June 1, 2017
The Day Abacha Died!
If Christians don't Bless the People, then who will?
Posted by Ambassador T .Brikins
Africans and
indeed Nigerians don’t rejoice or speak evil of dead persons. But the day Abacha
died…exactly nineteen years ago by June 8, 2017!
I was forced by the roar outside to dash to the balcony of my office overlooking the historic Queens Street in
Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria. The people shouted. The people leaped and jumped hysterically in diverse directions. They embraced and
carried one another. They raised beer bottles to the open skies. They sang. They
danced.The vehicles blared and hooted their horns in mad frenzy. My radical professor friends from the University of Lagos which is near came with
green branches of trees in their hands, waving and dancing to the rhythmic chorus,
’Abacha is dead, Abacha is dead, Abacha is dead. Abacha don die’’.
This hysterical expression of happiness marked
the end of military rule and the commencement of Nigeria’s march to democracy
amid bumps on a road yet to be scientifically defined after 18 years of democratic rule.