When will it end?

By Michael Orodare

It was the morning after the Bayero University Kano, BUK carnage and I was with my boss' driver in my boss' living room, as he flips through the pages of the national dailies, all he could see were bombings, killings and the likes, he told me humorously: 'Michael your people are at it again' I asked who? He said the BH of course.


We went back memory lane, discussing the Boko Haram insurgencies; Madalla Christmas day bombing and not excluding Enenche Akogwu, Channels Television reporter, who was killed in Kano in an attack which left about 200 people dead; and the Thisday Newspaper Abuja office bombing. He asked a question I couldn't give an answer to, he asked in Yoruba (Igba wo ni kiniyi ma pari na?) 'when will this thing even end?' a few seconds after he asked the question, I became moody and sombre, I was dumbfounded and couldn't get an answer from my bank of eloquence, humorously but with hidden sadness, I replied him: 'it will end when they've arrived at the number of people they want dead.'

After giving the wrong answer to a good question, I began to ponder on the question within myself, I was so perturbed by the question, I started asking myself the same question the man had asked me, 'when will all the bombings in this country end? When will the killings stop? Who will stop it? Why are they doing it? What do they really want?After about 30minutes of pondering on the question, I could not get a credible answer to the question. I have never felt embittered about BH previous attacks like the way I felt about the media attacks and the BUK attacks, the attacks were becoming too many.

Barely 24hrs after the BUK attack, when the nation was yet to recover from the tragedy, Jalingo started trending on Twitter, another explosion had just occurred again in Taraba state, and I asked myself again, when will it end?

They have failed to give the right authority an option of dialog, even when those at the helm of affairs were ready for a dialog, they failed to offer themselves for a dialog. We don't even know who they are and what they really want.

Should we beg Boko Haram? just like the question posed by the Online Editor of The Nation, Lekan Otufodunrin in his column in The Nation, Sunday 29th April, 2012. Even if the solution to the menace is to beg them, who do we beg, can we beg the invincible, who will beg them? Can we beg spirit-beings who have failed to reveal their identity and tell us what they really want?

For how long will the killings persist, why are they fighting the government with the lives of innocent citizens, a Yoruba adage says 'taba nba nija, sebi ti kaku wani? (Even if we are at war with someone, we don't wish them dead).

If they are being used for political gains, those using them for selfish political gains should please sheath their sword and offer themselves for dialog with the right authority.When will it end? When will the media stop having tragedy and catastrophic reports as their lead stories every day? When are we going to stop tweeting 'explosion rocks another city again?’

Demonizing and condemning the Federal Government and its agencies on the social network, and on the pages of newspapers whenever BH strikes will not proffer a solution to this carnage, rather, every right thinking citizen of this country should rise and together let's close end on this carnage, let's stop playing politics with the lives of innocent citizens.Let the carnage stop now so that together we can make this nation great again.

Do we wait until an entire geo-political zone is wiped off, before it is stopped? If it doesn't end now, when will it end?