TERROR TALES AND THE BLOOD BATH

by Israel-Triumph Olaniyan

PRESCRIPT

Rabbi was a young girl of five, and she watched men with knives drawn cut down her Father and mother like meat on the butcher’s slab. Sinzu was on his way home to tell his parents about his new job with Microsoft Technologies when he ran into a band of murderous crusaders. With a clean sweep of his dagger, one of them separated Sinzu’s limbs from his body, while laughing out loud…

These are a few of the ordeals of the many dying in Jos, Benue and the rest of the North-Eastern part of Nigeria.

The sight was gory, stark and insanely cold

Strewn all around were pieces of flesh and bone untold

Blood like raindrops in a jarring thunderstorm

Blast up and beyond into a non-existent form

The gruesome remains of something, hitherto someone

How it seems life has abruptly lost all significance

Inhuman mortals, sociopaths lost in a trance

Calculated insanity and destructive rage

A brazen decimation, a rapacious soul ravage

A surge of terror at ground zero

Pillaged houses and broken homes

Burnt country side and earth devoid of loam

Killers with no conscience, martyrs for a vain cause

Devil incarnates on a killing spree with no pause

Amputated limbs, a compulsory price survivors pay

Are we at war, many seem to ask in pain

Innocent lives lost forever to no gain

When will the reign of terror end?

When shall we grieve and to our wounds tend

If our foe’s ire is unremitting, and our dead innumerable

Shall the impeccant suffer for another’s grudge?

Or the unlucky traveller partakes of a dish he must purge.

Who then shall come to the rescue?

If the helmsman can’t, who will in lieu-?

Save our lives, b’cos death is on a dance rampage

Our brave ‘men’ are on the frontline

The lily-livered in the government at the baseline

Our young have become hostages to treasure

The old of their death so cocksure

And we, though long dead in our hearts live each day

Shall we look up to the Creator?

Or shall our liberty remain with the captor?

Should we stand by helpless and vie?

Watching and waiting our turns to die

Or we cry till the tears are gone from our eyes?

Never! No! Not yet! It is not over I say!

There is not much hope, not even to keep terror at bay

But! We will sit and watch no more

We all must stand to fight even with our sores

This we will do till death’s cold hands withdraw

This we won’t stop till the rage of terror cease.

POSTSCRIPT

In tribute to the many dead, countless bleeding and others suffering the crime of being born in the Nigerian middle-belt and the Northeast. We are in solidarity with you, we are praying for you!

An outcry to reveal the hopeless helplessness of a people being subjected to such horrific ordeals without anything being done about it. Its as though their lives are not worth more than cows.

The debate largely and strangely has been on how to appease the killers, while the death toll has continued to rise. We say a brazen NO to this…