Culled from digivarsity.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

It’s all too familiar; the sight of a timeline scrolling downwards, dozens of nonsensical tweets being skipped, a slight pause, and a message in passing ‘Boko-Haram strikes again’. What was once a horrifying awakening, a tale of woes to come, is now just a side-note. First we were mortified, then we accepted as fate, and now we disregard altogether with the most prosaic of attitudes. We move on with our daily lives, as we often do after yet another avoidable national tragedy.

These morbid attacks, which once scared us all, are now just fodder for beer parlor talk and lovers of statistics. ’12 people died today’ or ’26 die while 60 are injured’ might get your attention, only for a minute. These headlines are now so common that we have become detached from the reality of these atrocities. That behind every ‘12’ people that die, there is a son who will never see his father again, a loving wife who will never hold her husband again, a young innocent child who loses both parents. This is the reality that should haunt us all. But our lives keep moving on.

Equal sad, are the battles between ‘Boko-Haram and the JTF’. The JTF, an acronym so often used that we forget that actual humans lie behind it. These humans are lost faces, unknown to anyone, caught in a fight that is not theirs to fight, and in a war whose spoils they will never enjoy. Yet, they fight to protect your right to dismiss them and go on with your life. Imagine the horror of hiding in plain sight, facing an enemy who you can’t see or hear, like ghost lying in wait for the perfect moment to strike.

This is an ode to those who mourn loved ones, to the soldiers who fight a thankless battle, and to us as a national community. We must never lose sight of the reality of death, the pain and anguish suffered by its victims. The moment we lose this perspective is the moment we will finally stop demanding answers, till the terror which lurks in the dark, appears right at your doorstep.



Tomi Walker

@tomiwalker