The news that could not be wished away, keeps coming back until justice is done.
In Africa ‘small’ people are the majority therefore hard to hide injustices thrown at them.
When I was in secondary school, my sister and I lived in a storey building with eight rooms upstairs and 8 downstairs. The landlord is a DIY enthusiast. He is a trained carpenter but did all aspects of building work by himself.
He was a jolly happy man with his sing-song voice greeting every passersby.
The downside to his DIY enthusiasm in a country like Nigeria was that he makes his own rules, his then 2 storey building was once a solid bungalow, he ripped off the roof to make rooms on top with less than ideal structural pillars to support extra loads.
One midnight, half of the building collapsed. Not without warnings.
Weeks prior, I have overheard on a few occasions some adult tenants pointed to the cement peeling off the front building wall exposing soggy sand inbetween the bricks – sure sign something terrible is about to happen.
Landlord assured all was well. Tenants moaned and groaned and prayed some more.
My side of the building was fine. One room to the front of the house collapsed into the bottom one – no one died. Baba Iyabo was the only one that took a while to get out of the rumble. He was bruised all over but his limbs were all in the right places.
Everyone murmured under their breath accusing the landlord but really, the old man was a product of a lawless society – he apologised for the collapse, end of.
That was the last night I slept in that building. Realistically, it is a City Jungle.
Safe yourselves when you can is the rule of thumb.
Last year September, in the process of expanding worshipers’ guesthouse of a Nigerian popular Prophet’s synagogue in Lagos, 119 people died as the existing building gave way, 80 of the victims were South Africans.
Nigerians, the only way we know – showed heartfelt concerns by raising our voices. Many called on ‘God to judge’, many defended TB Joshua as being anointed man of God who can not be touched.
Ex President GEJ visited the site, so some hoped maybe, we’ll have precedent we could reference in the future – that was a dream.
Just as anything else in Nigeria, the noise quietened in a matter of weeks. Families of the victims in South Africa not long ago were worried of having the wrong corpses when receiving their family members months after the incidence – oh well.
Now, almost a year later, TB Joshua is back on stage continuing where he left off, seeing visions of heaven and curing HIV AIDS with anointing oil, along the way are uncountable predictions of what to happen.
Some South African folks were upset about TB Joshua birthday bash held in SA yesterday to be insensitive given families are still grieving. Some see no wrongdoing. One of the victims’ brother here thinks “these people are so heartless…” at 1:10 of the video clip.
At no point did anyone has strong faith that either Nigeria or SA government would for once work together to investigate this – got to show lives of the ‘small’ people means very little.
It hurts when we read candid assessment of our continent on the web as being one big ‘jungle’ where big animals trampled on the little ones at will.
Are we not?
Folakemi 