What Exactly Has Weakened, Divided And Made Us This Vulnerable?
I am one of the village children who grew up learning from my father and other elders about the culture and tradition of my people, our original culture was against any form of evil, I was told and also witnessed where any type of sickness was healed by the use of ordinary Kungureku, I also witnessed where a young man in Mbatiav was brought back to life from death when the elders summoned an emergency meeting(hambee ifian) and asked that who soever have a hand in the death of that young man should bring him back to life as Ityo I lumun ga, and this man rose from death, this happened as recent as 1985, so where is that same Ityo today that our land has become a victim of calamity, crimes that were hitherto alien to us, now has become indigenous crimes, our land is flowing with blood of the innocents as invader come right inside our villages and settlements to cause mayhem unhindered.
We have set aside our true culture and embrace what is totally foreign to our beliefs and norms, we have succumbed to sentiments, divisions, false leadership, selfishness, greed, politics of bitterness, hatred, rancour and acrimony.
We have refuse to be one,we have chased togetherness to foreign lands,unity has become our enemy, love for one another is no longer fashionable, as hatred and bitterness rule our hearts.
The above scenario has weaken us so much that outsiders have noticed our weakness and therefore capitalise on it to launch attacks on us and put us against one another.
Is a Tiv man, woman or child from Guma, different from the one in Ukum, Konshisha, Kwande and so on?
Why can’t the tears and wailings of a Ihyarev man not bother a Kunav man, why refer to others as Kave jela se di kpa ka se jene? These and many more have left us bare and shamelessly open to stagnation, underdevelopment and backwardness, we have become a laughing stock among local minorities, Igyuve sombu gema senden a akange, that’s our situation and if urgent measures are not taken to reverse this status quo, we might as well woke up one day to discover that we have being, captured, baptised and renamed as TIBI … (God forbid).
Truly things have fallen apart, we no longer have little regard for ourselves and cherished traditions, the custodians of our traditions also have gone the other way, how could an Ortar or Tyoor collect as little as N20k from herdsmen and give them hectares of farming land to be grazing, who introduced such practice.
Ior mba sen se kuren ave, ka kunya, doo ga chii…we have to go back to yiase, reconcile with our Aondo u abaver jua, let him cleanse us and restore our strength, unity and dignity, gadia ortiv ngu gban jime je ka kera doon u kengen ga.
Our leaders both political and traditional have to act swiftly, also with input of discipline youths to quickly arrest this situation before the situation arrest and imprison us.
We must build all our structures and struggles on the foundation of truth and not on sentiments or bias, that’s the only way to go.