By Pascal Oparada
Monday, May 28, 2018, was declared National Day of Mourning and Remembrance by Nigerians.
The event saw Nigerians from all strata taking to Twitter and other social media platforms to mourn and also berate the government for seeming inaction.
They seek to draw the attention of the international community and the Nigerian government to what many of them called senseless killings in the country by both Boko Haram and suspected Herdsmen.
Wearing black and coming under the hashtag, #NigeriaMourns, many Nigerians expressed grief and displeasure at the killings and the way it has been handled by successive governments in Nigeria.
Presidential aspirant of KOWA, Oluremi Sonaiya said, “those we mourn today aren’t mere numbers. We mourn a home that has gone silent – no more children’s laughter & chatter. We mourn the dashed hopes, warm embraces now frozen in time. We mourn the emptiness, the loss, the brokenness. We stand with the victims”.
Bearing banners and placards, members of Enough is Enough (EiE) organized a march in Lagos and held a one minute silence at Allen roundabout in Ikeja.
Amnesty International also joined in the mourning.
According to statistics, Nigeria has Africa’s highest number of displaced persons. As of January 2017, there are over 192,000 displaced persons, about 1.7 million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and 279,000 new displacements due to killings and disasters.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that there are 229,000 refugees in the country.
Nigeria has been battling Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast, farmer/herdsmen clashes in the North Central, gang and kidnappings in the South.
“The mourning seeks to sensitize the government and people of Nigeria not to forget these deaths and also to put a human face to the suffering of those left behind by these them,” Ijeoma Omenka told TheNiche.
