It is a season of death across the world’s vincinage, and this is no scam. In a world pregnant, but no-one could c-scan the nature of what its uterus contains, but its certainly full of meaning. Generally speaking, from the nation’s confluence states and the plateau, the northeast, north-central, and now, Zamfara in the northwest, where human beings were been macheted, slaughtered, maltreated, kidnapped, separated, and dispatched from this world to the great beyond.

The world is witnessing newer infractions and copious disregard and disrespect for human lives in Kabul, the massive hunger and suffering of its teeming mass of humanity, the recent coup-de-tat in Guinea, the offshoots and after effects of civil wars in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kabul, and elsewhere around the globe; and of course, the scourge of the most recent natural occurrence in Louisiana – the Hurricane IDA, resulting in deaths. It appears there is no peace and security in the whole wide world, no matter how and from whatever prism you view it.

The sordid and chillingly silly events in the Nigeria’s confluence states and the plateau, in Kaduna and lately in Zamfara, and in Kabul were arguably, unnecessary, meaningless and quite avoidable were wiser counsel have prevailed. But for the victims of the Louisiana’s hurricane IDA in the US, the situation that they found themselves was inevitable, and as well, practically unavoidable.

Death is not a fainting spell, (the Yoruba’s would say, “ajá ò j’ọ̀bọ kò lá f’iwé.”) One can’t compare or contrast the two. After the Louisiana’s devastating incident of penultimate week, I found it hard even to look at the devastating effects on the TV news. It was almost unreal to see what a few hours of wind, rain, and gale storms did to the land and its good and beautiful people in human casualties, and its many days of no electricity and sufferings in spite of the proactive and efficient measures mounted in place by the authorities.

Many homes were damaged, while others had been carted into the seas or reduced to streaming piles of rubble. Many of those homes represented a lifetime of hard work, resilience and forgone alternative’s – all lost in nature’s minutes of diminutive madness. At this incident, I could not help but reflect on the fact that the truly important things in life are not material.

Put yourself in the victims of the terrorists assaults and the hurricane devastation’s place just for a minute (did I hear you say, God forbid bad thing), one day you have everything going for you, and before you know it, you find yourself helpless and at the mercy of the state, feeling utterly helpless. Our bonds of friendship, I believe will stand the test of any hardship in the future.

The threats are becoming real as our habitable zones are increasingly being made quite unsafe by inclement occurrences and human elements with an insatiable appetite for the killing orgy. (Ìṣó ló kan igi títí, inú igi n’ìṣó kúsí), is a Yoruba wisecrack for how the world was fast turning itself against its human inhabitants.

My Christian belief taught that death was not really the end but, rather, a passage to the afterlife. But some deaths are quite peaceful, and a seeming transition from sleep to sleeps at another higher level and dimension. But at the present series of untimely and tragic deaths to which the world is losing some of its best, under the knife and machetes blows, from the barrel of the gun and been blasted out of the only planet man knows to be habitable is something else. Walahi!

Everyone everywhere is today completely overwhelmed with fear and plagued by sincere doubts. Religious beliefs notwithstanding, the idea that death is the absolute end of life scares many people, particularly, the well-to-do. You’ll note that most of the killers are the wretched no-do-gooders perhaps under the directions of well-to-do sponsors.

In a world born hungry for success the urge for success in every area of human life and endeavours is gradually been dampened by the savagery and dehumanising aura of society’s general debilitating conditions, added to that the scourge of the covid-19 and its variant complete the deplorable picture of the world we live in. Ah!(Èṣù ti gbé’bon)! The devil has finally picked the gauntlet!

Virtually every religion and society has embraced the notion that humans continue to exist or will exist again, after death. I dare ask, is it with the crushed and dismembered body and ruptured nerves and sinews? I am awed and scared of living, afraid of death, and also afraid of dying, and I’m sure, so are billions upon billions of living mortals, who have been unable to conquer death.

The fear of death, researchers have referred to as “death anxieties” and that’s the unpredictability all living around the theatres of discontent and unpleasant deaths deeply felt, since you really don’t know who, how or where else the unrepentant ‘killer squads’ will strike and under what guise.

Death anxieties have been classified into various categories. These include the fear of pain, the fear of the unknown, the fear of losing loved ones in death, and the fear of the negative consequences that one’s death may have on survivors, most of who are little children in need of direction in a ‘direction- less’ and a dithering world. A world that is at the root causes of the mass annihilation, killings, debauchery, savagery and the living threat to its own very existence. More prominent among these anxieties is the fear of ceasing to exist, which is very certain.

In recent decades, many books and scientific reports have brokered the topic of death, tons of volumes have been written on the topic. Still, most people prefer not to think of or about death, but, here all of us are living and sleeping and eating and walking in the valley of death and in the path of righteousness for one’s own sake and probably for God’s sake too, wanting without still waters, but without peace, death was fast becoming a restorer in peace. RIP. The reality of death, forcing us all to think about the ultimate end sooner than later, one way or the other.

Listening to global news on most cable channels, the summary was that of an imminent war and threats to global peace, arms proliferation and an Iran that was ready to talk about global peace and nuclear armaments on its own terms. But at the event of the war the world was beckoning, mass wastage and grand dismemberment is a certainty.

Today, human life is become quite fragile. Every human without exception, is subject to death, and this reality is frightening to so many, but the bourgeoisie rulers of the world in the secured comfort of their burj khalifs in and around the world they run to at the mere drop of violence. But a global conflagration will not exempt anyone.

The world has witnessed over the years misconceptions, community pressures, intolerance on the basis of ‘ethnoreligiousness’, persecutions and natural disasters has dulled global faith and enthusiasm sometimes resulting in untimely and avoidable deaths. Death we were told was the soul of the human body which leaves at death, but the assailants killed with the vehemence of killing even the body and the soul.

Now talking about soul and body, I remembered reading somewhere that on November 9,1949, a 70-year-old copper miner James Kidd, disappeared in the mountains of Arizona, U.S.A. Several years later, after he was declared legally dead, his investments with hundreds of thousands of dollars was found. In his will Kidd stipulated that his money be used for research to find “some scientific proof of a soul of the human body which leaves at death.” Well over half a century later, those researchers have yet to produce “scientific proof”‘ of a soul of the human body which leaves at death.

The world has witnessed over the years misconceptions, community pressures, intolerance on the basis of religion and politics, persecution and natural disaster all of which has dulled faith and enthusiasm. Sometimes resulting in untimely and tragic deaths even as the world is persuaded to look to science and technology for its problems.

Few have to contend with more demands on their time and energy. The challenges they face including how to make ends meet are innumerable. They must care for the many responsibilities of raising a family. Besides working at a job, there is shopping, cooking, cleaning, parenting. Then there is the need to provide health care, recreation, and emotional support for the children and, if at all possible, to find a few precious moments of personal time.

With the prevailing global economic downturn, most are not sure what to do, and quite overwhelmed by the many responsibilities they have. Widowhood, abandonment, or other unfavourable circumstances and feeling helpless, and pleading for relief in their tribulations; and they need that badly and desperately. Particularly, government in this regard is obliged to thinking through a complex arrangements of thoughts resulting in a wise dealing with the burden of destruction and aftereffects of the devastation, terrorism and economic strangulation has occasioned, and be observant, not just taking a superficial look at the situation.

Of course, try as you may, you can never fully appreciate what it is like to be indigent or survive in an IDPs camps unless you are one yourself. Still, everyone in an atmosphere of loving one’s neighbour and doing the optimum best to empathise with their circumstances will put you in a better position to act with consideration toward the weary victims of unnecessary unleash of terror.

While sacking and wiping terrorism, arranging for widows and fatherless children to obtain needed food in a dignified way and manner is desirable, its nothing too much to listen to their angst and grouses so as to forestall future regroupings and reoccurrences. Giving a listening ear under proper circumstances can do much to help.

The world have to come together to create a better tomorrow.

JimiBickersteth.

Jimi Bickersteth is a blogger and writer.
He can be reached on Twitter
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