Mystery surrounding figure five

There seems to be something mysterious about the figure five or numbers ending in five. A few days ago I realised it was June 3, so I called my brother-in-law, to talk about his narrow escape from the disaster which occurred at circle in 2015.

It is a date that reminds the family each year of the goodness of the Lord every year since the incident. My brother-in-law had been standing and chatting with some friends at one of the shops that got burnt less than an hour before the incident happened.

Therefore for us as a family, we cel­ebrate that day as a day of deliverance of one of us even as we sympathise with those who lost loved ones in that fire disaster. Later on after I finished talking to my brother-in-law and was reflecting on the incident and issues around it, another incident early on in that same year, came to mind.

The incident had to do with an air disaster in Europe and I began won­dering if the number five in the figure 2015, had something to do with it.

Reports came through that a Lufthansa flight from Barcelona in Spain, flying to Germany, had disap­peared from the radar around the Swiss Alps and that a search was being organised to try and locate it.

The result of the search established that the aircraft had crashed. What is even sad about this incident are the issues that led to its occurrence. Investigations conducted after the crash revealed that, it was deliberate­ly caused.

It was revealed that, the pilot steeped out of the cockpit to go to the washroom. The co-pilot locked the door so no one could enter the cockpit without him opening it.

He then proceeded to set the air­craft on autopilot to crash the plane. When the Pilot realised that there was something wrong with the plane he rushed towards the cockpit, only to realise that it was locked.

He banged on the door to no avail. They tried contacting the co-pilot but he would not answer. Nothing in this world will be more painful than to see death coming and being helpless to prevent it. They could do nothing until the plane crashed.

A former girlfriend of the co-pilot revealed later to the investigators that he once told her that one day, he would do something that the world will forever remember his name. It came out later also, that he was told by his Doctor not to fly a plane again until his medical condition improves.

Apparently he had a mental prob­lem but he kept it to himself and his employer never knew anything about his condition and he sadly killed high school students, about 60 from the same school, returning home from an educational tour in Spain.

This is one thing I have been praying against and I can imagine the grief of the parents of these students who tragically lost their lives.

In 2005, there was Hurricane Katrina which brought in its wake such a huge devastation in the United States. In that same year, an earthquake oc­curred in Kashmir resulting in over 86,000 people losing their lives, again note the last digit of the figure 2005.

I am therefore inclined to believe that we need to intensify prayer this year, 2025 to avert disaster. History has a way of repeating itself. Until I grew up, especially at the second­ary school level, I wondered why we should study history and that apart from it being a reminder of dates on which certain events occurred, there was really no use for it.

I now know better that it is the basis for forecasting future events. Our teachers did not help us by not telling us the importance of history, maybe I would have become the National

By Laud Kissi-Mensah