The
first I heard about the explosion which happened on Sunday the 15th
of March in the Abule Ado area of Lagos State was via a text message from a friend which had advised that the area
should be avoided because of a pipeline explosion. My first thought was, oh
no! Not another explosion, when will the vandals learn? To be honest, I
didn’t give too much thought to it again, I only hoped there wasn’t any
fatality of misguided people who risk their lives and die in the process of
scooping fuel. It wasn’t until very much later in the evening that I got to see
on the news, the magnitude of the explosion and I got to hear that this time,
the cause of the explosion might not have been pipeline vandalism that has come
to form part of our sad story in this country.
Picture of Emmanuel & Chisom Udoakanobi, newly married couple courtesy of Vanguard Newspaper.
Since
Sunday when the explosion happened, different media outlets have come out with
different figures/numbers of casualties and fatalities. As at this morning, the
Guardian newspaper, reported that 23 fatalities have been recorded as a result
of the explosion. Many more people got injured and are being treated at a naval
hospital not too far from the area of the explosion.
Something
I noticed though in the midst of the gloom and darkness of the aftermath of the
explosion, first in the much, (perhaps rightly?) vilified, social media, and
now in the traditional electronic media, is the fact names and faces are being
given to some of the victims of the explosion. The names we have heard and the
faces we have seen certainly are very few compared with the numbers of people
we have been told died from the explosion, but I definitely feel the fact we
have heard names and seen faces, and in fact have a story or two about a few of
the people killed in the explosion, is a starting point.
You
might wonder why hearing the names of the people killed in the explosion and
hearing their stories is so important. If you have followed events since Boko Haram started killing people en masse in Nigeria, all we are ever
given are the numbers of people killed. We were never told the names of the
dead, whether they had dreams and aspirations, and if any of them did, what those
dreams and aspirations were, before their lives were brutally cut short by
unfeeling terrorists. The story is the same with deaths recorded from
accidents, from building collapses across the country, from deaths stemming
from farmers/herders clashes etc. We never got to hear how the lives of the
loved ones they left behind changed after these deaths. All we have always been
told are numbers. No more. Just numbers that took the humanity from the dead
and rendered them as no more than mere statistics, corpses.
To
be sure, as someone who is developing a huge interest in numbers and
statistics, numbers are very important. Studying numbers and analyzing them can
go a long way in detecting problems and in knowing the kind of solution that
can be employed. However, where people are killed either by deliberate or
negligent actions or omissions to do certain important things, it is of the
utmost importance that people killed by such actions or omissions to act are
given flesh by the telling of their stories. By making their names public and
through the telling of their stories including their dreams, aspirations and
hopes for the future, we are made to realize that they may not have been too
different from those of us still living. It is only through the telling of the
experiences of the dead while they lived, that we really get to feel their loss
much the same or at least similar to the sense of loss we would feel, had they
been personally known to us. It is also through hearing their stories that we
can make the decisions individually and collectively, to be better, to do
better and to demand better from those charged with tasks which affect our
lives.
It
is in the light of the above that the celebration of the life of Rev, Sis. Dr.
Henrietta Alokha, the Principal/Administrator of Bethlehem Girls College, who
died in the process of ensuring the girls entrusted in her care by their
parents, lived, need to be commended and amplified. It is also for this reason
that we need to hear more about the newly married couple, Emmanuel and Chisom
Udoakanobi (the latter, reportedly, a first class graduate of accounting), who
were reportedly expecting their first child when they met with their untimely
deaths. It is because the people affected by the explosion are way more than
just numbers, that many of us rejoice upon hearing of the rescue of the 3 year
old Favour from beneath the rubble of buildings affected by the explosion.
It
is so we can properly mourn the loss of all those killed and sympathise and
pray for those who survived but probably lost properties and livelihoods and
for us to resolve and take action towards stopping recurrence of this kind of
tragedy that we need to hear the names, see the faces and listen to the stories
of all those killed in the explosion. We need to see the faces of the dead, so we can all appreciate that our individual actions and or inactions have consequences for ourselves as well as for others. At the end of the day, numbers are
important, but our humanity given flesh by the stories of the humans who perish
because of our actions or inactions, is way more important.
