Recently, the small nation of South Korea had a disaster involving a ferry that sunk in the sea with hundreds of school children onboard. In the wake of the accident, the nation went sober and their were wide spread anger directed at the government,the captain of the ship, disaster management teams and all parties that may be involved in regulations and rescue. It was a disaster of "national scale", more so because of the hundreds of school children involved in the accident, all media houses in the country minimized their reporting on other matter so as to give up-to-date information on the tragedy, resources and the technological wealth of the country were mobilized towards the rescue effort. Pages of the nation's newspapers were splashed with up-to-date photos of grieving parents, divers on rescue effort and of the remnant of the ship as it sinks further into the depth of the sea, international news media also played their role, keeping the world informed and independently probing the likely cause of the accident.
Essentially, the nation was consumed in the tragedy. This article on Reuters sums up the emotional mood of the nation as lifeless bodies of some of the children were pulled out of the sunken ship.
Parallel that incident to some of the recent happenings in Nigeria, hundreds of school children have been murdered in cold blood, some where butchered and others burnt alive in their dormitory, yet the government remain indifferent, in fact the nation's president even went partying in the open, barely a week of one of such incident, reminiscent of insensitivity of people in power and of the larger insecurity which plague the nation particularly the North East corner of the country where the dreaded Boko Haram fighters operate with near impunity.
More troubling is the fate of the over 200 school girls recently abducted from their school in the small town of Chibok, Borno State. The girls have been in the hand of their captors for weeks now -most probably being abused- yet the nation pretends as if "all is well". To further aggravate the feelings of the victims families, few days after the kidnap incident and barely 24hours after a major bomb blast near Abuja that claimed scores of life, the president, President Goodluck Jonathan went on a political rally at a nearby state of Kano where he was pictured merrymaking with his cronies to the delight of rented crowds and political thugs - a "branch" visit was never made to the town, school or the victims families !
The nation's populace has also been indifferent, there has hardly been any major protest calling for the girls' freedom and while international media like Aljazeera has been updating viewers of the girls fate and interviewing lying government officials, our local media news is awashed with political news, events in the on-going National Conference and other trivial matters. Only a few as the Premium Times Editorial has made statement on the matter, register its protest and call for mass actions until the government makes substantial act and free the girls from their abductors.
To sum things up, this is a nation rule by the wicked and the population divided. Children are being kidnapped, maimed, and killed horrifically, yet, some still find the victims to blame probably because it isn't happening in their "safe zone". No body wants to act now because they feel comfortable and unconcerned of events elsewhere, yet experience has taught many times that what goes around comes around. In his words and experience, pastor Martin was quoted thus :
"They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came.for the trade unionists, And I.didn’t speak up because I wasn’t.a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew And then . . . they came for me ... And by that time there was no one left to speak up".
So your time to act from your comfort /safe zone is now ! Use your Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and all social networking account available to you to swell mass action for the freedom of the school girls from captivity - over 200 of them ! Make a difference, use the hashtag on Twitter, the popular one #BringBackOurGirls or any other one for your campaign to free the girls. Act now, save our girls, save our future !!!
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