CRIME SPACE
Hello Readers,
OWO CATHOLIC CHURCH MASSACRE
Two years ago tomorrow, the brain matter of a three-year-old boy spattered on the floor of Saint Francis Catholic Church, Owo, when a damnable group of armed Fulani men invaded the church.
The video image of the attack (which has not yet left my retina) showed the father of the boy lying face-down on top of his son. His hands clenched tight on the child, as if he had offered himself as a protective shield against the oncoming bullets from AK 47 rifles. His brain too had been blown away, and part of his skull lay three feet away from his body. Many more bodies lay on the floor, their mouths wide open, and their eyes staring vacantly in the sea of blood.
On that Sunday morning, June 5, the Church priest was leading the congregation, presumably praying that God cast his pitying eyes on the country, when the attackers stormed the church and wreaked their characteristic havoc on the representatives of Christ.
By the time the attackers left, more than thirty corpses lay heavy and lifeless on the aisles of the church. Blood and chunks of brain were everywhere. And while the seriously wounded were rushed to hospital, those who had lost a lot of blood among them later lapsed into comas from which they never recovered. This increased the death toll to about forty.
After this appalling and horrific act of violence for no earthly reason, the chants of 'Allahu Akbar' were what rose from the lips of the killers as they left the church triumphantly with an exaggerated swagger.
When the news broke, the locals were stunned. It jangled their nerves. They poured into the streets. Many mothers and families of the victims flung themselves, froglike, on the ground. They pulled their hair. They screamed, and their scream rose in the air incisively. Men in the full flush of their gallant youth bit their lips, gritted their teeth, beat their chests, and rocked up and down the streets, visibly angry.
Their anger was real. But they could not do more than that under the Fulani government of Muhammadu Buhari. They were like a parent buffalo that cannot do anything other than watch, grunt, and gnash teeth when a crocodile grabs its calf by the hoof from the bank of the river and drag it deep down into the water.
But swiftly the politicians, including the then Vice President, rushed to the scene. They choked back tears. They were in a political pickle. It was difficult for them, this time, to describe the attack as a farmers'-herders' clash. They promised to find and bring the attackers to justice, though.
Two years on, the law of the land has not yet been able to account for the perpetrators of this unspeakable horror. And the families of the victims are yet to reach a satisfying sense of closure.
Today, the killers are still roaming free, smirking at justice.
And, unfortunately, in our midst, there are no shortages of idiots who are hell bent on putting us permanently in harm's way by canvassing free land for bands of primitive and obstreperous Fulani herdsmen to establish their own colonies among the representatives of the civilised world.
Let us take a short trip to Benue State. You do not need a snifer dog or any ground-searching equipment; all you need is a pickaxe and a shovel. And dig down anywhere you like in the State you will not dig deep before you come upon the bones of those killed by Fulani herdsmen. The farmers in the State, and elsewhere in the country, cannot get on with sowing and reaping. Their farmlands have been overrun and laid waste by Fulani herders who have made no staggering contribution to civilization.
YORUBA NATION IS THE ANSWER!
Sammie Adetiloye