My Unborn Grandchildren,
Before your eyes behold the light of this perilous times, I must etch this testimony upon the pages of time — not as a lamentation, but as a confession of a nation lost between its wounds and its worship. The ripples of my first letter stirred the conscience of the honest and provoked the arrogance of the blind. Mr Wonder Ade sneered, “rubbish writeup,” but I forgive him — for even truth looks foolish to those who profit from lies. And as Mr Ferdinand Okechi replied him with rare valor, “Are you a human being at all? I don’t think you are one. His piece is worth pondering on.”
To him, and to the courageous few who still think, I salute your intellect. And to the voice that rose like incense from Lagos — “I Salute You For Your Intellectual Capacity, MR INAH Boniface Ocholi In KOGI STATE, I Really Benefited From Your Article, May You Remain Victorious Always In Jesus Name Amen. SHALOM, FROM: ARCHBISHOP PRIMATE DR OLABODE DANIEL TLD DD, The Interreligious Human Rights Activist And Social Justice Advocate.”
Your words are oil to weary bones. They prove that in a nation of loud pretenders, there still exist prophets of principle and sentinels of justice.
Nigeria — oh my beloved but bewildered motherland — is now a country of particular concerns, a theatre of unending crucifixion. There is blood in the land. There is crucifixion in the land. Christians are being massacred in their sleep, and priests slaughtered beside the pulpits where they once prayed. Churches have become catacombs of silence, and faith has turned into an act of courage.
A typical Hausa-Fulani man once told me with chilling ease, “Violence means nothing to us; at any time, we can do it.” I shivered, not at his audacity, but at the deafening silence of those who should speak. Many Nigerian leaders — men with international pride but dirty rooms, diplomats of deceit — are too afraid to admit this national truth. They stand before the world, dressed in the costumes of peace, while their hands drip with the invisible ink of complicity.
In the North, Christians pray in whispers. They hide their faith behind drawn curtains, fearing the knock that might never let them rise again. They own no cathedrals, only caves or hamlets of survival. Meanwhile, in the East, South, and West, there is freedom of worship be it Christians Muslim, traditional, the ringing of bells, and the soaring of choirs. What a paradox — one nation, two realities: liberty for some, persecution for others.
My unborn sons and daughters, when your time comes, let your “It is written” and your “Yes” stand firmly in truth. Let your faith not be caged by fear, nor your tongue silenced by the politics of convenience. Truth is costly, but falsehood is fatal.
I write this not as a man seeking applause, but as one preparing for his exit. One day, before I leave this world, I will write my final letter — my epitaph to conscience. But before then, I must tell you: nobody sleeps without fear anymore. Bandits roam like kings, kidnappers dictate ransoms like governments, herdsmen graze death upon farms, ISWAP preaches terror as doctrine, and Boko Haram baptizes villages with fire. No one knows when they will come — only that they will.
Yet our leaders sleep behind barbed wires, surrounded by soldiers whose guns are aimed at the poor. They have fenced their mansions but not their morality. They feed fat while the nation fasts from peace. They have murdered the people not with bullets, but with pens soaked in greed. The policies they draft are guillotines in disguise — every signature another silent massacre.
The needy, the hungry, the forgotten — they have become laboratory rats in the grand experiment of corruption. Our hospitals are morgues of neglect, our schools are tombs of potential, and our roads are death traps paved with empty promises.
And yet, Nigeria pretends — pretending is our national costume. We act holy in daylight and commit heresy at dusk. We pray in English, sin in tribal dialects, and justify it in silence.
But hear me, my unborn descendants: beneath these ashes, the ember of rebirth still glows. When Trump called Nigeria a country of particular concerns, He did not curse it — He diagnose it. A nation only heals when it admits it is sick. Do not inherit our leaders DNA of lies. Let your generation become the architects of a moral renaissance, the rebirth of justice, the revival of unity.
When you stand before the world, do not apologize for being Nigerian — demand that Nigeria be worthy of you. Build a nation where cathedrals are not prisons, where mosques are not fortresses of vengeance, Shrines a center of blood rituals and where leadership is not a marketplace for betrayal.
And if someday, when I am gone, the world still calls Nigeria a disgrace or country of particular concerns — remind them: we were not born to disgrace; we were born to resurrect.
So rise, my unborn grandchildren. Rise with pens sharper than sabres. Rise until truth becomes policy, until justice becomes culture, until peace becomes identity. And when the last tyrant falls, let the new anthem of your generation be this:
“We are the children of the broken, but we rebuilt the altar of truth.”
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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