Human beings with the mindset of wild animals

By Usaini Abubakar

While travelling in some parts of the Plateau state, please be cautious and vigilant. It’s unfortunate that some blood-sucking people don’t know their enemy and enjoy attacking innocent travellers passing their towns, not knowing we are all victims of the same system. 

I don’t honestly know their aims. Do they want to turn every federal road that crosses their towns or within the state into gallows, a wasteland, battlefields, graveyards of multiple unknown bodies, or maybe something else of their making?

I nearly lost my life yesterday! Not only that, but I nearly lost my breath, lost the life beating inside me, but my strength and courage and determination and experience, like echoes of vigil nights, disappeared within seconds. Not only that, but I think casualties are not the death of those who started the war or those prowling grievance.

Not only that, but I believe casualties are those who keep quiet, who have the opportunity to talk but keep quiet, and those who smile every day when their next-door neighbours are in tears. But how can we together hold and retrieve ourselves back from this brainwashing?

So, I began to wonder what’s more important than human life. What’s more critical than togetherness, than friendships and relationships and progress? What’s more significant than peace, development, progress, success, love, respect, responsibility, and understanding? What’s peace if we can’t go anywhere inside our towns?

What friendship if we can’t befriend someone from another tribe, village, or country? What’s love if we can’t love and respect what others revere? What’s the progress if we can’t put one block over another? What’s progress if we can’t come together? What’s the responsibility if we can’t be accountable for our mistakes?

What’s faith? What’s a belief if we can’t respect other people’s choices and generational values? What’s up if there are no others? How can you, without reason, kill someone for someone’s sin or mistake? Why punish an innocent traveller for a sin they didn’t commit or knew nothing about?

Imagine we spent half our day alongside the road linking Mararraban Jama’a to Abuja, waiting for death, revenge, hatred, or the taste of human blood to leave people’s minds. We stayed as the only means of safety in our possession. We waited for God’s intervention, waiting and waiting, and I pray for no one to wait for this type of wait… waiting without knowing where death would come from.

Usaini Abubakar wrote from Jos, Plateau State. He can be reached via usainiabubakaradam5091@gmail.com.