By Prof Terhemba Shija
It has gone so fast. The speed with which the downtrodden victims of tragic events are mourned these days frightens me. People in government hardly give a damn. With zero empathy they deftly move on. Life must go on. The dead are truly left to bury the dead.
My heart bled when the nation woke up last Saturday and saw in the jungle of the Internet the various images of the holocaust at Yelewata. The bloody butchery left in the rains; charred carcasses unrecognisable, twisted like roasted goats and the mutilated bodies of infants and women littered by their farms.
There was a huge outrage across the world. Nigeria’s notable social media influencer, Very Dark Man visited the crime scene before any person in authority could muster enough empathy to be there. The new Pope, Leo XVI responded by offering prayers for the victims in faraway Rome on Sunday.
Yet it appears our empathy in Benue is severely diminished and our consciences seared after many of such bloody occurrences. We even appear to be in haste to move on, overlooking our solemn duty to the dead.
Africans generally respect the dead. We still mourn the dead and sympathise with the bereaved. It’s symbolic that it was an African that lifted the crucified body of Jesus and gave it a befitting burial.
It’s been almost a week since the dastardly massacre of over 200 souls in Yelewata. There’s no word yet about their burial.That tragedy is like no other since the commencement of the present administration two years ago. The climax of the steady graph of fulani herdsmen invasion of Benue rightly described by the Tor Tiv, Professor James Ayatse as “genocidal and land-grabbing.”
Death came to Yelewata at night on Saturday while the town slept. The AK47 rattled in all directions. The rains fell but could not withstand the fury of fire lit with petrol. Residents were roasted in their bedrooms; men, women and children. Those who attempted to escape in the deluge were either gunned down or slit dead with sharp machetes.
The death of one individual is in such a brutish manner is tragic enough. The slaughter of over two hundred innocent souls in their sleep in one fell swoop is certainly a tragedy of national proportion. It’s a big deal in a democracy where citizen’s rights to life are guaranteed.
For the first time in a long while, criminals, terrorists and bandits were called by their rightful names in Benue, but even the President, the commander in chief, wondered why none of criminals had been captured many days after they struck. And of course helpless victims of violent crime for whom government had failed to provide protection, should at least be accorded some measure of respect in death .
The President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu visited Benue last Wednesday but did not visit the crime scene. He probably felt it was enough to condole with government officials in Makurdi instead of relatives of the victims in Yelewata. Speeches at the President’s townhall meeting were few but elevated above the rank of the poor victims, who were in any case not in attendance.
The speeches dwelt predominantly on how politicians needed to reconcile their differences in readiness for the next elections. The ceremony lasted for less than three hours and the President flew back to Abuja.
Could that be the end of story? Why is there such a haste to close the chapter? Have we become so accustomed to death that we no longer bother about the circumstance and the number of people involved? Are the Yelewatans so inconsequential in their lowly social status that our country feels it owes them no apology for failing them? Why is there a hurry to overlook the importance of proper funeral ceremony that would engage the entire nation in deep introspection.
Flags were not flown at half-mast to honour the victims. The public holiday declared in Benue on Wednesday was in honour of the President and not the dead. No paramedics were seeing conveying corpses nor undertakers preparing decent coffins for their burials.
Our failure to do the needful could constitute another level of man’s inhumanity to man. It could amount to dereliction of responsibility for government to abandon the inhabitants of the town all because politicians had already met in Makurdi and gratified their egos.
We owe Yelewata a befitting funeral ceremony to express our grief commensurate to the attention the entire country has given to us over this tragedy. The Yelewatans are predominantly christians. They were killed callously by people allegedly professing another religion. A requiem mass for the dead would surely help to repose their souls.
Let our leaders also find a place in their hearts to empathise with the inhabitants of Yelewata. Let them think of at least establishing a school or a hospital where a cenotaph could also be erected as a memorial to victims of the pogrom.
May the gentle souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.
