FEATURE ARTICLE

Sunday, July 19, 2020
[email protected]
Arizona, USA
WHAT A PAINFUL LOSS!
TOLULOPE AROTILE (1995-2020)

Tolulope Arotile (1995-2020)

�It does not matter how long you live, but how well you do it.� -- Martin Luther King Jr.

igerians from all over the world woke up a few days ago to the freaking, stinging; sour, and sore news of a young 25-year-old Nigerian, Tolulope Arotile. Tolu was the first Nigeria Air Force female combat Helicopter pilot in Nigerian reconnaissance history. Tolulope Arotile piloted her passion and mission effortlessly until her painful demise. According to Tolu before her death, joining the Nigeria Armed Forces had long been her dream at a tender age. Tolu came from a humble background and followed her dreams with passion, and she conquered numerous challenges in her brief but checkered history.

Tragically, Tolulope died in a road accident at Nigeria Airforce-NAF base Kaduna after sustaining head injuries. She was instrumental in the fight against banditry and insurgency in the troubled spots in northern Nigeria. Expectedly, Tolu's death has triggered the usual mixed bag of intellectual conversations, senselessness, naughtiness, and unseriousness we see daily on social media. The more rational individuals are trying to eclipse their minds from the Nigerian road to nowhere, the more those minds find themselves in the enmeshed and soiled minds of the unrepentant characters in the homeland.

Sadly, I wish these selfish characters will stop forthwith from patronizing and politicizing the death of the innocent soul, and let Tolu's soul rest in perfect peace. Nigeria is a contradictory society with so many tenable, untenable; founded, and unfounded stories! When you have a dysfunctional system, all manner of true and untrue tales will continue to fester her entity, bringing real and imagined synopsis of stories. Tolu's accidental-death must be investigated by a neutral military panel to bring to closure her speculated death.

The family of Tolulope must also be respected to privately grieve, and bear their irreparable loss. Tolu was just like other impeccable and brilliant Nigerians who have contributed their quotas to the development of their country, and the world. She will be sorely missed as another untimely extinguished pacesetter in a clobbered nation crying for survival, liberation, and emancipation.

Tolulope Arotile came in a short period of time and conquered the beleaguered world with her ambition and aspiration. Tolulope's brief and successful career in the nation's Armed Forces should be a morale booster, moral compass, and career aspiration to young evolving Nigerians wishing to contribute to nation-building. What a great loss to waste and beautiful land struggling to identify her identity! It is psychologically painful and sad to hear the young accomplished lad's painful and untimely death! But who are we to question the inimitable power of God? God functions in mysterious ways that remain a mystery to man. God's ways are not our ways; and God's ways go beyond the human thought process and imagination.

Tolulope came in a jiffy, she saw a bleeding nation, and she conquered the conscience of a beleaguered country struggling for needless survival in the midst of plenty!

May her gentle soul rest in perfect peace, and may God give the family the strength and fortitude to bear her irreplaceable loss.

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