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We Are Humans First—How One Core Northerner, Aminu Saved A Bus Filled With Igbos















It was a major commercial bus bound for Lagos from Rumuola, Port Harcourt. It took off at about 10:30pm at night aiming to arrive Lagos before dawn.


Rivers, being a southern state, expectedly, Igbos packed the bus. Everyone on the bus was Igbo, save for Aminu, the only northerner who was also draped in police attire.


The 18-seater Hummer took off and began snaking and meandering through the bushy lonely Bayelsan road that lead to Lagos.

Then it happened. Barely 2 hours into the journey, the vehicle came to a grinding halt as all passengers lunged forward and then back amidst screeches of tires on jagged tarred road and the strong smell of rubber chafing from friction.


Apparently, the road ahead had been blocked off and the driver had slammed the brakes abruptly. Shouts of 'blood of Jesus' filled the bus as it stood still on the main road; a 4-tired metal human container bathed to a glittering polish by the full moon's rays. No sooner had the shouts started than the bushes surrounding the bus sprang to life.


Armed men swarmed the bus like flies would a carcass. The door slid open and gun nozzles ushered the passengers out into the cold eerie night. Now, Aminu who wore his police outfit was especially frightened. Of course, he posed a greater threat than ordinary civilians and it made sense if the gun men sought to kill him first.


He alighted the bus and hurriedly sprawled on the cold-tarred road planting his face downward, as if saying, "I didn't see you guys face, I wore my uniform by mistake, there's no need for you to kill me if I can't identify you." While he lay on the road, someone called out to him,


"Oga Aminu!" For a moment, he froze, and the cold night started to get even more chilly. Perhaps, it wasn't his Aminu, another Aminu must have gotten on the bus. He wouldn't move, he couldn't move, it had to be someone else. 


The voice came again, this time louder as it mixed with the icy night and echoed back from the bushes hugging the road on both sides. "Oga Aminu!!" and the source began to walk toward him. 


With each approaching step, his head thumped strongly so that by the time the owner of the voice towered directly over his horizontal frame, the throbbing had almost burst his ears. The armed robber bent over, held him by the shoulder and pulled him up, and almost immediately, he felt a flowing warmth across his lower body.


"Oga Aminu, no be you I dey call?" "Why you dey hide?"  "Na me, Emeka for Oyigbo station, you don sabi me?" Aminu couldn't place the face, lots of people get jailed at the station every day. Emeka sensed the perplexion etched on Aminu's face and began calling out to his fellow road raiders.


When they had gathered, he threw one arm around Aminu's shoulder like a lover man would do when showing off his woman to his friends. "Una see this Oga Aminu ehn, that time wey I enter cell for Oyigbo. Wey hunger dey tear men dem belle, Oga Aminu dey always buy bread and water for we wey dey cell. Na good man him be." 


When the gang leader had finished the eulogy, the others began to hail Aminu with new found respect. "Weldone sir." "How are you sir?" "Oya make all of una get up make una enter bus. Una lucky today o. If not for this man, una for hear ween.


"The passengers scurried into the bus, except Aminu who was asked to wait. Emeka vanished and promptly reappeared, "Oya take am." He held out a fat brown envelope filled with money. 


Aminu quickly turned it down. "You dey mad? I say collect am," the voice had suddenly become gruffish.  Aminu collected the envelope gingerly and was led into the bus.


His debt repaid, Emeka ordered that the roadblock be removed and waved the driver off. The bus eased away from the gang into the safety of the night.  


This true life story depicts how simple indiscriminate acts of humanity have the capacity to transcend institutional barriers of segregation. 


Aminu, who is a police officer from the core north, was transferred to the east of Nigeria. He, like many others, shared the belief that people should be treated with kindness and respect regardless of their religious and ethnic backgrounds.





 













Aminu would take out money from his meagre salary to buy loaves of bread and bags of sachet water for prisoners kept in custody where he worked. Whatever their crimes, he believed they were humans first, and treated them as such.



He was raised not to treat people how bad they were, but to treat them how good he was. This dispassionate, benevolent acts would later save Aminu and through him, a small group of Igbos. Many more stories like Aminu’s abound.



Stories of how Igbos prevented a station manned by a Hausa DPO from being burned in the East during the heat of the EndSARS protest. Tales of how a Muslim man smuggled Igbos out of the North in a truck during the civil war crisis. 



These stories are irrefutable references proving that despite religious or ethnic affiliations, humans will respond positively to acts of kindness no matter how little. Additionally, the stories tell of people who remain unfazed in spite of the existing socio-political stereotypes pervading Nigeria. 



It speaks of those who refuse to buy the narrative of a single story— the story of Nigeria’s civil war told from one perspective about an unending rivalry between the north and the south east. In her Ted video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the danger of a single story and how it creates stereotypes and that the problem with stereotypes is they are incomplete and they make one story the only story. 


The uneasy moments that trailed the Lekki shootings saw a brief spurt of the religious and ethnic tensions that ravaged the country during the civil war.



Tempers flew, tribal and religious slurs were exchanged and sadly, daggers and bullets, too. What started as a protest for general, nationwide reform degenerated into a shameful, unwarranted tussle between the north and south over the legitimacy of the protest and the appropriateness of the government's actions in silencing the protesters.



The real essence of the protest was almost forgotten because the Nigerian people, instead of unanimously looking to the leaders for accountability, neglected the real problem—corruption— and turned on themselves. 



And the real problem is that corruption does not know religion or ethnicity, corruption goes anywhere she is invited. And in Nigeria, she is the favorite guest of almost all top government officials and politicians. Corruption is as rife in the north as in the south. 



The issue of corruption is too large to deal with in a single short article and this write-up will not be challenging that record today. 



However, the key here is for us to understand that varying beliefs on religion and cultural practices is not the cause of our nation's failure, as existing stereotypes would have us belief, but the greed and selfishness of corrupt leaders.



And it’s our collective duty to stop the spread of stereotypes about tribe and religion and to propagate stories like Aminu’s that speak of communalism and mutual respect. 



We should all know that we are humans first and the qualities of humanity that bind us together are greater than the seeming disparate views that divide us. 







Dammy

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