I am still trying to comprehend what is going on; I suspect we have done something terrible and we are all paying for it. My greatest fear though is how much of our terrible deed have we paid for and how much terror and pain and agony and hurt are left for us to go through?
I am still trying to work out what type of creatures we have as leaders? How did they all manage to come together at the same time?
Of them all, the greatest wonder is the president, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He doesn’t, or didn’t, look like capable of hurting a fly; and yet since he and his vice took over our affairs it has been one bloody day after another. We never had a moment of peace since Jonathan became president.
I am still trying to understand what his good luck have to do with our bad luck. Does one feed on the other?
I am still trying to understand under what influence a leader would turn his back on his people at a time they needed him most as a matter of life and death. Was he running away? How we wish he was!
I am still trying to understand what a pastor of one of the churches affected by the bombing meant by “we saw the attack coming and we prepared for it” with all due respect to your office pastor, you knew about the attack and yet you allowed it to happen? By the way, who are the “we” in your “we knew”? This brings to mind: what has become of all the bombers and would be bombers that are not members of Boko Haram who were caught by various security agencies?
I am still trying to understand how a massacre can occurred at Gonin Gora when there were two military checkpoints less than five kilometeres apart; one of them in fact located at the exact spot where the massacre occurred (for the umpteenth time).
I am still trying to understand why the northern governors have not considered this matter serious enough to call for an emergency meeting, even if it’s only to drink tea and disperse.
I am still trying to understand how people that have sworn by the Qur’an and the bible to serve their people can still be able to eat, drink, make love to their wives and or girl friends, while infants are being roasted alive under their watch.
As a result of all these extremely painful ‘incomprehensible’, I, therefore, tender my apology to readers of this column for my inability to write anything this week. I promise that as soon as I can keep my emotions in check, I shall resume.
In the meantime, to those who might be interested, I would like to recommend a far more superior literary reflection of our situation. I thus recommend, strongly, the editorial comments of the Abuja-based leadership newspaper and the Lagos-based the nation newspaper. The two editorials were published on the same day, that is 21/06/2012. Here is a starter: the caption of the leadership editorial is: “where is the president?” while that of the nation reads: “off to brazil.”
By the time you run through these two literary and journalistic masterpieces you wouldn’t be so despondent about the future. You would at least have some hope that not all Nigerians are animals or without feelings. One day one day, square pegs will be in square holes.
Once again my apologies; and with this I sincerely and fervently pray for god to grant the families of all those that lost their lives in this barbaric tragedy the strength to handle this great psychological trauma. And may god have mercy on us, and send us the messiah we badly need.
Ameen.
Signed:
Barkbyte
