by Theophilus Yahaya

It is apparent you are not ready to bring back our girls, you all have failed us. Let someone who can do that; but before then, take a bow and leave. My heart keeps bleeding for those girls. Where and when will they find refuge? You have betrayed the vote of trust that binds our Leviathan. 

We have reached the nadir of despair. Today, Nigeria negates every word in the Holy Books, saying by wise men, proverb, rhetoric, etc. on hope. It is regrettable, but that is the absurdity of our existence. What manner of armoured men are we to employ to place a little bit of value on our cheap lives? What sorcery shall we beckon on to guard us against this madness everywhere?

For whom much is given, much is expected. I’m not quite sure on whom I’m addressing this piece to, but I do know that all the men and women who have contributed to our woes as a nation should find sense in it if they are willing to put off their garbs of pride. You see, we are quite aware that the human nature is naturally faulted. It has some loopholes hence; some things are naturally beyond our control. That is why we won’t really blame you for sleeping at meetings to discuss crucial national issues – after all, you can’t cheat nature. However, when it comes to being typically incapable in dealing with recurring menaces shattering our nation, you have to be responsible.

No man, they wise say, is an island entire of itself. As human beings, we are connected. Our humanity is. To a man in his right state of mind, the pains and sorrows of the troubled Nigerian families should lurk deep in the confine of his soul. Such pains are enough to even make the angels cry. Just in 3 weeks, we have witnessed some of the most horrible events in our nation’s history. The fact that an average Nigerian, more than before, is now a potential dead man isn’t new to many of us. That is the point to which we have descended to. That is savagery. Most of us are dead men walking. We all are casualties. Death is cheap. The country is synonymous with an abattoir, only that in this case, we slaughter humans. Ours is a wasteland. I remember being a passerby at Nyanya few days after the first blast only to see that the small stand where I nourished my aching belly few days to the blast was no more.

Fate might have been unfair to the victims of the inadequacies of the Mephistophelean beings we call our leaders, but not letting those that facilitated their deaths know of their sin against humanity will mean we are forever dammed as a nation. Come to think of it, how do you want to preach acceptance to a mother whose daughter is missing? How do you write of the pain of a girl who is a victim of the incompetence of a set of incompetent people? How? How do you do that when those people still hold on to power seeking and campaigning to reap us to bones yet again? If you care to know, politics is not the answer to all that life has to offer. Only a man who is defeated will ever think he cannot make a life out of politics. You don’t have to be a politician before your nobility will be written on by poets, writers, artists, etc.

Apparently, you have failed us in many areas of our nationhood. Why won’t beasts thrive in our midst? Like one Yoruba adage: You did not utilise the idiocy of a mad man, when will you ever see a wise man to outwit? This is what the beasts killing us are working with – let’s continue to kill them, their leaders are gullible. They have been given more than enough reasons to see us as mere goats gracing on a no-man’s-land. Why won’t they? You have thrown us into darkness for ages. Your policies are one of the greatest threats to the advancement of our education sector. Truth, which the elders say is the last wisdom, is alien to us. Before, it was 234 girls, now it is two-seventy-something. We don’t know how to get our facts right because you have stolen all the funds for facts finding and research. Just last week, it was reported that $20million was given to us in the 2012 fiscal year to strengthen our security but whenever our security agencies tell us they are on top of any situation, the image that comes to the minds of most Nigerians is that of some dozing set of rascals. If we may ask, how have you spent the money? Did it also disappear like our oil funds? Should we ask America because they will know? Anything goes here, nothing matters anymore and our leaders are still in power dancing all around the states seeking political relevance! Insanity! Isn’t it more befitting for you all to step-down as leaders, take off your filthy robes, cover yourselves in sackcloth and sit on a heap of ashes? At least, it is logical for a man, after trying all he could in solving a problem, to walk away rather than complicating it.

To our preachers, who keep pontificating on the altars without thinking of how to speak sense into these men of straw we call leaders, what is the essences of your callings? This we know: Christ was passionate about his people. Our house is fallen, your churches you are building.

In an ideal society, we shouldn’t be telling you this; if you have a conscience, it should have been considered in the first instance. Sadly, in Nigeria, we are a special people. All the crimes of our so-called leaders against humanity are sufficient to even bring the hardest men down to their knees. Just some days ago, the Prime Minister of South Korea, Chung Hong-Won nobly resigned after failing to prevent a ferry accident. That is nobility. That is the hallmark of a right-thinking being that still has an adequate flow of oxygen to his/her brain. Contrarily, in Nigeria, thousands have died; yet, for our leaders, life goes on! How animal can we get?

It is apparent you are not ready to bring back our girls, you all have failed us. Let someone who can do that; but before then, take a bow and leave. My heart keeps bleeding for those girls. Where and when will they find refuge? You have betrayed the vote of trust that binds our Leviathan. Life on this part of the world is short, solitary, poor, nasty and brutish. With all these, isn’t it common sense that you walk away? You need rest. You need to resign, for this is common sense!

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Theophilus Yahaya, a lover of arts and anything Nigerian writes from Nasarawa State.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.