You can forgive anyone out there who is still wondering what the big Naija fuss is with Facebook’s response to the Paris attacks. If your compatriot founded a popular social media platform and its being misused, you are qualified to mull over inanities. Until Liebaron Maku revealed to us that President Jones brought Facebook, we were all living in illusion. Once it was revealed, it became clear that the celebrated Mark Zuckerberg works for him and by corollary, the rest of us. This is why it’s so great to come from Naija, the greatest country in the world.
This is why most of us live on Facebook. We pay homage to Facebook before we do to God who we love with all our lips. On the platform, we share our meals with friends anywhere in the world instanta; apology to Chief Zebrudaya Okorigwe Nwogbo alias 4:30. It is the platform where we showcase our new dress and our new looks to the adulation and approval of our friends and the consternation of haters.
Facebook is not just a social media that we proudly own, only last week, sinnate president; Bukola Saraki discovered that his fellow dinosaurs are unpatriotic because they do not know how to use Facebook. They’re now enrolled in Facebook 101 classes. Again, non-faculty members of this corps of unabashed narcissists have the temerity to query the rationale behind its introduction. For me, this balances the equation – President Jones brought Facebook to Naija, Saraki brought it to the Irrational Assembly; to quote a contested football commentator – this is a one-one goalless draw.
So after President Jones informed us that terrorism is a global phenomenon and that we in Naija should learn to live with it rather than combat it, Facebook began to research their role in it all. They introduced a safe button that can be activated by anyone within a terror zone to alert their cyberkinfolk of their safety. With the Paris siege, they introduced a widget allowing anyone so willing to drape their profile picture in the French national flag in solidarity with a besieged humanity. It was not as compulsory as BVN; user could just – waka pass, except in a dynamically indolent country whose people moan over idiocies ad nauseam.
We, vicarious directors of Facebook would have none of this. With Jese tragedy, Ejigbo, Odi, Zaki Biam, Chibok, Damboa, and Gamboru on our watch, how dare them? Africa had Mali’s Timbuktu, Kenya’s Garissa and shopping gate mall, Burundi has Nkunrunziza and Egypt had Arab Spring. Where does Zuckerberg start from in a continent where we eat crisis for breakfast, tragedy for lunch and disorder for dinner? If our manager did not start from us, he was being partial. They should not have tested the widget on a country where one vehicle collision with no life lost makes headline news while we debate if girls were missing from Chibok.
Naija people are usually very proud of their inventions, except mathematics. Who is Opeyemi Enoch? His name does not ring bells because most of us proudly failed mathematics. That is why we can talk about billions everyday without a clue how many thousands make a million. Forgive us too, because, most of us would never make millions in our lives except the Naira overtakes Mugabe’s dollars. We are content with gari on the table, okrika behind our backs and a thatched-roof over our heads and no sickness in our bones. Let Dangote worry about how to make more.
Enoch, a Kogi-born (yes o) teacher, (sorry, I meant lecturer) of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (Oh no Digbolugi Fayose again!) has solved a 156-year-old Riemann Hypothesis adjudged as the most important problem in mathematics. With his brains, he has joined Dangote and Yemi Osinbajo among those whose monetary value is denominated in dollars! The difference is, I hope he has no siblings at home who could plot a kidnap just for a bite of his million. Dr. Enoch is one of those few Naija who did not tell Mathematics to solve its own problems because we have our hands full with ours or to report the missing value of X to EFCC. He helped maths solve its problems and found good value for his efforts. Unfortunately, he is unlikely to get Sai Baba’s attention or this year’s national merit awards except he gets an APC card.
Our grouse with Zuckerberg is deeper. Some of us are closet terrorists who bay for blood because someone without an idea of our date of birth called us bastards. We blame Zuckerberg but are more concerned about one Palestinian or Israeli child dying than a Chibok girl. We would excoriate Oby Ezekwesili for standing with #BringBackOurGirls campaign and not Biafraud. We would kill an innocent trader in Sabon-gari to avenge the sins of a Danish cartoonist whom the poor victim has never heard. Deep down, it is not about Facebook widget or the value of life, it is about our warped notion that if Charlie Hebdo thrives in France; it deserves any calamity unleashed on its inhabitants -we’re just not bold or coherent enough to say it. If you’re not happy with Facebook, close your account and start living!