Are you old enough to remember the days when some monumental events in your town are not reported on TV? Like those days in Jos when people threw pure-water [which is highly impure] at certain people and it doesn’t wind up on the news. That was before what we now call ‘citizen journalism’; now, it is hard to suppress the truth: Wikileaks keeps an ear on conversations in high places while the ‘Amebo blogs’ cover the rest, including the beautiful garlanded goat present marched to the bride and groom at a Lagos wedding. One is now happy that politicians are no longer being misquoted by the media; how could you plead ‘misquoting’ when the video of the whole interview (which you didn’t know was being made) is already on Youtube? On the whole, I love the life we live these days: Generals must stay awake at meetings; the lady who must scratch her bottom is obliged to first confirm that no one is holding a Blackberry around or, to be absolutely safe, that no one around has a Facebook or a Twitter account. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the GenerationTag where we tag you on everything you wish we wouldn’t tag you.
A story of is told of a man who was called by the police to come identify a body that might be his wife; the man responded: “Officer, I am a little busy right now, could you please post a picture of the body to Facebook and tag me? I would like it if she is the one” – he is of the GenerationTag I spoke about. We are the ones who discovered the ‘Tag Value’ of human misery, pain and sorrow; this is the value a youth attach to the photographic image of a human head, not right now while it still smiles, but when it is shot by a bullet or crushed by a trailer. If this imagery upsets you, I am sorry. But certain things must be said, I think.
If you have visited Facebook (also Twitter, Blogspot and wherever young Nigerians hangout these days), you might have come across certain appalling and graphic images. There is the lady with mutilated genitals (after sleeping with a monkey or maybe it was a dog); the man with testicles lying on his thigh (after the jealous girlfriend bathed him in acid), there is Cynthia in a Lagos hotel; there are even portraits of dead friends and relations starring at you. There is also the lady with all of her back burnt off after the crazy husband poured boiling water over her (and this is circulated not as part of fundraising for medical costs, but to warn off relations of the already arrested man from harming the woman). Even the gang-rape of the student in Abia got thousands of views before Youtube got rid of it. So what is it that appalls this ‘chicken brain’ that I am told I have? First that there is so much evil in our world – I mean, among young people in Nigeria. Secondly, that there is an appalling, gory and frighteningly insatiable desire for imagery of misery, pain and death among us. To say there was a tragedy in Kaduna would not do, one must upload the video and the pictures of the policeman marching to be shredded by a roadside bomb to tell the story.
When a young person looks at me across the street in Abuja these days, I wonder if they are wondering “how many people can I tag on a picture if something evil should happen to this guy right now?” And when they leave home, maybe they say “I hope I come across something real gross today to upload”. In June 2012, we were tagged in photos of the Dana plane in flames while we were still holding our breath for loved ones onboard. You can imagine my exasperation when I later read that rescue efforts were hampered by heartless onlookers (you can call them taggers too). Last weekend we were tagged again to photos and videos of 4 students being lynched in Aluu, Rivers State. Maybe it was easier for slaves – to die at sea or in some far away land unlike the Aluu Four who were burned in the community they might have proudly called their ‘hood’ or ‘area’.
Many words have been written about the barbarism of the act and I understand arrests are being made and we hope trials would come soon. But I have not heard as much about the barbarism of the photographers. To be fair, since certain things must be said, then certain images must equally be made as well. But is there any justification for photographing a man with a tyre being pushed round his neck and posting it to Facebook? One could ask the photographers what they did while this was going on; but that would be as rhetorical as asking the Jerusalem bloggers what they did while Jesus was being prepared for the cross – they passed the word about how lynching could best be done.
Maybe something is very wrong with me that I cannot stomach pain, even another’s pain. Maybe I am being escapist by seeking to deny graphic images of the evil that abound in my society. But maybe something is wrong with our society also. Maybe we are fast approaching the point where people would first snap and upload a picture before they come to the aid of victims of tragedies. We are coming to the point where the right to privacy (which is written in our Constitution) means nothing to Nigerians – there was even the man who hid under a couple’s bed to witness what they did at night.
I think that people – including the dead and the wounded for whom we must seek help, are still entitled to their privacy. If it was ever wrong to look at a man in his nakedness, then it is wrong even on the day that the people of Aluu decided to slay him. If it is wrong to parade images of nakedness, then it remains wrong even if it is on the day that the subject is reduced to a hapless corpse on the floor. Take a moment to ponder on the people photographed: what if the Police officer knows that the last memory his wife and children would have of him was not breakfast that fateful morning but, thanks to a youth with a phone, it would be the video made of him marching to and being blown apart by a bomb.
While we could not banish photographs from the registers from which we tell of our reality; we could not dispose of the humanity and dignity of the persons in our stories either. And if our response to inhumanity as happened in Aluu is simply to fish out our mobile phones, could we really be surprised that evil so abound in our communities? I lack words to convey my sadness about this barbarism, but I feel that between the Aluu Four and God, there is a tagging generation that is fast outgrowing its humanity. It is not the video of Al-Shabab beheading a man after a long ritual that would haunt some of us for years to come; it is the realization of what citizens could come together to do to one another while they make pictures of it …
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Daniel Nengak
Nengak Daniel is a Nigerian who thinks a 51.9-year life expectancy threshold in Nigeria is too low. As Nigeria celebrates its 52 anniversary since gaining independence, he thinks there is need to ensure that all Nigerians get to live to be a lot older than 52 years. Nengak Daniel Gondyi now studies International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö Högskola in Sweden. He was a Senior Programme Officer at the Centre for Democracy and Development, CDD in Abuja. He holds a Bachelor in International Studies from the Ahmadu Bello University. He reads and writes about human rights and democracy in West Africa. He loves cycling, asking questions and reading. Nengak can be reached via email on nengak.daniel@gmail.com
