The famous darkness of light takes its place as people scampered, leaving behind children and loved ones, on that fateful day when heaven lost its calm and watched in angry silence the troops of men finding death the easiest way they never bargained for.

“We used to know the touch of affection.”

Ethel said with an unusual naiveté, with tears streaming down her fine cheeks like waterfall cascading down the rocky hills of Obudu ranch, while the pains hastily stream down her spine, yet she smiled with unadulterated innocence.

She had just lost her brother in the inferno. Maybe tragedy is a friend of the family, she proclaimed with an unannounced exclamation.

“I was told my grandfather died in the civil war. Now so it seem, or is it not, that when horror visits the neighbourhood, our house is always a point of call?”

Her dad had met with tragic death too, as he was brutally murdered at gunpoint by hoodlums who have become masters of the roads.

The country had just celebrated her independence day anniversary few months ago, yet fighting and grumbling is yet to cease. Behind the scene, gimmicks of a confederate state will not stop, or so it seemed, that the forceful union which had given birth to an era inhabited by people who are shy to relate and trust has engineered cleavages that could not longer be tolerated. Was it just a mere reaction of the north to the man who had been lucky enough to man the golden stool of the nation? Can the splinters and ruins of peace so shattered be salvaged to ensure continuous national malady?

It has been years of painful feeling, and one is always forced to wonder if anarchy can ever pass through the ruins of their impoverished lives without peeping in to mock at them, just like hunger have laid siege on the whole city where the common man cannot boast of a filled stomach at any square of the meal he could afford. When will they see the appearance of peace and feel the texture of love and affection?

Many lives have wasted in vain already; there was yet a call against the menace of sectional madness that have carved out an enclave in the very heart of the nation. And why did they fight the same ones who they stretch their betraying hands to call brothers and the same people they share a smile with and wish the very best life could offer? For all that could be visible, the various attacks have been targeted at a selected crowd of people, tribe and faith. A war hasn’t been declared, yet there had been heightened fright as people began to quake under the threatening wind of insecurity. In fact there was no neighbour involved here, they were at war with themselves. This palpable fear engendered by the notoriety of aggrieved groups aimed to kill and maim in broad day light and open impunity. It is a fight they had not bargained for because such bargain will destroy the very heart and soul of a pursued unity and nationhood.

Whatever names that would be attached to it, call it an invincible menace yet they have and are expecting to witness much more; the very seeds of separation and enmity planted by the juntas and tyrants who had struck the newly born independent at the soul of its very tender heart, or have they not survived the civil war of unity and have they not still been stuck together like Siamese twins inseparable, yet this was a very known enemy taking arms against a brother.

The invincible brutal yoke of incessant killing and maiming, and the escalated intolerance has finally turned a once peaceful nation into Aceldama, a killing field and a boiling cauldron. And while they struggle for the survival of their souls, their brothers in the south are still entangled in the shenanigans of Niger Delta militancy, who before the government’s deceitful and amnesty, had made oil drilling and exploration a deadly and hazardous venture, still haunted by incessant

Kidnapping, rape and armed robbery; the combination of these have made life remarkably and truly miserable and no area a safe enough haven to dwell in peace, and this madness called conflict have seen brothers taking up sword against their very lives.

As far as Ethel was concerned, the country is blessed, absent of the many strange natural disasters that are recorded in the history of other countries – disasters that could set them on their heels scampering for their lives. In the long run, they have become their own disaster; they have become their woes and have forged tragedy with their own hands, unleashing its whole terror on the very ones they had long embraced and called brothers. This was a mayhem that was pushing the country to the brink of collapse.

Curse upon this slate of pain
Tears upon our faces stain
Darkness in our hearts contain
Sorrows no one can explain

Maim to leave behind our plight
Forced to abandon our fight
Death sets in, in broad day light
Taste of inevitable sour bite
Tales of pain we live to write

Place upon epitaph our fight
Intentional erasure of men of worth
With kins left behind to mourn and curse

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