By Taiye Olaniyi

If geographers still hold to our cherished dictum that, “Everything in space is a geographical phenomenon,”, then my heart, mind, and soul must be part of the “Cadastral map of sorrowful Nigerians” germinating in space and time.

Don’t ask me why am being sorrowful, then I say to you, you are part of my sorrow because you share in the sorrow of Nigeria and how far we all, directly or indirectly have contributed to miseries, woes, and calamities that now befall a nation that ought to by now be great but in shambles and rumbles.

I remember as if it were yesterday, our childhood days in Offa when our mothers used to wrap and cuddle us inside the thick-smelling cloth”Kijipa” to mitigate the chilling cold of harmattan, “oye.” As this cold dust-infested breeze in the windstorm permeate the atmosphere, the parental concern for us then that the harmattan wind “Shall not smite us to death nor our nostrils are allowed to block”.

As we grew up in age and learning, our parents could afford to buy us cockroach-infested second-hand sweaters, “Bosikoro ko ye wo, boba dara ko sanwo, bi ko dara, ko jule, aloku aso Kora,” just like Dolly Parton’s “Coat of many colours”, those sweaters our parents bought for us were to shield us from early deaths.

Later in school, we were taught of the “North Easterlies Wind” popularly referred to as ” Harmattan” as the cold, dry, and dusty wind that emanates from the Northeastern part of Nigeria from around late November to part of February coursing down South but with less intensity as it blows down the South.

Though its coldness could be better soothing to the body for those who could get clothes to wrap up with, very traumatic for those whose parents are by the Nigerian constitution not entitled to “Wardrobe” and other filthy allowances.

It had, has, and still is smothering and killing especially the children, the itinerant, uncared children uncatered by bad and fiendish governance, powers and principalities, the political class ruling and ruining the lives of our children and those of us parents alike.

As today the harmattan is blowing all and sundry, as it is no respecter of any individual in the perimeter of its influence, both the highly and lowly placed, the rich and the tattered poor are daily facing the menace of respiratory health hazards and chest problems associated with the annual North Easterlies.

To worsen the situation, the incessant discharge of chemicals and pollutants from the innumerable weapons of destruction in combat and war against the ragtag but mass destructive Boko Haram, no doubt will implicate and debilitate the body, mind and soul of us all in due course as it is currently doing to me and others of like minds from afar theatre of war.

Yes, North East and the North Easterlies, the incessant bombings from aerial topography, the stepping on landmines, the gunning and brutal slitting of throats, the fielding of soldiers as shields and as cannon fodders, the maiming, moaning, and gnashing of teeth, the misplaced, displaced and conglomerates of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, gory tales all are symptoms and diagnoses of hearts broken, sorrows and miseries traceable as causative factors and money making ventures by the unmasked political demagogues in religious garbs setting our world on fire.

My concerns that emit sorrows are many, a great nation God endowed with too many things but can’t boast of anything, a nation full of very religious individuals but too ungodly to be accommodated in heaven in the hereafter.

A nation full of pride and title-infested rulers but exhibit no nobility in character nor worthy in learning the true lessons of history, a nation where money bags use power to mortgage the consciences of helpless many, and a nation where her independence is mortgaged and subjected into the hands of powerful but fiendish nations.

The North Easterlies blowing its dust and revealing Nigerians as now a nation of very selfish and fiendish powerful individuals in government, private sectors, traditional institutions, religious, and judiciary all legislating and executing arms deals at the peril of the continuity of what God intends to be His “God’s own Country” but now in possession of powers and principalities including fallen angels.

However, the writings on the walls are many, the God sent are warning, the theatre of war for the setting of true Jihad, the spiritual battle wherein angels of light, the illumined will take control and sprinkle the light of understanding even as far to the coven of dark horses, the generation of vipers garbing in mere earthly apparels.

Now here with us, the Aquarian age and Dawn of Enlightenment are on standby, so, be warned all you evildoers for the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Be warned so sent the Son of Man to proclaim that ” When Conscienceless Power rules over Powerless Conscience, it is the former that first laughs, but the latter laughs last and laughs best.”

Be warned for” You cannot hide from God even though mountains cover You, His eyes are well on You”.

Be warned all You arms dealers for Nigerians are groaning in pain.

Taiye Olaniyi, a retired Postman from the Nigeria Postal Service is based in Lagos.