A BOY JUST DIED
“A boy got shot right on his head some days back…”
In a few words, I’ve been able to simplify an event that has turned the lives of his family members around. Pardon me for my understatement, it is not that simple. It’s an issue that has been swept under the rug a couple of times in times past like human life has no value. This is the challenge we the off-campus students of UNIBEN and many other federal institutions face daily, but I’m going to personalize this one because it happened in my neighbourhood.
Sometimes last semester, a hostel off-campus was raided and it was alleged that all the female students who lived there were raped. I say ‘alleged’ because no one came out to say anything. This and many other incidents of rape, murder, and robbery have been swept under the rug like it never happened. Like the lives lost or demoralized does not matter. No protests…just whisper. I don’t know if I’m the only one who thinks the school should take part of the blame. A school that cannot provide more than 50 per cent of its students with accommodation, should at least, to some extent provide its students—within its environment—with some level of security. As I said, these are just events that have been excused and swept under the rug.
“if you don’t look for trouble, it won’t come close to your doorstep,” that was my first reaction to this cruelty, but I imagined one day as I walked from Ekosodin to school, someone who I might have offended consciously or unconsciously may decide to take my life and people would pass it off as me being of those ‘bad boys’ or cultists as they are popularly known—who just got unlucky; who just lost his life for nothing. It’s funny how people (including myself) would make up excuses to justify or trivialize such madness. I wonder how my mother would feel if I was in such a situation or how my father would react. What justice would I or my family get? I know quite alright what we would get—silence. My family would have to move on like I never even existed like my life means nothing to anyone. Thus, the vicious cycle will continue until people start to speak until people start to demand justice until people start to realize that every life under any and every circumstance matter…