It was January 27, 2002. I was preparing for Jamb then. My family went to my hometown for a relative burial leaving only me at home. After reading for a while, I decided to switch on the TV. I cant remember which teams were playing, but I know I was carried away by the football match.
All of a sudden, I heard a big bang.
I initially thought it was my neighbour kids. I thought to myself that if it's any of those kids disturbing my peace, I will beat the crap out of them. Few seconds later, I heard another bang. But this time around the ground was vibrating. I said to myself, wait a minute, these kids can't have such power to bang and vibrate the ground.
So I decided to go outside and observe what was going on. To my utmost surprise, I saw mammoth of crowd, everyone looking confused to what was going on. Then I went to the top floor of the 3rd house to my house which is a 3 storey building to have a better glimpse of what was going on. There I saw crowd of adults all speculating what was happening.
Some said the military has overthrown Obasanjo, some said another civil war has broken out - Papa Chidi started talking about the ordeal of the civil war, and how he prayed never to witness another war in his lifetime, some said it was Cameroun fighting Nigeria because of Bakassi peninsula.
Bro Dee came up with the most reasonable speculation that from his observation that he thinks it is an explosive factory that mistakenly caught fire and set up the chain reaction. While everyone was speculating what the situation is, Mama Mary out of nowhere with anxiety and fear written all over her face shouted let's start running to the 4th street away. Then I said how are we sure those people there are not trying to run to our own street. Bro Dee looked at me and said this young man is very intelligent. He told Mama Mary to calm down that we will continue to listen to radio to know what the problem is, then after we know what the problem is, we can strategize what to do next.
After about 30 minutes later, we heard in the radio that it was a mistake from military cantonment that caused explosives to start exploding. Not too long afterwards, my pops eventually got through to my neighbour who he had tried to call like a million times in order to talk to me. He narrated what he heard from my hometown, and I told him I'm aware of the situation and everything is fine with me. I could feel panic in my mom's voice at the background (the fear of a mother).
It wasn't until the next day that we heard of the bad news of how a lot of lives were lost in the Oke Afa canal. That day, I saw Mama Mary, and I asked her if she heard of the Oke Afa tragic news, she said yes. Then I told her that can she see why it's not good to start running when you don't know what you're running from. She said my brother it is TRUE o.
My heart goes out to all the family that lost someone in this tragedy especially the parent that lost all their kids. May God continue to condole them and may all the innocent souls lost continue to rest in peace. I pray we don't witness this kind of tragedy again in Nigeria
Moral of the lesson: Don't run when you don't know what is pursuing you, and don't pray for war when you haven't witnessed one before.
Moral of the lesson: Don't run when you don't know what is pursuing you, and don't pray for war when you haven't witnessed one before.
- as shared by SlurryEye
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