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The movie “Escape from Sobibor” details the anguish experienced by Polish Jews in the hands of German and Ukrainian officials. The movie which is based on the true live stories of the survivors of Camp Sobibor who went through some of the most sadistic experiences in the hands of the depraved Nazi torture machines.
If the world thought that the holocaust will be the last time that men abused power and authority to meet their dark desires, they thought wrong. Time and time again the people in the corridors of authority have abused, exploited and humiliated the voiceless.
The same scenario plays out yet again in Kogi State. In the last one year, Civil Servants in the state have been through psychological, mental, emotional and physical torture in the hands of the government of the day in the guise of a screening process that has gone on for over a year.
A visit to the state Government house where a new leg of the ongoing screening process is ongoing would show you a sad sight of middle aged men and women looking highly fatigued by the rigours of what has come to be a never ending exercise.
From the vantage point where I sat, I could see men and women being bundled up into awaiting vehicles like common criminals or cows to the slaughter for alleged offences that they were said to have perpetrated. A woman who had taken a leave of absence to support her husband who was receiving chemotherapy treatment in Abuja had been labelled a diaspora worker. Please note that I do not query the motive of the screening exercise, after all it is for the greater good of ridding the system of all the discrepancies that has led it to its rot today.
From were I sat, I surreptitiously watched an elderly man who had the markings of the early stages of severe malnutrition confide in another man that he had borrowed some money to come for the screening. I listened to another talk about how he had become a ghost of his former self as the trauma of not being paid had began to affect him psychologically.
G.K Chesterton once said “There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.” This men and women have given the best years of their lives serving the state, they are not an inconsequential demographic they are the live wire of the state, they are the foundation on which this state was built.
– Amina Umoru wrote from Lokoja.
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