Although my major focus here will be on cryptocurrencies and blockchain events, I want to share with the community a part of my story-letter to the Nigerian citizens.
Dearest Fellow Citizens,
I stood dumbstruck as flaming tears oozed out of my eyes in torrents, saturating the upper part of my roughed blue shirt. My paired hallowed organ swelled as blood was ready to burst with the tears. I tried to gulp back the emotion but could not help it. The pool of blood, the cloud of fumes, the dismembered charred bodies, the pieces of shrapnel, the broken glasses, the destroyed shops, and the sudden crowd added to my confliction.
"Am I in a reverie?" I muttered to myself with a stare flickering with curiosity. "I wish to get over this daymare." I prayed and shambled closer to the scene, peering at the ground. "It is death." I let out a shout that ricocheted off the decrepit walls of the market. "Oh my God! What a doom to Monday market!" I joined the mourners with a voice reaching out to the four walls of the universe. We initiated a cacophony of wails with our oral gongs.
Two minutes ago, a teenager identified as Ashai had hurtled into the market, crashing into people and things like a fugitive looking for a hideout. She had bumped into me at the entrance to the market where I stopped to give 50 naira alms to the crippled almajiri. Despite her fishy move, nobody suspected that she had an incendiary explosive concealed within her. She had been recently a regular to the market and hence nobody knew she had death with her, right under her jasmin-embroidered gown. She disregarded everyone that greeted her even the chubby Fatima, her market crony. And on getting to the popular cycle rickshaw near a fish pond, she mingled with the ignorant throng. That was when death called as she blew herself up with immediacy, marking the seventeenth attack on the citizens of the country.
The land was corrupted once more with the blood of innocent citizens. Wails ravaged the air. Pandemonium was at its peak like the bloodred time of the 1966 pogrom. The explosion intoxicated the god of death with happinness; its putrid joy drilled us with a united sorrow and regret that would never elope from our broken minds. The country turned into a theatre of loss of blood for just no cause with the atmosphere reeking of death.
"If only death could slice its dagger through my throat cutting all the tendons and veins, I will be grateful. I knew the country has no hope and future from that cursed day the midwife evicted me from the comfort of my mother's womb." I said, roving around the entire scene with a pale and pasty mien. “What story do our citizens have if not the story of hunger, anarchy, death, tyranny, terrorism, assault, suicide, marginalisation, and grinding poverty?" A drop of tears streamed down my eyes, I shook my head. My mind became immersed with a vortex of remorse.Thus, despite being a man, I cried for the two hundred people that were roasted to death and the fifty others that sustained terrible wounds which might lead to amputations.
Monday market was closed at the moment. Businesses were halted and shops locked up as the marketers formed a crowd of disordered mourners and sympathizers, gathering around the ghoulish scene. I was there too. I watched as a group of people with tears dripping down their cheeks from their eyes were rummaging through the pieces of shrapnel, iron, block, concrete and glass to sort out the dismembered charred bodies of their loved ones.
I felt coldness running down my ventricles, my body going numb. But I managed to join the devotees in sorting out the casualties. Soon, sirens wailed as three fire engines and three military pick-up trucks raced into the scene. The military fired five shots in the air, dispersing the crowd. The devotees stopped and stepped aside for them. As the military stepped out of the vehicles, I counted them. They were 15 able-bodied policemen with guns in their hands. At once, one of them brought out pointed sticks from the third truck. Another four policemen joined him. Pegging the sticks in the ground, they tied a yellow rope at the top of each stick to cordon off the scene.
Within five minutes, the news circulated over the land and beyond the contour of our country. On the internet, over the radio, on the television, on newspapers both local and international, on Facebook and even Twitter, it was trendy. Terrorism had been born. Boko Haram was prepared to sacrifice the citizens to the god of death, fathered by rebellion. It was war against the citizens but we were mandated to call it insurgency.
I remembered being questioned by a Reutras news agent. My body vibrated as I talked. Goose-pimples burst out of my pores, looking like freckles. I could not remember the exact question he asked because the shock was too much on me, especially, when I learnt that my little Bello was among the dead victims. Words ran through my vibrating oral orifice uncontrolled.
"Roasted dead bodies covered the ground, many of which burnt beyond recognition. I helped to load thirty-two of the wounded victims into three ambulances." Not wanting to talk further, I used my left hand to hold my mouth. Tears drizzled from my sudden bulged, reddened eyes. I looked into the agent's eyes. He had no tears in them and was hawk-eyed. The initial voice in my mind said that the agent lacked empathy. But the second voice said that the agent was doing his job. "Sentimental and impressionistic feelings are not part of his job." I concurred. I then lose my mouth, thinking that the lips had exhausted their parrot-like energies but words rushed out like a flood from river Niger. "There is grave terror in the country. The government needs to act fast. Our president needs to put an end to this mess. It is getting out of hand. Since 2009, the god of death has refused to exit from our country. It is one death story or the other every day. May God save us." I slammed my mouth. It became obvious that the words had ran out of supply. I shrugged and waggled my head, spitting on the ground.
******
The incessant bombings and killings in the country ensued a global-cum-national conspiracy as the mouth of the world fell on the incumbent president, Dr. Goodman Nwachukwu.
"He is a coward," they chorused with their jagged lips filled with deceits, “a political chicken suffering from incurable ineptitude. Lacking commonsense and political nous, he is not diplomatic and does not have the interest of the citizens at heart. He must be haunted out of the presidential seat by every means." Everything that spoilt a man's name was said of him. We, the citizens, believed all their shining metallic words of deception. Like a dog that is destined to die, we could not perceive the odours of death hovering over the atmosphere.
The following day of the Monday market's incident, I read in Vineyard newspaper the comment of the president on the whole episode of deaths. It was on page 5 of the paper. Written in a bold font 14, it stood out among other texts. He described the acts as "odious attempts to inflame unhealthy passions and exacerbate worry and unhappiness, fear, insecurity and sectional divisions in the country." But the conspiracy made none of us to pay attention to him. We needed teeth for teeth reaction not strings of emotional expressions. Those words had no force. We required actions.
Even our supposed white aides condemned the president. They called him a gentile, convincing us to believe that he was the enemy. Most countries nailed him on the cross for a public mockery. I dreaded that the war he faced was bigger and more catastrophic than Armageddon but he did not say much. They accused him of of being reticent like Jesus of Nazareth in front of king Pilate.
*******
As days went by, the figure of dead citizens left us nonplussed. Our body systems lost control as we became paralysed with insecurity. Words failed us just like we failed ourselves. From 2009 to 2015, over 30, 000 lives of innocent citizens full of dreams of their own, good aspirations that could have been useful in placing the country on a stable development footing, was lost to the cold arms of suicidal death. There had been a series of bombings in Maiduguri, Kano, Kaduna, Yola, Gombe, Adamawa, and others.
In those days of wanton deaths, Mukhtara Yerodi, the then dignified governor of Kaduna, condemned the killings. He termed it the height of cowardice. And had a documented statement on the Reutras newspaper. I read it with eyes like gimlets and a mind sharper than the sword of a warlord.
"The enemies of peace have visited us with their ungodly venom of wanton destruction. Those behind the act have no notion of God, as they have no regards for the sanctity of human life. The lives of the citizens of the country are at risk. May we survive this indiscriminate bloodshed." He wrote with embittered mind and agonising spirit.
He then declared a twenty-four-hour curfew which confined the people in their houses. There was no movement of any kind in Kaduna. But it did not curtail the cankerworm. The cancerous killing persisted.
*******
The killing spree crystallised my thought like a refined gold. We, the citizens, then knew that the extremist sect was no longer against western education but against the government, against the citizens of the country. They needed an Islamic government, not an imbecilic man from southsouth.
"Nigeria, the 1914 mistake of Lugard's favour must crumble, its foundation shattered and a considerable size of the nationals blown to death if the president became re-elected," the sect vowed with their blood. In a rumoured video, Abubakar Audu, the recognized head of the sect, took the oath to reduce the country to an island of blood. Almost every Hausa / Fulani supported them. Nigeria belonged to their tribe. Other tribes were expected slaves to their beck and call.
We, the civilians, ran for dear life since the sect had no specific targets. Everybody was a victim. Here and then, they bombed innocent citizens in the churches, mosques, markets, and shopping centres, military barracks, commercial hubs, filling stations, university campuses, and villages.
The incumbent president did nothing to intervene in our plight. He must have been a woman. Many citizens said he lacked the tactics to combat for them. We needed a man brandishing with valour to confront this set of hoodlums and hooligans, mafias of the highest echelon. The expected messiah would come in the next presidential election. 2015 was the alleged year of the new faith.
*******
The fourteenth day of April, 2014 shocked everyone to the marrow as the rebellion of the extremist sect became too glaring on the international spotlight.
I was in southeast on that day. I had travelled for a friend's traditional marriage which was going to take place on the sixteenth. I had branched off at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to check on my younger brother, Ebuka, who studied Soil Science. Chitis restaurant was our meeting point. I boarded a shuttle that dropped me off in front of the luxurious restaurant. As I entered, the ambience of the restaurant enliven my spirit. Today was not my first day at Chitis so nothing mesmerised me. I paid for the VIP and entered there. I ordered for a plate of fried rice freckled with salad, a sizable turkey and a bottle water. Amaka, the waiter, brought my orders.
Just in time, I received a call that left me dumbfounded for one minute. Amaka, noticing my moronic looking, gave me a gentle tap on the right shoulder. Then I regained myself. I smiled at her, pretending as if nothing happened. She smiled back and walked out. Instead of gobbling down the food, I brought out my smart phone, accessed my Twitter and Facebook accounts. The heartbreaking news had gone viral. It was a reality, but I was sceptical. It was more like a bullshit story, a moonlight tale told in my village square.
The news said that an alleged Boko Haram group harvested and kidnapped 200 girls from a government secondary school in the northeastern village of Chibok, Borno state. I abandoned the sumptuous meal and told Amaka to take it. I only grabbed the table water. Walking out, I dialled the number of Alhaji Jubril, a top politician in Borno. He confirmed the incident.
"How is this possible?" I asked him. "A brilliant robbery and kidnapping! This is crazy. Where is our military in Borno? How could they have accomplished kidnapping the girls without a leak of information to alert the military?" I did not know that my tone echoed. Everyone's attention focused on me as if I was a mad man. I did not care. They have not got the news, I said within and squeezed my face up as if I chewed bitter leaf.
Before long, this news triggered a new sense into we, the citizens. We then found movements against the atrocities of the extremist sect. Crazy protesters used uneven placards with different writings on the roads, highways, offices, university campuses and even in front of Aso Rock.
"Bring back our Chibok girls, save our girls, fight for the citizens, incompetent president, a weak president, tactless leader, save our land and the citizens," were the inscriptions on the placards carried by the mobs that gathered in front of the presidential villa to express their grievances and displeasures towards the incumbent president. I was among the mobs. I needed an action from the government that would put an end to these bombings and killings which had turned into a national and international mockery. But despite the protests and demonstrations, nothing happened. We never heard that any member of the sect faced the wrath of the law.
Do you wish for the part 2?