DANGER OF A SINGLE STORY: NORTHERN NIGERIA EXPERIENCE

Northern Nigeria has experienced a cycle of violence that keeps having a high and low period; this cycle of violence has been fueled by politics and religious misunderstanding. Rumor-mongering, too, has become the order of the day year after year, keeping people on edge, and the Boko Haram insurgence with its attendant fear, destruction, and killing in the North East has not speared even another region of the North.

Though Northern Nigeria has long been a culturally and religiously sensitive environment, people have quickly forgotten the good days of its commercial contribution and peaceful coexistence between people of various ethnic groups and religious faiths. The region has been demonized because of what Chimamanda Adichie would call the danger of a single story.

I must agree that there have been negative stories from Northern Nigeria. And most of all, a kind of normalized political fear has invaded our lives.

According to Chimamanda, all of these stories make [us] who we [are]. But to insist on only these negative stories is to flatten [our] experience and to overlook many other stories that formed [us]. The single story creates stereotypes. The problem with stereotypes noted by Chimamanda "is not they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." There are many good stories coming out of Northern Nigeria daily, and it is very important to talk about them, too.

When one has a single story it becomes impossible for one to see people or others from another view apart from that which one has placed them.  This article is a call to all well-meaning dwellers of the north and south part of Nigeria, the media, both local and international, and Government functionaries; please let us stop showing Northern Nigeria as just one thing, a demonized region. Because if we keep showing ourselves only one thing, over and over again, that is what we will become, even to the unborn generation.

I end this appeal by quoting Chimamanda's words in the video that inspired this article: the danger of a single story: "I've always felt that it is impossible to engage properly with place or person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasize how we are different rather than how we are similar."

She continued, "Many stories matter: Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can repair that broken dignity."

So, it is time to repair our broken dignity. Let's tell our stories of love, charity, and equality to all people we meet through our daily actions.

(Reference:  The Danger of a Single Story-Transcript courtesy of TED.    I implore you to watch the video on YouTube http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story )