CONGRATULATIONS!!! we made it, again! It’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s a miracle that words alone, no matter how embellished, cannot qualify, and the reasons are as good as told.
In the outgone year we saw and heard of mishaps, both natural and human-made. We heard of violence; we heard of terror; we saw and felt a scare and there were visible scars, too. The Ebola saga, was it not scary enough? We experienced upheavals – economic, political, social and from all fronts. The still ravaging austerity measures…. Are they not economic upheavals that could become another sad debacle in our history as a people? Could it not become, as it were, another soury details if not nipped in the bud?
We also experienced fear in the preambles to the still much anticipated 2015 General Elections, palpable fears as people no more whispered, but screamed “revolutions” and went on to talk openly about it in the media. And for persons who had never experienced a revolution, the ten-letter word dripped blood and human tissues. One can then understand the fear. Was it not Richelle Mead, a philosopher, who said, “the most powerful revolutions often start very quietly, hidden in the shadows. Remember that”. That is akin to making scary faces at an infant and enjoying it as the innocent convulsed!
From one clime to another, we heard gory tales. In our parts and elsewhere, insurgents’ bombs exploded (if you listen, you can still hear them) and lives are snuffed out of the innocents by the minutes. We have thought about it and concluded that the starry skies would be filled with much more souls of bomb blast victims than would with those who transited by other natural or human made circumstances.
We heard of boats, ships, ferries or whatever other names they called those water-borne means of transport, capsize and the disappearance of souls, air planes also bearing hundreds of souls disappearing into unknown Bermuda Triangles, metamorphosing into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) with no known destinations, imagine those endless night we sat up between sleep, wondering in what part of the equally endless oceans would the missing planes lie, with cadavers of beautiful souls inert?
We heard of unthinkable murders; of assassinations that rubbished the popular, or famed, assassinations of world leaders and business moguls. In Benin City, Edo State, a poor couple who lived in a thatch – roofed mud house in a remote community were both sprayed with an assassin’s bullets until their assailant was sure the spirits had departed … and that kept this writer turning and tossing all night in bed, an outcome of a nightmare that every right thinking person shared in, for our collective guilt in others’ misfortunes. The questions were benumbing since the answers never came… why would anyone murder a poor couple in such a horrible state and location? What had they done to deserve being murdered by such uncommon means as gun shots? We decided … no enmity is uncommon where humans are full of bile and unforgiving. And that is not fair, to say the least.
Again, come to think of it, if you saw that huge armory that was recently uncovered somewhere in our own Naija, a catchment of arms gigangic enough to level World War 3 enemies on all fronts, and those displayed virtually everyday after normal police checks and parades, then it is clear that nowadays guns and bullets, even grenades and other explosive devices are cheaper by the dozens!
We heard of horrible tales – like those from the Hammer House of Horrors – of men serially, sexually abusing, impregnating or defiling their own daughters and infants, of fathers impregnating their daughters, murdering them and burying them in shallow graves in frantic bids to conceal their ogre, of men and women in the toga of ritualists caught with human heads and limbs that dripped with blood, of community upheavals where youths ransacked communities unleashing terror on residents, killing, maiming and engaging in wanton destruction of property. What did we not see? We saw police brutality, military rascality. We can go on and on, but do we inundate you, this first day of the year, with the gory details? Not all! But one more: we also heard of high-tech corruption in high places; we saw Nollywood in the hallowed chambers across the nation as legislators turned Sumi wrestlers. Who would also forget in a hurry, the uncanny, horrific abduction of over 200 school girls in Chibok.
We saw and we conquered. We are survivors, let us applaud ourselves that we were not swallowed by the year that has now become a residue of history. It’s a miracle! We were indeed, not moved by what we saw and heard as the song goes; we thank the all seeing all-knowing, the all sufficient and benevolent God, our creator. And now we make an affirmation (not a filial resolution) that this year, we have come, we will see, and we will conquer! Happy New Year!
