2014- annus horribilis

On March 8, Malaysian Aircraft (MH 370), a Boeing 777 disappeared. Expert conjecture is that it went down into the sea close to Australia taking with it all of its 239 passengers and crew. The flight was going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Many months after the incident both Malaysian and Australian authorities are still […]

On March 8, Malaysian Aircraft (MH 370), a Boeing 777 disappeared. Expert conjecture is that it went down into the sea close to Australia taking with it all of its 239 passengers and crew. The flight was going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Many months after the incident both Malaysian and Australian authorities are still searching for it under the sea. As if that was not tragic enough, another Malaysian aircraft that took off from Netherland was shot down while flying over Ukraine, ostensibly by the ethnic Russian separatist group seeking autonomy from Ukraine.
Ever since Russia over ran Crimea which was a part of Ukraine and annexed it early this year, Ukraine has found it difficult to hold together as a nation. Its ethnic Russians have taken up arms against the government in Kiev, its capital. The plane crash is believed to be the tragic fallout of the insurrection, which is  also believed to be masterminded and orchestrated by the Russians, whose President, Vladimir Putin has embarked on revanchist mission to recreate it into the former USSR, complete with all the Baltic states it lost under Gorbachev.  Many days after the plane imploded in mid air killing its 298 passengers dead bodies are still being collected from the scene and taken to Netherland to be medically sorted out for identification before releasing them to their loved ones. But the Ukrainian air tragedy has not stopped other air mishaps from happening. Soon after the Ukrainian one, an Air Algerie flying between Mali and Algeria went down in the Sahara also killing everyone on board.
Hard on the heels of this was the South Korean aircraft on an internal flight that crashed into a mountainous area south of that country during a storm. The few survivors included a few days old infant. Remember South Korea had lost early in the year a whole shipload of students going on a cruise. The mishap caused the resignation of the prime minister.
As disasters go, the continuous and almost daily deaths on the Mediterranean Sea by African immigrants seeking greener pastures in Europe comes to mind. These immigrants come from all over Africa, men and women, they brace the brutal and unforgiving journey through the Sahara desert by weathering its scorching heat and sandstorm to either Tripoli (Libya) or Algiers (Algeria) where they wait for months on end, until an errant boat comes along to take them across the treacherous waters of the Mediterranean Sea to their destination–Europe.  According to an account, less than half of those who set out ever get to Europe. Many die en-route in the Sahara desert unable to navigate their route to the sea-shore of Algiers or Tripoli. They succumb to the heat that fry up their brains, disorienting them and making them wander round and round until they succumb to tiredness and fall down to give up the ghost. Others get buried in the shifting sand dunes after getting blinded by the flying sand.
The lucky ones who get to the Mediterranean Sea bid their time and wait for any boat at all. Since the good ones would not take them because they do not have valid papers and even if they had they cannot pay the fares anyway. And when they eventually set out in leaky and decrepit boats, half way in the middle of the angry ocean, they pack up unable to go forward or return to their starting point. Eventually they upend their desperate cargoes into the sea. Hardly able to swim they all perish in a watery grave. Curiously, none of the African countries whose desperate compatriots die while fleeing from their countries has found it worthwhile to do something about the unending tragedy. The African Union (AU) has done nothing whatsoever either.
Only a few days ago, the phenomenon of implacable natural disaster was enacted  when the usually torrential monsoon rainfall that inundate the Indian sub-continent at this time of the year caused several villages to be buried by landslide, wiping out every living thing, including the humans in them. A mention must also be made of the Israel-Hamas lob-sided war going on that has killed some 1400 people, on both sides, many of them mere kids with no clue as to what has caused the madness.
But if all these tragic happenings occurred in far- flung places, the bombs exploding all around us, in our cities, handiwork of the insurgency make sure we are not spared the gruesome tragedies that daily assault us all in Nigeria. The festive Sallah period that should have been respected and kept violent- free witnessed the most widespread occurrence since the bombs started exploding. Incidents were recorded far from the accustomed places where the bombs normally go off, Kano witnessed several of such, two in the normally sedate academic environment of the Bayero University where the bombers were women. Another one went off on a kerosene queue in a fuel station. Needless to say that as usual lives were lost, limbs were maimed, vehicles were mangled and survivors rushed to hospitals for repairs and recuperation.
In Kaduna, two of the nation’s prominent citizens were lucky to escape attacks by the skin of their teeth. General (rtd) Muhammadu Buhari was lucky; the assailant’s car laden with bombs went off killing several road users but merely rendered his own car un-serviceable and un-useable without any serious and grievous harm done to him. Sheik Dahiru Bauchi, a foremost cleric at whose feet millions of Muslims gather during the Ramadan to drink from his fountain of religious and spiritual knowledge similarly was attacked but was unhurt. Similar gruesome incidents were reported from Damaturu to Damboa to Zaria and many other places, making it look like nowhere is safe for anybody any more, that as long as one is alive, healthy and up and about he/she is vulnerable.
The climate of fear has gripped the whole nation and no one is immune to it. Just as the lowly who commute to work every day in congested mass transit buses thereby rendering them cannon fodders when the faceless arsonists detonate bombs at vehicle stations and motor parks, so also are the well-heeled, retired generals and otherwise pacific clerics on whose shoulders the spiritual regeneration of the society rests, in danger of attack.
So, why are we recounting events that are already public knowledge?  The aim is to underscore the point that humans are at the mercy of forces -both natural and human- that relentlessly assail and devastate them. The natural forces, otherwise referred to as the “Act of God” we can do nothing about. They occur only so to show the immensity and the all powerful nature of God’s power. The other however most certainly originates from failure of society, particularly in the manner it is organised. Skewed organisation where a few feed fat and many scrounge like rats on dunghills manifests as a broken society that breeds envy, hatred and violence which only  a redressing can correct and make wholesome.