On December 25, 2011, as deafening bomb blasts turned Christmas celebrations into lamentation for the worshippers of St Theresa’s Catholic Church Madalla in Niger State, Rev. Fr Isaac Achi stood as the shepherd who died a thousand times on the inside while dozens of his sheep died fiery deaths.
The heinous attacks by Boko Haram which killed about 41 worshippers reduced President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to tears when he paid a visit to the church.
The attacks echoed similar attacks in Jos and Yobe on the same day as Boko Haram which had charged into the national consciousness barely two years earlier began to show that it was in the business of death to stay.
Twelve years later, a lot had changed for Rev. Fr. Achi and Boko Haram. While the priest was shunted from one assignment to another at the behest of the Catholic church in the Catholic Diocese of Minna, Boko Haram splintered into several similarly deadly terrorist groups.
With Boko Haram having also shown just how easy it is for terror to gain territory in Nigeria, other terrorist groups and other more viral strains of terrorism had steadily made Nigeria their favorite stomping grounds.
On the morning of January 15,2023,Fr. Isaac Achi was united with the kind of danger he had escaped by whiskers in Madalla eleven years ago.
However, this time around there was to be no escape. At about 3.00AM in the morning, armed men stormed the parish rectory of Sts Peter and Paul Catholic Church Kafin-Koro where he was parish priest. He was reportedly shot before the parish rectory was set ablaze with him inside.
They invaders also left his assistant fighting for his life with severe bullets wounds.
It was yet another iniquitous attack on human life and the catholic church in Nigeria,one which necessarily begs the question: until when before Nigerians are free of their killers?
Niger State where Fr. Achi was savagely burnt to death is only a couple of hours away from Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory and seat of power in Nigeria. The state has been one of the states most ravaged by terrorism in Nigeria.
In 2022,dozens of school children were taken from Tegina in Rafi Local Government Area of the state. The captive children were to spend eighty-nine agonizing days in the hands of their captors.
The mostly agrarian communities of Niger State have in the last four years been turned upside down by rampaging terrorists.
When in June 2022,about forty Nigerian soldiers were cut down by the superior fire of terrorists who attacked a mining site in Shiroro Local Government Area of the state, the entire country shrunk back in alarm.
In Kaduna State which shares boundary with Niger State and is also just a couple of hours from Abuja, terrorists have enjoyed a field day in the last four years. Or wasn’t it just the other day that seven personnel of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) were sent to their early graves by terrorists bemused by the audacity the gallant men and women had to cut off their routes?
In states that hug Abuja the Federal Capital Territory, terrorists prowl the forests like hyenas, laughing at what Nigeria has become and waiting for the perfect moment to strike defenseless communities.
Meanwhile, in Aso Rock, the seat of the presidency, the president and his team sit inert, unmoved by the hell burning through hapless and helpless communities not far away and doing their best not to be disturbed by the smoke.
For Fr. Achi, the terrorists must have decided to strike the shepherd having had their fill of the fat and fleece of the sheep.
His savage fate again forces the Catholic Church in Nigeria to do more macabre mathematics to know just how many of its priests and people have been lost to those who herd death and hawk destruction.
When the Catholic Church in the Catholic Diocese of Minna will gather to bury Fr. Achi, it will be one more grim gravestone raised to the grim reaper that stalks Nigeria at the instance of Fulani herdsmen, terrorists, their sponsors and those who tolerate them.
The sad tear-streaked looks on the faces of those who would be at Fr Achi’s funeral would also riotously depart from the bright smiles that lit the faces of the executives of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria when they visited the President on January 11,2023.
At that visit, the President had promised to reposition the economy and improve security before leaving office.
The Bishops who were at the event must have known that it would require a miracle to keep that promise coming from someone who has barely lifted a finger since 2015 and is merely counting months to leave office.
Nigeria is at the cusp of crucial elections. But with the wanton killings which continue to convulse rural communities around the country, who is to tell that traumatized rural dwellers will be allowed to exercise their right to ensure that those who will lead them in the next four years will not lead them to agonizing deaths.
It is a mark of just how unsafe Nigeria has become that rural communities which used to be oases of serenity have become killing fields.
While Nigerians who are better off pack urban areas in desperate attempts to escape the poverty an insecurity which stalks rural areas, those who must stay in the rural areas have made peace with the fact that death could come, at any time and in any form.
For Fr. Achi and all those who have been failed by a country that has never really worked, if there be another life, they will no doubt choose anywhere else but Nigeria.
As for those who await their turns in communities around Nigeria,and those who because they call the corridors of power home are culled from the brutal, bloody reality that life in Nigeria has become, may that day come when equality will permeate everything in Nigeria, good or bad.
Kene Obiezu,
Twitter@ kenobiezu
