When Daniel Craig was cast as James Bond in 2005, backlash was instant. Critics mocked his 5'10" height, blonde hair and looks, and protest sites like “Craig-Not-Bond-dotcom.”
Fans even mocked him as “James Bland.”
After Casino Royale released, the criticism quickly collapsed.
I went to secondary school in Barkin Ladi 20 years ago. This is what SS1 - 3 boys were doing, night shifts in the blistering cold. I did it too. My mates in Oyo were sleeping or studying. I’ve watched this shit deteriorate in real time.
Barkin Ladi now looks nothing like it did when I graduated 14 years ago. I went to the same junction we used to buy stuff during outings last year & I was shaking. They don’t speak the same language. Crisis after crisis. Slowly, the people who used to till those lands are now doing menial jobs in the south. The names of the villages have changed. The senator representing that region was killed few days after I graduated when he attended a mass funeral of people who were massacred by the Fulanis who now occupy their homes. 14 years ago guys.
Trying to raise awareness about this state-backed conquest feels like screaming under water.
Few months ago, my aunt in mangu came to ask for money to trade cause she can’t farm anymore. Their farms were attacked 3 years ago. They wouldn’t dare go back.
For more than 10 years, we’ve had internally displaced persons from Borno living in our house, after my mother took them in. They only go back to their so-called homes for funerals. 3 brilliant kids; Elizabeth, Margaret and Grace (named after my now late mother for her benevolence). The dad does security work, the mom cleans. Who knows what they could’ve made of themselves back home? I do, they’d have been compost for aliens.
It always starts small then it spirals out of control. We’ve seen all kinds of terror. I wish they just came and shot people but that’s not fun enough. Bullets are for runners. They’ll slice pregnant women open to kill their fetuses. They’ll feed women their kid’s fingers. They burn people alive, hack them with machetes. When people try to defend themselves, that’s when soldiers come in. They call it farmer-herder clashes. They say cattle was rustled. Cattle was rustled? That’s why you renamed my village and put 200 people in a mass grave ?
I remember @YarKafanchan saying that she wept after the 2015 elections cause she knew her people would die like flies & then what happened in southern kaduna? When people talk, they say where’s the evidence? But what about the bodies? Dying is a morbid thing to be skilled at but boy, we have experience.
We’ve seen “strategists” platform them and defend all manner of wrongdoing on the alter of political correctness.
Omoh, let me just stop here.