I want to appeal to the reader to forgive me for dwelling in rhetoric’s but it seems to me that by all standards I stand ignorant. I am so lost in the panache of democracy that our great country offers that I cannot help but wonder what crimes make people criminals?
A barber in northern Nigeria stands trial for his finesse in his art, in the same northern state where terrorist members are rehabilitated and supported in assimilating themselves back into a society? Scholars and bandits can dabble in discourse and seek the intention of peace but Lekki toll gate still reeks of patriot blood? Why does it feel like Nigeria punishes the rest of her children for trivial of offence and pampers the most mischievous? Is this a case of modern-day tribalism or do I smell a sniff of religious sentiment? At what point in our great nation will humanity come before sentiment?
The Mothers in Uromi have called for change, Governor Ishaku has asked us to lift up arms and Sunday Igboho has called us to join him in Ogun, igniting the flames of retribution. Society has told us to love our neighbors with unrequited mercy while we plant our hope in government whose hands are slowly slipping from the hinges of control. We sleep in peace every evening here in metropolis Lagos, but my sisters in Ondo have their virtues undervalued by the dungs of cows.
This year farmers will postpone harvests because our labor are beneath cow dungs. Travelling is at your own risk. Brothers kidnap brothers. Ransom are exchanged for corpses. If I had as much religion in me as the herdsmen worshipped wastelands, I would cry out about our state of existence as the foreshadowing of the last days.
However, the reader must forgive my rhetoric’s but I stand appalled by my ignorance since I found out that the definition of crime is as invisible as Nigeria’s morality. That a set of people can behave in the most atrocious level of menace and when another group bask in their shadow gets labelled as anarchist show how much of a Father Nigeria is to his children.
We did not go to Lekki with arms and yet no cleric maneuvered the path of discourse to our hideout. I can only wonder how it feels for a farmer to see on his television, the masked men who devoured his daughter’s virtue and mauled his cousins, smiling and shaking hands in the name of forgiveness when he knows that he will never find such comfort. He will reek of loneliness in his last days as he watches the world move on.
As a Nigerian, I was born a victim and I am not surprised with the way the short skirt of Justice evades the grope of the poor. I am not running after Justice. I am not crying for lost dignity. I am only searching for answers. What is the difference between people who commit crime in Nigeria and people who are labelled criminals?
CC; Excerpt from the collection of essays
“I am not angry; I am just a Nigerian. Written by Festus Obehi Destiny”.