No one is safe in all the villages across Imo State Nigeria

QUEENS, N.Y. - Oct. 20, 2025 - PRLog -- As he drove by the narrow, bumpy earthly road, I looked all around at the many uninhabited houses, the random unpainted corner stores, and the small farms overrun by weeds. I looked everywhere but did not see goats and sheep that used to roam the streets, the small talkative sharp village birds that chirp and hop all day. If there were any mother hen leading and guiding her chicks along the garden terrain, I would have seen them. But there were none.

Not a single person was on the street. Seldom have I seen this kind of gloomy day in this village. Not even an old man or woman with a knobby walking cane. The few people that I saw later were hungry, emaciated, with hopelessness written all over their faces.

Complete silence is an infallible omen that something bad is about to happen. That morning, there was complete silence; no human voice came from any of the swanky houses, no birds were chirping, the wind was at a standstill, and not even a sound came from the wooden pestle perpetually pounding away on the mortar as women prepared pounded yams and okra soups for their families.

Life here has gone from crises to calamity, I brooded. Where men and nature suffer the same stress of daily living and threat of surviving to see another day.

Clearly, no one has enough money to patronize any services or buy anything. A tailor by the roadside, who had his store open, had one abandoned pair of trousers nailed on store side door, looked forsaken and continued to scratch his head in despondence as we went by him. Fear of bandits and kidnappers prevents wealthy people from coming down to the village to spend their money.

Further down the road, on the left, I saw what remained of Benny's Bar. As a child, I remember back in the sixties, even when Yakubu Gowon was unleashing his Egyptian pilot flown Jets and Bombers to kill us off, Benny was still supplying kegs of fresh palm wine to older folks. I will never forget Benny and his bar.  My father used to send me to Benny's to get him a jug or a keg of fresh palm wine, and when I didn't come back on time because I wandered away, trying to get to the end of the world, he would send someone to go look for me with his usual aphorism for stragglers— mmiri ju ekete, mmirir eju yi ekete, lota wa. Come back home forthwith, whether or not your basket is filled with water to the brim.

End of Part
Part 2, coming soon
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