When I was posted to the old Imo State (now Abia and Imo States) for NYSC, it never crossed my mind to seek redeployment as corpers are now wont to do, even when I was posted to a remote village, Umuaku-Isuochi, for my primary assignment.
When I reported to the village, I thought I was the only one in the community who could speak Hausa, because for the first few months, there was nothing to suggest otherwise. So I quickly acclimatized and started learning Ibo. I mingled with the locals, taking their food, playing with them and generally enjoyed myself.
One day, I was engrossed playing a game of draught with the locals when suddenly out of the blue, someone came from behind me and said, "Ina kwana ina gajiya?", meaning, Good morning, how are you? Startled and not believing I had heard aright, I turned to see who spoke those words. Standing behind me was an elderly good natured person with beard and sideburns. He extended his hand in a friendly manner and we shook hands. I asked if he could speak Hausa or those were the only words he knew and he again responded in fluent Hausa saying, "Kamar Jakin Kano", roughly translated to mean very well.
So we talked...and it turned out that before the civil war, he had lived in the north, somewhere in the former Kaduna State, my state, (before Katsina State was created). He said he used to own a bakery in a small town called Bakori (my hometown), near Funtua...when he saw my eyes open very wide, he stopped to look again at me and said, "Don't tell me you're from there". I said I was and he went ahead and gave me another shocker...he said before he became established, he had stayed in the house of one very kind and gentle man called, Alhaji Barau...Wow! For a moment I wondered if he was a soothsayer, because that's my grandfather! When I told him so, it was his turn to be shocked! And looking at the animated way he was recalling the moment, I knew he was serious. What a coincidence!
You can see how fate brought us together after he had lived in my grandfather's house many years ago! He went on to ask me about my father and all my uncles, by their names, who he said were his friends. From that day, he became my family, taking me to his house, giving me food and generally looking after me.
It was much later I found two other Ibos who could speak Hausa fluently too in the village: one was the local bicycle mechanic who had also lived in the north and the other was a security guard in the community secondary school where I was posted, Mr. Johnson, who had been a driver in the north.
When I returned home and told my father he immediately remembered Uche. All my uncles also remembered him.
That was the kind of life Nigerians used to live, embracing each other wholeheartedly without any form of discrimination.
And that's the kind of Nigeria I dream of...