Once, the Army wore the robe of guardianship,
A shield against harm,
A promise to stand between danger and the people.
They called it protection.
We believed them.
But somewhere along the path,
The protector dropped the shield,
And picked up the torch --
Not to light the way,
But to burn the homes of those they swore to defend.
In Okuama, our river village,
We woke to the growl of guns.
Not for the guilty few,
But for everyone --
The innocent, the old, the young, the unborn, the cripple.
The ARMY came like a storm from the forest,
Breathing fire,
Swinging claws instead of hands,
Tearing down walls,
Leaving only the dust standing like a lone survivor in a graveyard of ash.
The killers of seventeen soldiers were known,
Named.
Yet, instead of finding them,
The Army punished the earth itself.
Fields turned black,
Fishing boats turned to embers,
Villagers fled into the jungle,
Where snakes hissed and crocodiles watched.
It was not the first time.
Ayakoromo burned when one soldier died.
Gbaramatu burned searching for one man.
I remember Ayakoromo --
The smoke took my grandmother,
Eighty-eight years old, too slow to run.
It took cousins and friends,
It took our laughter.
Yet in the North,
Where bandits kill soldiers in plain daylight,
The villages remain whole,
The huts intact,
Even the grass is not trampled.
Why does the fire only fall on our roofs?
Why does the claw only strike our children?
The wind carries no answer.
The palm trees stay silent.
The army calls it justice.
We call it terror.
The protector has become the predator.
The shield has become the spear.
They say they guard the people,
But the people lie in ruins.
In Europe,
in the world beyond our borders,
No community burns for the sin of one man.
No mother buries her child for a crime committed in far away lands
But here,
The Army sweeps through like locusts,
Leaving ashes where bread once baked,
Leaving silence where songs once rose.
Leaving bitterness where sweetness once holds sway.
These killings stain the uniform forever.
This is state violence --
An army unleashed on its own citizens,
And a government too cowardly to speak.
Every burnt home is proof of failure.
Every displaced family is a mark of shame.
You cannot build a nation by crushing its people.
You cannot preach unity while practicing destruction.
In the eyes of the world,
These are crimes,
And in the eyes of history,
They will be remembered as the darkest chapters
Of Nigeria’s betrayal of the Niger Delta.
The protector turned predator
Is the greatest betrayal of all.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State
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