THE ABULE ADO EXPLOSION, DREAMS LOST AND HUMANITY REGAINED

The first I heard about the explosion which happened on Sunday the 15^th 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.  

TERROR ATTACK IN FRANCE AND THE PRAYER FOR HUMANITY

a picture is worth a thousand words

The Friday 13th November 2015 multiple terror strikes in Paris and the resultant shows of solidarity with the French people all over the world on social media and elsewhere ignited a hot debate on social media in Nigeria.

While one group believed those changing their profile pictures on Facebook in Nigeria are hypocrites since terror attacks are a virtual daily affair in Nigeria and people do not change their profile pictures because of the terror attacks, another group felt they did nothing wrong by aligning themselves with the fight against terrorism through the change of their profile pictures.

This is of course not the first time this kind of debate will take place on social media in Nigeria. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack also in France early in the year, a lot of people showed their solidarity by using the #IAmCharlie hashtag on Facebook, twitter and other social media platforms.

Nigerian social media users are not the only ones engaged in the debate about the supposed hypocrisy of people showing their solidarity to the French people in the wake of the Friday the 13th’s terror attacks in France. People in the Middle East are also talking and protesting the apparently skewed coverage of terror attacks by Western media outfits like the CNN and BBC especially because a terror attack in Beirut at around the same time as those in France went unreported.

While it cannot be said that either of the two groups is wrong, it is a fact that the Western media downplays some news items while inundating us with everything that should or should not be known about others even while those they decide to downplay are equally if not even more important than some of those they decide to play to the hilt.

Much as we down here may want to be patriotic and feel for all those killed daily by boko haram (and others who hide under boko haram to carry out dastardly attacks), it may be a bit hard for us and the reasons are simple. Down here in Nigeria, the thousands of people whose lives have been cut brutally short by boko haram are mostly faceless and nameless. Our press, both those in the print and electronic media, perhaps does not know how to engage in investigative journalism. Perhaps they do but the cost is too prohibitive both in terms of finances and the danger to those who may seek to engage in it.

And because all we hear and read about almost daily is numbers of those killed without anybody making any serious attempt to find and interview family members of those killed or even to get pictures of them, a majority of us have, like people who work in the morgue, become “de-sensitised” to the killings carried out daily right in our backyard. I doubt very seriously that in spite of media outcry and global awareness about the Chibok girls and the on-going countdown of how many days the girls have been missing, we can find up to twenty Nigerians (outside of their former teachers and parents) who know the name of just ten of those girls.

If we don’t know the names of the girls, or have any idea how many of them dreamed of being doctors or engineers or astronauts, if we were never made to see what their lives really were before their abductions, how can we really feel a part of the pains their family and close friends have felt over the months they have been in captivity (assuming they are not the ones being used to carry out suicide bombings)?

This is however not the same for any news of terror attacks that the Western media choose to play up. For instance, it is almost certain that in the coming several days at the very least, a lot of people will get acquainted with the families and friends of most, if not all of the people that were killed and injured in the multiple terror attacks in France. We would almost certainly get to know where they grew up and what dreams they had that were cut short by the evil terror strikes. And we would get to see their faces so often that we would be forgiven if we swear we had seen them before.

It is in the light of the exposure given to tragedies like the November 13th one in France by the Western media including Facebook that encourages people to show support by changing their profile pictures that a lot of people changed their profile pictures. Those who did, I believe, would just as willingly change their profile pictures to show solidarity to those experiencing attacks in Nigeria if they are made to see that those killed are more than just numbers and were in fact people like them with dreams and aspirations even if those dreams were no more than just to wake up and go back to sleep at night peacefully every day.

Our journalists in Nigeria and indeed in Africa need to let the world know and keep its attention of the world on what goes on in this country and continent. With social media, this is not quite as difficult as it may seem.

Do we need to pray for France? Most certainly! And just as importantly, ne ween to pray for humanity and we need to pray for Nigeria to see the last of the insurgents and every single sponsor they have.