How corp member Samuel Orji bowed to humanity at the recent Monday market tragedy

How corp member Samuel Orji bowed to humanity at the recent Monday market tragedy

By: Bodunrin Kayode

Corp member Samuel Orji is not new to Monday market because he was raised in a restaurant right in front of the place as a kid because his mother used to be a food vendor to the traders within the vicinity.

Till the day of his death, he had friends and associates along the popular Ahmadu Bello way right down to Ali Kotoko Street where traders used to patronize his mother’s buka food.

But his mother have since left the town for Abuja leaving him and his brother Steve because he was still a student attending Ramat Polytechnic where he studied Electrical engineering when she left.

Having grown up in Maiduguri, he already knew that Improvised explosive devices IED could explode at any time during the day but never knew a semblance of the worse days could return to the city of yerwa.

For people who grew up in Maiduguri, the worse days are really over when everyone goes home before six pm so he was obviously rounding off his hustling that night when the explosion went off on Ahmadu Bello way which hit his legs and brought him down.

Though we all share a common humanity, living in the north east war theatre of hadin kai, we all go out each day for our daily bread not knowing what the end of the day will be like but taking each day as it comes.

Likewise, when corp member Samuel Orji left the house of his next of kin in Maduganari that fateful black Monday, he never planned not to return home, but as fate would have it, he was one of the victims that got hit by the suicide bomb explosion in front of the Monday market.

After being called up to the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) with number NYSC/RPM/25/185709, the young Orji was still serving at the engineering department of the Nigerian television authority (NTA) Potiskum in Yobe state when he lost his life.

Orji with YB/25B/1003 now serving in Damaturu found himself in Maiduguri the weekend before that black Monday because he had taken a pass to spend the public holiday with his brother and next of kin Stephen Orji who lives in Maduganari a suburban area of Maiduguri.

Speaking with this reporter after the tragedy, Borno State coordinator of the NYSC Bashir Nasir said the entire tragedy was a shock to him after a long spell of calmness in the city.

As soon as the incident happened, he was contacted by his headquarters (HQ) in Abuja to conduct a census of his Corp members to ensure all was well and report back to them.

It was in the process that he realized that his team was fine and that the fellow that died was indeed a Corp member but was serving the nation from Damaturu and that he had died as a result of the Monday blast on Ahmadu Bello way at the entrance of the market place.

“I quickly went into action by visiting all the places I know my corp members are based. And I was sure the fellow was not serving here in Borno after the roll call.

” Later a call came from his next of kin Steve to one of our staff in Yobe who indeed linked up with us here and that was when it was ascertained that Samuel Orji was a corp member serving in Yobe.

” I then went to the home of his next of kin Stephen Orji at Maduganari and that was how we took charge by handling all the preliminary expenses to ensure he is taken home for burial.

” The Yobe axis arranged for an ambulance and staff to convey his corpse to Enugu on Monday last week for burial.

” As a result of that triple blast I had to halt routine activities of corp members in the state except the medical officers among them who were released to assist in the hospitals on the condition that management will release ambulances from them to go and return safely to their bases. ” Said the state coordinator.

Challenges of the Corp in Borno state

The main challenge is obviously tied to their security which is why they are using the Arabic Teachers secondary school as a temporary location for now.

The original location has been tendered not usable after idps used it from 2012 to 3021

However, the governor in his magnanimity has given them a new camp of one km by one Km at Auno in the outskirts of the city.

Meanwhile the coordinator who would be one year next month since he assumed duty hinted that 506 Corp members of the batch A stream one of 2005 will pass out this week on the 31st of March.

Another bold set of Corp members of the batch A stream one of 2026 will however be sworn in on the 22nd April.

How corp member Samuel Orji bowed to humanity at the recent Monday market tragedy