NOI kidnapping – Why it’s hard to feel pity

by Yomi Kazeem
Compassion is hard to come by when you’re part of an oppressive upper class who have, to put it mildly, starved the citizenry of joy. On Sunday, social media was split in two halves after the news of the kidnap of the 82 year old mother of finance ministers, Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. Some tweeted kind, heartfelt words wishing the family well, others showed a harsh disregard for the event seemingly terming it as a ‘serves them right’ event.
You see, its hard not to feel angry at Nigerian leadership when anger is all you have left. While I hope the elderly woman, who had no hand in ruining Nigeria, is safely found, I also hope that events like this ring a bell in the heads of the inept 1% who lead us.
I hope they realize that their recklessness and brazen disregard for anything tantamount to progress will ignite a vicious cycle. A cycle no-one, not even them, will escape from.
Its simple logic really. There is an inevitable nexus between unemployment and crime rates. Where the majority of the population of young people are jobless and will be jobless for quite a while, its only a matter of time before shit literally hits the fan. Its a hypothesis, yes, but its one that’s backed up with statistics-and victims.
Unemployment is not a direct fault of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala or her mother, but its hard for a hungry mind to discern fine lines especially in a nation like ours where the lines between good and bad, moral and immoral, lions and lambs are increasingly blurred. Its hard for a poverty stricken multitude to sympathize with a minority who live in uncautioned opulence. Say what you want about compassion being a human virtue and all that but just remind yourself that these set of leaders do not have compassion for us either. It may sound harsh but its a fact. A harsh but true fact.
Before you point fingers at others for not caring about Madam Ngozi’s mother, ask yourself if the men who siphoned billions of naira in pension funds cared about those the money was meant for. Ask if anyone thought twice before the trillions carted away during the subsidy scam were looted.
Someone tweeted yesterday and asked ‘How can you not have compassion?’. Sometimes, in certain cases, even compassion is too much to ask. Sadly, this appears to be one of them not because we are not human but only because the line that differentiates lions from lambs is blurred.
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‘Yomi Kazeem is amongst other things, a soccer pundit on radio and a young entrepreneur. His favourite words are: ‘Up Nepa’. On Twitter: