Before I am accused of writing with a sense of entitlement and therefore asked to go back to the bush that I come from, let me state it very clearly that I write with slave like humility
You see, the Ibibio nation is a race of humble people. We mind our business and do not have any huge ambitions as far as Nigeria is concerned
We do not claim to have built Lagos. We do not control large swaths of the market in Lagos. We do not control trades, and we do not have any Lagosian married to an Ibibio woman who is aspiring to be Governor of Lagos
We eat our afang and mind our business. We do not even know how to defend ourselves
We smile when your people deride us and sexualise our women and call our men houseboys
We don’t fight back, we smile and carry our Chinese accent and go away
We have only two buildings in Lagos – the Ojuelegba one and the one that houses our state liaison office in Vi
The Ojuelegba one is the symbol of our heritage in Lagos. We are not plenty, we are the real dots that Buhari was talking about, and we go to that community centre to drink, make merry and tell ourselves stories our forefathers taught us
It is that one building that your LAMATA has decided to take in ‘public interest’
It is that same one building of all the buildings in Lagos that is fit for a bus stop or whatever they have said they want to use it for
A building valued at about N250m, and they are offering us N11m, cos our women are housemaids in your homes and our men are cooks and houseboys in your homes
We are not surprised, after all, you have done more for your own people in Oworonsoki, so who are we with our own one building that we will escape the wrath of a receeding second term
The humiliation is biting, the spite cannot be contained, the wave off of our protest, like how you wave off a fly from shit, is tear-inducing
Nobody in any position of authority has listened to us, not one person, not even you, whom I respect and like
I can imagine the day the decision to do this was taken and how they would have just smirked – what can they do
It’s true we cannot do anything, we will heal our wounds and take a lesson from this
But be assured, the children of Israel came out strong from Egypt; the Ibibio nation will come out strong from this
This is just pure bullying, cos we have nobody to fight for us, not even our bumbling Senate President, who is busy sniffing Presidential backsides to have the time to even care about a heritage slurred by the bigamy of power
That Hall brought us together. As a child, I remember going to that hall to watch the Ekpe masquerade and the beautiful damsels who danced the famous ekonbi
But all that is gone now, and we have been once again awakened to the rude reality that you will always be a bastard in another man’s land, no matter the pretence of a federation
Shebi, you have taken your land, give us fair compensation na, cos we all know that no land in this Lagos, not even one with only a pit latrine, could be valued at N11m
You have shown your power, but be magnanimous enough to be responsible with it
Give us fair compensation
We are weak, but we have history on our side
Thank you, Your Excellency, for this humiliation, and God give you a long life so you see what will become of the Ibibio Nation in this Lagos
Ese gan, adupe
Duke of Shomolu
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