As Buhari Departs: A Personal Reflection

By Olayinka Oyegbile

When the news of the death of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s immediate past president broke, the first thing that came to my mind were the immortal words of the poet John Donne, who wrote years ago that: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” 

*Buhari 

The death of anyone affects people in different ways. People cannot feel the same emotion no matter how alike they look. That is the reason why the death of a parent always affects siblings in different ways and manners. The same with the death of Buhari. We cannot all feel it the same way. His family, close friends, associates, good-weather friends, et al, would all feel his death in different ways from the common folks. It is as Leo Tolstoy put it in one of his books Anna Karenina. He wrote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." 

Southern Kaduna Massacres On My Mind

By  Sufuyan Ojeifo

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” John Donne

Southern Kaduna is a microcosm of Nigeria.  It is, by any stretch of the imagination, emblematic of our collectivity.  The people, who are marooned in their troublous ancestral Kaduna locale share a common civilization with us who are, somewhat, liberated in the ambiance of the expansive Nigerian-nation. Therefore, the killings of southern Kaduna indigenes by Fulani herdsmen, for whatever reasons, are nothing but fatal assaults on the humanity in all of us. 

The south of Kaduna has, historically, become a minefield of mindless genocide that has left the people immersed in eternal fear.  Scores of indigenes have been killed by installments.  Unfortunately, many more will, painfully, be victims of Fulani herdsmen’s fatal rampages as there are yet no verifiable foolproof measures in place to avert the incessant cold-blooded massacres that have been the tragic narrative of the hapless people.

One is continuously diminished by the killing of a man or woman, youth or child in southern Kaduna, an enclave that is predominantly occupied by Christian population.  “One life taken in cold blood,” according to the late inimitable journalist, Dele Giwa, “is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.”