THE BLOOD STAINS ON OUR NATIONAL FLAG. By Hon Segun Olulade
In August 2015, three American citizens Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler were on a train in France when they heard gunshots. With brazen display of courage, Skarlatos suddenly shouted, “Get him,” Stone jumped out of his seat to tackle the gunman, with his two friends and support from fellow passenger, a British consultant Chris Norma. After wrestling with the attacker, the four men managed to restrain the gunman, saving hundreds of lives in the process.
The then President of France, François Hollande honoured the men for their heroic act shortly after the August incident. In September, President Barrack Obama invited the trio of Americans to the White House. He referred to them as, “the very best of America.”
Stone, Skarlatos and Sadler had the choice to simply run for their lives and escape the gunshots unhurt, leaving hundreds of other passengers at risk of being shot dead by the assailant; but they chose heroism, saved the people around them who were just co-passengers, not their friends nor family members. The incident did not even occur in America, and most vulnurable targets were non Americans. But the values placed on the sanctity of lives is an inherent lessons of every ideal society, not only to Americans.
Nations have gone to war with another in revenge for the killing of their own citizen; nations have paid heavy ransom just to save one life; in ideal societies, security men have gone out of their ways risking everything to save fellow citizens. “Police is your friend” is true to the letter in a good society. But a drunken police in a sick society is more attracted by the value of a stipend than the life of a human being.
The headlines here lately are riddled with announcement of scores of deaths. Before the appearance of the terrorists, mass killing was considered a monumental loss for the nation, and treated with extreme mourns. Nowadays, the veins carrying the sanctity of life seem to be running dry in everyone. Even when forty people are killed in a community, it doesn’t sound like a breaking news anymore. Why did we chose to cope with avoidable ugly situation?
It is already a state of emergency when citizens no longer know the greater danger between a policeman and armed bandit; when emergency patient in the hospital lie critically at the mercy of a Doctor who the state still owes salary for few months, making the patient see a faster passage to the eternal life through the stethoscope of a Doctor.
When sick patient is afraid to buy drug from accredited pharmaceutical outlet for the fear of consuming fake drugs that can send him to early grave; when intelligence information is given away for a price; or when safing the life of a dying man on the road is considered unsafe in itself, then human security becomes traded for insignificant prices.
The value accorded the life of a dog elsewhere has suddenly become greater than what we place on human here.
A guest on a radio programme once said that the number of deaths in Zamfara is far more than that of Maiduguri, unknowingly to the public. The image of mass burial are now commonly shared on social media with intense apathy. Rather than saving lives, many resolve to taking videos of dying fellow man for fun.
Where did we throw the values of brotherhood which is the core practice of our motherland? Within 53 years of Singapore’s independence, it moved upward from third world country to a competitive first world country, and apparently the safest country in the world today. In Singapore, it is illegal for a citizen to own a gun.
In China, it is illegal to kill a fellow human being, the judgement is simple, death in return without prolonged court process. Life is valued as the ultimate posession of everyone that can not be replaced, and that is a fact!
My findings revealed that the killings and decadence became intense as our politics got more sophisticated. Most killings are politically motivated rather than being ethno-religious. It all gone wrong when the elites and political class will do anything to get their economic and political ambitions fulfilled at the instance of poor citizens who are often recruited and charged against one another.
The old mutual co-existence which was the bedrock of our greatness as a nation has been killed at the alter of selfishness and greed; our peaceful togetherness has been shattered; peace was perforated thereby leaving room for injustice, greed, and subsequently a space for inhumanity. The lack of peace and unity at the tail of our national anthem was caused by disrespect for freedom of one another which was hitherto the basis for tranquility.
In any case, my worry is that any society that detriorate to the extent that life is seen as mere object with little or no value is in a severe state. We must own back what belongs to us and the upcoming generations of our genetic successors.
We must build a nation like Singapore that got her independence six years after ours; we must see model in Malaysia which came to extract palm crop here and later became highest exporter of palm oil; we must quickly see Rwanda climbing upward in her glory gradually with sound policies in spite of her horrific memory of genocide. It is no time to play and assume this is a normal process to undergo unto greatness, no!
We must have challenges as a nation, but our challenges must be seen as propelling us towards our collective destiny of a nation filled with hope and glory, not a nation drifting backward by its history. I can’t agree less that the future is Africa. But most importantly, we must understand that the future can not reside in a lay-back country that is yet to take off speedily as required by the demand of this age.
We will get there, but first we must start to see every life as sarcosant to our greater future!
Olulade is a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, representing Epe Constituency II