I believe that Nigerians should develop an inquiring mindset, and ask questions… I believe we should always learn lessons from our situations and in this instance, we have loads of lessons to learn in HSE, so that such incidences reduce at least.
And so I heard that Dapo Oyebanjo, D’Banj, lost his one year old son. My subconscious kept processing the message and the verdict was that I needed more information. How does a one year old child crawl into a swimming pool and drown? Where were the adults around him? Sleeping? Frolickng? Absent? Negligent? Watching Nollywood? Well, my subconscious reported back to me that we need to ask some questions, and not just condole with the parents.
So I asked questions?
My initial comment and question was: “My sympathy with DBANJ but how can a one year old child drown in a swimming pool? Foul play? Recklessness of parents? How manage?”. When one guy said if I had ever babysat I will understand, I replied: “look at this man, after how many children of my own? My daughter turns 18 today. We’ve never had a babysitter or house girl. Swimming pool? I suspect foul play here. Maybe the parents had smoked whatever it is they smoke and were on cloud nine. Its an injustice against that child”. Verbatim.
Then all hell broke loose.
You see, there are sad people all around who are watching one’s every step. That is the price of leadership and any leader who feels too bad about it is actually not yet ready. There are people whose permanent estate in life is to be serfs, looking up to those who have elected, at great risk, to lead and make a change. They look up, not with a view to finding inspiration but with every intention of pulling down and rubbishing at the slightest opportunity. One or some of them, who are most likely benefiting financially from every government in power, chose to balloon the second comment out of context and take it to the world. I was thus cast as insensitive. A few friends reached out to say they wanted to rubbish my presidential campaign (which I haven’t yet started), and the political party which I chair. I told them nothing of such will happen.
Freak accidents will still occur, but our error-proneness is appalling as a people. We don’t have to be this fatalistic and consign everything to God. God is not an evil-doer. We should also learn First Aid. Chances are that if someone could do a CPR (mouth to mouth), that child may have been saved.
You see, dear readers, I believe it may be this way for many people but my subconscious runs far ahead of my brains. I just felt cocksure of what I had written and wasn’t ready to budge. Invariably no one had asked the question but everyone – including myself – had been condoling. Having lived abroad for the period of my masters degrees, and run a company in the U.K. for several years afterwards, my sense of propriety in this area was keen. My Sherlock Holmes mode was activated. Who was with the child? At what point did the child escape to the pool? Or was the child being taught to swim? Were any of the parents there? Questions coursed through my mind.
We are informed now, that the swimming pool is an internal swimming pool; probably the type people have in their sitting room. Everything these days is about aesthetics. now, a house where you have a swimming pool in the sitting room is not a house for a family. It’s a bachelor’s pad, where the daily activity is sex and orgies. When D’Banj became a family man, he should have remodeled. In this country, we have no idea whatsoever about health, safety, security and environment (HSE). When I ran a company in the U.K., the accreditors would check twice a year on your eligibility to operate in the U.K. What they looked out for was the heating of your office (you cannot keep staff in conditions too hot or too cold), your HSE policy boldly displayed for all staff to see, whether you had staff trained in First Aid, your fire exit policy and so on. I became wiser in the U.K., and developed a keener mind for safety.
But that is not where the story began. See, I’m a sucker for children. I love children. If it wasn’t for school fees, I will probably have more than the three God has blessed me with. My first, my daughter, turned 18 yesterday. Even when my staff have children, I insist they bring them to the office. Children are our future. When with children I study them. I’m always keen to find that inflection point; when children lose their disarming innocent and begin to suspect other people, just like their parents advised them. I believe I have a calming effect on most children. Sometimes I wish the whole world will remain as innocent as children. So if someone wants to offend me, they should offend children.
In this instant, this child cannot speak. At just 1 year 2 months, who will speak for this child. Even though dead, who will defend the child and protect our remaining children from hazard? My Nigerian brothers and sisters were however more interested in protecting the celebrities. They rained abuses and curses; I ignored these. I informed them instead that a society will be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable; children, old and infirm people, women and so on. Perhaps in that order.
Now that we have more information about what happened, and that Dapo Oyebanjo – and probably his wife – were not with the child, let me first apologise to them, for assuming they were there, though I didn’t mention any name in that comment. I apologise all the same.
I am so attached to children that I cannot take my eyes of mine. I refused to let anyone of them go to boarding school because of all the crazy things that I heard happens there. My first daughter did only one term in boarding school when she got into secondary school, lost so much weight, and made our house feel so desolate, I withdrew her. Now she’s in university, I am more prepared for it but she is in Abuja still. I will never understand how some people are so eager to throw their children to far places in this very hazardous world. This doesn’t mean I am into spoiling a child or making them soft. I want my children to observe me properly and learn the lessons I am trying to teach with my life first hand. I don’t want them to be overly influenced by outsiders. Well, thus far, it has worked for me. I believe they are fairly well-adjusted, honest, hard-working and very generous to their friends. Their mum, my wife, has also been very instrumental in making this happen.
Now that we have more information about what happened, and that Dapo Oyebanjo – and probably his wife – were not with the child, let me first apologise to them, for assuming they were there, though I didn’t mention any name in that comment. I apologise all the same.
I believe that Nigerians should develop an inquiring mindset, and ask questions. I believe we should activate that our age-old adage of our people that “even as we weep, we still see clearly”, taa ba n sunkun aa maa riran. I believe we should always learn lessons from our situations and in this instance, we have loads of lessons to learn in HSE, so that such incidences reduce at least. Freak accidents will still occur, but our error-proneness is appalling as a people. We don’t have to be this fatalistic and consign everything to God. God is not an evil-doer. We should also learn First Aid. Chances are that if someone could do a CPR (mouth to mouth), that child may have been saved. Yes, people will still die, but we have to exercise more care.
In replying, I went online to see the way this kind of incidence is treated abroad. I recall parents being jailed for leaving their children insight the car in the UAE while they go shopping only for children to asphyxiate. I found hundreds of cases of ‘child negligence’ in the western world. Who says we don’t deserve to live like those people too? How do we show that our lives matter as much as theirs?
‘Tope Fasua, an Economist, author, blogger and entrepreneur, can be reached through topsyfash@yahoo.com.
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