The boys on the street that snatch your phone from you and run away. And the others that punch you in the eyes after robbing you using a POS machine and your ATM card. They punch you in the eyes so that you are too worried about your sight that you forget what they look like or the routes they took. There are some others that make you fall asleep in the bus using charms and then take you to unknown destinations to use you for money rituals. Then the others that attacked a school bus and raped the students. Then there are the ones that walk majestically into homes and then smash the head of occupants with a grinding stones killing entire families in one night. We also have the ones that walk into homes and then rape the mother in the presence of her husband, and some that ask the son to rape his mother else he dies. Then we have terrorists who deliberately walk into crowded places and detonate bombs, killing thousands of people. We have some terrorists who barge into people’s farms and kill the farm owners and their laborers using machetes.
All these happen in Nigeria all the time. It has become so recurrent that it leaves me feeling apprehensive whenever I go out. It has left me paranoid. Too conscious. I hate touts.. Ruffians.. I get irritated when I see them. It made me hate poverty and all those who put us in this state. The politicians! Oh how I hate them! Illiteracy and poverty are the causes of hideous crimes like this. The government knows this, yet they keep stealing.. They keep enacting silly policies that aid corruption. How I hate my country!
I made a resolution as a child. I saw on TV, a story about gunmen attacking voters. They had come to vote and then a riot broke out. Many civilians were killed. Innocent civilians who came out to vote. They died. I can’t remember how old I was then. But that day I swore that I would never come out to vote. I also swore not to participate in the National Youth Service because most youth corpers, especially those deployed to the North were getting killed in acts of terrorism. But that didn’t work out. I had to participate in the youth service regardless.
Now I’m older. I understand it’s my responsibility to vote. But it doesn’t change the fact that Nigeria could turn you into a crazy old woman before your 25th birthday. Nigeria could make you develop the deepest psychological issues. This country is totally messed up. And unless all the people in power are removed, it’ll remain messed up.