Why Has Life Become So Cheap in Nigeria?

Where should people start from in Nigeria? From where exactly are people expected to pick up the pieces when entirely avoidable tragedies bring with them a truckload of pain, anguish and loss?

At what point do people step beyond their threshold having had enough? Just when should a people who seem to have bottomless fortitude finally say they have had enough?

Of course, at the end of many ponderous days, the recent airstrikes which killed more than 40 people in the Doma Local Government area of Nasarawa State will be put down to a deadly accident, another deadly accident. That is even if desperate attempts to blame terrorists for it fail.

The herders were said to have been retrieving about 1,250 cattle which had been confiscated by the Benue livestock guards while the airstrikes were coordinated by a drone deployed by the Nigerian Armed Forces in continuing operations to flush out terrorists.

Whatever it was, no explanation would possibly be enough for the man who lost nine family members to the deadly airstrikes.

In Nigeria, death is never far away. Beneath every word said about  how sacred human life is here and despite everything the law supposedly says about  how criminal it is to take human life, there is always the next casualty and after that, the next in the sequence of bloodletting that has left a country’s hands soiled with blood.

The attacks continue in Nigeria and the bodies continue to pile up whether at the instance of state or non-state actors. At this juncture,  is safe to say that the worst  Nigerians feared when Boko Haram upped the ante of its operations around 2009 is gradually  becoming a reality? Countless Nigerians have been caught in the relentless crossfire as Nigerian authorities have battled terrorists with suspect artillery.

The Nasarawa incident is certainly another black mark for ordinary Nigerians in what is surely a compelling and utterly excruciating experience of what it means to be a Nigeria. For all its prodigious potential, promises and problems, Nigeria remains a country roiled by uncertainty.

A chief reason so many Nigerians cling to the crags of religion with their fingertips is that they are desperately unsure about what the next moment can bring in a country that has experienced and experimented with all that there is under the sun but one which never fails to invent new ways to shock itself senseless.

The cloud of insecurity which beclouds the fleeting sense of safety Nigerians feel is bared by the fact that Nigerians stay in their homes and are killed; Nigerians go to their farms and are killed; children go to school and are abducted; people travel and never return home to their loved ones.

Although there is no explanation that can satisfactorily stanch the bleeding of the hearts of all those who have lost loved ones to the explosions, it is time Nigerians began to receive some explanation about why they drop dead like flies in their own country again and again.

Nigerians deserve to know why life has become so cheap in a country which has everything to make life not only safe but worth living.

People should not be attacked and dropped so frequently an in the country as randomly as if the country is fighting an all-out war. People should not have to live under the suffocating cloud of insecurity and uncertainty that has become the lot of many Nigerians in recent times.

It all boils down to leadership at the end of the day, to how a country has been run in the last decade or so since terrorism became an existential challenge. A lot of what has refused to change has simply refused to change because those whose merry-go-round had taken them into and through the corridors of power in Nigeria were simply content to do the rounds even if things only became worse as they did.

It is rather unfortunate that the war against terror is claiming so many lives at the moment. Whether it is security personnel, the terrorists themselves or innocent civilians being killed, result is the same and the conclusion inescapable that there are too many unaccountable deaths in Nigeria at the moment.

Kene Obiezu, keneobiezu@gmail.com