The last few days have been us running for our lives, and I'm here to tell you why that is.
It all started on a Sunday morning. I was at home when I heard the news that someone had been shot in a street not too far away from where I stay. At first, the rumor had been that he was shot while getting robbed. Apparently the young man had refused to let go of his phones, and the robbers had angrily gunned him down.
But it didn't take long for the real story to come out, because later that night, another man had been gunned down, this time, just around the corner from where I reside. That was when we heard news that two other people had also been killed that same night, making it a total of four people who lost their lives that Sunday.
It turned out the whole thing had to do with cultism, rival groups gunning themselves down for one reason or the other. The sudden rise of violence prompted the villagers whose community we reside in to take action. Immediately, a town crier had gone around that night (around 1am) announcing that a curfew had been put in place.
No one is seen outside once it's 7pm. I've been living here for the past seven years, and this was the first time I was seeing anything like this.
Fast forward to the next day, and you could tell that everyone was tensed. A lot of shops refused to open, and you wouldn't blame them because for the entirety of that Monday, all we saw were armed police patrolling the entire area, looking for who to arrest, whether innocent or not.
It got to 7pm, and I got to realize that the curfew wasn't a joke. All the shops were closed; there were no generator sounds or any noise anywhere. It was almost as if everyone were on alert, putting their ears out for anything at all that sounded like danger.
Luckily for us, it's been calm for a while now, and we can't just hope and pray that it remains that way for as long as possible.