By James Nwakpa
Each time I view the imagery of the horrible and bloody scenes in Effium autonomous community of Ohaukwu L.G.A in Ebonyi State, as a result of the mindless and brutal killings of the innocent citizens by the war lords and satanic agents in the area, I will be forced to reflect on the well articulated poem of a literary giant, John Pepper Clark:
The casualties are not only those who are dead. They are well out of it. The casualties are not only those who are dead. Though they await burial by installment.
The casualties are not only those who lost persons or properties, hard as it is to grope for a touch that some may not know is not there.
The casualties are not only those led away by night.
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a haven. Nowhere as absolute as the grave.
The casualties are not only those who started a fire and now they cannot put out. Thousands are burning that have no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who are escaping. The shattered shall become prisoners in a fortress of falling walls.
The casualties are many, and a good number as well.
Outside the scenes of ravage and wreck; they are the emissaries of rift, so smug in smoke-rooms they haunt abroad, they do not see the funeral piles at home eating up the forests.
They are wandering minstrels who, beating on the drums of the human heart, draw the world into a dance with rites it does not know.
The drums overwhelm the guns... Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges when not in the niche others left, we fall.
All are casualties of the war.
Because we cannot hear each other speak. Because eyes have ceased the face from the crowd. Because whether we know or do not the extend of wrongs on all sides, we are characters now other than before the war began, the stay at home unsettled.
By taxes and rumours, the looters for office and wares, fearful everyday the owners may return.
We are all casualties, all sagging as are the cases celebrated for kwashiorkor.
The unforeseen camp-follower of not just our war.
It is pitiable that the people of Ezza/Effium just like every other average Nigerians are still trying to recover from the shock of "END SARS" protest in Nigeria coupled with the devastating effects of the economic crisis orchestrated by Covid-19 pandemic that ravaged the whole world, only to be thrown to unimaginable conditions comparable to those of the Nigerian Civil war.
People are brutally killed in cold blood on daily basis for unjustifiable reasons.
Houses and other valuable properties are not spared in this inhuman acts.
Thousands are displaced and rendered homeless in their own father land.
The aged, the women and the children are dying of hunger.
All these things are happening just because of power tussle and the endless quest for money and wealth acquisition by the blood suckers called themselves politicians. What a wicked world!
My appeal to the government is not to relent in its efforts in quelling the calamitous war and to carry out thorough investigations over the matter and ensure that all those who masterminded these dastardly acts are made to pay with their blood as a noble prize for this man's inhumanity to man because he who pays with pebbles should expect stones in return.
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