How is the Nigerian crisis affecting your relationship?

She was by my side as we sat in my office whilst I was busy on the Des Moines Register, editing my letter to Karl Maier, the author of “This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria”. She said she was feeling tired after returning from a job interview. She was reading the letter on the recent devastating terrorist bombings in Jos, Maiduguri and Abuja during the end of year holidays and how these horrifying tragedies have confirmed the terrifying premonitions of another civil war in Nigeria and worsened the anomie plaguing the citizens with many people living and working in the troubled areas in a quandary, to remain and risk their lives or relocate to safe areas. She spent a year in Jigawa for her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme. Jigawa is one of the threatened states in the north and no northern state is safe for non-Muslims, because the jihadists of the Boko Haram sect are sworn enemies of non-Muslims they condemn as infidels. Thousands people have lost their lives since the ethno-religious conflicts started.

We gasped as we viewed the online video of a woman wailing over the corpse of her husband, one of the over 80 people killed in the Christmas Eve bombings in Jos. The woman is not the only one who is bereaved. The survivors of those killed in the recurrent internecine conflicts are not the only ones who are bereaved, but the entire population of Nigeria, who are now ill at ease, because the present Nigerian government has failed woefully to guarantee the safety of lives and properties in this precarious state of worsening insecurity. But do our impressionable youths care, even though they are most vulnerable?

As the bombs of destruction were exploding in the north, millions of our compatriots in the south were shooting their firecrackers of celebration on the streets as they went on with their binge, pretending to honour Jesus Christ at Christmas and thank God for the New Year.

Widespread ignorance is the bane of the populace and it is like the prevalence of a contagious disease.

They say ignorance is bliss, but ignorance also kills. An innocent Hong-Kong based Nigerian named Michael Afolabi was stabbed to death by three drunken youths just minutes after hailing the dawn of 2011. The murderers were on a binge at one of the New Year carnivals in downtown Lagos. Afolabi left behind his bereaved family and a beloved partner who are still mourning him.

It is sheer stupidity for a member of a family to be celebrating when their home is on fire! And that was exactly what those binging at their so called Christmas and New Year carnivals were doing when catastrophic bomb blasts were burning and killing their fellow citizens in Jos, Maiduguri and Abuja.

They were not ignorant of these horrifying tragedies, but foolishly non-chalant. They continue to live in denial of the grave consequences of the Nigerian crisis.

Majority of our youths are impetuous and vacuous. They fail to see the systemic failure of governance and the worsening ethno-religious crisis as a wakeup call to confront and address the predicament of their bleak future in this state of emergency.

If Nigeria is plunged into another catastrophic civil war today, what would you and your lover do to survive?