Bloodshed In The Family

When the home turns to dreaded and haunted abode, there is no place left to hide. It is a sign of anarchy because those pursued outside do run home to hide away from trouble.

But that seems to have been lost with the orgy of violence, stalking the homes of Nigerians. The homes have become killing fields. Love that gave rise to marriages has taken flight, vacating the homes for cudgels, daggers, knives, hatchets, acid, petrol, fire, hammer, axe, guns, etc. Almost every item in the homes has been turned to object for murder.
We are prone to news of deaths in the homes. They come from husbands to wives and from wives to husbands. Even cherished children are not spared by parents gone amok. In the past one year, we have reaped blood and carnage in the homes in tens, at least the ones reported in the media in various homes. And the trend seems to be on downhill roll that nothing comes in its way right now.
In less than two weeks two ugly tales of domestic violence at their worst levels jolted us.
One was in Abuja and the other in Lagos. They came at the worst magnitude and forms. It was just few days after the Abuja incident where a jealous wife doused her husband with petrol while he was asleep and burnt him dead that a worse case unfolded in Lagos.
The victim husband in Abuja, a journalist, politician and adviser to a senator, died in the hands of his second wife in Gwarimpa, a highbrow Abuja area.
The offence the man committed was an allegation that he gave more time and attention to the first wife. He had planned to travel to Kaduna to see the first wife when the second wife decided to end the trip and get better attention by roasting him in petrol fire at night. The late victim is Mohammed Ibrahim Matazu. He became yet another victim of the scourge of blood that has gone viral in the homes. The husband killer, who is now in cell awaiting trial, is simply called mummy by the family. But her act was a world away from the way of mummies.
If you, however, feel appalled by this dastardly act, you then don’t need to read the shocking tale of a worse theatre in Lagos, just few days after. The Gwarimpa incident looks like mere rehearsal to what unfolded in Lagos when a jilted lover went totally berserk and left eight persons dead in his wake. His target originally was a former lover. He killed the woman he claimed to have loved, killed a relation of hers with the eight-month old foetus she carried. His anger is that the lady’s family was opposed to his relationship with the lady he claimed to have loved and later killed.
A man, just 27 years old, reportedly walked into the girlfriend’s home in Igando, Lagos suburb, and shot dead seven persons. The next victim, the ex-lover’s sister and her three children were killed too. He was not done yet as he later picked the victim’s phone and called her husband to know his location and stalk him for further massacre.
The recent incidents made Abuja Metro to embark on a recall of some of the recent bloodsheds, rocking Nigerian homes and families that have put husbands and wives in stiff contest over who out-kills the other.