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I am trying to get the dead NYSC members off my mind, but it’s hard; the cruel cold-blooded murder of those National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members severally and sadistically killed in some parts of the north in the aftermath of the presidential election two weeks ago stays on my mind, often intruding on my sleep.

Every now and then I seem to hear distant cries for help, of a young helpless boy or girl – fresh graduate from our universities after years of studies, expenses and hardship – demanding to know if their death will go just like all the others before them, forgotten by a country that has given them little and has now taken even all that they had – their lives and their hopes. I get the question: What next? Would I so forget them and move on if any of them were my daughter or son?

But although the country is particularly jolted because of the inclusion of young graduates on national service amongst the particular targets, the killings this time is not any more sordid than all the earlier ones in which children, women and the youth were not spared.

The killings have become cyclical and each time with little or no provocation. You never know what will get the murderers started. At one point it was an eclipse of the sun that some Islamic preachers interpreted as the wrath of Allah being visited on the earth because of the sins of Southerners/Christians in their midst. At another time it was an offending cartoon by some Danish artist in faraway Denmark. At one point it was in “revenge” for America’s attack on Afghanistan. At another it was in protest of “Western education”. The list is almost endless.

Before this latest killing started, one Sheik Abubakar Jibril, an “Islamic scholar” in Sokoto, went about with his followers tearing down posters of President Jonathan wherever he found it! What further signal could be needed of an impending doom if Jonathan won?

The cycle of massacres of southerners in parts of the north continues. If it is not Maiduguri, it is Kano, or Kaduna, or Bauchi, or Jos, etc. across a large swathe of the North pointedly demarcated in the presidential election result.

I’ve read all sorts of attempts at contextualizing this latest of so many horrific killings in the North. The more it is “contextualized” the stronger the question gets, “what next”? “Is that it – till next time?” For let no one make any mistake about it, this latest killing will not be the last.

These massacres occur and recur because some of their religious and political leaders preach hate as they feed and control the minds of their large followers. And rather than the security forces and the law descending on these “mob handlers” severely and appropriately, they are treated with kid gloves for whatever reasons including fear of setting off greater conflagration. Perhaps this “fear” is at the bottom of the unseemly appeasement of the perpetrators of these heinous murders, virtually turning justice on its head and making the victim feel sorry for making himself “available” to become a victim, while the criminal is continually assuaged for “understandable rage”.

The ongoing “contextualizing” is part of the appeasement process. The hogwash victims are forced to swallow includes the poverty and illiteracy level of the mob, and, well, “others suffered too”. Isn’t there a saying that “na poor I poor, I no crase”? In the case of our northern mob they are poor and mad, we are told. Some “contextualizing” has even suggested that some of the Corps members may have been compromised! Nonsense! At least we know of Corps member Ukeoma Ikechukwu who posted this message on his Internet Facebook not knowing that death awaited him:

“Na wah o! This CPC supporters would have killed me yesterday. No be threat ooo. Even after forcing under aged voters on me they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot papers to thumbprint. Thank God for the police and I’m happy I could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats, especially in the north, bravo! Nigeria! Our change has come.” Ukeoma was killed.

The government is getting complicit in their attempt to “quieten things down” by not, up until now, publishing the names of the Corps members who were martyred. I endorse the call for billboards to be erected in all the states where the murders took place, billboards of a montage of photos of these Corps members, with an inscription: “THEY CAME TO SERVE, BUT WE KILLED THEM!” Moreover, their families must be adequately compensated with what would amount to the cost of undergoing a university degree course plus the average salary a graduate would earn for a minimum of 10 years.

The ongoing “contextualizing” is part of the appeasement process. The hogwash victims are forced to swallow includes the poverty and illiteracy level of the mob, and, well, “others suffered too”. Isn’t there a saying that “na poor I poor, I no crase”? In the case of our northern mob they are poor and mad, we are told. Some “contextualizing” has even suggested that some of the Corps members may have been compromised! Nonsense! At least we know of Corps member Ukeoma Ikechukwu who posted this message on his Internet Facebook not knowing that death awaited him:

“Na wah o! This CPC supporters would have killed me yesterday. No be threat ooo. Even after forcing under aged voters on me they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot papers to thumbprint. Thank God for the police and I’m happy I could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats, esp in the north, bravo! Nigeria! Our change has come.” Ukeoma was killed.

The government is getting complicit in their attempt to “quieten things down” by not, up until now, publishing the names of the Corps members who were martyred. I endorse the call for billboards to be erected in all the states where the murders took place, billboards of a montage of photos of these Corps members, with an inscription: “THEY CAME TO SERVE, BUT WE KILLED THEM!” Moreover, their families must be adequately compensated with what would amount to the cost of undergoing a university degree course plus the average salary a graduate would earn for a minimum of 10 years.

This latest killing must not be allowed to go the way of all the others before it. The southerners targeted and killed are the victims. Others who were attacked for their political positions are also the victims. The assuaging by contextualizing must stop. The murderers and their handlers must be brought to justice, a justice as merciless as the ones they have brought on their victims.

 Photo Credit: Premium Times Nigeria

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