By LANRE ADEWOLE
Osun, the state of the Living Spring is awash with dead bodies and flowing from its tributaries, is the shed blood of the innocent. Days back, the Nigerian Police, not one to trust with accurate data when in the negative net with numbers, publicly declared 30 souls already lost to the madness for political power, gripping the state.
The senseless killings in the state ahead of the August 15 governorship election remind of humanity’s first murderer; Cain. Rejected by God, he reached for the neck of his brother; Abel. But he would not escape justice; first, the coroner inquest of God and second, the punishment for his cruelty, triggered by envy and desperation.
Just like the blood of Abel wasn’t quiet until it reached the ears of God in heaven, the blood of the innocent being slayed by whoever and whichever political party(ies) in Osun, won’t go mute until the God of vengeance comes into this too.
How do I know this?
First, God says vengeance is His and He will repay evil doers (Romans 12:19 and Deuteronomy 32:35). Second, as it was in the beginning, (so) is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
God placed a curse on Cain; he became humanity’s first vagabond.
The killing spree that is making Osun resemble Akeldama, a location near southern part of Jerusalem also known as the Field of Blood, where Judas Iscariot disemboweled after betraying Jesus, is definitely being orchestrated by the seeming untouchable; at least for men and authorities of this dispensation, considering that the Nigerian State has not been able to halt their inglorious march from community to community in the state, mowing men down like weeds that are of no use.
Of course the Nigerian Police is part of the helpless Nigerian State, which has long developed clay feet in its prime responsibility of keeping its own safe. Shame on the barbarians running the crippled giant!.
There is a jazz called àsegbé (comeuppance neutralizer) in Yoruba land. Most of those into demonstrable recklessness like the one going on in Osun State, are believed to be backed by it. But there is also àtunbọ̀tán (the aftermath). It’s not a charm; it’s an invited outcome, like what awaits those lining the road to Abere Government House in Osogbo with unmarked graves of the innocent, multiplying widows and the fatherless in the state while sending parents into a lifetime of sorrow by mowing down young people (tomorrow’s hope) right in the presence of those who sired them. God will surely judge.
There is a politician in the state. He belongs in the court of the rulers and has taken a front row in anyhowness, snatching ungiven mandates during party nomination, engaging in pointed ta lo ma mu mi (stop-me-if-you-can) and seemingly getting away with his atrocities. His hands are believed to be heavy in the ongoing activities in the killing field. He is like the Biblical Saul; the persecutor, before his encounter with Christ. This Ijesaland politician is believed to be supervising the killings ongoing in the state, literally keeping watch over the blood-stained garments of his groomed executioners while at their inglorious assignment, the way Paul supervised the extrajudicial killing of Stephen in the Bible.
He openly boasted he would turn the state into a Dead Spring, filled with the carcasses of young Nigerians in the state who would not line quietly behind his party, to sway the outcome of the coming governorship poll. Security agents would not invite him. They heard evil being planned but decided to unhear it, just like they now see the promised evil being visited on the people of my state but still choose to unsee it.
When men at the departure lounge of life cling to their atrocious ways like two new lovers who can’t seem to have enough of each other, they have likely signed an eternal pact with the devil, especially for those who hang the Christian label among them. They seem to have irretrievably settled for the “enjoyment” this world (particularly political power) can offer their ephemeral existence and go burn eternally in hell. Beyond packing their miserable lives away from our faces at certain points, another àtunbọ̀tán they are inviting upon their households with the innocent blood being whimsically shed because of power struggle, is the certain curse of Cain coming upon their lineage. It’s God’s established principle. It will certainly be, except for mercy.
Here at this point, let me warn girls who rush to marry into families with fame and money. You may be running into established curse which 100-carat gold on your neck may not lift.
Many fathers, like those ordering executions all over Osun State and elsewhere in Nigeria for political gains, have eaten the sour grapes and their children’s teeth must be set on the edge. Vice versa, gold-digging boys should also be careful!
“You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (Exodus 20:5-6).
How are those turning power to their god and clearing their path to it with unaccounted-for murders not fitting this Biblical bill.
This gerontocrat-murderer reminds one of the “Fada Fada e” chorus in ragged rap artist, Phyno’s soar-away collabo with Olamide, the one the street hails as Badoo. If the young street-made Nigerian artiste who now resides in the US thinks he is a baddie, hin baddest papa dey Osun dey kill to impress his new associates. Ojo nbo ni Oluwa wi (the day of reckoning is at hand).
Maybe the day of the Lord is even here already for those sending other people’s children on what the Yoruba will define as ise de toru toru (dangerous errand); and hired killer’s job can’t be an easy engagement under whatever circumstance even when the mental faculty is loaded with opioid.
A very prominent jagbà (mandate snatching) advocate, also from Ijesaland who bragged in the media about training his children, Ivy-Leagued, because the god of wealth has made his abode its permanent shrine (despite only running some regular businesses and well, also engaging in paid-for but unexecuted government contracts), may already be having his Cain-esque moment with God. Of course, the intention here isn’t to mock anyone’s family tragedy. The Yoruba will say it’s the farmer whose cocoa plants survive the nursery transplant that is deemed the expert in burrowing the soil and burying the seedlings.
Especially in this their Generation Alpha age, it takes special grace of God and ridiculous quantum of His mercy for children to turn out well and give parents peace of mind, especially the ones transplanted from Africa, nay Nigeria, to their now-wild, wild West (America to be precise) and some parts of Europe where the imported Uncle Sam’s social madness is also conflagrating.
Drug, booze, orgies, heart-jarring newly-coined sexual socialization, extremely-baseless and senseless orientation of what personal freedom is, among many other wild lifestyles, are spiraling these atohun rinwa (relocated) children into barely-recognizable monsters for their parents.
Abroad, this self-announced moneybag is battling with a situation, involving a transplanted son and his mother (the fellow’s wife), leading to the hospitalization of the woman. Family was a product of God’s supreme intellect. I will never mock one in crisis. Will skip the details, as what the boy did to his mum in oyinbo land will make any parent recoil in horror. Maybe it is time for the man who “is always entering” to properly touch base with his Creator in genuine repentance. There is nothing hidden that will not be made known, even in shores yonder.
If you hide your children abroad and empowering other people’s, to be committing atrocities all over the state including killing other people’s children, there is God that can’t be stopped who will definitely ensure you also mourn in the recess of your chamber. Know this and know peace.
I have noticed the booming silence from Abuja as Osun boils. Maybe to the political leadership of the country, the killing spree is just a lot of nothing and the 30 lost souls, a mere collateral damage in the quest to bring the state under the Big Tent. Well, God dey.
When helpless, the Yoruba will encourage with “the one we can’t restrain, we release, to God”. It would seem Osun will remain in the throes of the marauders till the morning after the poll. That would seem a pretty long time to be in the valley of shadow of death. But a former prime minister of the United Kingdom, Harold Wilson had an original that consoles thus “a week is a long time in politics”. The pasteurized form of Wilson’s original, fixes the unpredictability of politics and even time, to 24 hours.
God doesn’t not find pleasure in the death of the wicked. He wants all men saved. It’s not too late for those taking human lives for sport. Yes, the Yoruba believe God is swift with justice in this age “Olorun atijo lo npe muni, warawara ni ti asiko yi”, but He is also rich in mercy though Proverbs 29:1 is equally clear about the fate of the hard-necked. “He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy”.
There is an obscure story about a legendary politician, assassinated in the early part of this dispensation. He, alongside a world-famous bookish friend, allegedly killed an unharmed man during a major political imbroglio, with gun, in a prominent Oyo State town. That was when Oyo and Osun were together. Years after, the shooter in the story was also shot dead by assailants unknown till date, with multiple persons prosecuted and acquitted . Those who live by gun die by it.
