....... The little girl just stood there, here eyes bore a mixture of confusion and fear, from her breathing you could tell she was out of tears, people who had bee watching here said she had gone round the market several times shouting the names of her mother and sister she had left at the very spot where she now stood. There she was covered in soothe. The very spot she had left her Mother and sister didn't look like it was anymore, she had left a market place full of life, bubbling with merry makers and beer stalls. Now all she could see was burnt debris all over the place, some heaps still burning. The organized chaos of the market place had been replaced by a deathly hum, the smell of burnt flesh and plastic. Blackened and burnt wood were strewn in all directions, by the time relatives had come to take her away, her story had been heard by all the security operatives and emergency worker on site. She had been sent by her older sister to go fetch some more seasoning when it happened. As she walked back to the fish market she heard the explosion, unaware of what it was she kept on walking worried that if she didn't get the seasoning back to her mother on time she'd be in trouble.
Now all that is unnecessary, who ever was going to eat the fish, her mother, her older sister, and many more people were no longer alive.......
The above is a fictional/ hypothetical situation of what could have happened at the Abacha Barracks last night at around 7:00PM.
I had the mind to write a follow up to my last post titled; "A day in Baghdad", having already titled it "The New Baghdad", I later stopped myself thinking it was too far fetched, then the recent explosions in Jos caused me to have a rethink.
In the early 2000s after American & British forces invaded Iraq, they never realized their biggest battle was not going to be the invasion itself. It turned out to be governing a state so divers in sect and tribe. The biggest mistake any one would make would be to judge the people of Iraq as principally Muslims, or divide them into Shiites and Sunnis. As it turned out there are as much divisions in Iraq as there are in Nigeria.
The American forces for several years, faced an uphill task, both in trying to battle insurgents and also trying to stop in fighting amongst the tribes/ factions and sects. Then the worst happened, public places began to be targeted; from ministry buildings to town markets, no where was safe.
Baghdad and Iraq as a whole had now become a war zone, with people afraid to venture out of their homes for fear of being caught in a suicide attack in what ever form. The terrorists had gained an upper hand in a lot of ways as the people of Iraq felt they preferred Saddam's terror to the kind they were faced with since the invasion. It took the United States government Trillions of Dollars in tax payer's money to equip the military and several years to eventually bring everyone to the table to negotiate a truce and come together to form a government.
The Nigerian situation doesn't look similar to the Iraqi early years per say, but one thing that is beginning to look so familiar are the car bombings of October 1st,the New year's eve incident & the Jos Bombings. No one has come out officially to claim the Jos and New year eve attacks, but they've driven home a message amongst the Nigerian people, the message of fear and terror, the message that says the Government and the leaders do not have the power to stop these attacks.
The heads of security boasted of how satisfactory things were, then they impressed us with the capture of arms and ammunition at the Apapa wharf claiming they were bound for the Gambia.
I for one wasn't impressed.
Then The Jos fighting erupted again, now tell me if that wasn't good reason to beef up security round the Country. Instead all we kept seeing on the news were Youth Forums and political dialogue. Maybe the bombings and fighting might be inter-connected no one can put a definite finger on that. But the Iraq play book looks like being reprized in our sub- Saharan surroundings. For all i care the necessary ingredients are available; militants, factions, diverse and distrusting tribes and religions, marginalized communities with access to arms and ammunition and a very unreliable and corrupt security apparatus.
I am unrepentant about painting a very dark and pale picture and trust me this is not the kind of post i had planned on posting on the first day of the year, but if calling a spade a spade is what it takes for word to get out there and for people to start thinking about the gravity of the situation we are in, then fine I'll choose to be the messenger that could get shot (figure of speech please).
Our leaders i fear have forgotten what ruling a nation is all about and have replaced the ideology with self- interest and egotistical hooliganism.
Each bomb blast i hear about brings the thoughts of Baghdad closer to mind.. I earnestly pray the situation does not get worse than it already is.
....If that little girl actually existed, her loss should not be allowed to go in vain... then again, little boys and girls who have experienced such things already exist in Jos, in Abuja and in the Niger Delta.... Stopping this unnecessary bloodshed is what we owe them. Terror is an act we all must fight against, we as a people must ask our leaders to be accountable for such lapses in security.
The year 2011 is an election year, our right to vote is one of our many weapons we can utilize now. Please register to vote... fear, distrust and Terrorism must not enslave us..... Nigeria shall not become a new Baghdad.
