Writing this has been one of the hardest things I have ever done as a columnist. I have written sad things over the years but this one has to take the cake. There was no fire, no terrorists, no armed robbers, no violence, just pure sadness and poor strategy. Young kids trying for a job perish across the nation as a result of heat wave, stampede, and carelessness.
I have lost my voice from asking the all-important question why? Let me share with you a letter I received at the top of the week from one of our readers.
Dear Eugenia
…another painful event has overtaken us, the Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment tests…
It hurts because it was needless and preventable and no one will be held liable or accountable. Neither will an assessment or a thorough investigation be held. Could the tests have been split into groups and held over a few days? Who thought of the national stadium? Were safety assessments done prior to the day? How many coordinators were present? Was there a safety briefing done? I am weaving in and out of questions here.
Surely we cannot go on like this.
Yanju
I have concluded by this last tragedy that there is a real spiritual and human problem which has attacked Nigeria and we need to act very fast before we decimate our future generation. As current leaders, mothers, uncles, fathers and aunties we have a duty to protect our younglings. It is natural to man and guess what it, is natural to animals. Have you ever watched a mother hen hover over her chick? Have you ever watched animals in the wild, birds in the nest, trying to feed their young ones, lions teaching their cubs how to walk? It’s amazing, the tenderness, the protection, the care. As a child I used to love the chicks in our poultry and when they are left to roam, I often ran after them, buttery yellow, fluffy and cute; a sight for sore eyes. I would clutch them and cuddle them, until one day a mother hen came at me with all the fury it had, charging at me, nearly plucking out my eyes. I still have a few scars on my arm to show for that attack.
This is how fierce a mother ought to protect her children. Apart from its biological parents, a Nigerian child has the nation as its primary parent. The entire community where he lives is his home, his family.
Let us catalogue some of the things that indicate to me that we are currently doing the unimaginable, as communities, as parents, as a Nation, as a people.
In Rivers State, four young men in their prime are barbarically beaten and burnt to death. This is Nigeria of the 20th century; a community which hosts a university kills university students in broad daylight. Are we not eating our children?
In Yobe State, a federal Secondary school is set ablaze by persons considered terrorists in a zone of insecurity. The school was not secured and the kids left to fend for themselves. Have we not become cannibals?
A few years ago, a plane load of children from Loyola Jesuit College died in a crash. One woman lost all her three children. Her face still haunts me; carrying a framed picture of her three children on her head. I could not sleep for days. I am a mother. We ate up our children on that plane. Parents waiting to pick up their children watched them burn to death. A sight no parent should ever have to witness.
Only this week, we gobbled our children again, ate them whole and spat them out; bloodied, cold and dead, at a place where they went to seek for a better life. They came from everywhere to a simultaneous exam organised by the immigration department of the Federal republic of Nigeria. The pictures in the papers told the story. 70,000 people in Abuja; It boggles the mind. One door opened for all of them to go into the stadium. At the end of the day over 17 people were dead in Abuja alone and others perished in several other parts of Nigeria including pregnant women. Indeed we have concluded the ritual of eating our children.
We all need to take a second look at how young people perish in Nigeria and what this portends for a Nation as blessed as Nigeria.
I urge spiritual leaders to begin a systemic cleansing process, l urge each and every one of us not to partake in making a meal of our children, and consuming them with relish. It is time to stop, to wash our hands of blood and pray that it does not happen again. I am tired of wailing in the night. While the rest of us are going about our business, parents of the dead in the immigration incidents and husbands of the pregnant women are left carrying emptiness, sadness, and darkness. It is time to take responsibility for our children. They do not deserve to die like this.
We need to stop eating our children.
Eugenia Abu
