By Banji Ayoola
War? Never again! Never again in our motherland! Never again on the soil of Nigeria!
Never again shall we allow our disagreements to degenerate into such barbarity again, into such callousness!
When people, bonded together, who are meant to build a harmonious, peaceful nation state, who are meant to build a joyful federation of diverse peoples, cultures and other social backgrounds, turned our fertile and pregnant fields into battlegrounds, turning the guns and other weapons against one another. Weapons supplied to combatants on both sides by nations which pretended to be our friends.
When hate freely walked the land to unleash horror on our people.
The horror of those years of senseless bloodshed and destruction, on both sides of the needless dispute still lives with us, still haunts; the regrettable scars still live with us fifty-five years after the war ended – the hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of our peoples who, as living victims of the war, either now live a miserable life with their limbs butchered off; or are lame and crippled; or who are homeless, jobless and hopeless; or have lost everything they had worked for to the war; or who are widows; or who are now orphans having lost both fathers and mothers to the war.
The sight of human beings on crutches, who before the war were able bodied, but are now compelled to troop out to the roads to beg for food, is horrible enough.
The pictures and videos of scenes from the war are frightening enough.
I shed tears when I saw human beings torn to shreds by bullets, when I saw flying shrapnel from the singing gun.
When human beings, like animals, were hunted and hounded out of their homes in the middle of the night by ferocious looking, gun wielding soldiers who were drunk with rage, and coldly pointing their deadly weapons at human beings. At human beings! And not at animals of prey.
When I saw bombs smashed to dust buildings and human beings; destroyed farmlands and animals; poisoned the waters and air; suffocated many human beings and animals to death; made extensive areas uninhabitable for human beings, animals or plants, or any living thing at all.
The streaming tears from my eyes rolled into a mass of hot balls, which almost choked me when I saw gravely undernourished children, who looked like skeletons of lizards.
When I saw mothers, dead to consolation, crying for their children and husbands suddenly snatched from them, and killed just overnight by vengeful mad gunmen, among whom were mercenaries from countries pretending to be friends of the combatants on both sides, pretending to be friends of our country and her entire people, pretending to be our friends and helpers.
I wept when I saw hungry mothers, helpless fathers, hopeful but skinny children, lined up in the burning sun in long chains for watery and lean rations that could best be described as appetisers.
I wept when I saw the senseless mass destruction of facilities and infrastructure, of bridges connecting the people of this country, when I saw how the famous Onitsha Bridge, a remarkable monumental link connecting our people together, was blown up, and how a section of it hung in the sky.
I wept when I saw children who were meant to be in primary schools, and roaming about joyfully in an atmosphere of peace, and in the safety of their parents’ homes, under the watchful eyes of their mothers, and under the overall Protection from Above, carrying guns, weapons of destruction and marching to the war-front as soldiers.
I wept when I saw how we threw away peace and embraced war, how we abandoned the round table and opted for the battlefields to kill and destroy ourselves.
I wept, and still weep, at the great opportunities and privileges thrown into our laps by Divine Wisdom, as people brought together by threads of fate to be better human beings, which we have thrown away in the frenzy of senseless anger, hate and bitterness.
The bitterness of the infamous Civil War is still there, rearing its ugly head oftentimes to cause more problems and frustrate genuine efforts at nation building.
Now is the time for us to heal wounds, expunge the bitterness, rebuild and restore broken bridges, to really re-think and build a nation where no one is oppressed, where all shall prosper together in our diversities, which we will now use to build trust and friendship.
Our Prayer is that our leaders and peoples will be guided aright.
Arise o compatriots!
Heed the call of an emerging new nation, our new fatherland, a new Nigeria, which we will now serve selflessly, and strive honestly to bring to serve the Holy Will of the Almighty Father.
Banji Ayoola
