By Bayo Oluwasanmi
I penned a piece titled A Doomed People published in SaharaReporters October 11, 2012 on the riveting butchery of four students
of University of Port Harcourt in Aluu three kilometers from the main campus of the university. Friday, October 5, 2012 Biringa Chiadika Lordson, Ugonna Kelechi Obuzor, Mike Lloyd Toku, and Tekena Erikena were turned to hunted animals, clubbed, broken, and finally eliminated.
The case known as Aluu Four, till date, the killers have not been brought to justice. I have edited the piece to reflect the name of the victim of the Kano murder. The Aluu Four murder was a case of debt collection that went awry. But the characterization of the Nigeria situation expressed in the article remains the same.
Nigeria is trapped between legislators who are mentally disordered offenders and criminal lunatics roaming Wambai market in Kano and other parts of Nigeria. The census explosion of lunatics in Nigeria is part of planned expansion and extension of inmates at the National Asylum to make Nigeria a Central Criminal Lunatic Asylum (CCLA) nation.
The morbid utterances, priorities, and actions of the lawbreakers make them lunatics. If law makers were deranged, how can the ruled keep their sanity? Deviant or odd behaviors have become the norm. The situation now is, sanity begets sanity. It’s now murder and madness by doomed youths. Angry Muslim youths in Kano last week beheaded Igbo woman trader, Bridget Agbaheme over allegations that she blasphemed during a religious argument at Wambai market. Nigeria has become a front-page material for all the evils in the world.
Our hearts have become strangers to divine influence. Nigeria is home for abandoned monster of cruelty. It’s been an open season of killing in epic proportions across the country. The ceaseless kidnappings, the brutal and brazen abductions, and horrific ritual killings taking place all over the country make Nigeria a CCLA country.
What the hell is wrong with the misdirected and deranged Kano youths? Beheading a woman for “blasphemy” against Prophet Muhammad? A difference of opinion on Islam will now attract death by murder? While their counterparts in civilized nations are busy working on tomorrow’s inventions that would change the world as we know it, the Kano home grown terrorists are busy looking for preys to hunt down. A wasted generation badly messed up by wrong religious indoctrination. Pummeled by fanaticism and infatuation of heretical teachings of mangled and morbid religious beliefs and philosophies perpetrated by their blood thirsty mentors and religious teachers. I bet you, these youths are lost forever.
As I read the story, I was lost in thought. Dejection was on every line of my face. I felt much older than my age. I was miserable and with good reason – the apocalyptic face of doomed youths, the sliding further of my beloved country into the abyss of shame, cruelty, and wickedness.
As I compose this article, my hand staggers between the alphabets on the keyboard. I’m overcome by horror of a great darkness. I keep asking myself: is this my country Nigeria? Personally, it’s a bitter cup of humiliation and agony for me to read that a petty trader was decapitated as meat readied for grill for burgers and suya. Reading the story, I could visualize the killers dressed up in their abominable best, in a perfectly understandable state of excitement, and I can see the visible signs of their collective admiration and affection for the killing of the poor innocent woman.
Nigeria is surrounded by sinful influences and corrupting pressures. We’re notorious for our immorality, idolatry, treachery, cover up, and polytheism all leading to a dangerous chain reactions. The murder of Bridget Agbaheme served a text book example of our extended heartless religious barbarism. Nigeria has become the proverbial barren tree flaunting its pretentious foliage. Like the barren tree, it spreads its pretentious branches aloft, luxuriant in appearance, and beautiful to the eye, but yielded nothing but leaves.
Seems to me Satanic agencies are feverishly working overtime to make Nigeria a forest of 170 million demons. Every day, we’re treated to cornucopia of ancient evils. With the spate of killings, kidnappings, and other indescribable butchery and decapitations of lives, our humanity and civilization are being threatened, assaulted, and persecuted.
Simple arguments of differences of opinion on religion led to the coldly and calculated murder of Bridget. We’ve become insensitive to these barbaric acts so much so that such killings were greeted with clamorous throngs. These times are different! Our humanity and civilization have never been less, more bent, terrorized, and indeed vassalized.
Nigeria suffers from horrible void!
Right from antiquity, government has had to grapple with two distinct functions, negative and positive. Its negative functions include the prevention of violence, protection of life and property as well as the enactment of criminal laws and seeing to their enforcement. Government’s positive responsibilities, among others are to accelerate the hopes and aspirations considered common and basic to the great majority of citizens. Where are the inmates of the National Asylum? The killing feast of Bridget should serve as a wake up call to “freshen up” the highest paid lawbreakers in the world to reshape and redirect their abilities and priorities and indeed jar them back to reality.
Where is the anger of the lawbreakers over the butchery? What plans have they to rescue the nation from cheap deaths and ballooned fears that are sending Nigerians into their early grave? When are they going to address the nagging issue of religious bigots and fanatics? True, Nigeria has for several years been in a perpetual state of anomie. But now, we’re sliding gradually into intellectual and moral anarchy. When we recall the performance of the lawbreakers to date, they have nothing to show for representing the people. Nigerians have no faith in the present or in the future that things will get better as long as we have these sponsors of lunacy as law makers. The only visible things going on in the National Asylum are exhibition of bestialities.
Nigerians have developed native immunity to violence and murder. Where is our collective sense of outrage, shared sense of shame and sorrow? Where is the sense of loss and anger over the senseless killing of Bridget? This is a different world! What sort of country is this? Not a sigh is breathed, not a pain felt, not a grief pierces the soul of the law breakers. It’s business as usual. This is a different world!
We’re in dead time. A blank period!