By FUNKE EGBEMODE
It is another sad day in Nigeria.
Another dark day.
His only sin was that he woke up and went to work, something he had been doing for years. If he had known what that fateful day had in stock for him, he would have stayed in bed. But he did not. He had no way of knowing that the monster we thought lived only in the forests of the north had finally built a hut in the South-West.
Michael Oyedokun a schoolteacher left his house in Oyo State to go to work. He did not carry a gun. He was not a soldier marching to a battlefield. He was not a criminal fleeing justice. He was not a politician with enemies or political detractors.
He was a simple teacher, a man who carried books instead of bullets. His daily assignment was to help shape young minds and help children find a future brighter than the present darkness surrounding Nigeria. He taught mathematics, a major subject needed to birth the next generation of engineers and pilots, doctors and nurses, tech pros and climate change experts.
But before the day ended, terrorists reportedly captured him and hours later, ended his life in the most gruesome manner. The darkness of Nigeria consumed him, leaving all of us bewildered.
Mr Oyedokun’s only offence was going to work.
That single sentence alone should break the heart of every decent human being.
In sane societies, teachers are protected because they build civilization. Nations honour teachers because they prepare the next generation. Didn’t we all grow up in communities that respected them because every doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, governor and president once sat before a teacher in a classroom?
But today’s Nigeria is beheading its teachers. Today’s Nigeria is not safe, not for pupils or their teachers. How did we arrive at this cruel, sorry pass, this evil junction of blood where a man can leave his home in the morning to educate children and never return alive? What kind of people does that make us?
As far as this girl is concerned, this is no longer just insecurity. It is organized cruelty. It is the systematic destruction of human dignity. It is evil in human form. Those we call criminals are demons, monsters. Or is it not beyond frightening wickedness that there human beings who can hold another human being down for his head to be severed head as though his life meant absolutely nothing? Doesn’t that level of brutality belong in nightmares, in horror films? Why then has it become a recurring reality in Nigeria?
It is easy to call out President Tinubu.
It is convenient to blame this on Governor Seyi Makinde. But let us ask ourselves, who are the people providing cover, funding and guns for these demons? Somewhere, as you read this, someone is leaking, selling sensitive information to kidnappers. Someone is selling them daily supplies. Someone is making tons of money from this evil enterprise. They know people will die, blood will be shed, yet they don’t care.
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What kind of darkness possesses man that makes him comfortable spilling innocent blood? What happened to mercy? What happened to conscience? What happened to humanity?
Teacher Michael was someone’s son, a husband, a father, a breadwinner, a family’s hope until his head was taken to prove a point.
This is the kind of tragedy Nigeria now produces with such frightening regularity and we are gradually becoming emotionally numb, exhausted. Every week comes with fresh horror.
A farmer goes to his farm and never returns.
A trader’s blood is splattered on her wares in the market.
A nursing mother is abducted.
Students disappear on highways.
Youth Corp members are kidnapped in busloads.
Worshippers are shipped off in the middle of church service.
Villages are invaded in the middle of the night.
Children watch helplessly as their parents are slaughtered before them.
Entire communities sleep with fear wrapped around their throats.
And now, a teacher has been beheaded simply because he went to work.
The dead are almost never the powerful.
They are ordinary Nigerians struggling honestly to survive.
The victims are the people who still believe in hard work. People who wake up every morning hoping to feed their families legitimately. People who still believe dignity can come from labour instead of crime.
But in today’s Nigeria, honesty itself seems endangered. What are we going to do?
The tragedy of this latest killing becomes even heavier when one remembers how poorly teachers are already treated in the country. Many work under terrible conditions. Poor salaries. Broken classrooms. Leaking roofs. Inadequate teaching materials. Yet they continue showing up every morning because they have to, someone has to .
Society hands children over to teachers daily with one request: help shape the future.
And this is how Nigeria rewards one of them.
By allowing him to become another corpse in the growing cemetery of national sorrow.
Somewhere sadly as you read this, Teacher Michael’s wife is staring blankly into darkness, unable to understand how life changed so brutally, so quickly. The children are waiting for a father who will never walk through the door again. Somewhere, his relatives are crying and asking questions nobody can answer.
How does one explain this kind of death to a child? How does the Oyedokun family recover from this horror?
How do communities heal after repeated exposure to terror? The emotional destruction caused by terrorism goes far beyond the bodies left behind. Violence destroys the invisible structures holding us together. It destroys confidence. It destroys trust. It destroys peace of mind. It destroys hope.
Some weeks ago, I alerted us about the steady movement of these demons towards the South through Kwara state. I wrote about the less than two-hour drives and 90-minute journey between horror and once-upon-a-time safe places. The Kwara abductions frightened me sh-tless, I must confess. I told a friend the name of the town these monsters may be headed. He laughed. Well, he is not laughing now, trust me. This thing has finally gotten out of hand. Don’t bother telling me anything different. The monster is ready to go shopping in the open. It is daring us, all of us, from President Tinubu to my youngest grandchild. We must wake up and kill it, this monster. There is no second option.
The fear we live with is too much, devastating, debilitating fear. Enough is enough. Fear has now become one of Nigeria’s most dominant national emotions.
We fear highways.
We fear lonely roads.
We fear strange motorcycles.
We fear unknown phone numbers.
We fear traveling at night.
We fear forests.
We fear sleeping deeply.
Parents panic until children return home safely.
Families pray before ordinary road journeys as though loved ones are heading into battlefields.
Before you put everything at the doorstep of the current administration, think deeply about how decades of decay got us here. Let’s not be shallow. Think of the years of selfish leaders, years of no planning, no focus on tangible development. Think of those who hid behind religion to impoverish those who trusted. Where we are today was long in coming but anybody with the sense God gave a goose knew we would eventually harvest what we sowed.
We did not start looking over our shoulders overnight. It was a gradual descent into the valley of darkness and despair. We simply left undone what we should have done. We refused to learn the simple lessons; like terrorism does not only kill individuals. It attacks the spirit of a nation itself.
That farmers abandoning their farms out of fear will have ripple effects.
Businesses collapse in unsafe communities.
Schools become dangerous places. Investors are staying away. Entire villages are becoming ghost towns.
Perhaps the saddest part is how Nigerians are gradually becoming used to tragedy.
Outrage now has a short lifespan.
A massacre happens.
People cry online.
Officials condemn it.
Burials take place.
Then another tragedy arrives and pushes the previous one aside.
The dead disappear into statistics.
“Ten killed.”
“Twenty abducted.”
“Thirty villagers massacred.”
Simple numbers.
But every number was a human being with dreams, plans and loved ones. Every victim had people who depended on them emotionally and financially. Some hoped to build houses, planned to marry and have three, four children . Some wanted to send their children to school abroad, give them the great starts they didn’t get. Some simply wished to grow old peacefully.
Then evil arrived with guns, machetes and hatred and everything ended abruptly. Hopes, dreams, plan went up in smokes of pain and indescribable pain.
The danger of repeated violence is not only physical destruction. It is emotional numbness. A society constantly exposed to bloodshed risks losing its capacity for empathy. People become tired of mourning. Shock begins to fade. Death becomes ordinary.
That may be the greatest tragedy of all.
One cannot even begin to imagine the final moments of that teacher’s life.
Perhaps his wife reminded him not to be late returning home.
Perhaps his child asked him to bring biscuits after work.
Perhaps he left home believing it would be another normal day.
Perhaps he even smiled before stepping outside.
Then somewhere along the journey, terror found him.
Students will resume lessons someday, but there will always be an invisible absence hanging in the air. A chair in the staff room will carry silence.
A life once well laid out, a future once looked forward to has been snuffed out, candles of a family’s hope blown out, just like that, only to be remembered with one-minute silence moments at milestones.
Will we catch these monsters or is it already too late for us?
Dear Lord, please don’t let the remaining victims return to us headless.
EGBEMODE writes via: [email protected]
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