“They came alive to Bauchi state to serve the nation; but when it was time to leave, they left as dead heroes”.
This was not how I planned to end my life. Being immortalized was not part of my bargain with the creator. Hadn’t Ismail Kadare, the Albanian writer said that “in the nocturnal realm of sleep are to be found both the light and darkness of humanity, it’s honey and it’s poison, it’s greatness and vulnerability?”
So, I dreamt the dream of big mansions and state of the art automobiles. I wanted to live, to enjoy. I wanted my reward here manifested here on earth in the physical since heaven is a paradise where suffering is alien to human nature. I wanted to be married, with children swarming all over the house like bees in a honey’s nest. I didn’t believe in vulnerability. If I had ever failed, it was failing forward because I had never see myself as a victim but as a soldier wading through the storm called life. Even when it seems all was crashing down, I stood in the rain. I didn’t allow my dream to fizzle out. I created a perfect picture and I held it close to my heart. It was this picture that I looked into and smile when I walked long distance to school in tattered uniform clutching a poly bag. I didn’t mind that I was not chauffeured to school like the children of the privileged but I minded being called poor. No! I was not poor, I am only less privileged. What I lacked in money, I made up in virtues and value. I didn’t have the finesse of my mates in Queens College and other Ivy League schools but I invested in self development. I became an adult before my time, treading life’s path meticulously since mistakes could cost me chances and opportunities. My quest took my time, my energy and all the strength I could muster. That I had to die this way is most incongruous. That I died in the service of a nation that offered me less is resentful. A nation which knows better to protect the children of the rich and send those of the less privileged to death pegs. To die in the hands of young people blinded by ignorance and sentiments is most unfair. Young people who unlike me, have no iota of vision and so live each day as they see it. I was tortured, lynched, and killed. I died for a cause I did not caused nor believed. That I had to be a sacrificial lamb for a credible poll is most ironic. The world was silent when we died. The guilty still walks freely on the street. It took more than 48 hours to get the first disclaimer from the instigator. The head of the harem said it was our destiny. Did we deserve to die? I did not plan to be martyred. I did not set out to be a hero.
So, I dreamt the dream of big mansions and state of the art automobiles. I wanted to live, to enjoy. I wanted my reward here manifested here on earth in the physical since heaven is a paradise where suffering is alien to human nature. I wanted to be married, with children swarming all over the house like bees in a honey’s nest. I didn’t believe in vulnerability. If I had ever failed, it was failing forward because I had never see myself as a victim but as a soldier wading through the storm called life. Even when it seems all was crashing down, I stood in the rain. I didn’t allow my dream to fizzle out. I created a perfect picture and I held it close to my heart. It was this picture that I looked into and smile when I walked long distance to school in tattered uniform clutching a poly bag. I didn’t mind that I was not chauffeured to school like the children of the privileged but I minded being called poor. No! I was not poor, I am only less privileged. What I lacked in money, I made up in virtues and value. I didn’t have the finesse of my mates in Queens College and other Ivy League schools but I invested in self development. I became an adult before my time, treading life’s path meticulously since mistakes could cost me chances and opportunities. My quest took my time, my energy and all the strength I could muster. That I had to die this way is most incongruous. That I died in the service of a nation that offered me less is resentful. A nation which knows better to protect the children of the rich and send those of the less privileged to death pegs. To die in the hands of young people blinded by ignorance and sentiments is most unfair. Young people who unlike me, have no iota of vision and so live each day as they see it. I was tortured, lynched, and killed. I died for a cause I did not caused nor believed. That I had to be a sacrificial lamb for a credible poll is most ironic. The world was silent when we died. The guilty still walks freely on the street. It took more than 48 hours to get the first disclaimer from the instigator. The head of the harem said it was our destiny. Did we deserve to die? I did not plan to be martyred. I did not set out to be a hero.
Time; how short, immortality, how long! This was not how I planned to pay you back mother. You did not lose me to the leeches in the floods of Gbamaturu Kingdom when we were ambushed by men of the task force in the Niger Delta. You did not los me to the hostile nurses at the general hospital who vent their anger of being underpaid and frustration of workload on poor patients. It was you and I through thick and thin in days devoid of sunshine. You once took me on an escape into elitism by predicting how life would be better for both when I finally finish school and get a good job. You were my own messiah; you give it all up for me to not just live but live well. I was a product of a filial mistake. Like Sam Omatsheye’s Baby Ramatu, I was the love fruit of misbegotten loins. “You did not love him, he who made the love loved it and lost it in his own conscience”. Yet you did not vent the anger on me even when I came in the image of another man- which to you is a symbolism of a hard nut. How come it is what you have always warned about; that one must not always behave like a dog with reversed wisdom which after receiving a stab at it ears, went and hid the machete to return another day that surrounded my death. Perhaps the most painful part of all this is that I didn’t have the opportunity to warn you of my demise. Mama I’m sorry!
That peace is costly but well worth it price is an indelible fact as violence often destroys treasures stored up over the years. Yet it has been said that war comes as a failure of human wisdom, a failure which often causes irreparable loss in the mind of the helpless.
Our people say if winning a race depended on one’s number of legs then the millipede would beat the dog arms down. I knew this all the while so I did not set out to do anything extra-ordinary. I knew I was not the proverbial cat with nine lives so I kept to the rules and shielded to safety in times of crisis. I have read Daniel Webster words that no man can suffer too much and no man fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country. For the first time that I tried to do something different. I wanted to be responsible and courageous by bringing sanity into a decried system. For that first time I paid, I died. I did not set out to be a hero.
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