• The imperative of Psycho-Trauma Awareness
• Psycho-Trauma Healing, for Personal, Organisational and Societal Wellbeing
Nigerian History: A Caligraphy of Traumatic Experiences
A major part of the 62 years of Nigeria’s independence, has been characterised by suffering, pain, distress, and outrightly traumatising experiences for individuals, families, and communities. It is estimated that over 80 percent of Nigerians have been exposed to one form of trauma stress or the other in the cause of their lives. No wonder we hear the expression these days, that “Nigeria has happened to him!” or “Nigeria has happened to her!” To pick up our history of trauma from post-independence times, is not to ignore the brutal and ignominious legacy of the trans-Atlantic and trans-Sahara slave trade, which lasted for over four hundred years, and was sustained by the greed, the wickedness, and the callousness of our local leaders, (the Chiefs, Obas, Obis, and the Sarkis), who conspired with the unscrupulous foreign merchants to prosecute the reprehensible trade in human cargo, until the Whiteman changed his method of exploitation from slave trade and slave labour in the Americas, to colonialism, and then compelled our autochthonous conquerors to toe the line. Thus, the present generation of Nigerians are descendants of the perpetrators as well as the survivors of that most callous and notorious shade of man’s inhumanity against man, by which fellow human beings were raided, sold into slavery, and shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to a land of no return, or they and generations of their descendants were condemned to a dehumanising life of servitude within the country. Following closely after the four hundred years of slave trade was another one hundred years of colonial exploitation, which has left behind devastating consequences on the individual and corporate psyche of Nigerians, as indeed is the experience with people of other colonised African countries.
With the short time available for this presentation, I resolved to limit myself to post-independence Nigeria, and the series of traumatising events that have turned us into such a wounded and hurting group of people, that are constantly acting out our individual and intergenerational traumas in wounding and hurting our fellow sufferers. From the Operation Wetie of Western Nigeria that started in 1962, to the 1966 Coup and the infamous pogrom against Igbos that followed in the North, which all culminated in the unfortunate civil war of 1967 to 1970, an event that unleashed unprecedented horror on individuals, families and communities, the same civil war that was the excuse for the Asaba Massacre of October 7, 1967, when callous or vengeful officers of the 2nd Division of the Nigerian Army ordered the execution in cold blood, of over 700 unarmed men and boys, who assembled in one location to welcome the Federal troops upon the liberation of the Midwest from the Biafran Army. Hundreds of others were rounded up from their homes, their farms or their hiding places and executed. It is reported that the massacre was so comprehensive, so total, that there were no men left to bury the dead. While many of the victims were buried in mass graves, some courageous women and girls dragged the corpses of their fathers and husbands, and uncles and brothers, from where they were executed to their homes, where they used hoes to dig shallow graves for the dead. There is the story of a particular boy who witnessed the soldiers asking a young man to dig his own grave, and thereafter callously pushing him into the grave with a torrent of bullets! There is hardly any family in Asaba that did not lose three or four male members – fathers, sons, brothers, and uncles. And indeed, there are families that were wiped out entirely, as three generations – grandfather, father and sons were killed during the massacre. I am not aware that the individual and communal trauma of the Asaba people were ever seriously addressed in any programmatic manner.
The victims and survivors were expected to simply move on with life. Yet the trauma of the massacre must have left its devastating impact on not only the survivors, but also the generations that have come after them, who today may be occupying positions of power and authority as public officers and corporate executives, senior functionaries in the judiciary and law enforcement agents, university administrators and lecturers, human resource managers, and organisational or industrial psychologists, as well as pastors, imams and local chiefs and heads of families. Without addressing the individual, communal and intergenerational trauma that these people may be carrying around, they are likely to visit their trauma on those around them, and especially those over whom they superintend by a myriad of maladaptive behaviours. And with regard to the perpetrators, it is widely believed that it was the 9th Brigade of the 2ndInfantry Division of the Nigerian Army under the control of Ibrahim Taiwo and Murtala Muhammed respectively that carried out the atrocities. With the 1975 coup that ousted General Gowan, Taiwo and Murtala become Governor of the old Kwara State, and Head of the Nigerian State respectively. And what can we say about the possible state of mental health or ill-health of many of those that made up the 2nd Division of the Nigerian Army at the time? There is a seemingly insignificant but important detail regarding the perpetrators of Asaba Massacre that should be of interest to Psychologists, and especially those undertaking research and documentation on the impact of traumatic experiences on the human brain and the subsequent (post-trauma) behaviour of sufferers, if such devastating experiences are not properly integrated through a series of intervention mechanisms.
The important detail is as follows: The 2nd Infantry Division of the Nigerian army was quickly formed in the lead-up to the civil war. It is alleged that many of the men that ended up as conscripts in this Division under the control of Murtala Muhammed and Ibrahim Taiwo, were so illtrained and so undisciplined that they could hardly be called “soldiers.” It is alleged that a good number of them were recruited from among death row prison inmates, and from among motor park touts. They did not have the benefit of any thorough training in the conduct and ethics of warfare. Instead, they were largely wounded, disoriented,or traumatised men who were simply conscripted and empowered with deadly weapons – and propelled by the hysteria and madness of war, they committed unspeakable atrocities not only in Asaba, but also elsewhere in the then Midwest and across the Niger. It is also alleged that the same 2nd Division that carried out the Asaba massacre, soon met their waterloo as they lost almost five thousand men while crossing the river Niger, and several hundreds more at the deadly contest in Abagana. (Source: Interview with the Late Col. Paul Ogbebor, referenced in the Nigerian History Platform on October 7, 2022) Those who fought the gruesome civil war as middle and senior level officers took over the reins of power, and superintended the political, economic, social, and cultural lives of Nigerians for much of the next thirty years! After the 30 months war, the trauma of these officers – these psychologically and emotionally wounded perpetrators and victims of the war, was never diagnosed, let alone treated. Instead, these war veterans (who would have been suffering various degrees and combinations of psychopathologies on account of war trauma), appropriated the legislative and executive powers of state at all levels, and also superintended the conduct of the judiciary – drafting decrees, establishing military tribunals, appointing and dismissing judges, etc.
They ran the country from the barrel of the gun and militarised practically every institution and agency of state. The modus operandi of the military, the command-and-control culture, became the dominant national culture across the national spectrum. They humiliated respected public figures, including world renowned university professors and those repositories of the accumulated knowledge of the civil service that used to be referred to as “super permanent secretaries.” They brutalised and imprisoned Human Rights and pro-democracy lawyers, journalists, and other social critics, despatching a number of them to their early graves, leaving behind a trail of blood and tears, and rendering many young women and children widows and orphans. Like a locust invasion, the military destroyed practically all the institutions and infrastructures of state that were built up over the decades by the colonialists and the political leaders of the first republic. They went further to forcefully take over missionary schools across the country and saw to the near-total destruction of almost all of them before they stepped aside in 1999.
We Are All Victims of the Nigerian Ongoing Trauma Stress
The series of negative or adverse experiences unleashed upon successive generations of Nigerians – which often overwhelm our capacity to cope (that is technically referred to as psycho-trauma), have left their toll on the individual and corporate psyche of multiple generations of Nigerians. We are all bearing and having to struggle with one or more forms of trauma stress that the Nigerian state is constantly unleashing on its citizens: The 3-year-old toddler, who is vicariously bearing the trauma of the parents that have just been ejected from their slum settlement in Abuja and rendered homeless; the 5 year old girl, kidnapped along with other children from an Islamiyya school in Niger State; the 10 year old street kid in Gusau, who has never been enrolled in school, and is already learning the art of banditry; the 15 year old girl forcefully abducted and married out (against her will) to a terrorist kingpin in Maiduguri; the 20 year old student in Kaduna who is yet to complete his 200 level studies, after four calendar years in the university; the 35 years old State House of Assembly member in Lokoja, Kogi State, whose life is in danger, for daring to identify with the opposition party; the 40 year old market woman in Yenagoa whose house and shop were completely swept away recently by the flood, but who has not received any help from any government agency; the 50 year old Senator in Abuja, who recently received intelligence reports that he is being trailed around town by “unknown gunmen;” the 55 year old State Governor whose mother-in-law was kidnapped by bandits, and is yet to be released;the 63 year old professor of mathematics, who receives less than USD600 a month salary, and who today has been denied eight months salary, for daring to join the ASUU strike to compel the federal government to implement the agreement it signed with the Union since the year 2009; the 66 year old former Deputy Senate President who has been languishing in a U.K. detention facility for most of the year, with Nigerian leaders simply moving on, as if he were a common criminal; and the 78 year old president of the federal republic, whose wife has come out to publicly confess that he is an untreated patient of PTSD.
Indeed, all of us are often unaware and undiagnosed victims of varying degrees of what has been described “Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder” (OPSD)! We are distressed, wounded, and hurting victims of our national ruination that has been superintended over the years by a succession of punitive overlord who themselves are victims of the endless cycle of physical, psychological, and emotional violence that the Nigerian population has been through. No wonder we witness such a high degree of the phenomenon known as re-victimisation or re-traumatisation. It is widely acknowledged in Trauma Literature, that “HEALED PEOPLE HEAL PEOPLE,” and that conversely, “HURTING PEOPLE OFTEN HURT PEOPLE.” The fact that wounded people often go on to wound others, has been sufficiently demonstrated by researchers. Yes, there is abundant evidence today of the long-term devastating effects of traumas that have not been treated or sufficiently integrated.
A Nation Superintended and Violated by Traumatised Leaders
My dear friends, as I was reflecting on what to share with this elite group of Organisational and Industrial Psychologists at this Conference, the news broke out of the public confession of Madam Aisha Buhari, the President’s wife, that her husband suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and that his chronic trauma condition was neither acknowledged, nor formally diagnosed and treated. But she said she had to bear the brunt of it all. She says, and I quote: “My husband served the Nigerian Army for 27 years before he was overthrown in a coup d’etat. He fought the civil war for 30 months without rehabilitation; he ruled Nigeria for 20 months and was detained for 40 months without disclosing the nature of his offence… You can imagine myself at the age of 19 years, handling somebody that went to war, suffered a coup d’etat, then lost several elections, and finally getting to the Villa in 2015… So, at the age of 19, I had to figure out how to tell somebody of his calibre that he was wrong or right, and that was the beginning of my offence in his house, and contesting elections in 2003 and failed, 2007, failed, and 2011, the same thing – all without rehabilitation. I became a psychotherapist!”
Mrs. Buhari’s public confession on the reality of undiagnosed and untreated trauma among many in positions of authority in Nigeria, including the presidency, is a graphic illustration of a major part of my presentation today. Nigeria as a corporate entity, and Nigerians as a people have been groaning under the heavy burden of widespread undiagnosed and untreated intergenerational and personal psycho-trauma, whose devastating impact includes the many maladaptive behaviours and psychopathologies that we witness daily in our national landscape. What is more instructive is that perhaps some of the more traumatised persons among us (with a whole range of undiagnosed psycho-emotional pathologies) are the very ones who catapulted themselves into positions of political power and economic influence and have consistently unleashed their trauma on the hapless population, and seem determined to sink the ship of state entirely. With the military takeover of power, suddenly, a 32-year-old Lt. Colonel whose only preparation and experience is the art of war, became Head of State or Governor. He appointed and sacked Chief Justices, Ministers, Commissioners, Vice Chancellors of Universities and Ambassadors. He had the power to sign the death warrant on condemned persons, and also had the discretion of the prerogative of mercy.
Yet, many of these veterans of the civil war, are not only perpetrators, but also victims and survivors of the trauma of a bitter civil war, along with the multiple coup d’etat that became a pastime for ambitions and power-hungry soldiers. They often exhibited a range of maladaptive behaviours that in the context of their war trauma experience (and their experience of multiple coups), are perhaps quite understandable. These include the widespread and well-known alcohol addiction among senior military officers, and their propensity for humiliating, bullying and brutalising junior officers, as well as those of us whom they often arrogantly and disdainfully referred to as “bloody civilians.” Elements of the Nigerian Police Force have sometimes openly boasted before innocent citizens that, “I will shoot you, and say that you are an armed robber, and nothing will happen.” Executive Lawlessness and widespread impunity came to characterise governance at all levels in Nigeria, leaving numerous individuals, families, and communities traumatised, and their trauma experiences have hardly been acknowledged, let alone treated. Yet the negative impact of these layers of trauma in the Nigerian population are manifested everywhere in maladaptive behaviours.
Though we have since 1999 been operating a democratic system, Nigerians have not witnessed a significant shift in the general conduct of political leaders, from the military approach to a more civil approach. Instead, we have continued to see office holders execute the business of governance as if it were state capture, and they relate with the people who elected them to office in the same way as ancient emperors or primitive feudal lords related with the conquered people whom they called subjects. The inexplicable level of corruption is another maladaptive behaviour among our leaders that is worth investigating as one possible knock-on effect of the successive intergenerational and personal trauma that Nigerians have been through. How else does one explain the monumental Abacha loot, the Cecilia Ibru loot, the Deziani Allison Madueke loot, the Abdulrasheed Maina Police Pension loot, and the Accountant General Ahmed Idris loot, and that of numerous other public officials, who allegedly have stolen funds that they and their family members cannot spend in a thousand years? How does one explain the widespread stealing in the most irrational and humongous manner, if these are not glaring manifestations of some undiagnosed and untreated psychopathology?
A critical observer recently crafted a post regarding what he sees as the madness that has plagued the Nigerian public official on a WhatsApp group to which I belong. Part of the post reads: …the Nigerian public official, although filled and belching with excess, would still hide stolen meat within the corners of his mouth at a dinner, stuff fried rice into his socks, and try to shuffle moinmoin into his shoes. Madness you say. But who else would steal 80 billion Naira except a mad fellow? …God, open the eyes of our elites to see and know that they don’t need what they steal. For only a mad fellow gathers stones and pans that are needless. How does one explain the fact that those who belong to the Nigerian political and economic elite, the majority of who came out of very poor families and villages, having themselves enjoyed high quality public education (often with Federal or State Government scholarships and bursaries), have decided to destroy all our public educational institutions, and send their own children to expensive private schools at home and abroad?
The same crop of Nigerian elites has superintended the ruination of our public health infrastructures, while they themselves frequent the UK, the US and Dubai for their healthcare needs; how else does one explain such behaviour pattern, except that we may be dealing here with disoriented minds that require psychiatric attention? How does one explain that there may be over a thousand private jets in a country that cannot own or maintain a national carrier; or that the 6th largest producer of crude oil in the world cannot have its own refinery, and as a result we witness incessant chronic fuel shortage, with the attendant punitive consequences on motorists who must spend extremely long hours queuing for fuel? How does one explain the fact that university teachers could be so shabbily treated in a developing country with critical manpower needs, and that leaders can go to bed and sleep well through the night, when public universities across the country are closed for eight months, and nearly two million of our most endowed young people are roaming the streets, and enlisting in criminal ventures?
And how does one explain the abysmally poor quality of persons that our country continues to throw up for leadership positions at all levels, when we are a nation endowed with some of the best intellectuals, technocrats, and administrators, that can successfully govern such technologically advanced countries as the UK, the US and Canada? Perhaps it is on account of these baffling contradictions and absurdities in the conduct of leadership and the widespread mismanagement of critical national affairs by a succession of those who have occupied high political office in Nigeria that Dr. Uche Ojinmah, President of the Nigerian Medical Association recently called for a mandatory psychiatric evaluation of all who present themselves for the office of President and State Governor in the 2023 elections. Earlier in the year, Brig General Buba Marwa, Chairman of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, called on political parties to include drug integrity tests, as part of the screening processes for candidates.
To be continued NEXT WEEK
• Being full text of a paper presentation by Rev. Fr. George Ehusani, Executive Director, Lux Terra Leadership Foundation made at the 2022 National Scientific Conference of the Nigerian Association of Industrial and Organisational Psychologists, Abuja, Nigeria.
