Once agains a mother cries. She has lost her child whose crime was being in
the wrong place. The place where barbarians were.
An Okada rider nearly hit a pregnant woman. That happens. Some people beat
and stabbed him. That happens. They should fear the law and be arrested. He
stabbed someone too. That happens; he should be arrested. Perhaps he died.
That happens. It is unfortunate; whoever killed him should be arrested and
sentenced for manslaughter or murder. He may be killed or pay blood money.
But what happens next in Nigeria is what worries the most. The barbarians
are unleashed. Blood-thirsty barbarians set out on a murder and vandalize
mission. Like canines, they lack color vision. They cannot differentiate
between the persons who committed the crime and everyone else who appears
to be of the ethnic group. The barbarians hunt in packs like dogs. They go
and burn shops of Hausa or shops of Yorubas or shops of Igbos. They believe
they are exacting revenge by doing so. “After all it was one of yours.” I
wrote of this in 2013. I called it “Genocidal thinking
<http://ends.ng/genocidal-thinking/>.”
An innocent man walks along in the wrong place at the wrong time. The
barbarians find him. He appears to be of the group hunted. They pounce on
him and set him ablaze. They howl like wilder-beasts as they drink his
blood.
Others celebrate their actions from far off; some brother jackals online
rejoice. “They deserved it,” they say. “That group has bad eggs so they all
deserve to be killed…why did one of ‘them’ do that? They all deserve
death. Kill them all,” the barbarian fans say.
In Nigeria we have departed from God. We have forgotten God’s law that
says, “whoever kills must be killed.” Boko Haram terrorists who kill en
mass are spared death; we give them life. We have violated God and violated
the land. Indicted politician sponsors of terrorists and political killer
thugs are in our hallowed chambers. God’s wrath is on us; it is a promise
He has made, that whoever departs from righteousness will get the painful
reward. Our wickedness has revealed us as beasts. Blood drinking barbarians.
I had hoped Buhari would declare war on barbarism. It only takes one stern
announcement, spread through all media channels, “*that the new government
will not tolerate a single person or animal in human form taking the law
into his own hands*.” Continues, “*from now on, terrorists, political
killer thugs and mob murderers will be sentenced to death as the law
dictates.*” But Buhari hasn’t. In fact, he has even defended barbaric
behavior by his military generals. “I am a sitting duck,” he says. “If not,
for touching a soldier’s chest, those people would have suffered
more”…than ‘just’ that massacre of 1000+ of their kind. In Nigeria, the
reward for a mis-endeavor or misdemeanor is instant barbaric judgement with
the sentencing to death of you and your kind; delivered not by courts, but
by civilians or the military. Like I said earlier, courts give life to
terrorists. This is the way of Nigeria. The 100-year entrenched barbarism
that started since colonization is far from its end.
It is challenging to be a Nigerian. A citizen of a land of barbarians.
Dr. Peregrino Brimah @EveryNigerian