CHIBOK GIRLS: PRODUCT OF A PEOPLE'S SILENCE

I have this friend that I am very fond of
He is a Nigerian; a good one at that!
One day, recently, he told me that the reason
Insurgency is thriving in his part of the country,
Is because there is still sympathy for the rebels.

He told me about his mother
And her sympathy for what is going on
But he ascribed her predilection to her lack of Western education!
I laughed and quickly told him something...
Something I haven't thought about till I said it.



My heart goes out to these innocent girls
Who have been forcefully abducted for what we don't know!
My heart goes out also to the innumerable innocent
Citizens of this land who have died from bombs,
Bullets, assassinations, decapitations, etc

As I reminisce on these unpleasant thoughts
I am also forced to remember countless Nigerians
Especially, people of Igbo extraction
Who have been variously targeted and killed
In different parts of northern Nigeria in times past

Everyone is crying about the present deaths and abductions
Yet we forget so quickly where these things come from
In the past, it was a very normal thing for Igbos and southerners
To be killed in northern Nigeria even from a religious
Provocation in far-flung lands like Denmark and Australia

Then, those who were not affected didn't see it fit to speak
In the days when people were killed for their ethnicity
From there we graduated to killings along religious lines
Now, no one is spared no matter ethnicity or religion!
And those hitherto quiet ones, have suddenly found their voices

Hmmm! An Igbo proverb says: "If a wild animal that is taking
Goats and sheep is not checked, one day it will take humans!"

My dear people, that day has come!
It is here with us!
But some people are quiet - the rich, the privileged, the powerful
They are safe behind their iron girders and police escorts
Watching with condensation as "lesser beings" are being mowed down

I am no prophet
But I am sure that one day, the thing that took the chicks
Will come for the mother-hen!
Then other chicks and other mother-hens will no longer be safe


For the hapless people of my country
Who are living in fear for not knowing when the next bomb,
The next shootings, the next poisonings, the next catastrophe
Will come to claim them or their loved ones
God whom we are waiting for, 
Is really waiting for us to take the first step
Because it is the person who is pressed by shit that leads
While his or her escort follows

           
             

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