Mfana Ibaha: The Many Meanings of No Problem

Some words are too deeply rooted in culture to be adequately captured by their dictionary meanings. They carry history, temperament, memory and an understanding of human relationships that only reveals itself through context. Crispin Oduobuk explores such words, “Mfana Ibaha”, as here concluded. The words make up Ibibio expression commonly under stood as “no problem”, but one capable of carrying meanings ranging from reassurance and composure to acceptance, restraint and the quiet recognition of consequence. Continues From Previous Edition

Nursing had given her a profession grounded in modern science and institutional discipline.

But education does not necessarily erase what came before it. Perhaps all it does is add another layer.

The Christian woman, the trained nurse, the reader of Shakespeare and the Ibibio woman who understood consequence in a much older vocabulary were all there at once. That is what stayed with me.

And now, when I think of mfana ibaha, I hear something of my mother’s sentence in it. Not the violence. The restraint before the possibility of violence. The refusal to announce what comes next. The understanding that the absence of a threat is not necessarily evidence that there is no consequence.

Of course, this is one of the mysteries of culture. We like to imagine that education, religion, modernity and civilisation progressively lift human beings away from their primordial selves. Perhaps they do. But perhaps they also teach us new ways of containing older impulses.

My mother did not stop being an Ibibio woman because she became a Christian. She did not stop carrying the moral imagination of the world that produced her because she learned Shakespeare. The new did not destroy the old. It sat on top of it.

That may be true of all of us.

Modern human beings carry ancient instincts into modern rooms. We sit in offices, use smartphones, speak the language of rights and constitutions, attend universities, worship in churches and mosques, sign contracts and invoke the law. Beneath all of this are older ideas about honour, injury, reciprocity, obligation and consequence.

Civilisation may not eliminate those instincts. It may simply give them new clothes.

The weight of propriety

This is where mfana ibaha opens into something larger than language.

Cultures are not sustained only by constitutions, laws and formal institutions. They are also held together by unwritten rules about how people ought to conduct themselves. There are expectations about respect, reciprocity, hospitality, obligation, apology, forgiveness and the limits of acceptable behaviour. Much of social life takes place within this invisible architecture.

A person does not need to be told every morning that certain things are proper and certain things are improper. The knowledge is absorbed through family, community and experience. It becomes part of the instinct with which one navigates relationships.

This is where the expression becomes a small window into a larger worldview. There is an understanding that human beings will inevitably offend one another. The question is not whether conflict will occur. The question is what we do about it.

There is dignity in knowing when an argument has reached the point at which further words will achieve nothing. The refusal to continue arguing can itself become a statement.

This is not unique to the Ibibio. It is human.

What may be particularly interesting about mfana ibaha is the way the expression accommodates both sides of the human response. On one side, grace. On the other, gravity.

Grace says: this is not worth losing my composure over.

Gravity says: neither should you mistake my composure for helplessness.

The two can exist in the same person.

Peace is not surrender

There is an important distinction between accepting a situation and surrendering to it. One can decide not to escalate without forgetting what happened. One can forgive without pretending that an offence did not occur. One can choose silence without consenting to everything that has been said or done. And one can say mfana ibaha without meaning that there was never a problem.

Perhaps this is why the expression should not be understood merely as a polite version of “no worries”. There is a philosophy of self-command in it. The person who says mfana ibaha in the face of an affront is not necessarily powerless. He may simply have reached the point where further argument would diminish him.

That is different from surrender. It is also different from revenge.

There is a space between the two, and that space is occupied by consequence.

The person who refuses redress may imagine that the matter has disappeared because the argument has ended. But human beings do not always work that way. Sometimes the end of an argument is simply the moment when both parties stop talking. Sometimes it is the moment when one party begins thinking.

This is where time enters the equation. There is a kind of power in refusing to allow another person’s impatience to dictate the timing of your response. The person who reacts immediately may feel powerful because everybody can see his reaction. The person who waits may possess a different kind of power: the ability to decide what deserves a response and when.

That is not necessarily vengeance. It is patience. And patience, properly understood, is not inactivity. It is the refusal to surrender judgement to the urgency of the moment.

The wisdom of the unsaid

We live in an age that increasingly rewards impatience and immediate retaliation. Say it immediately. Post it. Respond. Expose. Call someone out. Make sure everybody knows that you have been wronged.

The digital world has made public reaction almost instantaneous. A disagreement that might once have remained between two people can become the subject of hundreds of strangers within minutes. There is something to be said, therefore, for an older wisdom that understands that not every provocation deserves an immediate response.

But restraint should not be romanticised either. There are circumstances in which silence is noble. There are others in which silence is complicity. There are wrongs that should be confronted and injustices that cannot be wished away by calling them “no problem”.

The wisdom lies in knowing the difference.

That may be the more difficult lesson contained in mfana ibaha. It is not simply about keeping calm. It is about retaining the ability to choose.

To choose whether to forgive.

To choose whether to insist.

To choose whether to walk away.

To choose whether the matter is genuinely finished or whether something remains unresolved.

In this sense, the expression speaks to an older social order. It allows a person to regulate his own response while leaving the other person to contemplate the meaning of what has just been said.

There is an economy to it. Why spend ten words where two will do? Why announce a consequence when the circumstances may speak for themselves? Why surrender your composure merely because somebody else has lost theirs?

The expression does not always answer these questions consciously. Culture rarely does. Much of what we call culture is simply accumulated experience turned into instinct.

From Ibibio to everywhere

There is no need to romanticise this. No culture has a monopoly on wisdom, restraint or good manners. Every community has its contradictions. Every society contains admirable traditions alongside practices that deserve to be questioned.

The value of examining a cultural expression such as mfana ibaha is to recognise that sometimes a small linguistic detail contains a larger human insight. The Ibibio person who says mfana ibaha may be speaking within a particular cultural context, but the experience being expressed is universal.

We have all encountered moments when someone has told us, in effect, that our grievance does not matter. We have all had to decide whether to insist, withdraw, forgive, retaliate or simply move on. We have all had to learn that peace and weakness are not synonyms. And most of us, at one point or another, have discovered that there are things better left unsaid.

There are versions of this wisdom everywhere. The belief that what goes around comes around. The notion of karma. The old Christian image of the mills of God grinding slowly. Different cultures have found different ways of expressing a similar intuition: that actions do not necessarily disappear simply because their consequences are delayed.

Mfana ibaha does not need to embody an entire philosophy. It is enough that it offers a wonderfully economical place to begin.

The song and the inheritance

This may also explain something about the extraordinary reach of 2Baba’s song.

Popular culture has a way of taking words from particular communities and releasing them into a much larger linguistic marketplace. A phrase can leave its original setting, travel across ethnic and geographical boundaries and acquire a new life among people who may know little about its origins. Millions can sing a phrase without knowing all the cultural layers contained within it.

Yet the phrase travels. That, too, is something beautiful about Nigeria. We are constantly borrowing from one another. Words travel from one language into another. Expressions cross rivers and state boundaries. Songs take local idioms and make them national. What begins in one community can eventually become part of a shared Nigerian vocabulary.

Mfana ibaha is one such traveller.

But if it has travelled this far, it may be worth pausing to consider what it has been carrying. Not merely “no problem”. Something more subtle. A preference for composure over panic. An appreciation of dignity. An understanding that relationships are governed by obligations that are not always written down. A recognition that peace requires restraint, but restraint should not automatically be interpreted as weakness.

And perhaps also this: that beneath the educated, religious, modern and civilised person is an older human being who has not entirely disappeared.

My mother knew Shakespeare. She knew nursing. She knew the church. She also knew the language of consequence.

That may very well be what culture ultimately is: an older house in which all the newer rooms have been built.

And somewhere in that house is mfana ibaha. No problem.

Sometimes it is an assurance. Sometimes it is acceptance. Sometimes it is the grace of refusing to be provoked. Sometimes it is the end of an argument. And sometimes it is a verdict disguised as peace.

The wisdom is in knowing which one you are saying.

And which one you have just been told.