USING EVASIVE LANGUAGE

Telling lies is a vice, not a virtue. Parents often admonish their kids to always avoid telling lies at all times. Pastors and other religious leaders regularly paint fearful and scary pictures of the religious consequences of telling lies. In court, many cases are lost daily because the plaintiff or defendant told lies. All these notwithstanding, sometimes it is desirable or in fact necessary to avoid telling the truth.

Sometime in June 1992, I visited the ancient city of Kano in northern Nigeria. Kano was a muslim-dominated city which practiced sharia law. The few christians who lived and worked therein, prefered to live at the outskirts of the city in order to avoid religious conflicts. Despite this, conflicts between muslims and christians were frequent. Sadly, the christians were always on the losing end. Each time a conflict arose, churches were burnt down, warehouses were looted and vandalized and many individuals lost their lives.

Being a christain from the southeastern part of the country, visiting the city was always a nightmare as riots could break out at any time. It was therefore very disheartening when I encountered one of such riots during my 1992 visit. I was the only one in the house when the rioters visitedmy uncle's house. I peeped through a hole and saw that they were armed with guns, clubs and other dangerous weapons. I escaped through the backdoor and scaled the fence into the next compound. A heavily-bearded man approached me from the main building and waved at me. I was reluctant to approach him for he looked every inch like my assilants. The smile on his face won me over. He took me into his house and hid me underneath a bed.

Unknown to me, one of the rioters had seen me escape into the adjoining compond and alerted the others. Hundreds of them entered into the compond from the main gate which they pulled down. They demanded for me. The bearded man whom I had come to regard as my angel informed them that I had jumped the fence into the next compound when he attempted to catch me by himself. A few of them entered the house and searched vigorously while others stood outside chanting songs in Hausa and Arabic languages. Finally, they believed my host and departed to search for other victims. I am sure he won their hearts because he was a muslim like them and could speak their languages perfectly.

I was in the man's house until the police brought the situation under control. I have never stopping imagining what would have happened to me if that wonderful man had told my assailants the truth.

I had also witnessed another incident which convinced me that sometimes, telling the truth may not be a wise thing to do in every situation. I was undergoing compulsory paramilitary training alongside one thousand other fresh college graduates in my country then. We were being prepared for the mandatory one-year youth service program for fresh college graduates. The rules in the camp were very strict as we were being trained by soldiers.

One day, Ibe, my roommate sneaked out of the camp and went into the nearby town to relax over a few bottles of beer. Unfortunately for him, he ran into Major Dogo, the camp commandant. Ibe's uniform made him conspicuos and Major Dogo had no problems asking him to stop.He did not stop at all but ran away. The Major directed the soldier with him to catch Ibe. Ibe was lucky as he was able to get to the camp and jump into the compond before the soldier could arrest him. We all saw him running towards us and figured out what happened. Our suspicion was confirmed when within minutes, we saw a soldier jump into the compound ostensibly in pursuit of Ibe. By this time, Ibe had mixed up with the rest of us. His uniform only served to make him blend with the rest of the crowd.

Soon, Major Dogo gathered all of us and scrutinized each face. He was initially confident that he would have fished out Ibe. However, his confidence waned when he found out to his dismay that hundreds of other boys looked exactly like Ibe. He instructed us to identify the culprit. We all informed him that we did not see anybody run into the compound. We all knew that if we had identified Ibe, the punishment for him would have been dismissal from the camp. He would have lost the opportunity to serve the country for two years. The implication was that he could not transact business or get employed in the country as a graduate until he returned to complete the assignment. We all knew what our colleague did was bad. But we did not want him crucified.

All of us were eventually punished. We accepted our punishment happily and moved on. Until today, I have never stopped feeling we did the correct thing by telling lies in order to save our friend and colleague.