25 May 2008 |
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Disasters, Crocodile Tears And The Next Tragedy Nigerians and their leaders are very good at shedding crocodile tears in the presence of disasters that ought to compel them to hide their faces in shame. In the last one month alone, there have been four major national disasters; in each instance, the country ohs and ahs and hems and haws and life continues; as we await the next tragedy. The latest tragedy is that of the needless death of 46 military officers who had just returned from Darfur, Sudan where they had served meritoriously as members of the UN Peace-keeping Force. They were traveling to their base in Borno state. Between Bauchi and Potiskum, one of the trucks conveying the soldiers had a head-on collision with a petrol tanker which allegedly lost one of its tyres. Both vehicles went up in flames. 46 soldiers were said to have died on the spot. The Tribune reported a casualty figure of 50. This was on Wednesday, May 21. Familiar story? Oh, yes, most certainly. On Friday, the remains of the soldiers were interred at the National Cemetery in Abuja. President Umaru Yar'Adua had to cut short an official trip to Arusha, Tanzania so he could attend the burial personally. In a statement, the President said: "I deeply regret that having bravely confronted and survived the hazards of service in strife-ridden Darfur, the gallant soldiers returned home only to lose their lives....". In another statement, the Vice President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan added: "Death remains an enduring paradox. If not, how can it be that men, who...risked life and limb in the defence of the honour of our nation and flag, be cut down so casually..." Indeed, there has been so much political and social correctness oozing out of Abuja, like a burst water pipe. But nobody should be fooled by the hand-wringing apoplectic. The missing line in the official dispatches is that Nigeria is just as "strife-ridden" as Darfur; the death of the soldiers is another painful reminder of the Nigerian pathos. The Vice president described death as a paradox. Well, death is certain, it is the inevitable end of all living things. It is Nigeria itself that has become a paradox. The story of Darfur is that of genocide, war and cruelty on a grand scale. Nigeria is similarly under siege. Nigeria is no less in a state of war. The enemy within is the absenteeism of the state in the discharge of its bounden duty to ensure the sanctity of human lives. The dead soldiers had survived in war-torn Sudan, only to perish in the gruesome daily war on Nigerian roads. If the enemy had been another soldier bearing weapons, they would have known what to do to defend themselves. But death came in the middle of the road, and stole upon them like a thief laying ambush for its target. Across the country, death lies in wait. To a Nigerian living inside Nigeria, the pathos is familiar. Take the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. On a daily basis, it records accidents resulting from collision between petrol trucks and other vehicles. There is even a stretch of the road at Ogere where petrol trucks line up on both sides of the road, leaving a very narrow opening for motorists. In the same location, the tanker drivers smoke cigarettes, a la carte food sellers, make fire, suya sellers play with hot charcoal. There are petrol trucks on virtually every highway and street in this country as I had indicated in "The Sign of The Times." (The Guardian, May 9). Bad trucks. Useless drivers. A negligent state. Besides, in virtually every aspect of our lives, best practices and standards are not observed and the cost is measured in terms of lost lives and properties. The 46 soldiers enjoyed the honour of national burial. The majority of the people who die daily, as victims of a failing state are unsung; their tragedy is often unreported, their corpses are left to rot by the roadside, our highways are littered with headless bodies, mangled corpses, and wreckages of terrible accidents. Every disaster ought to provide an opportunity for self re-examination and a re-assessment of existing processes. In Nigeria, this is never the case. We just shed crocodile tears and move on. Confronted with regular disasters in the aviation sector, the Obasanjo government for example, had set up a panel to look into ways of improving the safety of air travel in the country. That panel came up with so many recommendations. Today, there is no evidence that any of those recommendations is being implemented. It's been over a month now since a plane disappeared into thin air within the Nigerian space. There have been issues about the country's lack of capacity to respond to and manage emergencies, and the shortcomings of agencies such as the Fire Service and the Nigeria Airspace Management Authority (NAMA). But who is doing anything about that. Fire Service men at the Ijegun fire incident complained that the inferno was so much it could not be managed with ordinary water. They needed a certain chemical which they did not have. The petrol tanker that ran into the convoy of the soldiers from Darfur is perhaps an unmistakable metaphor. Petrol has featured in the three most recent disasters. In the Fadeyi area of Lagos, the tragedy was caused by a petrol tanker, in Ijegun, an earth mover burst a petroleum pipeline, and now the Potiskum road tragedy. Crude oil is the mainstay of the country's economy, but the country is weighed down by the curse of oil. Nigerian leaders in 50 years have not even been able to work out how to transport petroleum products without causing so much damage across the land. What riles is the fact that government is always quick to offer excuses. The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has attributed the accident involving the 46 soldiers to "poor visibility." What poor visibility? NNPC, the owner of the burst pipelines in Ijegun is blaming everyone else but itself, even if the Group Managing Director of the NNPC has publicly admitted that the laying of petroleum pipelines in Nigeria is below international standards. Fifty years after the fact, the Federal Government through the NNPC is now planning to do something about the pipeline network in the country. You can be sure this is being said because it is the convenient thing to say. The right questions are not being asked: why would a construction company attempt to construct a road on top of a pipeline? Why didn't they carry out necessary due diligence? Why didn't the Lagos state government discover the error before granting approvals? Ijegun is now deserted because more than a week later, burst NNPC pipelines are still flooding the neighbourhood with petrol. A little spark and boom... At the burial of the fallen 46 soldiers, President Yar'Adua had promised to ensure that government provides welfare assistance to families of the deceased. If he really means this, it would be so nice. But this may have been no more than a sound bite. Families of fallen officers usually have harrowing tales to tell. They are chased out of official quarters even when they have nowhere to go. They face difficulties getting their late relation's entitlements as the system rejects them.Perosn in distress in this country are routinely ignored Is there any guarantee that President Yar'Adua will keep his promise? It is hard to tell. In May 2007, the same man had promised the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that he would find a solution to their lingering feud with the Federal Government and also ensure that the sacked 49 UNILORIN lecturers were recalled. A year later, the President is yet to keep his promise. The least that can be done in the case of the 46 soldiers however, is to ensure that their wives and children are paid their due benefits without any stress whatsoever. Government officials should save their hypocritical tears for another day, and focus on how to remove all the known obstacles that continue to devalue the worth of a Nigeria life. One starting point is to identify the owners of that murderous petrol tanker on Potiskum road. And the bereaved should not hesitate to go to court to press charges. Still On Man U, Chelsea And Nigerians In a piece titled, "Manchester United, Chelsea and Nigerians" (The Guardian, May 23), I had commented on the fanaticism of Nigerian football fans and their psychotic obsession with European football. Three reports taken from the Sports sections of The Guardian, The Punch, and The Nigerian Tribune on the same day are further instructive. The Guardian story: "Five feared dead celebrating UEFA Championship final" by Aniete Akpan: "The reckless manner with which Nigerian fans celebrated the victory of Manchester United in Wednesday's UEFA Champions League Final has claimed no fewer than five lives in Calabar. The fans died at various locations in the city in the build-up and post-match celebrations of the game that took place in Moscow, Russia. At about noon on Wednesday, thousands of supporters of the two English clubs trooped into the streets of Calabar adorning the familiar red and blue colours of Manchester United and Chelsea FC, singing and dancing. They mounted giant loud speakers on the vehicles they used for the campaign while the supporters hanged dangerously on various cars they used for the rally.... Literally the streets were painted red and blue and the enthusiastic supporters on motorbikes and cars drove dangerously, performing several displays and manoeuvres that led to loss of lives and injuries. The Guardian gathered that three Chelsea fans in the reckless rally were involved in a fatal accident at IBB Highway, by Otop Abasi. Two of them died while one sustained serious injury. Similarly, another two Chelsea fans wearing blue jerseys on a motorcycle collided with a truck. The two died instantly7 at the Army junction. A Manchester fan sustained serious injury in an accident along Mount Zion Road.. while another of its fans had one of his legs cut off in another accident along Calabar Road.....A football enthusiast and businessman Armstrong MIchael decried the reckless celebration saying the government has to put a stop to it. The Punch in its "United's victory brings sorrow to Abuja fans" wrote that "Multiple accidents along the Ahmadu Bello Way in Abuja on Thursday left many football fans in sorrow following the Manchester United's victory over Chelsea in the UEFA Cup Final on Wednesday.... According to the News Agency of Nigeria barely an hour after the final whistle, some excited fans were involved in accidents which left their carts in serious damages.,,." The Tribune story is titled "7 die in Ibadan, Port Harcourt - 2 injured in Calabar, Man Utd/Chlesea fans clash in Ibadan. Indeed, all the Nigerian fall-outs of the UEFA Champions League Final match in Mosocw, are scary. In Ibadan, one Man U supporter was shot dead. In Port Harcourt, an over-excited supporter slumped and died. In Mushin, Lagos, we have since learnt that there was a shoot-out after the match between Man U and Chelsea supporters. Nigerians are a peculiar brand of extremists. Nobody has slumped or died in Europe because of the UEFA Cup final. Not in Britain. Not in Germany. Not in Spain. Not anywhere else. We have not heard of riots between Man U and Chelsea supporters on the streets of Russia or London; surprisingly the famous English football hooligans did not misbehave either before or after the match. The English and other Europeans have moved on with their lives since May 21, but on the streets of Nigeria you can still find young men and women, wearing Man U jerseys. They have even started talking about a likely friendly match in Abuja between Man U and the Super Eagles or between Man U and Enyimba FC. So what is all this about gun-battles in Lagos and Ibadan because of a football match in Europe? This is clearly a case of dying one's indigo a shade darker than the celebrant's. And it is a familiar story. In the 1960s, for example, there was a popular American dance style called Twist. It soon caught on globally and Nigerians also started dancing Twist. In the United States, nobody died Twisting on the dance floor, but in Nigeria, people started slumping on the dance floor and dying; our people managed to turn an otherwise graceful and stylish dance movement into something suicidal as they twisted themselves to death! And most recently, when a Danish cartoonist was accused of having offended Moslems with a certain irreverent cartoon, nobody died in Europe as a result of that cartoon. There were protests across Europe yes, but all within the scope of decency. In Nigeria, churches and mosques were burnt by Moslem and Christian warriors, people were murdered on account of a cartoon that nobody had seen. No Nigerian newspaper had published the controversial cartoon; most of the gladiators did not even know what they were fighting for. The obsession with English and European football among Nigerians may well become a national security issue. The solution is not as Armstrong Michael suggests, to ban the celebration of football victories. The thing to do is for the police to begin to arrest football hooligans, and step up security on match days. At the moment, the police treat football-related violence with kid gloves, if they themselves are not busy taking sides.. Public enlightenment may also be necessary to remind the Nigerian football fan who is ready to die for Man U, or Chelsea, Arsenal, Portsmouth etc, that sports should be about fun and friendship, not hate and violence, or suicide.
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