My head is heavy with dark thoughts of blood and knives and gunshots that shatter the stillness of the night.
The faces stared at me from the newspapers twenty four hours later, young, hopeful, and cheerful; 43 boys who could have been children of any Nigerian parent. Set ablaze in their hostels on a normal regular night, startled, unaware, frightened and nervous. They must have followed the routine of the day. Prep, maybe a shower, a banter with their bunkmate, private prayers, then lights out. Most of us went to secondary school. I went to a boarding school, so I understand the routine. There is nothing as bad as being startled from sleep and not knowing where you are. This often happened to us all huddled up together when an alarm is raised and we all run towards the door barefoot in our nighties screaming and hugging each other.
Our school was near a cemetery and so it was often a false alarm of sighted ghosts. It usually ended up with laughter and a return to our beds or still frightened we held hands and fell asleep, safe in the thought that the expatriate Reverend Sisters often came over from their residence in the school compound, to assure us that all was well. This would happen thrice or four times a year. Sometimes it would be mischief by a student who is a prankster. It used to be such fun, after a while we became unafraid and will run towards each other yelling, jumping and screaming; after which we will return to our beds and have many tales the following day with embellishments and shifts and faction. (Fiction and Fact) This was in the early 70’s.
In 2014, 43 years later, it is a different ball game and with technology and modesty, it ought to be better. But in Federal Government College, Buni Yadiin Yobe state early last week, it was neither about technology nor modernity, sleeping students between the ages of 10 to 17 are awakened by flames, burning, crackling and explosions. Running half asleep between a red blazing fire, disoriented, suffocating and blinded by the smoke, children, in their innocence , our babies ran headlong into persons old enough to be their fathers, uncles or big brothers who overpowered them and slit their throat in a gory tale reminiscent of hammer house of horror or shot them dead as they scaled the windows in fright. I have played back the pleadings in my head, the fear, the shivering… the frozen looks of death.
I have been benumbed since this tragedy. A broken dismembered Nation of children crying from their graves, of parental discomfort, of boarding schools with inadequate security, of screams and blood curdling cries of uncontrollable mothers and men and fathers who have lost the will to live. We are faced with families whose three children might have been wasted in this school by persons who have clearly departed their own families and have shelved humanity.
What about the girls they abducted? Those innocent virgins taken by force from their familiar abode to be destroyed, emotionally maimed, enslaved and raped by strangers carrying guns who may be harbouring diseases unknown. The sheer terror leaves me cold and stuttering. Poor girls, who have never been naked in the presence of a man, not even their brothers. 20 girls in their prime taken into the mountain as sex slaves and cooks and concubines of men whose minds departed them many years ago.
I have searched my head for reasons for this bestiality, for this horror upon our children. As a parent, I find myself unable to sleep, tossing and turning. We are all concerned about children we send to school and hope for speech and prize giving days. These parents are now left empty handed, some may even have had two sons killed and two daughters abducted. We need to search for the girls, we need to protect our schools, look out for our boys. We need to howl and cry and wear as hen clothes. We need to act, we need to pray. I can still hear a parent wailing, the cry of loss, and the pain of grief, the heavy burden.
My heart goes out to all the families. No one can really understand their pain but we carry the pictures of the children in our hearts, as their parents bury what they can find of their children’s bodies; with a lump in our throats. We have been crying in our hearts, rocking ourselves from side to side, biting our lips in regret, worrying about those twenty girls. Its 2 am in Nigeria, I am sleepless in Abuja!
By: Eugenia Abu
