By
Obododimma Oha
This is an important story I must tell before I die. For those that are distant, losing a relative in a mass slaughter or dying in it may look like one of those thrilling bends in a folktale. They hardly feel it!
I was on a university bus returning to Ibadan from Abagana, after attending the burial of the mother of a colleague, a woman who loved me so much and took me as one of her own children. I just had to attend her funeral, even if it took place thosands of kilometers away.
IPOB protesters, youths mainly, were approaching from the Asaba end of the Niger Bridge. Approaching from Onitsha end, behind us, was a more military gun vehicle, with a shooter who was trigger-ready to open fire. Our transport vehicle was trapped in the middle. We were there for a while: it was as if the air also stood still. The shooter was waiting for the word to release hot lead into us and the unarmed protesters! It was also like a meeting between common sense and crazy idoicy. If the gunner had opened fire, we would have been the first to be hit. Yours sincerely would not have been writing this today. For the government, it would have been a collatarel damage! Or, there would have been a narrative that we were shot by the unarmed youths. Some people would have believed the latter. Fools and gullible people, always.
After some waiting, reason prevailed: the road opened. The machine gun fellow was ordered to stand down; we were allowed to go! Thank God: o buru ebu, ma o tighi eti. It lifted the heavy smasher but did not smash! I am alive today, still active as God's project today. Please, thank God for creating that software called reason and installing it in the heads of humans.
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