Getting inured to it all

--So, it has all come to this?I looked up from Kofi Annan’s Intervention to see Mutum standing over me. It is very like him to sneak around at this time of the day to relieve his boredom and find companionship.

-- Be and act your age, my friend and stop tiptoeing around like a thief. You look ridiculous acting in that manner. The whole house, particularly the children may be thinking it would be better to avoid you.-

--You must be the only one who didn’t notice when I drove in because I entered in style with so much fanfare and commotion with my horn blaring, so much so, that even the deaf and blind would hear and see me entering the house.

--That’s my point, what you term “style and commotion” is seen around here as disturbing the peace and acting in such a way that one would think you have just arrived from “Aro” and that you should be taken back there

--Meaning you people take me for a raving lunatic. What have I done wrong to deserve this indignity or is it wrong to pay a visit to a friend?

-- Nothing is wrong with your coming here. What is wrong is the commotion you cause. Anyway, what does your “has it come to this” mean?-

--The bombings, the kidnappings and the unending so called war going on in the northeast, of course. Or you want to tell me you have become inured to these strange happenings.

--Inured. By that you mean I have become hardened to the goriness of the state of things. No, I’ve not. What human being can become indifferent and accustomed to almost daily butchering of his fellow humans, in whatever guise? No, I can’t be inured. Since no word can capture the depth of my anguished feelings I seek escape by not talking or thinking about them.

--Ah that is impossible! 100 unsuspecting people blown into smithereens at sunrise while finding their ways to work; a bevy of ladies, some 200 of them, seized at the point where they were about to write an examination by people parading themselves as soldiers and you think you can disappear and shroud yourself in some cocoon world to avoid not thinking about the events. No, it’s impossible and you know it.

--But the alternative is worse; the thought of these dastardly anti-social acts is enough to create fear of being bumped off anytime so much that one is disinclined to venture out there. But it is impossible not to go out if one must continue to survive. So, I agree with you that we have now become hostage in our own land, helpless and waiting for the next gruesome bombing, hostage taking or some such horrific action.

--Yes, we are all like sitting ducks, in a manner of speech, waiting to be blown up or seized by some aggrieved religionists mouthing some ill-digested notions of his belief or is it some faceless group, as is being widely speculated now, out to aid some political cause and to profit from making sure the country enjoyed no peace. -

---But do you believe all these conspiracy theories that interests in high positions are stoking the embers of violence to further their own interests? Do you believe that there could be some fifth columnists, agent provocateurs and others somewhere behind these unprecedented unleashing of violence on the scale it is going

Nigeria has never been put under this kind of siege and strain before, where sleep has

virtually been banished from our

nights and our waking moments are a nightmare for fear of being about “when the road is

hungry

on and on purely innocent people whose main individual preoccupation is merely to get by from one day to the other?

--My friend, it’s not what I believe. It’s what people are saying and as you know “the voice of the people is the voice of God” to quote a popular religious saying. Certainly no one in his right mind can deny that what the country has been facing in the past 4 years is not insurgency by the Boko Haram, but it has gone on for so long that it is lending credence to imputations that it may well be that faceless groups are at work exploiting the unhappy situation to achieve their own agenda. And before you accuse me of reading too many of those cheap thrillers from abroad purveying such hardly believable, less than literary stunts, just take your time to think deeply about the matter.

--Don’t waste your breathe. I may disagree with you on many issues but on the score of the unending insurgency I’m inclined to be on the same page with you

--Good, ol’ boy, it is the only reasonable way to see it!

-- Don’t patronise me, I’m as old as you are, if not older. So look elsewhere for your boy. People are inclined to think that way because Nigeria has never been put under this kind of siege and strain before, where sleep has virtually been banished from our nights and our waking moments are a nightmare for fear of being about “when the road is hungry” and being blown sky high out of existence with ones remains reduced to rivulets of blood and fragments of body parts mixed with sand. It is in order therefore to invoke the prayer “may we never walk when the road is hungry.”

--Amin. But having prayed what are we going to do about getting blown apart?--.

--How do you mean? Soldiers are fighting in the north east to combat the Boko Haram and all across Nigeria security surveillance has since been intensified. Hardly can anyone go beyond 100 kilometres without getting his vehicle and person searched. And just the other day in the bank, not only was I frisked but while inside the security details kept their keen eyes on what was in your hands and pockets and I couldn’t help chuckling to myself that the heightening of security awareness was altogether necessary.

--Even so, much more need to be done

--What more can anybody do? Anything beyond what is being done now and we would have arrived at George Orwell’s 1984, where we all will be under the all-seeing eyes of the Big Brother, with all the inconveniencing implications. It could even foreshadow authoritarianism and dictatorship. We should be careful not to go too far

--Well, we have got to that stage in the life of this country where the citizens must take some responsibility about their own safety-

--You mean citizens should raise their own militias beyond the regular security outfits. Haba! wouldn’t that be going too far. In Borno State where a vigilante had been raised, it was because of a shooting war going on and even so how much impact has the vigilante been able to make in the fight against the insurgency and kidnappings in those parts

-- Well, I still believe neighbourhood watch groups and individuals taking interest in knowing who their neighbours are and what line of work they are into could be of immense assistance in stopping those sworn to killing and destruction.