I started writing this post a while ago but it was really hard.  Harder than I thought it would be.  So, I stopped.

It’s a topic I write on every November. A topic I’ve thought on every last quarter for the last decade.

Before 2005, I always said that if I was going to have to lose any member of my family, I’d rather it happened in one of the more random months- months I like least (think February-April…sorry but errr, what are those months?! Lol). I said, “Universe, don’t you dare take anyone away from me at Christmas time! That’s the best time of the year, everyone’s home and happy for goodness sake!” And in my house Christmas is serious business; annual colour schemes for our Christmas decorations, pre-Christmas strategy meetings for gift shopping, Christmas present hiding prior to Christmas morning.

#WeAintPlayingOutchea

So I just figured the universe would realise that messing this up by introducing a death in the family might be as painful as losing Christmas itself. But as a pastor once said, “You should remember that the devil is wicked. He won’t say I took your mum so I won’t take your dad.” Nope, that gremlin will take the lot, play cousins and all.

So death visited us in 2005.

Today, Ibiso would have been 23. I imagine she would have sent my sisters and I a lengthy wish list prior to the date, littered with her carefully curated items.  She was always so self-aware even for a thirteen year old.

This year it seemed particularly pertinent that I write this post.  You see, this December marks the 10^th year anniversary of the Sosoliso plane crash; one of the worst tragedies of the Nigerian nation and the only true tragedy of my life. Over sixty children headed home for the Christmas holidays killed aboard a flight from Abuja because of the Nigerian government’s ineptitude, incomprehensible greed and amazing selfishness. A government with the people’s mandate  could not ensure that an airport would have basic water supply or indeed any other simple amenity needed for rescue in the event of a plane crash.

Because a plane crash at a poorly maintained airport was reasonably unforeseeable.

When a friend of mine sent me an article listing the Port Harcourt International airport as the worst in the world, from travel website http://www.sleepinairports.net, and hoped for my opinion…I realized I wasn’t ready to write an article on this. I started to respond to him in our WhatsApp chat but I was frightened by the vitriol that bubbled hot and maniacal, rushing from my brain, scorching my throat and pouring out of my fingers. I stopped my thumbs twice and erased my messages thrice. He finally received this edited version:

“I was actually going to write an article for a paper on the Sosoliso crash, it’s the ten year anniversary. An article on how nothing has changed. If the same crash happened today, the kids would still die. If that sort of dog chasing tail isn’t an analogy of Nigeria, I don’t know what is.”

I was so angry. I am so angry. It’s the sort of controlled, concealed potent force that congeals into a hard, dark thing just pulsing underneath the surface, effervescent and willing to rush raw and ready if you indulge it by the barest whim. And so I control my thoughts and focus instead on jabbing my keyboard’s tiny keys because all I can think today is, “What has to happen for Nigeria to get better?! Who has to die?! How many more martyrs do we need? It truly is as Chimeka Garricks remarks in his book, ‘Tomorrow Died Yesterday’,

“There are no radicals in Nigeria, only mad men and martyrs”

If you haven’t lost anyone before…I recommend that you don’t. The wound never ever heals. It festers and grows and some days you’re very well. On others, it breaks down all your walls, knocks in your soul, caves in your spirit and just sits on your mind, heavy and relentlessly bearing down on you.

I had to end that WhatsApp chat. I could not believe how angry it made me inside to think for even a nanosecond that all my sister suffered was in vain…because it didn’t even bring a little bit of reform to the industry. The rage descends on me periodically with the unpredictable, stifling heaviness of malaria. Still so angry.

I thought I was ok. Time heals all wounds after all c’est ne pas?

Yet, all we’ve had is time.

Ten years. A decade. 3, 650 days. 87, 600 hours. 5, 256, 000 minutes. 315, 400, 000, 000 seconds.

Time.

So much time has passed. Yet so much stays the same.

Nigeria we hail thee.