Nigeria today has left many people in crippling agitation. The events that occasion this feeling are the everyday experiences of hapless fellow compatriots. Kidnapping, robbery, Ponzi schemes and other nefarious dealings stare the common man in the face. So, in a country stormed by insecurity, one cannot but raise an alarm at any situation that signals an impending doom. This provides a narrative landscape for the recent altercation between an Uber driver and his passenger.
Netizens on WhatsApp took to an aggressive reposting of the report made by one X (formerly Twitter) user, Nevermind (@Big_Itohan), against an Uber driver named James Oluwatosin Ogunsanwo. The former posted that Nigerians should beware of the latter, as he uses his Uber service to provide victims to a syndicate of area-boy robbers. She went further to give details of how his indescribably faulty car is a scheme in the notorious business. However, as luck would have it, a live chat between a concerned reposter and a neighbour of James’s was leaked. In the conversation, the godsend persuasively dispelled the rumour with repulsion at the defamation of James’s character.
Whatever our evaluation of this drama may be, there is no “victor or vanquished”. In this situation, John Donne’s all-time pithy poem No Man Is an Island is timely. The closing lines of the poem, which read, “… never send to know for whom the bell tolls;/It tolls for thee,” bespeak the empathy behind Miss Nevermind’s action. Granted that she made a wrong judgement of her robbery experience in the course of her travel in Mr James’ car, her reaction was a response to what the nation has done to you and me. Nowhere is safe. No one can be trusted. And in times like this for that matter. Everywhere is precarious. And as it is believed in a street prognosis, a dangerous person does not bear the mark of their identity on their forehead. So, @Big_Itohan did what was right because the country presently teeters on the edge of insecurity. She raised the right alarm, albeit on a wrong judgment.
In the same way, those who spread the message like wildfire were right in their action. The bell tolls for everyone in today’s Naija. The message and false accusation could have been true anyway. And that single support of the finger could have saved my own family member, whose next Uber trip would have carted them to the prickling number of missing persons. In that wise, their action starkly justifies Niyi Osundare’s rhetoric in his poem Not My Business. If they had minded their own business, that most likely would have given vent to the subterfuge of road banditry. Nigeria’s insecurity issue is past taking lying low. In fact, there is logically no way anyone could have treated such a heartbreaking message with indifference. On this note, let us bury the hatchet and withdraw the boiling contempt.
There should also be an immediate dismissal of prejudice. In the presumption that the complainant is to be sued for defamation, let no one hijack the argument for ethnophobic claims. That has plagued us enough as a nation. We are quick to tender reductionist views. Our binary alternatives mentality has hampered critical thinking: it is either this or that or nothing else. But this matter on the ground is more sensitive than our parochial perception of it. We are also very obsessed with sensational stories.
Emotions should not supersede reasoning. This is not a matter of the woman fingering manhood for gender malice. That would be an outright evasion of the truth that two aggrieved Nigerians are psychologically molested by a failed system. We cannot dispute the obvious fact that this nation is toying with its citizens’ mental well-being.
An unchecked use of social media can put society asunder. We should stay conscious of that drawback and learn to fact-check every alarm raised. In the name of the cruise, issues have got out of hand. Nigerians should learn to control their emotions: not every item of news on the internet is true. To this end, the courts of the internet should temper justice with mercy. Finally, our unreserved apology goes to the transportation company whose image seems tainted.
