01/09/2021
9 YEARS TODAY, AND IT IS STILL PAINFULLY CONFUSING
Today marks the 9th year that this gentleman, Abubakar Umoru, my elder brother left home and has not been seen or heard from.
It was in the morning of Saturday, 1st September, 2012 that Abubakar Umoru, whose picture is shown here informed his wife and my mother, who just sadly passed on on 10th August this year (22 days ago), that he was travelling from Hayin Banki, Kaduna to Abuja to go and carry out an assignment and return in the evening of that day.
As a computer engineer and programmer, he is the CEO of Virtual Systems on Junction road, Kaduna. He trains and also writes computer programmes for clients who use them for their businesses,he also builds up ICT network systems for firms who need him to do so for them. The business entails him travelling out of Kaduna to other places once in a while if he has a job to execute.
It was for such an assignment that he left Kaduna that fateful day, promising that he was going to Abuja, install the programme he had written and then return in the evening.
I came to Kaduna around 10 am that Saturday for a weekend from Abuja as usual, and was told by my mum (who came to Kaduna then and was staying with my brother in our family compound, where she had raised us up. She was in Kaduna because she had to get medical attention), that Abu had just left for Abuja but said he would be back in the evening.
Well, when it was 6 pm my mother became restive and asked the wife to call to know if he was on his way back already. The wife called and he told her that he was preparing to go and board a vehicle. When she called 15 minutes later to get an update, the line was not going through. That was the last time his phone rang and that was the last time that any of us heard from Abubakar Umoru till today.
The next day we began our search, mother could not rest and the wife was restive too. Together with my siblings and relatives and friends we checked Road Safety offices to ask for accidents, we went to parks, hospitals, mortuaries from Kaduna town to Abuja through the roads, stopping and asking from village head to village head.
We panicked, cried, wrote to Police stations, Commissioners, Inspector General. We wrote to the office of the DSS and other security agents. We panicked, cried, prayed, fasted, dreamed a lot of dreams of his return but they were all dreams. Till today some of us still dream those dreams. Abu did not get out of our dreams to return physically. Our ears were filled with speculations during the great flood of 2012, speculations of ritual killings, speculation of whether he was kidnapped, specualtions of speculations.
Days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months and years began to count while the pain could not be borne. Our mother could not contain herself to have her eldest son, one of her two children who is a full grown man disappear and not be heard of. My very sweet younger brothers and sisters could not sleep then. We printed posters of MISSING PERSON and posted, opened a page on facebook (Abubakar Umoru) and even got caught up in the hands of 419 (Fraudsters, One so called Inspector Mike who played on us, told us he knew where Abu was being held but after some time and after getting more than sister thousand naira from us, it later proved to be false when the Police waved in.
It can take pages and pages if I would write (and I mean it). But Abu could not be found, none of us could rest. How can you rest in such situation? If we are certain that he is dead, we would bear it no matter the pain. It would gradually heal with time even if not forgotten, the pain will reduce. We tried to make our mother accept that if he is dead he is dead and if he returns, he returns, but it did not work. She counted months so that eah September 1st, she would say, "it is now 3 years; it is now 4 years; it is now 8 years... until she died few days ago without seeing the 9th year of her son missing nor her son’s return. The wife, due to trauma, said she could not stay any longer so she left within the first twelve months. She later got sick and sadly passed away about two years after the disappearance of her husband.
Too long for you to read, but too short for me that has written it because a lot of things that is part of this story which I do not have to write down here. May be I should write a book one day, yes, I should, about Abu.
How can we make up our mind and comfort ourselves that he is no more alive when he might be somewhere still needing help? How can we take it that he is dead when neither we, nor anyone can prove him dead. Did something happen to him? Did he run insane and could not trace his way back home? Is he somewhere, wrongly and mistakenly detained? Has he died? Did this? Did that? Did? Did? A lot of unanswered and unanswerable questions.
If it were a commodity that is missing we would forget it and buy another one, build another one if it were a property, or hire another one, but he is a human being with breath like you and I. May be he is dead, and that would have been good if we know, but may be he is not dead and that is the confusion. Would I love to be forgotten by him if I were the one in his shoe? I know him too well, he won't sleep all night all year to make sure he gets to the root. But yet we do not know what else to do.
So many stories around his disapoearance but today marks the 9th year, and if anyone reading this still have a hint about him, it will help. If Abu comes across this post himself and reads it, it would help to let him know we have not given up on him.
Even if we do not cry again, and panic again, we surely cannot forget that we do not know where you are, Abu. May whatever has happened or is happening to you be made known to us one day by God who knows all, whether dead or captured and kept somewhere beyond your power to return.
Abubakar Umoru, your mother just died some days ago and we your brothers and sisters and friends still don’t know what to do but we are hoping, and wont stop hoping.
