Editor’s note: Joachim MacEbong, the Naij.com columnist, remebers the case of the “Groundnut girl,” Chinenye Kenneth — a picture of this young street vendor doing her homework, taken by chance, went viral and spawned charity campaigns. While this campaign of kindness and compassion is commendable, charity in Nigeria, Mr MacEbong says, does have a reverse side when thinking about the issue in a broader sense.
A teenage girl is taking a break from hawking in order to complete her homework, under the streetlights, oblivious of her surroundings. She probably knows that people passing by, either on foot on in their cars, notice her, but she is past caring.
This could be any number of teenage girls in any of Nigeria’s cities, but in one case, someone driving by takes a picture, and it goes viral. Several people make it their business to track her down and help her. In fact, one of the tweets carrying her picture got retweeted over 1,600 times.
Eventually, she is found just over a week later. “Groundnut girl,” as she was called, goes by the name Chinenye Kenneth in real life, and is a secondary school student in Yaba. There are many, many, many, like her all over Lagos and beyond, struggling to keep up with the demands of school work and hoping they advance in life, while dealing with the day to day of hawking to make what little they can for them and their families to survive one more day.
Can we start a gofundme account for the #GroundnutGirl Last seen around Herbert Macaulay road, Yaba Lagos http://pic.twitter.com/08o59x9L1g
— D.O (@DOlusegun) December 8, 2015
Groundnut girl found! @Gidi_Traffic @MazinoAppeal @SubDeliveryMan @KwamiAdadevoh @lindaikeji @Inzaghi1 @ALIBABAGCFR http://pic.twitter.com/owEipQR9JO
— Mosopefoluwa Odeseye (@Mosopemi) December 8, 2015
Now, good Samaritans have rallied around Chinenye to raise money for her education. However, there is something arbitrary about this being picked from the millions of others in a similar situation. It is a quintessentially Nigerian story that can be summarized as “fit be you oh!,” in which the average Nigerian bides their time, hoping, praying, “kabashing,” waiting for their big break.
What made Chinenye Kenneth’s case special, other than the fact she was photographed by a total stranger and the picture posted on Twitter? What makes one story connect with us, while many more slip under the radar?
The identifiable victim effect helps us to empathise with distinct individuals who are suffering, far more than a faceless mass of people. By bringing out one or a few stories to represent a group, it has become the choice tool for activists, journalists, politicians and others seeking to bring attention to a specific cause.
Such stories are more powerful than statistics. One study in 2007 compared the donations when one group was exposed to a battery of statistics, and another group was exposed to a single, specific story. The second group donated twice as much.
There are several other examples from just Nigeria’s social media space, where millions have been raised for people with one medical condition or another. The identifiable victim effect is why the picture of a drowned boy on a beach in Turkey put the Syrian refugee crisis back in the global consciousness. It is why one story of a Syrian man saw him get donations of nearly $200,000, enabling him to move from selling pens to running a bakery, employing other refugees like him.
The outpouring of kindness when confronted with a touching story can be truly inspirational and can restore faith in the goodness of humanity. However, you cannot possibly help every teenage girl or boy hawking on the street, or donate money out of your own pocket to every refugee, or help everyone needing a lifesaving operation. Past a certain point, systems must kick in which does the job of protecting vulnerable people in our society. There will always, always be a place for personal displays of kindness, but such things may convince us that we have “done our bit,” when in fact we can do much more.
The “white saviour industrial complex,” about which Teju Cole wrote so brilliantly in 2012, is one example of this. In one of the tweets that preceded that article, he talks about how the “white savior” supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
In much the same way, an emerging social media charity industrial complex delivers help to the odd person in need in the morning, but in the afternoon or evening does not hesitate to line up behind one or the other dodgy politician who probably did his or her fair share of looting. This looting prevented many others from getting a good standard of living that would prevent them from ending up hawking, or provide healthcare that would prevent them from relying on the kindness on total strangers on the Internet, or security, or water, or good roads.
Every single time we provide cover for a corrupt politician for whatever reason, we damn millions of Chinenye Kenneths in our society to a future without prospects, one that leads to a crushing of the spirit in many cases.
The vast majority of them will not be saved by tweets, retweets, and a few million naira.
-
Author, Joachim MacEbong
Joachim MacEbong is a communications professional and political analyst.
This article expresses the author’s opinion only. The views and opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Naij.com or its editors.
The post The Issue Of Politics And Charity In Nigeria: How Many Groundnut Girls Can We Save? appeared first on Nigeria News today & Breaking news | Read on NAIJ.COM.
from Nigeria News today & Breaking news | Read on NAIJ.COM http://ift.tt/1VmgJZL
via Latest News
Post a Comment