Minorities Must Write Their Own Stories Or Others Will Write Them For Us — Duke
By Missang AKPET
Former Cross River lawmaker and author, Rt. Hon. Orok Otu Duke, has charged minority groups to document their histories before they are lost.
Duke spoke in Calabar at the Ernest Etim Bassey Press Centre during an interaction with journalists ahead of the Abuja presentation of his five new books on November 5.
He said the failure of communities to write about themselves has led to loss of culture and distortion of history..
He regretted that many communities do not record the good, the bad and the ugly about themselves.
“On my own, I found out that a lot of times, we fail to document things about us. If we don't properly document our activities, culture and our ways of life, we tend to lose a lot,” he said.
The books billed for presentation in Abuja are come October 5 are Treasures, Winnowing, Welcome to Uyo: The Nigerian Civil War through the eyes of a Calabar child, Oluchi's Journey, and Calabar Modern Stories.
Duke explained that _Welcome to Uyo_ was written to capture the neglected experiences of minority communities during the civil war, which he said began in Gakem, Cross River State.
Challenging the popular narrative, he said: everybody is talking about how a particular tribe was killed during the war. Not true. Not true at all. More people in the minorities died in the civil war.
He relived his childhood in Uyo, then a major refugee camp, where he witnessed daily deaths of schoolmates and mass burials, with bodies later exhumed by rain and eaten by animals. He called on Nigerians to start writing, regardless of scope.
“Let us write. Let us write about ourselves. It must not be only during your happier days, even sad days. Let us document and tell others about us,” he said.
