“I know you’re busy and you may not get to read this, but I just want to say thank you for all that you do. And please be safe! These people can go to any lengths to silence you, so please stay safe!”
If I had 1 naira for every time I have heard or read a message for me along these lines over the past month, I wouldn’t have an awful lot of money to be honest. I would just have an interesting pile of N1 coins that nobody could ever actually spend. Imagine the frustration I would feel, knowing that I have a huge and growing pile of what is technically money, but is in fact a useless pile of flat metal discs that take up a lot of physical and psychological space and have zero value in the real world.
That feeling I have just described is analogous to how I feel whenever someone hits me with the “You have enemies so please stay safe” routine nowadays. I know that the sentiment is well intentioned and harmless, but I also get very frustrated at the different variants of this comment because – like the metaphorical pile of N1 coins – what exactly is the value of this message? What utility does it provide? Does it in fact provide any? Or is it in fact just a way for the commenter to feel good about the inability to get involved in whatever “fights” one is embroiled in?
The “Bank of Fear” and its many Depositors
Some weeks ago, a fellow Nigerian exile and I went for a midnight drive looking for a specific type of takeaway restaurant to satisfy our sudden craving. This person, whom I will call “Exile 1” received a call on her phone and in the course of the conversation, Exile 1 mentioned to the Canadian caller that I was also in the car. This happened to be the evening where I made a somewhat raucous appearance on Channels TV’s Politics Today, opposite Dr. Kabir Kabo at the height of Pantami-gate.
“Tell David to be careful!” the caller advised sagely, “They will be looking for him everywhere they have a presence or where they can find people to do the job. He should be very careful with his movemen-!” Click! Just like that the call was cut prematurely and the phone tossed into the back seat by an exasperated Exile 1. He wanted me to know, “I hate when people just say “Please be safe! What are you contributing toward the safety?! Why are you saying it?!”
To him, the situation was very simple – you are either contributing to the problem or to the solution. The problem he said was fear. There is a “bank of fear” that simultaneously impels and inhibits Nigerians in the worst possible ways whenever the issue of opposing or redirecting any affairs of state comes up. The constant and repeated use of the “Please stay safe!” maxim as far as he was concerned, was just another deposit in the already well-stocked bank of fear. What problem did it solve? Nothing. What exactly did the call to action even mean? Essentially just, “Be afraid,” with no resolution whatsoever.
The “bank of solutions” however, he said, is anything that helps people in our exiled condition to live a more satisfying life. It could be financial. It could be a nice Netflix recommendation. It could be a nice meal with friends. Basically, anything that made the experience of living in stated opposition to our increasingly despotic government to be just that little bit easier. These little deposits help us raise and maintain our spirits in the face of what would otherwise be truly enervating. I did not realise it at the time, but that sentence grew on me until it became something of an unofficial personal guiding philosophy. I also realised one more thing.
You want “Safety?” do something about it then
Apart from the counter productiveness of investing in people’s fear by constantly instructing them to be more paranoid and afraid than they already are, there is one major reason “Please keep safe” delivered in an emotion-laden voice with furrowed eyebrows really rubs me off the wrong way. It is that doing so transfers the burden and the guilt of all that is Nigeria to everyone except the person speaking.
Where what we really mean to say is “I wish Nigeria were not a 3rd world hellhole that all of us will eventually succumb to one day,” what actually comes out is “Please stay safe.” In this context, we can translate that to mean “It’s not my fault,” “Just grin and bear it because the alternative is…” This is not to suggest that I am calling for some sort of revolutionary event to demonstrate dissatisfaction with the status quo (history shows us clearly that such emotionally charged phenomena rarely end well). The point however, is that if you don’t actually want to do anything about a bad situation, “Stay safe” is a great way to assuage our conscience.
I will always be an advocate for saying exactly what we mean and meaning what we say. As such, the use of linguistic devices and euphemisms to cover our metaphorical butts has never sat well with me. If what we really want is to achieve something that can be described as being “safe,” there is no shortage of reference material pointing to what it is that we must do. If we do not really want to go through any of that trouble and we just want to survive at knee level (which I suppose is also valid), then we should also own it fully.
Long and short – the next time you see me in any city anywhere in the world and you realise that I am the one living in exile after picking a fight on principle with the Nigerian state, don’t bother telling me to “Stay safe.” “Staying safe” is the very last thing that I personally want to do, and this come from a place of ideological conviction.
After all, to be honest, none of us is safe anyway.
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