Akwa Ibom State has finally become a mega city
with everybody growing impatient as features of a
mega city, a land blessed by peace and unity with
funerals raging in almost every corner, but the
population has still outgrown its major detractor which
is death. As I watch the young men mix about, I
wonder if ethnicity will ever tear them apart? Or if
they were ever divided once? Akwa Ibom is a land
blessed by God and here peace speaks louder than the
din of the commercial keke's that ravages the
tranquility of the humid streets. I wonder aloud if they
will be divided if politics comes again, or will people be
ripped off buses to be thrashed because their tribes
didn't allow other tribes to campaign in their locality?
If i am to question without prejudices, how
correct can it be? Akwa Ibom is a land of emotions with
sober men watching and protecting the peace that our
fathers gave to us as our inheritance; if I am thinking
aloud, I wonder who is already scoffing this idea or this
article, already I can see faces smiling, others red with
passion, all am trying to say here is simple, I am a lover
of PEACE, i love my state.
Recently my state has been ambushed by
population outburst that threatens the peace I bath in
everyday; I am not lazy, don't even think about it, trust
me I've been to states where some people literally live
their lives in molue or buses as they ply their daily
means of livelihood, but in my state its rather a
metaphor that very soon we may be living there
because that is the other alternatives of living in a mega
city.
Akwa Ibom I love you, I am happy, I am from
Akwa Ibom state and I would have regretted if my
parents were not from Akwa Ibom and I came to live,
leaving here when am grown up would have been
traumatic and a harsh nightmare I wouldn't love to
wake up from. I am a son of PEACE, an ambassador of
eloquence, a tempest of development, a flood of
substance that Nigeria is bathing in. Akwa Ibom is like
the garden of Eden blessed with independence from the
world.
Anywhere I stand as an Akwa Ibomite, I am sure
that in a crowd of billions, a million is envying me; I
believe in its love, I believe in this land not because I
am a believer, but I believe in its ideals, I believe in
what it has offered to the young, old, needy, poor and
the less privileged in our society, even to the
Almajiris....yes I believe in it!
When I stand in the street and watch, I see all the
tribes of Nigeria moving about freely with no mockery
of tribe nor kin, how I wish my country was like my
state! How I wish I could walk the streets of my
country without fear of any religion, without fear of
been uprooted from my spot by a piece of shrapnel of a
bomb that just exploded at the corner of the street or
been slaughtered by a group of maniacs who thinks
that children is the shield they use to wage their
sabbatical war, I wish I can walk the streets of my
country without fear of IEDs that was constructed with
fertilizers that poor farmers should have used to
increase their yields! But No! It is used to harvest
bodies all in the name of Religion! That speaks the
same PEACE that my state speaks!
And I ask have I not known peace? In my state?
Or have I not tasted the fruits of peace in my state?
Because in my state I sleep with both ears shut and not
with my eyes snapped open at every noise that passes
the street! I love peace and am not ashamed to say it, if
I say this, I hope I won't start another protest because
if I am to say this, it must be for peace of my country!
Let nobody be deceived that when a man is killed on
the temple of religion that the Almighty who created
that spirit, body and soul is smiling or rewarding such
acts with either imaginary or perceived rewards!
Regardless of who is killed!
I love peace and I want to enjoy such serenity my
brothers have been robbed by troubled and broken
people and i add finally, my brothers if your
environment is hostile? You are always welcomed to
Akwa Ibom State my first love!