Kaduna Killing and Leadership Silence

Each time I feel that the killings in Southern Kaduna have stopped, I become nudged to the reality of its persistence, now and again. The continuous coming to terms of the subsistence of the carnage just does well to reveal how a designed and conscripted silence had pushed it below the radar.

The killings have been ongoing, and every day. We might not be fed with them, the mainstream media may not carry them, and the government might denounce or play down the reality. But lives are lost daily, just as people are been butchered daily. By SUSPECTED herdsmen.

Life is going on. We have just so many things to practically keep up with. The novel Coronavirus pandemic (or scam pandemic as some may posit), the Big Brother Naija TV reality show, the resumption of the foreign football leagues' season, the politics of Edo and Ondo polls. Differently, we have varying things that have kept us fully engaged in, based on predilection. And indeed, we're fully committed to them, as definitely, life must go on.

In all these hilarious and vivacious commitments, somewhere just near, some people are battling with survival and under the throbs of death and fear, not giving the slightest of attention to our commitments; indeed not because they also do not wish, rather because they're so committed to life's survival as to give a little nuance to these. And more pathetically, we seem not to know, not even to bother, cause we all are carried away from their horrendous reality.

This reality, which is a battle of survival for the people of Southern Kaduna and which to us means nothing is the continuous slaughter, the imposed butchery and the sworn mission of annihilation visited upon the citizens of southern Kaduna by still yet to be identified herdsmen.

HERDSMEN. The arrival of the word in the lexicon of Nigeria geopolitical space came with it, bearing the people of southern Kaduna in mind and to inflict in them great horror, it appears. It just seemed it came for them, to annihilate them and raise a connotation that a mention of herdsmen must be in similar context with Southern Kaduna! It is ridiculous, and not much more than it is disheartening.

The people of southern Kaduna are battling with their lives, and each time, it must be with and against herdsmen. In a manner that beats the senses, even as recurring the case has become, each incident of the attacks by this sinister group leaves the security men with the same dilemma of identifying them. They're always suspected herdsmen! Innocent lives daily are slaughtered in such carefree spree, for no fault of theirs than they are inhabitants of Southern Kaduna. And all we see is an IGNOBLE leadership and a DEAFENING silence that spur it!

The government consistently has pretended not to know that it is a very big problem. It pretends to assume that it's such an issue that could easily be given a line thought in a carefree speech and forgotten. It doesn't see it as a battle for life and survival by a threatened people, hence it has chosen to hide its inefficiency in silence and denial. How many times does one get to hear of these murders? Or does the silence deny its occurrence? The pang of a conspiratorial leadership silence!

Unfortunately, we the citizens have encouraged the government to continue to tow this ignoble path of a conspiratorial silence that fuels murder. We're carried away, and by things that really do not matter; and painfully our commitments have denied us of the needed expression of concern over these barbaric killings and which eventually should nod us to demand for leadership responsibility from the government. Indeed, our nonchalant attitude continue to spur the irresponsibility of our government to things that should matter!

My heart goes out to all those  men, women and children BUTCHERED in Southern Kaduna in such horrendous and nauseous manner as is becoming recurring, and for all surviving victims, who have been left to wait helplessly for their turn. I fear to say this, for I do not wish to, but can I benumb the suggested reality? What can the surviving inhabitants of this place do to avert the worse that continued to visit them that they've not really done?

Sincerely, I could just imagine and fear for them. My heart bleeds heavily for the conspiratorial SILENCE shown by government's inaction! For how long shall this land soak the blood of the innocent citizens to demand responsibility? Until it becomes a BLOODMINE? Or until the blood cuddle up into a voice and speak? Oh please, let the BLOODSHED raise our leadership to visible action!