It was a symbol of death.

Where there had but a few hours ago been life, the sound of children chirping at each other in delight on the commute back from school, there was a deafening, accusatory silence. The roadside was once full of women – old, young, tall, short and all shades of dark – yelling at passers-by to patronize them, their bales of clothes, locally made wrapper, shoes, bags, energetically strutting the length of Kawo with bottles of nunu and fura – local drinking delights. Now, there was the palpable presence of carnage, the sound of commerce and industry (or was it the quest for survival), replaced by the piercing beats of wailing, the agonizing rhythm of lamentation, the inquisitorial cadence of grief.

I remember a little girl, not older than six, muttering in between tears below her breath in Hausa, words unintelligible to my Ibibio and English ears. But the look on her face was comprehensible. It was the stare of loss – of a knowing familiarity yanked violently from one’s hands, and the inevitable helplessness that follows. I have had that stare three times this year alone. It seemed to me a language of its own.

It was a scene of utter carnage, a confusing fellowship of burnt flesh, bloodied clothes, smoldering wood and eviscerated body parts. It was all the more confusing because if the blast near Kawo bridge, in the heart of Kaduna had happened just a few hours earlier, I won’t be writing this piece. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the news when it broke, it simply could not be. I had to go back to the scene to see it, to make sure it was real.

I do not feel a sense of relief at being alive. Nay, it is an overwhelming sense of despondency, a shackling of the mind, like walls closing in on my senses. Why am I here and fifteen others, which as cogent a claim to life as mine, dead? Why did shoppers, commuters, marketers, men, women, children, the little boy struggling with a bale of jalabiyas, set out for Kawo in the morning not return to their families alive in the evening?

Kaduna has always held fond memories for me. I reunited with a long lost friend from my NYSC days just a day before the twin blasts which bored yet another hole in my, and our collective consciences. We spent the whole day laughing, catching up, taking a jibe at the occasional girl who strolled past, sharing bottles of drinks and a few years worth of memories. We also shared snippets of our future aspirations.

The teenage boy with the case of inferior electronic accessories on his head also had plans for his future – a future that will never be.

Now, all I’m left with are ghosts. Ghosts that wake me up at night. Ghosts that ask me questions, engage me in conversations – about my life; about their lives; about why the only connection we all share – a nation that history, and our parents told us is ours – is falling apart before our eyes; about how a human can be so callous as to take that which he never could possibly create, the opportunity to live, from a fellow human; about how our leaders could be so utterly bereft of intellection and humanity that the standard response to a bombing reads like a line from a medical procedure – flood the scene with ambulances and security men after the fact, impose a curfew, issue a statement, then issue another statement to counter a contrary pronouncement from an equally inept political opponent, setting off yet another political merry-go-round.

I cover these kind of stories for a living. I’ve probably written 20 or more ’15 dead in Benue clashes’, ’10 killed in Yobe market attack’ and ’31 dead in Kano bomb attack’ headlines over the course of my short writing career. I commissioned ‘dispassionate’ analyses on the subject, and wrote a few myself. I’ve debated them in cozy talk shops, rowdy cafés and air conditioned office rooms. They made no sense to me of course, the almost insatiable appetite to wreck harm, sow discord and spread violence. Killing, and being killed has become Nigeria’s national sport. Still, nothing prepares you for the opportunity to stare a violent, gruesome end and live to speak about it.

At least I’m back home, safe within the familiar confines of my family, but am I really safe? Are we really safe?

A ghost asked me that question last night.

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