The lines moved me to tears and anger. They were from a friend mourning a friend. They read: “It is only in Nigeria that youth service is risky. If Boko Haram did not kill Corps members, politicians will.” And there is another: “You only went to serve your fatherland, but it is obvious the land does not serve you well.”
Words of pain, anguish and anger have poured from friends and others since the news broke that Okonta Samuel Dumebi, a youth corps member, was one of those whose blood was shed by politicians during the war called Rivers rerun election.
Two of Dumebi’s colleagues who were with him when the message of death was delivered at Ahoada West Local Government Area were also shot at by hoodlums. They ran into hiding but are still in shock about what all the madness was for.
Men who fancy short cuts and easy fixes terminated Dumebi’s biological clock with hot led and left his friends with no choice but to roast them in fiery curses— which I wish can be irreversible.
It is at times like this that I wish some of those scenes out of Yoruba movies are real. I mean those scenes when dead persons pursue their killers and make life miserable for them until they confess and subsequently die too.
Dumebi’s death is like using the blood of an outsider to appease the gods in Rivers. He was not a son of the soil neither was he a resident. Home was in Illah, Delta State. His primary, secondary and university education were all at home and in Edo State. Cultists did not kill him in his years at the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma but politicians did in Ahoada. Now he lies cold in a morgue. His dreams will be interred with him. The bowel of the earth is awaiting his cherubic being.
You may wonder why I am not worried about the fate of his parents. He had neither. They died before him and must have received him now that the evil men of Rivers have done their worst. They can only take life, they can’t create it. Shame on them!
In this society of greedy people and egoists where it is hard to find people who think of the others, your death would appear not abnormal. But I ask: what manner of society is this?
I am not optimistic that Dumebi’s killers will be found. As soon as he is buried, the files will be interred too. Here we love burying things and moving on as if it is possible to truly move on without finding out went wrong. We deceive ourselves by forgetting yesterday when the answers to today’s problems lie in knowing what we did not do right the day before.
The NYSC described your killing as “primitive, barbaric and ungodly”. So were the pre-election killing of 25 people in Omoku. Some of them were lucky to have their heads still intact; some were not that lucky. The heartless men who killed them severed their heads and went away with them. In this same Omoku on April 3, last year, men without brains killed Christopher Adube and three of his children. They also killed the family driver and a family friend who was in the home when they came, dressed like soldiers, that evening. The bullets they pumped into 15-year-old Paul Adube’s leg have ensured he is wheel-chair bound. The hot lead they released unto Ogechi Adube’s legs have also seen rods inserted into her bones and because of this, she cannot fold her legs.
Adube had 12 kids from his two wives. Three were killed with him; two were left somewhat crippled and the others now live with shattered dreams. They are not sure of where the next meal will come from. They said that much at a meeting a fortnight ago with national leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Adube’s sin, I am made to understand, was his relationship with the APC. His children’s sin was being born by him. The evil men applied the Law of Moses. It makes no sense to them that the coming of Jesus Christ marked the end of that law, which encouraged taking out the father’s sin on the son or daughter.
Going by the report of the Rivers Commission of Inquiry headed by the immediate past Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, a monthly average of 19 killings occurred in the state between November 2014 and April 2015.
Of the 97 allegations of killings the commission received, 94 of them occurred between November 15, 2014, and April 11, last year.
This report, Odinkalu said, reaffirms that no state or country should allow a repeat of such violence in the name of politics. It also shows how and why Rivers State and Nigeria must end impunity for political violence.
The evidence before the commission suggests a significant incidence of internal displacement as a result of political violence in many parts of Rivers State. It also received evidence which strongly suggested that sexual violence was part of the arsenal of political violence in some areas.
Members of the commission met some of their survivors, such as orphaned children. They met a particular one that was nine months old when his father was killed in his presence. He was still breastfeeding.
They also met young widows of political violence, as well as grand-mothers who had to bury their grand-sons killed in violence. He sued for peace and called for concerted efforts to avoid repeats.
Obviously, no one listened to him. Before Dumebi and others killed on the election day, over 30 people were killed between January and mid March.
Sadly, the violence has ensured that the election is inconclusive and here lies my fear. How many more people will die on the day the seats yet to be filled will be filled? How many heads will be broken to choose the National Assembly members? How many pints of blood will be spilled before the House of Assembly is fully formed?
My final take: The guns in Rivers must be taken away. I do not mean the guns with the police or army or DSS, but the guns with people who are not supposed to have them. This is no time for blame game but time to take away the guns and save us from heartache.