Ibe Ikwechegh
‘Mummy calm down’ became a sensation in 2020, when a video surfaced on social media of four-year-old Orefeoluwa Babalola, desperately and passionately pleading with his mum Tolu Babalola to spare him from ‘torture’. The child with tears rolling uncontrollably down his face, his body convulsing in fear and with apprehension so clear in his eyes, and finding no possibility of intervention from any other human nor from the gods, advocated intensively for himself and at a point tried to negotiate what could be a ‘truce’ in the rational belief, even in his tender heart, that it was necessary for mummy to ‘calm down’ and perhaps take a sober reflection on what was obviously an abusive situation.
When this video surfaced, we never joined Ore to call the mother to reason and by that, extend our call to other abusive parents to ‘calm down’ and take a better perspective on the dangers of child abuse. We did not find it a good occasion to warn abusive parents of the damage abuse does to children’s psyche and general well-being. We did not care that such episodes produced in our children, low self-esteem. It was not important to us that abused children grow up with increased fear and distrust nor was it disturbing that such children find it difficult to maintain healthy relationships since they find those who should protect them as potentially dangerous. We cared not about the traumatic disorders, which like shadows, follow such children.
But here were the things we did; we shared the videos with friends and loved ones to amuse and entertain them. We thought of the potential of commercializing the ugly episode. Ore, most likely, did not get any evaluation for post-traumatic stress nor any form of rehabilitation but it was rather reported that he got a role in a movie so that he could further entertain us even at the risk of suffering a constant reminder of his abusive childhood. It was also reported that a governor was magnanimous to reach out to Ore but certainly not for any recondite reason.
Then, a few years after all this drama, it is now reported to us that Ore’s mum has taken her life. When the video she made of herself abusing her own child is placed side by side with this new fact of suicide, only a highly pretentious person would refuse to admit that in hindsight the video provided corroboration that Ore’s mum was troubled. And so we have with us a video pointing to us a child living in an abusive condition and a mother deeply troubled and begging to be helped and yet we failed to apprehend either of these impending tragedies.
In the August 2018 edition of this magazine, we wrote an article titled ‘What the law doesn’t know about suicide.’ In that article, we pointed out that like some oxymoron, the law allows us to omit to take all necessary steps to preserve life, to clothe the body or to medicate for illnesses but prohibits a positive step to end our lives. After showing that the law, in criminalizing suicide, does miserably seem to have indistinct lines of passivity and activity, but sees suicide as behaviour, we argued that that in so doing, the law fails to take into account that people who commit suicide pass through the process of darkness, despair and resolve. So while the law unproductively focuses on effect and response, it has remained blind-sighted to the causes of suicide and because of that, the law may remain ineffectual in addressing the problem of suicide. We then submitted that the law must apprehend the moral, social, psychological, and philosophical underpinnings of the problems of suicide and create institutions of help and succour.
It is the dearth or ineffectuality of such institutions of help and succour, the lack of sensitivity of the government and of the people on matters of suicide and other welfare issues in general, coupled with this recent tragedy that has provoked, once again, many questions.
Asking one to calm down is often heard among adults in settings of argument but more especially in friendly banters. It is not a language of children. Was there a possibility that little Ore would have severally heard this type of plea from his father, asking his mother to back down from some threat of violence or even a mere tirade? Is it not within reasonable imagination that Ore’s mum had occasionally been struck with bouts of loss of her mind for which asking her to calm down was a tactic to which Ore had become accustomed? How come we did not see in that infant’s eyes that he was an abused child who perhaps constantly lived in the fear of imminent harm to himself, so much so that out of the exigencies of his peculiar condition, he had developed for himself a skill for negotiating out of violence?
Why did the mother find such eerie pleasure in the child’s agony, which was sustained for minutes in the video we all watched and which for a child in distress must have seemed like ages? We know that African mothers spank children, yet it is one of those things that we do as parents but always wish we did not have to. Why was that episode so pleasurable for Ore’s mum, so much so, that she held a camera in one hand, threatened violence with the other hand and with the rest of her body language, emotionally tortured her own child and still had the atrocious nerve to post the video for the world to see.
What was the recording for? Was it for the entertainment of the public who will share in this sadistic pleasure or was she making a home video with which to entertain herself from time to time? The comedian, Mr. Macaroni, would have asked her, ‘Are you normal? And how come, we did not learn from that video that Ore’s mum was passing through darkness and despair, a precursor for suicide? Maybe that was not too obvious. What society would watch with ease such strong evidence of child abuse and rather than take remedial steps, watch and share for pleasure? What governor of any state will watch such a gory video and against contacting the relevant offices, the police, the welfare department and other relevant authorities, stretch his hand beyond his state to make the event a heroic one? Where then is the disincentivising for such occurrences?
Neil Postman in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, drew comparisons between George Orwell’s predictions in his book, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Arnold Huxley’s Brave New World Revisited. Orwell had more or less predicted a ‘Big’ government and its negativities that as a tool for manipulation and oppression would among other things, deprive its citizens of information and control people by inflicting pain. Drawing a comparison between this Orwellian nightmare and the then-obscure predictions of Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World, Neil Postman wrote:
“…. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance…Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions…In nineteen eighty-four…people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.” Neil Postman then concluded his thoughts that Huxley and not Orwell was, after all, right.
The truth is that today we have so much information at our disposal. The traditional media cannot by any means keep speed with social media. Events happening in the remotest part of Nigeria spread within seconds. There is scarcely any important development whose news is obscured. But being abreast with information has not produced any real benefit. It seems that information that cannot be mutated for entertainment and pleasure is quickly despatched to the dustbin of extraneous things. Passivity, egoism, vanity and do-nothingism is a culture that has exploded upon us like dynamite.
Is it possible that things have become so tough in this country that in the pursuit of temporal amusement and entertainment, we have deprived ourselves of all sensitivities that otherwise characterise civilized humanity? Our desire for pleasure, or to borrow words from Huxley, our infinite appetite for distraction has made us such an insensitive culture.
It is not out of tune to say that in our pursuit for happiness, maybe as a reprieve from hardship, we have inflicted upon ourselves, a great desire for pleasure, only that this time, it is not the government that is wholly culpable as Huxley predicted, but the people themselves. Amusement, laughter, merriment and fun all have their places. But we very easily desire them to take centre stage and displace time for evaluation and action. In our culture, nothing is taken seriously, ‘all na cruise’. It is only this hedonistic pursuit for pleasure that would make a government, social services department, recondite organizations and the public at large ignore those signs that were all too obvious that Ore’s home was troubled. All those signs that stared us in the face like high-definition television were all left to drown in the sea of irrelevance and all that was left afloat was our inordinate perception of pleasure.
It is highly probable that had we been more discerning and less unaffected, Ore’s mum might have been saved from this danger of death that was forever imminent and it is also highly probable that just with the right adjustment of attitude and readiness to suppress our ‘infinite appetite’ for distractions and pleasure, Ore and others like him would be saved from this type of calamity that has further portrayed us as very insensitive culture. The time for the change is now, before ‘what we love will ruin us.’
