It looks so unreal; because it is so despicably nonsensical. No, it did not happen. It could not have happened. Or rather, it should not have happened. How mad can anyone be to cart away 200 innocent school girls and hide in an unknown habitation? Then he goes viral to boast about selling them into marital enslavement.
Sometimes, there are mental images you do not want to harbour for long; because they send a crippling shudder right through you. You don’t even want to imagine them. For instance, only a few people would draw delight from a mental picture of a Boeing 777 aircraft, filled with more than 200 passengers, diving off the skies straight into the bottom of the sea. Just imagine being one of the passengers. See what I mean?
As I write, the grotesque image of a jumbo jet, flying over the skies of New York on September 11, 2001, comes to mind. Suddenly, it losses height; drops with the speed of lightening, pulling images of sky-scrappers to its belly. What’s going on? Before that rhetorical question drops off your breathless lips, there is a bang; intense heat; a fire; then darkness. The aircraft has just hit the World Trade Centre. Hundreds of people are roasted and torn into shreds. How could people be so audaciously wicked!
When you read about events of these descriptions, they sound strange, unrealistic and unbelievable. And because they are far from you, you are persuaded to regard them as fairy tales. Then one day, a demonic phenomenon appears in your backyard. It is called Boko Haram. It has just one mission: to kill, to destroy, and to steal. In its killing spree, the group does not discriminate. Although members say they are fighting for Islam, yet they kill Muslims the same way they kill Christians. How do you handle such absurdity?
One day, they followed the Inspector General of Police (IGP)’s convoy into the Police Headquarters and bombed the car park. It was an attack at the lungs of the nation’s security heartbeat; sending an ominous message to every Nigerian: you are no longer safe.
A few weeks later, on the eve of a New Year when, as tradition demands, people gather to wave off the receding year and hug the new, a deafening bang, a huge smoke and a blinding fire, all at once, hit the army barracks in Abuja. Beautiful lives came to ugly ends with human bodies torn in pieces. The scare was becoming real and frightening.
I recall that sweet-looking morning as I drove to work. Suddenly, I heard a distant rumble. Seconds later, a thick smoke rose, darkening the sun-lit horizon. I pulled up, grabbed a phone and called our photographer and a reporter. I thought it was a fire outbreak. A few minutes later, the photographer called back to say the bang was caused by a bomb that hit the UN Building. I could not believe it. That act was a message to the world that Boko Haram could take on anyone.
Most of the headlines and analyses in the media on the above incidents must have annoyed the sect. And it wasted no time in demonstrating this. Its next target was the Abuja office of THISDAY newspaper. A vehicle pulled up at the gate one day, but was turned back because the driver could not specify who he was looking for. But with an extremely accelerated speed, he burst through the gate straight to the building and detonated a bomb. It brought the building and the neighbourhood to their knees.
The incidents at Nyanya are still too fresh to recite here. You can only imagine several buses loaded with human beings: civil servants, traders, preachers, armed robbers, hawkers, pickpockets, mechanics and applicants, among others. Suddenly, a blast rocks them to silence; to pieces; and to the mass grave. It happened twice in two weeks. What have we done wrong?
With tears still in our eyes, while digging the graves for the departed, the news walked in with a bloodied face. In the history of kidnapping, no such record had been created. It was midnight in Borno State. Out of nowhere, seven trucks made their way to Government Girls Secondary, Chibok. Over 200 girls were sardined in the trucks. The captives of the demonic plot were forcefully woken up from sleep; probably beaten. Yes, more than 90 per cent of them are said to be Christians, but that was not the reason for the assault. Their only offence is that they went to school.
Last week, the leader of the killer squad appeared on the internet with conditions for releasing the girls. He showed them reciting the Qu’ran; dressed in hijab. Those images sent shockwaves across the world.
You can imagine the agony parents of those harmless girls are going through after seeing their kids in such condition. What about those whose kids were not shown in the pictures? Their only conclusion would be that they have been slaughtered. Their guess may be correct.
Something has to be done about this tragedy that has befallen Nigeria. Let’s wake up! The nightmare has lasted too long.