Ifedayo Babalola

By Ifedayo Babalola

Once ranked as the happiest country on earth, Nigeria is now home to a league of tragedy merchants. Unlike what obtains in the beautiful game, however, positions change weekly on the Nigerian tragedy leaderboard based on how many are dead, injured, or kidnapped and how much destruction is wreaked to properties.
Just as teams at the bottom of sports championship tables hardly get a press mention, minor infractions in Nigeria (for example, the kidnapping of one or two people) no longer make it into our newspapers.

To be noticed these days, a disaster needs to be extensive (like the kidnapping of three busloads of people) or creative (like what we now call the Ibadan explosion). A tragedy must now evoke strong emotions to make it into our consciousness. An example of this will be the kidnapping of six siblings, and most especially if the victims are of the female gender.

The high point of the 2023 championship season took place when a bandits’ team killed nearly 200 Plateau State indigenes in the Christmas Day Massacre.

However, that is history as the 2024 season begins. In the first two weeks of this year, three busloads of passengers have been kidnapped, six sisters have been abducted, and the Ibadan explosion has happened. We have also heard of ministers playing casinos with billions of naira. What an action-packed season this promises to be!

And where are the spectators in all of these? How are the Nigerian people coping with this competition of the absurd?

The high point of the 2023 championship season took place when a bandits’ team killed nearly 200 Plateau State indigenes in the Christmas Day Massacre.
However, that is history as the 2024 season begins. In the first two weeks of this year, three busloads of passengers have been kidnapped, six sisters have been abducted, and the Ibadan explosion has happened. We have also heard of ministers playing casinos with billions of naira. What an action-packed season this promises to be!
And where are the spectators in all of these? How are the Nigerian people coping with this competition of the absurd?

The threshold for what is considered horrific by Nigerians has become relatively high. A mere thirty to forty years ago, news of a fatal motor accident would have sent Nigerians into a mournful mood. Not too long ago (for what is four decades in the lifespan of a nation), we would have reacted with shock at the kidnapping of a couple of people or if members of two communities inflicted bodily injuries on each other in a clash.

Fast forward to 2024. Bad news is competing with the national currency in a devaluation sprint race. Unfortunately, such occurrences have become two for a penny, and death is at its cheapest.

Bus loads of people may now be kidnapped. Explosions of unknown causes may reduce whole communities to rubble. ‘Bandits’ may ransack and raze villages and their residents to the ground.

What can you, as a patriotic and hardened Nigerian do? Here is what you can do: You go through the reset ritual. Pause a little, then shrug your shoulders to shake this one off, making room for the next bad news, comedy skit, or both, for they often come at you quickly.

It’s a first-in, first-out situation. There’s no need to stockpile other people’s disasters on your otherwise burdened shoulder. Yes. Shrug it off until it calls close to home.

After each of the numerous occurrences follows the predictable and choreographed aftermath. Messages of sympathy will flow into the affected state’s Government House, and there will be promises “to fish out” the perpetrators of the tragic incident. The choice of a fishing metaphor is uncanny because it is usually a string and hook exercise designed never to catch the big fish.

Then, they will instruct us to remain calm as the security services personnel are on the ground and on top of the situation. And yes! If you see anything, inform the authorities. That should do.

So, next time you encounter a group of gun-totting kidnappers on Enugu/Otukpo Road, ask them to hold on a minute so you can inform the authorities that you’ve just seen something.

Security experts will come in next. They will fill our television screens in extensive babanriga and garland our phone screens with well-cut suits. They will answer time-worn questions using words like synergy, strategically, technologically, and security architecture (a very popular one).

These wise ones will remind the government to ‘beef up’ security and employ more people in the armed forces. The gurus will counsel the police to use modern tools like drones and surveillance cameras to perform their duties. The politically conscious among them will stress, for the umpteenth time, the need for state police forces. Job done.

In the past, we revered Abuja as a federal capital city. We used to think it impregnable and that Abuja residents, being The Commander-in-Chief’s neighbours, are enviably safe. Not anymore, it now appears, as the insecurity circle closes in,
no one is immune now. Everyone is potentially either a victim or a close relation to a victim.

Beyond being directly affected is also the fear factor. In as much as you live in fear of bandits, kidnappers, or the next big bang, you are already a victim, for the most pervasive effect of terrorism is the spreading of fear, the loss of the freedom hitherto taken for granted and an enforced change of the society’s lifestyle.

Even the fortresses of the rich and influential have been breached. In case you did not know, be informed now that the location of the Ibadan explosion is a high-brow part of the city. It is a habitation of ex-ministers, professors, business moguls, and other professionals. What does that tell you?

No one is unaffected. Not even the diaspora Nigerians, most of whom have relations in the country. For example, it is alleged that one of the fatal cases at the Ibadan explosion on the 16th of January, 2024, was visiting his parents from The UK. Oh, cruel fate!

It’s no wonder that, as graphically detailed in the novel, ‘Rejected’ by Johnson Babalola, the longing for the home country weighs constantly but with trepidation on Nigerians abroad.

No one is immune.

So, next time you hear the cries of victims’ families, know that they are expressing a collective pain. They are crying for us all and lamenting the fate of a once beloved country now enmeshed in a league of tragedies.

As John Donne put it, ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’

*Ifedayo Babalola, commentator and satirist, writes from Ibadan.