I school in Ilorin, a reasonable stretch of distance from Offa. But this absence of proximity is not enough to immunize my consciousness against the knowledge of the tragic incident - an incident that is a testament of all the credulous sicknesses that afflict this country: porous security, anomie, and pathetic illusion of statehood.
The proportion of this killing should normally, in a place devoid of a culture of unmitigated violence against the masses, excite a poignantly visceral and logical response. But the converse is the case as the incident is agonizingly struggling for attention in the dual spheres of human interaction - the physical and the virtual.
Armed robbery in daylight, spanning for a number of hours. People are not talking about it. A number of policemen were murdered. No hasgtags online. Banks were robbed and some people's monetary trust is violated. No official presidential/governor statement. These people killed are inconsequential. Yeah, yeah. Do these people not belong to a strata of the society that does not deserve governmental empathy and protection? Who are they? How weighty are their surnames? Fuck them, both in life and in murder, the government says so in silence.
Why is Offa (which I have chosen to mistake for Offal which the devil chose to dine on on that day) not in public discourse? What are we even discussing right now? What is current staple on the internet, please? Tell me.
My deduction so far is that our society has evolved into a final destination of stolidity; it is now pathetically stoical. We relegate a tragedy, which if it happened in another country would have occassioned a global condolence Olympics and seminal response to this, because we cannot extract any political or tribal calculus from it. If it happened elsewhere, we Nigerians would be the champion of humanitarian hypocrisy, dying our clothes indigo more than the bereaved.
What everyone should learn from this is that we are not yet a people of conscience and our humanity is conditional. It is rather a gift than moral obligation.
I am greatly disturbed because a society that has lost its primary concern for the lives of the common people is a dangerous one. We live in dangerous time, I tell you.
Written by:
Ope Adetayo.
