Throw Away Your Arms ( Robbers !)

Even in war times, when children or women, let alone pregnant women, fall casualty to bombardment it is usually received with sobriety and regret. Much more so in peace times.

Or, are we at war here in Nigeria? Have armed robbers declared war on 'punny' defenceless everyday people?

Armed robbers have never been known to kill bank staff during robberies. Rarely so. But, I do not lay claim to any existing statistics. Last week they started killing. Not accidentally, by stray bullet, but deliberately ! Killing a woman. A pregnant woman. And another one, a staff of the bank too.This is way overboard!

Our dear brothers and sisters who do these robberies you should give it up now. This your handshake with us has gone beyond our elbows. It is no longer fun as you thought it would be. Some readers would squirm that I called you 'brothers and sisters'. But you are. You have your relatives amongst us. We are all Nigerians. Bearing under this one and common burden called 'Project Nigeria'.

We are all under the same pressure. Why do you opt to kill your fellow man in order to dodge your own pressure. Stand up, face-up to your life like a man. Stop breaking innocent lives like frustrated babies seeking attention break breakables in the homes.

It is the worst kind of poverty and hopelessness when you believe you have to kill and mame and dispossess others before you can progress in life. And when you have bought that jeep, and built that house, and gotten that child-hood lover of yours how do you feel inside knowing how you obtained and attained your new status !?

And you the gang that killed these people they believed in you, they saw hope for you; but you had given up on yourselves. The pregnant woman hoped on her feminine immunity, that you would not dare harm her. She did not imargine that you would kill her, a woman; plus that she was pregnant. They both counted on your humanity. But you were so far gone, long gone !

As a memorial to these un-necessarily wasted Nigerian lives and a sign of penance, all the robbers in Nigeria should henceforth throw away their arms and be bold enough to tackle the challenges of living within the acceptable norms of civilized society. Their abominable action is sacrilegious enough to have the earth opening up and swallowing them all alive.

The way our life is , is a result of the choices we have made earlier on in life. One should be alive enough to dance to the music one has created for oneself. Everyone is bearing a cross whether you believe it or not. But we don't have to encroach on the next man's space. Everyone has his appointed time. Today for one , tomorrow for another. Brothers and sisters, grow up and go straight!