HERE and THERE: A quarrelsome lot

“I am quarrelling with your husband,” was the opener. “He stood me up last week.” My immediate response would have been: Oh yeah? Please, pick a number, take a seat and join the queue; in fact don’t call us, we’ll call you! But because of the tone behind the declaration I stayed my hand. We are Nigerians and quarrelling takes on a whole new meaning with us.

Now that in itself is a typical Nigerian quarreller move, pausing first to analyse the insult, to pick through the nuances of the tone in which it was delivered, check to see if due deference was given to status and plan the appropriate reaction. I know of few other places where someone will suit up for battle because he or she did not like the way you greeted him or her.

In some climate zones, people stop speaking to each other, cancel appointments, or shift allegiances and call it a day. Take this example attributed to filmmaker Woody Allen: “Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ But not in those words.” Here, a quarrel is not just a ten-minute blow out of exchanging insults; it is a process, a choreographed opera replete with overture, drama, denouement and negotiated settlement, which can take on national dimensions.

You could even look at this nation as a conglomeration of major and minor quarrels constantly in motion. One major convulsion moved us from three regions to four, to 12 states and the ball kept rolling till we got to 36. A race to dilute every possible reason for quarrelling? Perhaps.

We actually have a quarreller in chief and the fall out of his disputes, some would even say payback, still reverberates today. Former President Olusegun’s Obasanjo’s bid for a third term set him on a collision course with his vice president Atiku Abubakar and with the rest of the country.

Obasanjo lost his bid but the quarrel between him and his vice president put paid to the latter’s ambitions to contest for the presidency. Thence ensued a bitter feud which in typical Nigerian fashion was orchestrated to a close at the beginning of this year in a series of well choreographed moves.

Flashback to the Constituent Assembly of 1977/78 and the big debate over the Sharia Appeal Court where the 92 pro Sharia members staged a dramatic walk out and it seemed that the birth of the Second Republic was in grave danger of a miscarriage. A different Obasanjo then personally intervened. A compromise was reached and the man, who everybody loves to hate today, engineered the first successful military to civilian handover.

Columnist Mahmud Jega writing for Daily Trust in February of this year had a list of what he called conflicts between various governors and party chieftains, former movers and shakers and would be king makers, numbering 26. These quarrels are inter state, intra state and some “which have no local or international boundaries.” Jega adds, “other feuding politicians all over Nigeria should please pardon me for not including them in this short list for space reasons.”

For us too, quarrelling is love play as wittily encapsulated in Fela Ransome-Kuti’s timeless classic, Shakara. It’s called African romance conveyed in that slow, deliberate, head to toe scrutiny, followed by the derisory glance as she turns away.

It is simply the first movement in a symphony that always ends on the same note. In the olden days, if you wanted to catch the attention of a girl you liked you waited till she passed by on her way to fetch water and threw a stone at her. Pick her a flower, offer to carry her pot? How can! Today old friends bump into each other and express the sheer pleasure they feel in the string of treasured insults they hurl at each other. Coconut head! See this fool!

A primer on Dating Nigerians published on a site called Nigerians in London advises foreigners about one of our favourite pastimes, partying. “Feel free to bring a friend,” it says.” If the discussions sound like bitter quarrels, pay no attention. It is just the Nigerian way of letting everyone know that they are having fun.” A good friend passed on to me a favourite piece of advice of his father’s: ‘Agreement is for the day of quarrel.’ Now any advocate can quote you chapter and verse on the law of contracts, but I bet it will not be as succinct as that gem.