STORY, STORY (1)....ACROSS THE RIVER NIGER BY FERRY.

...Dear Didie,


I was too young to understand why some of the things am about to tell you happened they ways they did.

But I as much as I can remember, we had a very happy family, and everything seemed just fine, just as you, your sisters and maybe your friends feel they are now, in your families and environments.

The difference is that, while I was about five years old at the time this story begins and about eleven when it would end, you are already eleven now.

I am writing you, so that you can always remember these incidents, make up your mind that as you grow up, you are not going to be a part of anything that would create rumours, and then conflicts, and then, the kinds of scenarios that I am about to narrate to you.

That is not all. I also want you, to encourage your friends and peers, to join you to do things that would led to the benefit of all Nigerians.

You need to know that war destroys things, separates families, stunts development and the lives of a lot of people. Nothing about war is good.

War stops everything else but war. War kills people, ordinary people, and civilians, dead!

When there is war, everything you take for granted, like going to school, work or eating what you like (if you can afford it), moving about freely and keeping the things and people dear to you (toys, cars, houses, and even your family members, both males and females), become impossible. Soldiers just take whatever they want to take in war situations. And nobody can stop them.

You also need to understand that to be caught up in a real war, is not the same thing as watching war movies, or watching real wars in other places like the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leon or Somalia from television reports, or DVD docummentaries.

Wars terribly affect the lives of ordinary people caught up in them, and not just the lives of the soldiers who fight in wars...

----BIAFRA:LEST WE FORGET!