We are tired of burying our children

 Article written by:  Our Reporter

Their only known sin was that they were born in Nigeria or perhaps that they had the misfortune of being students in Yobe state. They had dreams. They had a future. Their parents had plans. Until the knife men came and slaughtered them like rams.
It is a nightmare, the worst nightmare of a parent for your child to be brought back to you in a body bag, wrapped and tied in a mat or in a wooden box. These were children whose parents drove to school.

They shopped for them, helped them arrange their ‘provisions’ in their lockers. ‘Make sure you face your studies and remember the son of whom you are. I didn’t send you here to come and play. Don’t forget that your mum and I a better life than we do. I do not want you to write WAEC twice and I know you can do it if you put your mind to it.’ The parents must have said all these and probably more and the poor boys and girls, happy to be back in school after the holidays must have promised their parents to be of good behaviour and do them proud.

Now they are dead. Not because they were not of good behaviour or were not facing their studies. They didn’t die because they were ‘scaling fences’ to attend a party in town. Death simply crawled in while they slept and took them in the most gruesome way. Some were shot. Many had their throats slit from ear to ear. Others were burnt beyond recognition. Cruel, hor-rific fate All those plans, all those dreams gone in a pouf of terrifying smoke, futures drowned in rivers of youthful blood.

How did we get here? How did we inherit a nation where we slit the throat of teenage boys and night marauders carry off our innocent girls to places unknown? How, dear Lord, did we get to this evil pass when our children are snatched from our breasts? I imagine those dead boys returning from ‘prep’ and slumping into bed, tired but feeling good that they were prepared for their weekly tests or continuous assessment. I can picture them laying out their uniforms  for the following morning, polishing their sandals while chatting about knotty topics.

I can almost hear them calling out to one another across the dormitory. ‘Musa, can I borrow your calculator for the Math class tomorrow?

No you can’t, you want that teacher to bake my buttocks with his cane? Stephen, have you done your Government assignment because I want to borrow your textbook? I’m hungry o.

Who has biscuit? ’You remember all those last minute things we did before light out, ahead of the morning after? Now there is only mourning after and pain that cannot be described. Pain that never goes away.

How does a mother forget?

Which part is she supposed to not remember?

How does a father move on, beyond this point, without the son he was sure will do him proud, carry on after him? How do you forget the first time your baby is first handed to you his first smile, his first tottering step, his Friday in school. And then he passed ‘common entrance’. the excitement, the shopping, his starched shorts, white socks, neat hair cut as you take him to school.

Now, he won’t ever come back home, not for mid-term break, not for public holidays. Never again. He’s gone, gone forever, taken from you by men for whom I can’t find appropriate adjectives. Only parents who have walked this path of in-describable pain can understand the agony of listening to the sounds of rain when your child has just been buried. You feel cold on his behalf.

You wonder how he’s feeling alone in the dark dark soil, while you are inside.  Be cause you still haven’t come to terms with the reality that he can no longer feel the cold of the rain or the heat of the sun. Those 59 slaughtered students of the Federal Government College, Buni Yadi, can no longer feel anything, for no fault of theirs except for being sons of an insanity-ravaged country. I know some of those slain students bought JAMB forms.

In a few weeks , their mates would sit for UTME but their seats would be empty. Because this is a crazy country. When it is prize-giving day, they will not be around. Because we are a nation that eats its young. When their peers graduate five years, ten years down the road, the bereaved parents will remember again and watch helplessly, wondering what they did wrong as each of their dead children’s friends marry, have children. This nightmare, this cruelty, these demons from the pit of hell…

Oh God, are you there?

Are you going to let the wicked have the last laugh? You said children are your heritage, how come our children are being sacrificed at the altar of Baal and Beezebub? You arranged the death of King Herod in public. The people watched as worms devoured him in broad daylight. We need you to remove your hands from the folds of Your garment and avenge the weeping mothers in Nigeria.

I am pained, so pained I probably I’m not making sense but for how long are we going to live like this, perpetually afraid of the next bloody night in a school hostel, ghastly breaking news about death in the mosque, bloodbath in the market? How long? There are things that must not happen in a community that has a king and council of chiefs. There are things that must not occur in a kingdom that has warriors and War Commanders. I know this is a tough battle and it won’t end abruptly.

I also don’t envy President Goodluck Jonathan. I know he doesn’t envy himself right now but this is his baby. Like Governor Kayode Fayemi told me a few weeks ago, this president has more capacity than Nigerians give him credit for.  Mr President, this is a battle you can win. This is a battle you must win. You have done well in many areas but you cannot bequeath a country where children are slaughtered in their sleep to your successor. No, that is one legacy  you can’t afford. This is a crazy war and you cannot fight it like a gentleman.

This is terror, bare-faced terror. It will be too humiliating for terrorists to run you out of town. What will you tell the world, that you didn’t have enough money or war chest or soldiers to do what you need to do? That you were afraid to step on toes? Never mind all those telling you that you are doing your best  because you can and need to do better than this best. My people say, it is the man who brings misfortune on you that is the first to call you a man of misfortune. The buck stops on your table, sir.

The emergency rule in some the terror-ravaged states is a good step in the right direction but that is one ‘best’ that can be improved upon. The governors are doing their best too but we are tired of burying our children. There are things an elected governor cannot do. He is handicapped by democracy, his constituents, considerations for his second term or being able to install a successor.

A military administrator has no such troubles. It is time to go to war and appoint military administrators. And let nobody even attempt to quote human rights or democracy bla bla bla at me unless you have buried a child. It’s easy to go on television breakfast shows in designer ties and jackets and quote sections and sub sections of the constitution when none of your children has ever returned home in the cargo department of a plane or in an ambulance coming from the morgue.

It is easy to speak rhyming adjectives and ‘big English when you are watching another man’s child holding his intestines in his hands. But terror wars are not fought in designer suits and suede shoes.

We have seen that the affected governors are frustrated and helpless. They are tired of the carnage. Let’s do something even if it sounds unusual. Let the governors step back for a while and let MILADS step in. A soldier will do what he has to do. He is trained for war, not to check the constitution before he can take a leak. It is obvious that what we are doing now is not working, how is trying something different going to hurt?

We cannot continue in sin and expect grace to abound. We cannot continue to do the same things and expect a different result.

How does everybody issuing press statements about how we are at war and so on and so forth wake up dead children? How?

Article source: http://sunnewsonline.com/new/back-page/tired-burying-children/