By OKEY ANUEYIAGU

In a trending video, a grieving mother hands her child laying in a casket a machete, a knife and asking her child to ensure that the child avenges the brutal death of this child.

This child was one of the many victims of Fulani Jihadists and killers of Christians in Nigeria.

The video is heartbreaking and saddening to watch.

One must wonder and question the motivations behind these atrocities and rampant killings.

We have seen this before. Actions motivated by political expediency, religious bigotry, ethnic and tribal hatred have played out in our country for decades.

We must recognize the origins of these killings; they are spillovers from our evil pasts, and the unresolved grievances associated with the unforgettable episodes of pain, suffering, agony and sorrow.

What is obvious, is that we have invested in these conflicts to secure our greedy interests and our primordial dominance attitudes.

Watching this video brings immense pain to me, and took me back to when I was a child in Biafra; a period of agony that started from the pogrom in the North and down to the East where the blood of Easterners, mostly children was used to irrigate the soil and the land of the Igbo and other Easterners.

To appreciate what is happening in Jos, Kaduna and elsewhere, where rapacious criminals are indignantly killing innocent people, we must leap back to Biafra and the heinous stories of the senseless slaughter that occurred during the war.

To be silent about our evil past, will not allow us the opportunity to understand our history and our present happenings.

I am gravely worried about these killings, because its deadly consequences and longevity mars the mythology by which we explain away our evil past.

We must remember our past, reconcile with the present, as we empathize with the grieving families in the Plateau and elsewhere.

•Prof. Okey Anueyiagu, a A renowned scholar, author and activist, writes from Ikoyi, Lagos.

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