The monumental shock and horror I felt interrupted a pleasant sleep on the night of Thursday, 20 April, 2017. Though I ceased being a football fanatic almost a decade ago after the showdown at Moscow, Russia, the fact that I detached my spirit from the game and mastered my body so that I didn’t get edgy each time I missed a match didn’t obliterate the reality that football is a great love of my life. While I may not hit the viewing centres in my shorts and branded jersey, like I used to 10 years ago, screaming my lungs out, I frequently engage in my private parties when I get the chance to see a game and let my face explode with reminiscent smiles.
I didn’t watch the game, but somewhere in the Plateau, my only brother and his friends, clad in their branded red jerseys, stormed a viewing centre and flooded my phone with pictures. They had hilarious captions for shots taken before the game and during jubilations after each goal. They wanted to immortalise an epoch-making night and they made sure their biggest football enemy (me, a Chelsea fan) was tormented. As I caught a glimpse of the Calabar tragedy, cold shivers ran down my spine. I just kept thinking about my brother and his friends who also watched the game in a viewing centre and I went berserk… 30? Electrocuted in Calabar? Those were brothers, sons, fathers, uncles, nephews, boyfriends…. An invisible but huge lump started to form in my throat as I stared into oblivion. But my sorrow was yet to begin. The day following the unfortunate incident, I read with excruciating pain for the umpteenth time, the tweet by Manchester United and fought back a bucket of tears…
The English Premier League giants, riding swiftly on alien tides barely 24 hours after the football tragedy, conveyed their condolences to Nigerian football fans. The Red Devils, on Friday, had tweeted: “Our thoughts go out to the United fans, their friends and families affected by the tragedy in Calabar, Nigeria.”
While this tragedy is gradually fading off the news in Nigeria, I am certain that the football pommies, citizens of a much saner clime, would yet be perplexed at the absurd cause of their fans’ death. Yes, it would seem unbelievable to anyone from a normal community that people could die like that, but sadly, in our nation, such deaths are the order of the day. As a matter of fact, we have become so twisted that we consider such occurrences as normal in ‘Naija’.
According to a survivor, a transformer near the viewing centre located in the Iyang-Esu area of the Calabar Municipal Local Government Area, exploded during the game causing a high-tension cable to drop directly on the viewing centre. Read his horrendous testimony as was reported by a national daily: It happened during the match between Manchester United and Anderlecht. I heard a deafening bang. I rushed out to see what was happening. When I turned back to go inside the viewing centre, I saw a cable coming down on the centre and this electrocuted the viewers in the hall.
“It was a horrible sight to behold. I wish I didn’t come out to watch the match. Come to think of it, I have DStv at home but I enjoy watching matches at viewing centres. I could have been dead. I can’t believe that the people I was chatting and joking with a few minutes ago are all gone in a most anguishing way. This world is vain.”
True, the world is vain, but Nigeria is a dingy tunnel of avoidable mishaps which, due to the gross irresponsibility that permeates it cardinals, gives a free pass to the dreadful Grim Reaper to cheaply harvest her citizens. In this country, we see high tension wires hanging precariously over houses in residential areas as if they were lines for airing laundry and no one bats an eyelid. Our leaders, from the least to the most important, couldn’t care less…after all, the FCT and Government Houses nationwide have master plans. The electrocution in Calabar is simply another of the numerous matches organised by our irresponsible leaders where the number one citizen of our nation, clad in the referee’s outfit, blows the whistle innumerable times for the Grim Reaper to take free kicks and the 36 spectators, seated on the sidelines, scream goal!
They waste our wealth and sell the souls of masses at wholesale to the Grim Reaper and sans a tinge of mortification, the throw flatulent condolence messages at the press, who propagates them by the speed of light, but are we not tired of such superfluous condolences? Death by electrocution, a stinking negligence on the parts of the various authorities involved, has been unleashing cheap deaths on Nigerians for far too long. Words will fail me to recount all of such incidences nationwide, but I am sure you have not forgotten that beautiful first class female undergraduate of the University of Lagos who was wasted about two years ago. There is a myriad of such tragedies in this country and our leaders remain unruffled.
We read about these evils in the news and we close the pages or turn off our television sets and just go on, but there are cables hanging everywhere… even over our homes! I have been sick to my stomach since I read about the Calabar electrocution. Recent reports now claim that seven, and not 30 people died, but does that salvage the situation? This is 2017. With the kind of resources Nigeria has; high tension wires shouldn’t be lurking over our heads, chilling for the next cheap harvest. Harrowingly, however, instead of these monies to be pumped into projects that will improve our living standards like creating under conduits for these wires, these monies keep turning up in buildings and most recently, burial grounds!
While I wish that my offspring will be born into a similitude of the Nigeria of my dreams, I guffaw deep inside for I am merely building castles in the air. How many more condolence messages do we need to hear to become sane?