Nigerians are a people used to shock therapy. But which each shock that lances through Nigerians, often more jarring than the last, doubts about how effective shock absorbers here are Nigerians are spike. A people now used to bad news almost round the clock have almost forgotten how to be stunned, having learnt to take the brutal blows in their stride and move forward.
If it is not of buildings collapsing to trap people in Lagos, it is of a woman horrifically slaughtered by bloodthirsty criminals in Anambra State. If it is not of dozens of farmers slaughtered in Borno State, it is of over a hundred people roast to their deaths in an illegal oil refinery in Imo State. In between, some time is still spared to pepper Nigerians with the living nightmare of some of their fellow citizens in Kaduna whose only offence was board the AK-9 train from Abuja to Kaduna on March 28,2022.
The consequences have been devastating. Over the weekend, in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, some Nigerians went from being out of bread to being out of breath. A church, Kings Assembly, had invited the public to the fourth edition of gifts and food items distribution fixed for May 28, 2022.It was an occasion to reach out to the poor and less privileged in the society, an occasion to give life. But invariably, as it always does, death, the mortal enemy of life, lurked just around the corner.
According to reports, there was a scramble to get into the venue of the event and as is so often the case with such desperate scrambles, a stampede resulted and about 31 persons were crushed to their deaths with many more left critically injured.
In the vicious scrap that the Giant of Africa has now become, it always seems there is a scramble for everything including jobs, education and money among other things. There is even a scramble to leave the country. All these scrambles have combined to tie the country in a knot of desperate struggles.
The Port Harcourt tragedy reopens wounds that have never really healed, further asking tough questions about life as it is in Nigeria. It also questions just how many people have to die in Nigeria while trying to survive, just how many people run out of breath while running after their daily bread.
It is a tragedy of epic proportions one which in the bodies of children trampled to death during the stampede holds up a mirror to the Giant of Africa so it can see the precarity of living of its 91 million poor. The tragedy also dredges up painful memories of tragic events that unfolded in 2014 during the recruitment exercise of the Nigeria Immigration Service in Abuja when 16 people were trampled to death.
Questions must also be asked about the public safety measures in place in Nigeria and the prevailing mentality which shapes the value people place on their own lives. While it is true that in the face of diabolic insecurity and relentless hunger, life in Nigeria has become as cheap as salt, at the end of the day, it is only those who manage to stay alive that can eat.
Systemic inequality in Nigeria today which sees the gap between the rich and the poor continue to widen cannot be arrested by occasionally handing out palliatives to poor people from time to time as the milk of human kindness overflows. There is no reason why the daily experience of millions of people in an extravagantly gifted country such as Nigeria should be one of desperate poverty.
If only malevolent corruption can be tamed and resources more equitably distributed, families would not have to besiege the venue of any charity event as early as 6:30 in the morning only to be crushed to death even before the day fully breaks.
The authorities in Abuja and in Rivers State can huff and puff but unless something drastic is done to check the grinding poverty passed between generations of Nigerians like some ghoulish heirloom, people will continue to die needlessly and carelessly.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
