Another person was taken.
By evening the news had already travelled through Port Harcourt in the way it always does. Quietly. Casual gossip. As if it were traffic.
A body was dropped around Rumuokoro.
A girl, they said.
Thrown by the roadside.
Someone used the word “used.”
As if she were an object.
As if her life had been a transaction completed.
People gathered. They always gather.
Some with concern.
Many with conclusions.
“It is all these girls that follow yahoo boys.”
“That boy go find wetin he head no fit carry.”
The verdict comes quickly here.
Before facts.
Before names.
Before families are informed.
It happens one too many times.
Bodies appear.
Crowds form.
Phones record.
The story is rewritten by strangers who were never there.
What unsettles me most is not only the violence.
It is how normal it has become.
How sympathy has been replaced by suspicion.
How pity is none existent.
Only judgement remains.
How death has become something we explain away so we can move on with our day.
Tell me, how do you know what happened?
Were you there in the final moments?
Did you hear the fear in their voice?
Do you know if they were forced, deceived, trapped, desperate, or simply unlucky?
And even if they made a reckless choice.
Even if they trusted the wrong person.
Even if they chased money or love or escape.
Since when did that become a crime punishable by death.
Port Harcourt talks a lot.
But when do we pause.
When do we demand answers instead of inventing them.
When do we say this is not normal.
Because another body at Rumuokoro should not feel like routine.
It should feel like an emergency.
