“The woman with the calabash nudged her, then motioned to some other people close
by. ‘Bianu, come,’ she said. ‘Come and take a look.’ She opened the calabash. ‘Take a
look,’ she said again. Olanna looked into the bowl. She saw the little girl’s head with
the ashy-grey skin and plaited hair and rolled-back eyes and open mouth. She stared at
it for a while before she looked away. Somebody screamed. The woman closed the
calabash. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘it took me so long to plait this hair? She had such
thick hair,”
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Adichie
Wail! Nigeria wail! your sons and daughters are dying by the coming of each new day! Your streets are unsafe to walk in, your markets and garages are now abattoirs and your highways are reliable death traps!
Mothers are still waiting, waiting for their wards that left the house and haven’t returned yet. The woman from across the street; her husband was a trader – he won’t be coming home tonight…he won’t be coming home ever again. Mr Adamu was about making his way through the traffic gridlock…alas!…he didn’t make it to the other side of the road!
Ibrahim just got an admission to study medicine at the University but…he was brought back home to us tied up in a mat with eyes rolled back into their sockets and pieces of his flesh stitched in a million ways so that we can recognise him as our former Ibrahim!
Now we are afraid to leave our house to seek ways of making a living. Even in our houses, our safety is not guaranteed…death still comes knocking. The other day, Emeka was stabbed in the throat in his sleep, he bled to death while trying to mumble his final words on earth. Oh Nigeria why?
We now watch out for every strange bags and objects around us, we don’t even trust people carrying knapsacks on their backs anymore. Our closest companion on the street is now our enemy. Who knows…he might be a suicide bomber…or to him…I might be a suicide bomber…a threat to his existence!
Nigeria! Your civil servants and office workers now leave their houses as early as 2:00AM in the morning in order to avoid traffic drags that might lead them to their early graves because you now have bombs on your roads!
Nigeria! your poor and downtrodden masses now live in fear even in their humble abodes. While your rich go about smiling and getting fat. The ghettos and slums are shortcuts to the grave while the opulence of your highbrow neighbourhoods swim with happy faces of the rich and powerful. They sit under air-conditioned living rooms to watch what you have become on CNN and BBC as they take off from your shores the next day to well developed nations where their average life expectancy is guaranteed!
BOOM! The bomb goes off and your ignorant masses rush down to the scene to witness the carnage and havoc created with their eyes as they happily upload pictures to the social media through their mobile phones with interesting taglines such as “First To SEE: Bomb Blast Claim 30 lives – Mukaila”, “Just NOW! Blood and Human Parts from Bomb Blasts! 🙂 – CindyBerry”…and while they are at it….BOOOOOM again…the second explosion was more deadlier than the first….Alas! the girl that just tweeted about 5 minutes ago is no more!
And when your children take to the streets, the tear gases and water cannons of the police will be waiting for them there with the koboko (horsewhip) of the soldiers waving ferociously in the air as it drink from the blood on the backs of your children. Your children are now been slapped and smacked around on the face by the same defenders of the nation…or better put – defenders of the government!
I pledge to Nigeria my country…to serve Nigeria with all my strength…to defend her unity….But how can I do this when I am scared to go into the streets?
To all the countless victims of terrorism in Nigeria…we say…REST IN PEACE!
God bless us all
God bless The Federal Republic of Nigeria!
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