It’s January again and my Zamfara experience 2 Januarys ago won’t just go away

A thread.

During the 2nd week of January 2017 we (bohomedialtd.com) got a brief from a client (an International NGO), to carry out an assessment of Zurmi LGA for a project they wanted situated there.

Zurmi is a Local Government Area in Zamfara State. It shares a border with Niger Republic from the north and Katsina State from the east.

We toured Zurmi and I remembered holding back tears when I saw the living condition of its inhabitants. These folks are dirt poor. No modern infrastructure. Roads are just tracks. Poor power. No water. Nothing. Life there is like living in the Stone Age. And I am being modest.

Our inspection party got to Moriki, an Emirate in Zurmi LG. Here the tears actually fell. I saw a woman in labour lying on a mat of a thoroughly unhygienic floor, in the “ward” of the town’s derelict hospital.

There was no doctor, only an unqualified midwife was with her.
I wept.
Guys, I couldn’t bear the sight

Well, we ended up as guests of the Emir of Moriki, HRH Sama’ila Muh’d Ari II (MON) (Sarkin Burmin Moriki), a fantastic guy! When he discovered that I am Tiv from #Benue State he took me on a historical journey that explored the Tiv-Fulani relationship. We parted as friends.

I was deeply touched and impressed by his sense of history and dignity. Mind you the Tiv and Fulani were at daggers drawn then as it is now.
I haven’t been back to Zurmi but the place left an indelible mark in my mind.

In my mind it is a metaphor for abject deprivation and depravation… of man’s inhumanity to man! I shared the experience as a blog then but I never expected that up to this moment instead of ceasing the killings would have morphed to what it is.

I am completely distraught each time I hear of the killings among this already impoverished lot! It’s so sad because these folks are POOR and instead of find succour all they get is a harvest of deaths.

Several killings there don’t even make the news. Some time in July 2018 over 40 people were murdered in Zurmi. The federal and state governments then were busy battling defectors! How much more suffering can a people take?

We, I mean all Nigerians, must wake up to the fact that this violence affects all of us and not only Zamfara or other troubled areas and so our voices must be heard across religious, political and other divides. It is people with blood in their veins that are killed.

Destinies destroyed forever. We need to somehow make government more responsible to their basic responsibility of safeguarding lives and properties. When the people demonstrated in Tsafe LGA they were brutally putdown! But then things just can’t continue like this.

The government can and should do more than issue warnings.

vanguardngr.com/2018/12/this-i…

Each time someone is violently murdered in Zamfara or anywhere in Nigeria it is a bit of us that is killed. We might not be aware but if this isn’t stopped some day it will catch up with the rest of us.

End

#zamfaraisbleeding
#zamfaralivesmatter #stopzamfarakillings
#zamfara