I’ve watched many post-apocalyptic movies that fill me with dread and I am always glad those are movies.
As I watch and shiver, I tell myself, these are movie scenarios that can never happen in real life. How can there be one antagonist to the world? One who knows where everyone lives, what they eat, if they succumb to his evil laws, if they as much as opened their mouths to say anything contrary to what he commands?
The world can’t be held up like that!
Then the world got hit by one small virus; so small and simple not of Ebola’s voracious character nor of AID’s debilitating ways, just cold-like symptoms… and it shut down the entire universe for months and even to date in certain parts of the world.
Like uncle Dapo says, this is not the news!
Then a few days ago, I read online of Hizbah in Kano. They had caught a few people found not to be fasting during this Ramadan and dealt harshly with them. They reminded me of those movies; there usually is a battalion of foot soldiers hunting down ‘offenders,’ sometimes killing them, many times putting perceived ‘offenders’ in jail…in order to generally ensure compliance.
Again, like uncle Dapo says, that is even not the news.
The news is, I was wrong.
Today, thanks to our devices; we can all be monitored; we can be found; the places we visit, our bank details, our favourite things, the people we talked to, everything about us and even our future plans, are embedded in small chips that make finding us child’s play.
There’s no escape!
Some will say, but that is no longer news na.
But lets us pause to think.
With data collection; our names, ages, location at any point in time, our families, their birthdays, their locations, our travels bank details…our very future encased in miniscule chips are in the hands of terrorist sympathizers…
Aha!
You should be worried.
Especially with news that our President has dismissed as “cancel culture” the recent agitations against a minister in his cabinet said to be an Al- Queda and Taliban sympathizer.
But my worry is that our Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, recently branded an Islamic extremist, having once supported the teachings of Al-Queda and Taliban is still sitting on key info, aka our future, our data and we can do nothing about it is…scary to say the least.
This man is sitting on highly sensitive information and we are here all acting like all is well!
To be honest, I think we have become numbed to happening around us; I mean, just a few days back, an Ekiti monarch was kidnapped in his own palace!
We aren’t astounded over the students kidnapped inside their own campus just kilometers away from Jaji, the military establishment in Kaduna state; school children are taken from their schools at will; we are no longer shocked when whole bus loads of passengers are stopped on our highways and hundreds carted away like cattle for kidnap.
I don’t need to rehash the daily episodes of kidnapping and acts of terrorism, aka ‘banditry’ going on in Nigeria; the way it looks now, there is no state, no local government that has been spared.
Need I mention that most of these kidnappings are done through intelligence gathering?
Regardless of what your faith is, as a Nigerian, you should be worried; because you see, terrorism knows no religion even though it comes with the garb of religion; it doesn’t differentiate Christianity from Islam; Obas and Emirs are taken at will; pastors and imams are hunted down, victims are one and same; it doesn’t recognize royals, lords or slaves, every human is fodder.
That is why statements attributed to the President, that Pantami has repented, is very worrisome. In saner climes, regardless of how long Pantami is said to have renounced his affiliations with any terrorist group, he would immediately be stripped of his current position!
For the sake of the agitations, for the sake of the fact that several people have come forward to point Pantami as responsible for religious attacks against them, the President should’ve at least asked for a probe into the agitations.
Then again, this is Nigeria, the land of anything goes!
That is the news!