Nyanya et al: Out of these Ashes…

Nyanya et al: Out of these Ashes…

“Out of the ashes of my dying today; I see the breaking of a brand new day…”

Chris Delvan Gwamna, singer

If one sits down and plans a project, it gets to the point when he begins the execution. Of course he sets out to achieve some stated goals with his project and by the time he finishes every bit of the project activities he is able to see whether or not he is on course. He continues if he believes he is on course until the end of such a project. Of course he is happy when he has achieved such stated objectives. Infact he is elated.

I have tried to imagine the feelings of the masterminds and executors of heinous acts such as the bomb blast we saw penultimate Monday at the commuter bus station in Nyanya on the outskirts of the FCT, Abuja, among hapless people whose only sin is that they woke up in the morning and set about to make ends meet. The explosion killed 71 persons with a couple hundred others left with different degrees of injury, some quite life threatening as it stands now. I still find myself unable to imagine that some persons that bear the semblance of or appear human are laughing or celebrating the horror. But then of course I also think to myself that events like that don’t happen by chance: someone actually sits down and plans it. Such a person expects the kind of outcome we saw. It is a project for him and, as with any other project, the success must be thrilling. So I am left with no other option than to reason that someone somewhere, guided by whatever interest, philosophy or belief, is jubilating at the success of a well planned and executed project.

The only problem, however, is that such persons or quarters have demonstrated themselves far beneath humanity; for, warts and all, humanity is beautiful and that beauty derives from the simple yet awesome fact that humanity itself is a product of God, the good God, and there is nothing that proceeds from this God that is not inherently good and beautiful because a product bears the imprint of its maker. For such quarters to be capable of such brutality, and with relish to boot, means that they have divested themselves of every shred of humanness and are only good to be, proverbially, trampled underfoot by all humans.

Humanity, therefore, must not succumb to anything subhuman! Clearly what these subhuman quarters want of humans in Nigeria is for them to rise against each other and when the state of anarchy is rife, they swoop in on all of us. Their reign can only but be a reign of terror and we are being generously dished out a foretaste; sure enough it is sour, foul and repugnant. Some Nigerians have already, rather erroneously, concluded that it is a certain section of the Nigerian population that has vowed to mar the government of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan by rendering the country ungovernable. Nothing is farther from the truth. These same subhuman quarters will hand the same deal to any other person on the seat of president regardless of where he or she is coming from or what his or her religion is, in so far as such a person does not fit their defined subhuman standards. By the way, no matter anything anybody wants to do or say today, the power matrix of this country has changed and it will never be the same again. Nigerians must get used to that.

Thus, Nigerians must perish the thought about some sections of the population working against the presidency of any other. No section is spared of this woe, hence we must all come together to ensure that humanity, good and beautiful that it inherently is, does not give in to evil.

We may weep, but let us never lose sight of the fact that evil can never win against good. For out these ashes of death, as the singer puts it, we must see the breaking of a brand new day, in which the name of the good God, the creator, alone is glorified.

May God receive and rest the souls of all who continue to die in this carnage. Nigeria will emerge better and stronger… but only if humans are determined to keep hope alive.

(Published on the BLUEPRINT Newspaper of Thur April 17, 2014)