How not to save poor Nigerians

Abimbola Adelakun

Success Adegor is the latest face of Nigeria’s poverty-porn, a
tale that excites as much as it outrages. Success became a
sensation, the Nigerian Malala Yousafzai who wanted to risk
flogging so that she does not miss a Mathematics examination.

Her story – and that of other viral Nigerians – is relevant for
evaluating the worth of the feral nature of outrage, emotionalism
and knee-jerk responses in the age of social media. We seem to be
getting better at summoning the necessary indignation to react to
these viral videos, but that is about how far it goes. We are not
doing enough to follow these stories to a reasonable
conclusion.

Recorded without parental consent, Success’ defiance and desire
not to miss a minute of learning got the attention of celebrities,
other Nigerians, her local government honchos and the state
governor. Consequently, her fortunes swelled beyond what might have
been imagined if the viral video had not been made. Even the state
government was forced to pay attention to the sham they pass off as
“free education” in Delta.

Success is the latest in the series of Nigeria’s poorest who
have recently been saved from Nigeria’s mal-management, thanks to
the power of social media to amplify issues and play on the most
primal part of us. Less than a year ago, there was Tajudeen Ibrahim
Agbabiaka, a five-year-old from Ibadan, Oyo State, whose video went
viral because of his inability to use the English language. There
is even one Ugochukwu Ibere, a selfless young man hawking sausage
in traffic, who gave his wares to court-bound prisoners entrapped
in a baking Black Maria in Lagos traffic.

Tajudeen, like Success, was showered with gifts by other
Nigerians, met his state governor and was adopted by the state with
promises of academic scholarship. Ugochukwu’s generosity paid off.
The last time we heard of him, the manufacturers of the sausage he
gave to the beleaguered prisoners had not only stocked a shop for
him to sell their products, but also paid two years rent. In
addition to those, I can give at least a dozen other examples of
Nigeria’s poor who have been exhibited with varying diseases and
needs on social media. The stories are all curated to appeal to the
angel of our beings. The parents or sponsors do not just beg for
help; they wear countenances that tug on every string in our
hearts.

Many kind-hearted Nigerians, of course, respond, and for the
most part, that is where the story ends. Most people hardly bother
to find out how much was collected; if it was dispensed on the
needy in a sustainable manner or what became of the person after a
year or two. What seems to matter to donors is how they are swayed
by the narration of suffering and the immediacy of response to save
this one person from Nigeria and her many problems. There is often
no strategic or long-term interest in saving the person.

Each time Success’ and Tajudeen’s stories occur, some people
manage to look beyond the mushiness these sensational stories
generate and point to the larger structural problems that created
them. They have been the ones to call out the Delta State
Government when it hastily suspended the head-teacher of Success’
school, as if they just woke up to realise that those kids were
schooling in a pigsty! Where were they when the roof and windows
became so decrepit that the elements had a fair game on the kids?
What moral grounds do they have to blame anyone when they run a
school like Okotie-Eboh Primary School 1 in Sapele Local Government
Area? The abandonment of the school by the relevant authorities is
symptomatic of other public schools in the state. And, for the
record, Delta is one of the wealthiest states in Nigeria.
Paradoxically, they also have some schools with infrastructure as
ignoble as some of the poorest countries in the poorest regions of
the world.

None of the grandiose promises and platitudes fed the public via
the opportunistic photo-op and public relations mileage they got
with Success Adegor changes the reality of millions of other
children who have no choice but to attend such hovels called
schools. Tajudeen’s startling illiteracy did not elicit an urgency
to develop a sustainable policy that will boost early child
education statewide and take children like him back to school.
Instead, the Oyo State Government responded to the social media
hysteria and made him an icon of their administration’s
good-heartedness.

Let me first acknowledge this: When we all fall over ourselves
to save that one child from Nigeria, it makes a difference to that
child. However, in the long run, the good we do is not good enough.
We allow governments who have long abdicated their responsibilities
to take advantage of the emotional rush of those viral stories,
swoop in to save the day and walk away after playing the hero.
Nothing gets resolved eventually. We may get some moral and
psychological gratification from donating to individual causes, but
we are not saving the poor. We might even be making things worse
for those at the centre of our generosity. None of these projects
are sustainable in the long run. After the cameras are turned off
and all the do-gooders go home, the poor will have to face the
reality of living on the pedestal we put them. Some years ago, the
buzz was all around Olajumoke Orisaguna, the bread-seller. The
aftermath of that moment has perhaps turned her story into a
sociological study of how the rich should not save the poor.

The gift economy, through crowdfunding, that Nigerians bestow on
the chosen few is by no means unique. All over the world, people
give to such causes. Thanks to technology, philanthropy is now
cheap. We no longer need a single wealthy hero to save the day; we
can all use our electronic devices to wire money. In the wake of
the Christchurch terrorist attack, more than $11m have been raised.
They collected the sum by bypassing traditional charity
organisations who have institutionalised alms-giving. In the USA,
the cost of health care is so prohibitive that people without
insurance go online to beg for donations to pay their hospital
bills.

While the practice is global, those of us in societies where
basic infrastructure are virtually non-existent need to be wary of
sentiment mongering. Countries that have social and physical
infrastructure guaranteed can afford to give to single causes. For
Nigeria, unfortunately such efforts can paralyse us. Rather than
deploy our civic energies to advocate structural reforms, we all
merely shower one person with gifts and move on. Those that have
been most guilty of saving one child at a time – the tribe of the
elite, the rich, and the so-called “social media influencers” – are
folk with enough gravitas to advocate for better conditions for
Nigeria’s poor. They should not fritter away their social influence
by doing the least possible. If the Delta State and Oyo State
governments could react to Success’ and Tajudeen’s videos, it means
they can also respond to social pressure to make more meaningful
gestures at sincere reforms.

There are times I wonder if the manner we give to causes like
Success and co is also not an indication of our growing pessimism
about the state of the society. Nigerians, it seems, are hoarse
from regularly shouting about their living conditions and have
accepted that some things are not going to change. They want things
to be better, but they also despair because they do not see a
defined path to the resolution of Nigeria’s situations. They are
probably so jaded by the seeming intractability of these problems
that they have resorted to saving Nigeria one child at a time,
especially ones that go viral.