Nigeria: Man Must Whack

• Share

On the surface, Nigeria seemed tranquil enough. A dozen ocean-going freighters thrashed seaward from Lagos' Apapa Quay, laden with cocoa, groundnuts, rubber and timber. In the Eastern Region's capital of Enugu, helmeted coal miners queued up as usual at the "Drink Tea and Eat Fried Meat and Radio Servicing" shop. At the Iddo Motor Park, beside the Bight of Benin, the lorries and "mammy wagons" of Ibo refugees were drawn into a frontier-style circle, while families clustered around huge pots of palm-oil chop—a bubbling mass of rice, meat, fish and coconut squeezings. The fatalistic mottoes on the mammy wagons seemed symbolically apt. "God knows best," read one; "I shall return," promised another. But the most appropriate said: "Man must whack."

Far to the north, Nigerians were whacking with a fury. In the Northern capital of Kaduna, raging mobs of Moslems armed with iron bars and broken bottles surged through the streets shouting anti-Ibo slogans. They killed at least 30 of the Ibo "aliens" from the east. In Kano, a swarm of Northerners marched out of the mud walls of the old city and stormed toward the airport, seeking Ibo blood. At the site of the huge Kainji Dam on the Niger, six Ibo bodies were scattered in the dirt, and at least 50 more Ibos were badly injured. In such Northern towns as Jos and Samaru, Zaria and Maiduguri, communal violence raged with the intensity of last May's infamous "Ibo hunt." By week's end, confirmed deaths stood at 200.

Fading Away. As black Africa's most populous nation marked its sixth anniversary last week, it teetered on the brink of civil war. The cause of its problems is the age-old struggle between three dominant tribal groups: the ambitious Ibos of the oil-rich Eastern Region; the ebullient Yorubas of the cocoa-growing West; the feudal Hausas and Fulani of the semiarid "Holy North." Their differences are basic and, unfortunately, all too typical of the tribal divisions that plague other African nations. The Northerners are rigid Moslems, suspicious of outsiders, wary of progress, ruled by reactionary emirs whose palaces are made of mud and whose law is adamantine. The Ibo

Easterners are Christian, democratic, enterprising—and far wealthier than the Northerners. The Yoruba Westerners, whose capital of Ibadan (pop. 750,000) is Nigeria's largest city and the world's largest shantytown, are farmers and small traders whose passions are High-Life music and politics, often accompanied by endless draughts of pungent palm wine.