Opinion: Sacred Killers – By Sam Omatseye
The picture destroys anything in the heart. Children, mothers and fathers expiring in their place of comfort and succour. As George Lamming wrote, “something startles where I thought I was safest.” They left home in their Sunday best as families, as friends and as a community under God. They were slaughtered by bloodthirsty mischief of sub-humans who are no more than instruments from hell. On the bandits, if it is to yell, ears are torn. If it’s to shed tears, the ocean is full. If it is to spend money, we have done it. For that reason, Amotekun was created. Yet, these marauders came as molten magma from the hell to set ablaze people who did nothing wrong but to bear a different ethnic name and serve a different God.
Ondo State is one of those places where surveillance and Amotekun have shown impressive records. Hence they targeted Gov. Rotimi Akeredolu’s hometown. His voice did not spare them, so his policies. But, as they say in security, you only have to be wrong once for such a tragedy as that to happen. A prelate was whisked away for N100 million in the southeast. They are the same sort of savages. It still boils down to the fact that states cannot stop the morons until the centre flushes them out of the bushes. We know where they are but we don’t go there. The federal government has made them sacred killers, the bushes their sanctuaries. They are too sacred to die even if they slaughter us in our sacred places. They are too murderous to be ruffled. We have acquiesced in their savagery. When T.S. Eliot wrote his play, Murder in the Cathedral, he had no idea of Owo where the house of God became an abattoir of human souls. Murder is in our midst. When next shall we see its bloody eye?
– Omatseye is a respected columnist with The Nation
