BHOMBS!

As if I did not already have enough to worry about, looking through facebook (which normally cheers me up) gave me sadder news. Nigeria, my beloved Nigeria was seeing renewed violence, this time in the ancient city of Kano. This time, the violence was targeted at the Police installations in that city, and as at the last report I read, a promising young man had died and many more were reportedly injured. I awoke to see pictures of a bomb blast induced carnage of a bridge in Yenagoa. My mind immediately pictures a  people cut off from others by lack of access and I become sadder still. What is going on? And why? Not being one to form opinions on political issues, I am being drawn out to think of how this chaos is always so well-timed. Its almost like when you watch some of those Nollywood movies and the 'boss' calls some evil sounding guys and pays them to ensure his agenda comes to pass not becos of any other reason than that he is rich enough to make the person or situation he wishes to, disappear, or whatever it is the money he pays buys. It all appears staged to me and the timing of such attacks and their effect just favors the government of the day more than anyone else. I know carefulity is required in this day and age of blatant violence against innocent citizens honestly sharing their opinions but my heart just aches with sadness at how inhuman and less than merciful our polity is becoming. If truly there is a group that feels aggrieved by the inclusion of Western education in their daily lives making them violently resist all such influences, they need to (methinks) find a settlement far from other humans and live like the cavemen they wish to be. I am sure no-one will begrudge them that, least of all the people who will heave a sigh of relief from not having to have contact with such baser men, but i seriously think the agenda of these 'people' (no nastier terms come to mind) is a diversionary militance to keep this nation from achieving stability enough to forge ahead in its path to development and better days. The other thing I feel about all this is that it is very hypocritical of these 'people' to constantly utilize means of education to achieve their aims while insisting that a lack of education, especially all things 'kaboom' is their message. How are bombs made? It is a highly skilled Western knowledge. Who has not heard of those trained in acts of terrorism who spend their growing up years in Western nations being trained by those who are skilled in these arts and who, when their doomsday nears will repair to a native corner to be schooled in the ideas of their sect. That's just hypocritical! If you want nothing to do with Western education, then your weapons of warfare must be such that we can easily ascertain that that is your message. This is why I feel these guys are tools, mere tools who are allowing themselves to be used in the most basic of ways while imagining or perhaps even dreaming that they are idealists who have a say in the way their message will be perceived. If I go on, it will read like a sadist's comedy, what with the 'escape' of a highly sought after proponent of the sect, the handing over of 100 million big ones to the family of one of them killed (mistakenly, I believe) in a shoot out, much like the American government would hand a flag to the widow of an American soldier who died protecting her sovereignty, and various other scenarios of similar grotesquely annoying tidbits.  The sadness I feel makes it hard to find a person to blame but focuses me on a system which feeds on its future, the young and not so young of Nigeria, the promising and the devout in her pursuit of stability. Those are killed off, leaving those who will believe that to make their point, its necessary to throw carnage into the lives of other living beings, who move, feel, reproduce and can die. They are growing in numbers from the northern mis-educated to the southern un-eduacted, and onto the western ill-educated and eastern pseudo-educated. All are wrongly educated and the major education they require is an open mind (no, not Teju Cole's), a mind that evaluates and questions, that seeks solutions rather than celebrates problems, a mind that is compassionate of others and empathizes becos it truly knows or attempts to know before forming an opinion. This is my real sadness, that we as a nation have lost the plot and become the very anti-thesis of who we used to be, a nation going somewhere, a nation of influence and now all we really are is a nation of closed minds....smh.