YET ANOTHER BOMBING AS MEMORIES A-NUMBING

Now we wake up every day in Nigeria and it seems like we have all been transferred to the troubled east. I remember those not too distant days when I heard news on CNN about bombings in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan

and I wondered why people will clad themselves with explosive devices, walk into the market space and detonate into pieces; alongside innocent people. Now that same far memory resides just next to me, in my own country, with my own kinsmen and without recourse to solutions coming soon.

I ponder on the many killings, bombings and atrocities yet can’t seem to decipher why a people once said to be the “happiest people on earth” will suddenly embark on suicide missions for any cause. Obviously something is wrong somewhere. And to make matters worse, Nigerians down south have not acquiesces with the brutal reality that sooner than later the pocket of violence up north might and will envelop the whole country in what will mostly be reprisals and justifiable defense.

I have never seen a Nigerian government so weak since the time of Shagari (he was also a teacher) and they mostly exhibit, through body language and lack of will and ideas, how not to run a country with vast differences.

Just yesterday, at least 118 people were killed in the central Nigerian city of Jos on Tuesday after two bombs ripped through a business district packed with commuters and traders.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosions, but the bombs bore the hallmarks of other attacks by Islamist sect Boko Haram, which has recently stepped up a bloody five-year battle campaign to establish a caliphate in northern Nigeria, and kidnapped more than 300 schoolgirls from a remote north-eastern school in April. In the past month, the group has set off two bomb blasts in the capital, Abuja, and another in the country's second city, Kano.

But there were glimmers of how frustration and anger at rising insecurity could take on a sectarian character. A group of Christian youths in one neighbourhood set up checkpoints, where they carried out stop-and-searches on vehicles. In another neighbourhood, Christian youths armed with clubs marched towards a Muslim neighbourhood before they were stopped by policemen. "They were very angry, and innocent people would have been their victims," said Ahmed Shittu, who escaped the crowd by ducking behind a wall.

And these will not abate as we will only witness rise in anxiety for where next the bomb will be detonated. We are sitting on a keg of gunpowder and as soon as we can, we must make sure that we alight it without setting ourselves ablaze.

All I could do this morning is listen to this 2Face’s song and console my bereaved soul, hoping that when I open my eyes tomorrow, everything would have returned to normalcy (if we ever had that in Nigeria anyways)