We read it in the newspapers and magazines. We saw the spectacles of nightmare on television. We followed the ominous buzz on the internet. We knew a tragedy was upon us. It was not the sort that humans made, but humans had to save.
We could not live down the horrors of the story. Floods came in savage majesty, water levels levitated with the arrogance of height, lapping highways, humbling roofs, topping and toppling trees. Villages succumbed, towns shrank to the size of puny hamlets. Lush vistas ruined by rush of water. People fled, but not always fast enough. Nature is no friend of surrenders, not partial to escapes. Many died in the swash of its cruel journeys. It invaded homes, swept out privacies, pulverised memories.
Memorabilia of ancient remembrances were gone, hostages to the pitiless appetites of watery graves. Water, water everywhere but not a home to save.
Suddenly boundaries shattered. Water did not keep its contracts. River and land collapsed into each other. Where cars glided, canoes tumbled. Where children frolicked, fishes flourished. Where humans slept and sat at dinner, crocodiles and hippos swaggered with jaws. It was the definition of chaos, and an omen for the end of life. Homes of high and low fell. No bodyguard or military hardware could guarantee the integrity of the first private home in Otuoke, nor that of the subaltern farmer in Anambra State. It was a democracy of plunder, the equality of tragedy, the impotence of hierarchy.
Who would not have contemplated apocalypse, when all of a sudden water rushed from its appointed place and came, sheets after sheets, roars after roars, threatening, shattering in endless arrays of conquests. Within 24 hours, we had refugees. This was not the aftermath of the Jos bloodsheds nor the Boko Haram rampages. It was nature, in its unthinking might, coming in incarnations of human disarray. It came not with guns or bombs, not with nozzle to aim or eyes to gloat, but with a malice of its own.
When all of these happened, in as many as 24 states, I had a feeling of surrender. Much has been written about President Goodluck Jonathan’s late response, how he was in New York selling investment to Nigerians who followed him from home.
But the story of flood is that of a failure of Nigerians as a people. We lamented privately, but on the whole we have done too little. As I write, many people cannot go home. Even when the water dries or returns to its natural course, home will not be the old home. Existentialist philosopher Heidegger wrote about home as the ultimate sum of all human effort. These people were dislocated. When they return, they will begin a new search. But this is not the time for philosophy, for abstract sympathy.
African society is noted for its sense of communal empathy. But we have little of that now. Where are the rich among us? Other than Aliko Dangote who rolled out a huge sum of money, I have not seen much from private citizens. This is the time for corporations to show their responsibility to society. In spite of the huge profits of the banks, oil firms, and telecom giants, we see tokenism. They are quick to spend money on Nollywood impresarios, social conceits and concerts of vanity.
Where is all that money politicians pay to help their ambitions and acolytes? It is time to turn the loot to charity. Where are the churches? I observed that they reacted to the refugees from Boko Haram torments with great mobilised materials and money. Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) worked up the brotherly love of members. But the flood had no sectarian friend. The foe was humanity. The churches have done little. They can expend billions in expensive schools built with the poor’s tithes, but they have not risen to the needs of neighbours in various camps and schools in Delta, Anambra, Rivers, Bayelsa, Kogi, etc. A few churches have given some help in the affected areas. But what did their mega pastors in Lagos do, in spite of the massive resources at their command? The Muslim brothers too have not shown any better love.
When hurricane sacked Louisiana in the United States less than a decade ago, America rose up in a flush of cooperative help. Churches, nonprofits, individuals poured into the area. They bore materials and haloes of hope. Our state governments not affected by the tragedies have acted as though grateful for the beneficence of nature for not enlisting them for these apparitions of torture.
The Red Cross and a few other groups have helped. In my conversation with the head of publicity, Nwakpa O. Nwakpa, I learned of the limitations of the body. Of the over 130,000 Nigerians displaced, they have resources to help a small percentage in 10 of the 24 states. The Red Cross needs to be commended for their work of love. Of states affected, two governors have stood out in the work. They include Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan of Delta State and Peter Obi of Anambra State. They have been mobilising people to bring relief to the displaced. If for its symbolic value, Gov. Uduaghan paddled a canoe. I thought it was quite an amount of risk. In the ambience of crocodiles, I wonder what the presence of guards around him could have mustered if the scaly beast lurked. They operate with stealth and could have surprised from under a canoe. So Uduaghan’s effort was not only symbolic but an exercise in understated gallantry.
When the Bible tells us the story of the first great flood, God provided the ark for Noah. We don’t need a physical ark today. The ark is the love we can give. Why are people not flooding the places with the little they have, a widow’s mite mentality? We don’t have to be wealthy to give, we only need to empathise. Why can’t our musicians mobilise and do concerts in affected camps for free? Americans did the We Are The World concert for the starving children in the Horn of Africa. As Chinua Achebe records in his controversial There was A Country, a concert kindled sympathy for the starving children in Biafra. It is not that we don’t have it. Good leadership can light the quiet candles in our souls.
In a recent visit to Ekiti State, I witnessed the efforts of first lady Bisi Fayemi who extends the Governor Fayemi’s social security programme with a food bank project. You want to see the joy in the faces of the poor as they took possessions of their bags containing food items. I wondered how the trickster would not replace the needy. Mrs. Fayemi assured me that a system of supervision guaranteed its integrity. Fountain of Life Church provides free lunch in a part of Lagos.
Cash nexus and the individual ethos of the city have robbed us of the Noah’s Ark. We need to return to the compassionate society, to revive the village ethic and cooperative élan of our forefathers. We don’t need a flood to remind us. If we are faithful in little things, the national reflex will rise up to big occasions like the present disaster.
