March 14th, 2009

Irung ema esiak usung, usung asiak abie (The village may construct a road, yet it is the road that builds the community)

As a child, we learnt that disposing a seed of the Ndiya fruit was often accompanied with the saying “Ndiya uduokko duok, ndodong” None of us knew how the saying originated but like most things in our society, the word took on a religious meaning. We were told as children that failure to repeat those words meant that one was careless and may result in bad luck such as not finding the fruit at another time. Today, I can appreciate the wisdom of those who taught the young people about care in disposing the ndiya seed. Such care allowed the young to throw the seed away from the parent plant and on to a fertile ground that allowed for its germination. Rather than fear the anger of a neglected god, the accumulation of such tree in the community means that the Ndiya fruit remains abundance in the community. There is wisdom in planting the seed through care after the fruit was eaten for such care fed the next generation. This piece of wisdom was also applied in the saying that the community may construct a road, but it is the road constructed through the effort of the community that may define and build up the community. Human effort has its reward and what is invested eventually determines wealth and status.

This saying about the benefits of communal investment sounds like a gem from ancient days when our people were spreading out and establishing villages. A wise person perhaps employed it as a talking point to encourage participation. Today, this piece of wisdom is still relevant. Our people built roads and villages; they also pressed for self determination and freedom. They protected their drinking water and farmland through the ability to organize themselves into political units. Today, we have lost that zeal and the need for self determination. Between 1903 and 1945 for example, the British established 17 provinces in Northern Nigeria. Today, those provinces have been turned into 20 states if Ilorin is included as the British did. We in our land have still not agreed on the need for a political unit call state. Some have seen the demand as fragmentation while others see it a threat to homogenization. We have failed to build a road and as a result we have none to build us and open up our area to the outside world. Personal and communal investments are more than mere savings for a rainy day; they are the starting point for the next generation.

The problem with investing for the future, as John Maynard Keynes reminded us, is not that we lack ideas or that we cannot develop new ones, the problem lies in escaping from the old ideas of selfishness, greed, ignorance and procrastination. It lies in the old habits of micro-infighting and reserved coldness that prevents reaching out. Indeed, we have an opportunity to build a road in order to build ourselves, the problem lies in the ability to join hands and to let go of the old habits that stifle growth. Like the Ndiya seed that we threw away as children, our actions or inactions in the end may actually turn out to be what we keep for the future generation.

 

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