Anger in the Airports and Beyond

If the elites that can afford flying in Nigeria are now exhibiting such unrestrained anger, what do you think is happening with the poor, with this level of unprecedented third person induced poverty and suffering?

One is apt to ask, what do the anger at the airports portend to the health of Nigeria?

Certainly, the explosion is coming. We should not all be caught unaware. While our connected elites have shock absorbers to cushion these human brought about suffering, the poor Nigerian is left to find succour from extreme places.

My fear is that when the eruption finally splashes unto our faces, we may not be able to contain it. Their stretched shock absorbers may not be that elastic to shield them from the collective anger.

As it is now, second class citizenry has been wiped out from the Nigerian stratification since almost six years ago. Now, the coming of this government has levelled the poverty downward spiral to an almost point of no return with majority of Nigerians living on the edge of hopelessness.

What more, same government is enmeshed in how to perpetuate itself back to power in the next two years thereby closing the gates of its capacity to undo all the errors of carelessness it has become used to in running the affairs of Nigeria.

Know this, anger exhibition this much has many unpleasant intervening variables. To understand this better, one needs to appreciate the issue beyond those short videos about the events and go into deeper frame and video content analysis of the visuals.

For instance, do we all notice, in the whole videos, almost all therein were angry? Was it the pilot of the KWAM I video that accelerated plane knowing fully that people were around the vicinity of the plane? Or, was it the airport security personnel in the video of the second happenstance that were with unrestrained, unprofessional approach to airport security?

All were angry!!!

All were exhibiting palpable and bottled up anger impulses.

Therein lies our postponed dangers, if an elite that can afford flying tickets will be that unrestrained, if a pilot, that’s said to be well connected politically can be that reckless and if the airport security personnel can be violent, almost six men wrestling one lady, then one can only imagine the type of violence we’d exhibit when our streets explode.

The signs are there and they are not some happy signs. Nigerians are suffering; Nigerians are angry and worst still, Nigerians are getting poorer by the day as a consequence of elitist rough handling of the Nigerian economy.

You know what?

The blame is not only on the political elites alone. We should also look at the core ideological leanings that give credence to these ill thought out policies that perpetuate poverty circles among the majority, the neoliberal capture of the study of means of production and wealth distribution that downgrades poverty to only pieces of numbers good for statistical permutations.

The moment our political elites and their policy study base begin to see poverty, suffering, hunger and unemployment as numbers, not social maladies, then there won’t be conscious efforts to attack the root causes. Rather, what we’d have are high wire political and policy rhetorics aimed at whitewashing, window dressing and statistical realignment of the digits in order to lie with statistics.

And then, we continue to wallow without actually accepting the fact that statistics doesn’t cook tuwo da miyan kuka, neither does it bridge the widening gaps between the few omnipresent consumers of our national assets and majority poor that are just thriving to survive. Also, when the time comes, changing our poverty, suffering and hunger to statistical digits for permutations on computer apps cannot stop the mayhem.

– Dr Hashim Suleiman is a communication expert and senior lecturer, Department of Mass Communication, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria