SATURDAY BREAKFAST with TONY OKOROJI

Hatred appears to have taken over the world. In Ukraine, the Middle East, East Africa or even Nigeria, the gory images of the slaughtering of innocent people is no longer shocking. It has become an everyday thing. It is almost becoming normal. Human life that is irreplaceable has become so cheap that it can be snuffed out without a thought.

‘Unknown’ gun men are running riot across Nigeria, killing and maiming at will. Nothing is sacred anymore and no one is off limits. The world seems to have gone back to the dark ages, only that it has done so with precision weapons and killer drones.

In the last couple of weeks, the perennial carnage between the Palestinians and the Israelis erupted again. It usually starts with the Palestinians, young men and women, throwing rocks at the Israelis across the fence that divides them and small-sized bombs exploding in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Very soon we will see on television, the also gory images of the mayhem caused by the massive Israeli military machine that appears ever ready to show its biceps and rip to shreds the Palestinian men, women and children.
Some Israelis and hundreds of innocent Palestinians, old women and mere children have been slaughtered like cattle in a never-ending war in which they are neither participants nor do they quite understand the reason. Massive buildings come crashing down like a pack of cards. Exactly what the Russians are doing today in the cities of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the people responsible for this massacre and their friends justify this horrific killing field. They explain it with a lot of grammar especially at the United Nations. Those who have the big guns also own the big loudspeakers and the sophisticated propaganda specialists. So, they activate their propaganda machinery to dominate the narrative. Nothing is true or false anymore. It is all a matter of how you coin it and spread it. So, they justify the carnage by announcing that they are defending their people or taking land that belongs to them! Of course, they have the veto power or have ready support from their friends with the veto power.

It does not matter that the innocent women and children so brazenly murdered are some other person’s ‘people’ and also children of God. We live in a world in which might is right and so the children of the slaughtered old women and the brothers of the murdered children, who probably will never have access to any significant military machine, will eventually turn themselves into suicide bombers and explode themselves on other innocent civilians. And the cycle of blood continues.

I have written before that every crazy group in the world unleashing death on everyone around them can justify the killing. It is usually based on an ‘us against them’ mind set of some spiritual, tribal or political leader hungry for power, control or real estate who drums up the immense bitterness fuelled by some ancient bigotry or hatred that eventually turns the young, jobless, frustrated and restless into destructive machines.
Talk to any members of the vicious Boko Haram group or ISWAP that have unleashed fear and death across Nigeria or the other ethnic separatists that are emerging everywhere in Nigeria and they all have religious or tribal justification for their senseless killing of innocent men and women. Members of the Al Shabab gang who have gunned down many innocent people in East Africa are sure that they are doing God’s work. Whether it is Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram or even the IRA that kept Northern Ireland in commotion for many years, they all beat their chests and assert justification for the innocent lives they have taken. Check out their justification and it is based on some skewed cultural or religious beliefs or some real or perceived injustice done to their ‘people’ today or in times gone by.
Nothing frightens me these days more than the seemingly unstoppable spread of fundamentalist religion, tribal and cultural hegemonism being spread on WhatsApp, Facebook and other social media platforms and creating fanatics of all kinds. The digital media was supposed to bring all of us together. It has also given a big megaphone to merchants of hate to market their hatred.
Contrary to popular notion, this terrifying development is not limited to the Islamic faith. All over the world, there are self-styled prophets in religious garments indoctrinating masses of people who they will unleash on the world and who would become cannon fodder in their war to rid the world of those who do not agree with them. There are politicians and wanna-be leaders deploying the same template.

All of these ‘men of God’ and “leaders” of their people, preach love but the love they preach is not love for all children of God but love only for the people who think like them, pray like them or love like them. If you think differently, you are vermin which must be exterminated to create their pure world. They have convinced themselves that they are holy warriors fighting God’s battle and that they have the right to kill in the name of God.

But who are these people supposedly fighting in the name of God and killing the children of God? Who told them that God needs their help? Who informed them that they are more effective than God, the maker and giver of life, who if he chooses can wipe out whole nations in a twinkle of an eye? How can a war be holy in which innocent children of God are killed?

Who will stop the madness going on in Ukraine?

See you next week.