Bloody Friday and the Fear Factor

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Rousing from a lazy morning in bed, I heard a blast in the distance this morning and asked my husband: ‘That sounded like a bomb, didn't it?’  For all my sheltered life, I had become more familiar with the perilous sounds of bombs in the past 12 months of living in Abuja Nigeria.  Not wanting me to panic, my husband reassured me I was wrong and as it was raining, I shrugged it off believing it could have been thunder. I now know my first instinct was right because about thirty minutes later, my phones went off with calls from all around the world inquiring that I and my former colleagues are all well. I worked in the UN for 8 years and in the UN common house building for 2 years.

Placing calls to friends in the building, I learned that one of my closest friends was actually not at work that morning and was only heading to the UN building after he found out about the bomb.  Another one in the building sounded a little disoriented as he and others were looking for missing colleagues. The two agencies I had worked in were on the 3rd and 4th floors. The last time I visited, I was shown to a new section on the ground floor where some of the support services had been moved within the space originally allocated to the UN Information Center (UNIC). UNIC had remained in Lagos when the rest of the agencies moved to Abuja.  The ground floor also housed the Bank (Standard Chartered Bank) to the left and common support services to the right.

Last month the UN received a bomb threat from the Boko Haram Islamic terrorist group and stepped up security in response.  This morning, a suicide bomber staked the building and seized an opportune moment when the exit gate was opened for an exiting vehicle to drive in and ram into the left side of the building where a bomb detonated on impact taking out the ground and first floors. The UN clinic is also on the ground floor but in a separate building at the back. Security staffers on the ground floor were killed on impact.  Another dear friend whose office was recently moved to the ground floor happened to be attending a meeting on the fourth floor and was not at her desk when the suicide bomber rammed the building.  18 people are now confirmed dead and about a dozen seriously injured in hospital.

Nigeria is a country where the Muslim population is roughly equal to that of Christians; the north and middle belt (where I live) are predominantly Muslim. As much as I love this city, I live in fear.  I speak a smattering of Hausa (the Lingua Franca) but not enough and I find that while it is a relatively safe place to live, Fridays are extremely tense days for me. Mornings are usually fine but I usually awaken on Friday mornings with a sense of trepidation. On the alert for anything out of the ordinary, I conduct school run more prayerfully than usual, watching the clock until it’s time for the return school run and once my children are safe within the walls of our home, no one ventures out unless they absolutely have to and I even tell staff members who work out of my home office to be on the alert on Fridays. As worship time draws to a close, we become more nervous because most riots occur on the return from the mosques, where it seems incensed worshipers are sent out on whatever destructive mission the clergy choose. When night falls uneventfully on a Friday, I give thanks silently until the next Friday when we live through it all again.

Last Updated on Saturday, 12 November 2011 12:13
Written by Lola Balola