Lord, “They Say” is a serious problem in this our village

Dear Father:

You know when I came from Charlie Land about 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the man that was representing Charlie Land in our village at the time. In fact, it was even a “They Say that prompted me to go there to clarify some things.

“In this country, one thing you should be afraid of is “They Say.”. And to be honest with you Father, since then I have treated every “They Say” with a pinch of salt.

So Father, Wednesday of this week was no different from the usual They Say. Okay, two kids were found dead in an old car parked among nearly a dozen of other old cars. Apparently, they had gone there that morning to play in the car as we all did when we were growing up and unfortunately locked themselves up.- Remember Father I said apparently with caution. With nobody again apparently aware of their whereabouts, those babies may have met their untimely deaths.

But as any concern people of a particular fiefdom will do, people in the area, not thinking about checking those old cars, all joined the aggrieved family to carry out a thorough search. With the Gboyo business on the increase in our village, They Say found a perfect moment to gain popularity.

And so they searched the whole day but apparently not in any of the cars and so could not find them. The next day, they were discovered dead in the front seat of one of the old cars.

Boom! They Say began to spread the news like wide fire and by the time it got to other places, They Say said the children body parts had been removed and that they were

skinned alive. Even some respectable town criers that were not on the scene call it murder.

Father, at this point all senses of reasoning were dead in the mind of our people. It was like that time when they had their religious war here. People who did not know what had actually happened could believe any report They Say brought.

“They Say the ….people na burn one church and they attacking Christians oo.” Some people, I was told ran from ghetto, already high on drugs and started attacking people from the other religion all because of They Say.

And so, this other They Say was of no different. The first thing that came to the mind of the people was the babies were brutally murdered and the suspect was the neighbor in whose old car they were discovered.

And as the crowd gather as a result of They Say efforts, they set the car owner’s house on fire and nearly kill his wife and cook and knowing him to be from one of our neighboring villages They Say swelled all on social media everywhere nobody want to know the truth, even some town criers took their stories from They Say.

All these things bring us to two things Father- destructive nature and the high illiteracy rate in our village.

You know weeks before this incident, one of the chiefs in our village son and his girl friend were in one of the chief’s vehicles quarreling over boy friend and girlfriend issues, which led him to beat on his girlfriend in the car and she was crying.

Nobody care to ask what was going on but the fact that one motorcyclists had alarmed that the girl was being kidnapped for gboyo (ritualistic killing) everybody ran to the car-even after the couple said they were lovers having quarrels, they ran after them. Not even the police station could save them. They burned the car in front of the police station. And all those that committed this act may have reacted because somebody claimed They Say the people kidnapped the people daughter in that car. What a backward country. We have a very far way to go in terms of modern civilization.