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It
was that hour of Sunday, generally a work-free day, when many would be
in church praying for God’s favour; and presumably a good time to
travel as traffic was expected to be light. But all those permutations
failed Sunday 15 August in Lagos at the Berger bridge junction on the
Lagos-Ibadan Expressway when a speeding trailer (articulated truck) ran
into a convoy of vehicles held up at a police checkpoint, igniting a
fire, which spread panic and claimed scores of precious lives.

The event, on
account of its human-interest value and enormity of the loss, was
front-paged by many of the dailies, four of which we will examine. What
caused the accident, when, where, why and how many died were some of
the traditional queries tackled in the press reports in the effort to
help the reader understand the significance of the event. Although
there was near unanimity on the general details, the variations in
accounts speak of the professional vigilance and sensitivity of the
media houses in addressing the challenges of reporting.

Since none of the
reporters from these four papers witnessed the accident as it occurred,
they relied on accounts of ‘eyewitnesses’ to reconstruct what happened
before their arrival.

The problem with
eyewitnesses in emotionally stressful situations is that their accounts
can be coloured by the stress of the occasion and their prejudices.

From the headlines on Monday 16,

the papers sought
to convey the tragic nature of the event. ‘Bloody day in Lagos’, said
the Punch; ‘Day of Horror: Black Sunday in Lagos’ announced the Nation.
‘20 die in checkpoint tragedy’ asserted NEXT; while the Guardian
grouped it with similar tragedies: ‘48 feared killed, 20 vehicles burnt
in Lagos, Edo road tragedies’. All cast adequate headlines but the
Nation could have showed more racial or ethnic sensitivity to the use
of the adjective ‘black’ in qualifying that Sunday. Ours being a black
race we do not need to employ ‘black’ in any uncomplimentary context.

All were agreed
that the immediate cause of the accident was the trailer that rammed
into a commercial bus at a badly mounted/illegal police checkpoint,
leading to a conflagration, which wasted lives and property. The
Guardian, however, appeared undecided whether it was a trailer or a
petrol tanker. While it said on page 2 it was the former, it cited the
latter on page 14.

When did the accident occur?

“Around noon” (the
Nation); “around 11.27am” (NEXT), about 10am (Guardian). The Punch,
which said one of its correspondents “arrived shortly after the fire
broke out”, omitted the time. The testimony of Fadipe Idowu of the
Lagos State Fire Service in The Guardian that information about the
fire reached his office at 11.19am suggests that 11am would be a
useful, but not conclusive peg.

Where did it occur?
“On a bridge near the Berger area of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway”
(Punch; “between the Mobil Filling Station and Otedola Estate junction”
(Guardian); Shangisha bridge on the outskirts of Lagos (Nation); along
Otedola Estate, Berger Bus stop (NEXT).

On why it happened,
all speculated that the trailer’s brakes failed when suddenly
confronted by an unexpected checkpoint. The underlying anger of the
media against police checkpoint activities found vent in all the
reports. The Nation quoted Gift White, an ‘eyewitness’, who said: “The
policemen were stopping the trailer driver at the checkpoint and he did
not stop. They chased him until the man lost control and hit the
vehicles in its front. We hear they wanted to collect money from him”.

Isaac Ejuvwevwo,
who lost an SUV, also told NEXT that while held up by the checkpoint
traffic: “I just heard vehicles hitting each other behind me, then the
one behind me hit me, then I saw this trailer carrying sugar. The next
I saw fire…immediately I saw the fire, I and the other person in the
vehicle ran out. A little baby burnt in one of the cars, the parents
escaped”.

Expectedly, the Police denied complicity.

Spokesman, Frank
Mba, told the Nation: “there was no policeman at that place before,
during and after the incident. That conclusion is hasty and
unnecessary”, only to be quoted by NEXT as admitting “that there were
some checkpoints along that road but denying, “that his officers might
have caused the accident”.

On the casualties,
the figures are understandably varied. Punch’s Sesan Olufowobi showed
some enterprise in physically counting some of the charred remains to
estimate that at least 40 people died and 25 vehicles burnt.

The narrations also
had some positive sides. Punch talks of a Bolaji Bello who picked up a
13 year old, who broke her leg while fleeing the inferno, and took her
to the hospital. The hospital treated her without demanding a dime. It
will be nice to know what has since become of the girl and it will be
nice to know what will happen to the fleeing policemen, who triggered
off the disaster.

While praying for
the repose of the souls of the dead, the media should appreciate that
although police checkpoints may not disappear in the short term, they
need to be better managed as platforms for security control, and not
extortion centres. True, much evil has happened at checkpoints; some
good too has come from them. I once had a stolen car recovered there.

Darfur’s
joint U.N.-African Union peacekeepers face a dilemma in Darfur , which
could shape the future of the world’s largest U.N.-funded force.

After violence left
five people dead in the highly volatile Kalma Camp, six refugees sought
sanctuary in the UNAMID force’s police base there. They are thought to
be rebel sympathisers and the government accuses them of instigating
the camp clashes, demanding that UNAMID hand them over.

Kalma, just outside
Darfur’s largest town Nyala, has long been a problem for the Khartoum
government, whose offices in the camp were burned down by angry
refugees. Rebel supporters in the camp have obtained arms and there
have been clashes with government police in the area.

Now if the six are
responsible for the violence, which was between refugees who support
rebel leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur and those who took part in
peace talks, which Nur rejects, then it is Sudan’s right to try them in
a court of law.

However the
government is headed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a man wanted
by the International Criminal Court for presiding over genocide and war
crimes against these same Darfuris,

which is why they are in the refugee camps in the first place.

Repeated reports
during the seven-year conflict of the torture of Darfuri detainees give
a pretty good indication that they are unlikely to get a fair trial if
UNAMID hands them over.

So what to do?

This is the stuff of nightmares for U.N. peacekeeping officials.

If they hand them
over they lose the trust of the 2 million Darfuri refugees they were
sent to protect and could be subject to attacks by rebel forces, who
would see them as an enemy. But if they don’t hand them over, they are
stuck in a standoff with Khartoum.

The force relies on
cooperation with the government for its own security. The government
also allocates visas for staff, allows equipment in through customs and
gives travel permits. And the government has shown it is ready to use
these powers against any foreign organisation that annoys it.

According to U.N.
sources, the instruction came from New York not to hand over the six
refugees without a bona fide arrest warrant based on real proof they
had committed a crime and guarantees they would get a fair trial, which
UNAMID would need to follow very closely and publicly.

As one UNAMID staff member told me,

“If we can’t even do that we may as well go home.” Catch-22.

Should UNAMID hand them over?

Can UNAMID guarantee them a fair trial?

Can UNAMID continue to defy the government request?

In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anaesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.

“I felt the instrument – describing a curve – cutting against the grain, if I may so say, while the flesh resisted in a manner so forcible as to oppose & tire the hand of the operator who was forced to change from the right to the left,” she wrote later.

“I began a scream that lasted intermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my ears still.” The surgeon removed most of the breast but then had to go in a few more times to complete the work: “I then felt the Knife rackling against the breast bone – scraping it! This performed while I yet remained in utterly speechless torture.”

The operation was ghastly, but Burney’s real heroism came later. She could have simply put the horror behind her, but instead she resolved to write down everything that had happened. This proved horrifically painful. “Not for days, not for weeks, but for months I could not speak of this terrible business without nearly again going through it!” Six months after the operation she finally began to write her account.

It took her three months to put down a few thousand words. She suffered headaches as she picked up her pen and began remembering. “I dare not revise, nor read, the recollection is still so painful,” she confessed. But she did complete it. She seems to have regarded the exercise as a sort of mental boot camp – an arduous but necessary ordeal if she hoped to be a person of character and courage.

Burney’s struggle reminds one that character is not only moral, it is also mental. Heroism exists not only on the battlefield or in public but also inside the head, in the ability to face unpleasant thoughts.

She lived at a time when people were more conscious of the fallen nature of men and women. People were held to be inherently sinful, and to be a decent person one had to struggle against one’s weakness.

In the mental sphere, this meant conquering mental laziness with arduous and sometimes numbingly boring lessons. It meant conquering frivolity by sitting through earnest sermons and speeches. It meant conquering self-approval by staring straight at what was painful.

This emphasis on mental character lasted for a time, but it has abated. There’s less talk of sin and frailty these days. Capitalism has also undermined this ethos. In the media competition for eyeballs, everyone is rewarded for producing enjoyable and affirming content. Output is measured by ratings and page views, so much of the media, and even the academy, is more geared toward pleasuring consumers, not putting them on some arduous character-building regime.

In this atmosphere, we’re all less conscious of our severe mental shortcomings and less inclined to be sceptical of our own opinions. Occasionally you surf around the Web and find someone who takes mental limitations seriously. For example, Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway once gave a speech called “The Psychology of Human Misjudgment.” He and others list our natural weaknesses: We have
confirmation bias; we pick out evidence that supports our views. We are cognitive misers; we try to think as little as possible. We are herd thinkers and conform our perceptions to fit in with the group.

But, in general, the culture places less emphasis on the need to struggle against one’s own mental feebleness. Today’s culture is better in most ways, but in this way it is worse.

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that President Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

To use a fancy word, there’s a metacognition deficit. Very few in public life habitually step back and think about the weakness in their own thinking and what they should do to compensate. A few people I interview do this regularly (in fact, Larry Summers is one). But it is rare. The rigours of combat discourage it.

Of the problems that afflict the country, this is the underlying one.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Last
week, residents of the Eti-Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State
took to the streets to protest the plan by the state government to
impose tolls for passage into the Lekki area.

No doubt, the gut
reaction to this move would be support from the general public. An
peaceful attempt by citizens to protest oppressive or thoughtless acts
of government is most welcome in any democracy that hopes to thrive –
and on the face of it, this civil action is as basic as they come: a
people already finding it hard to maintain a comfortable quality of
life should not be made to bear unnecessary burdens.

However, this matter is not as cut and dried as it seems.

The state
government in April 2006 signed an agreement with Lekki Concession
Company (LCC) under the Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) scheme for a
period 30 years; an agreement under which the company would upgrade and
expand the busy road and recoup its investment before handing ownership
back to the government.

The company is
presently test-running at the newly constructed toll gate, and
residents are already convinced that the toll will be too high and are
very reluctant to pay any sum for going to their homes and offices
anywhere on the 24km road.

This knee-jerk
response against paying levies for infrastructure provided is worrisome
even if understandable. For years, Nigerians have cried for private
sector participation in order to inject efficiency into public
infrastructure. True, government – at various levels – has seemed
intent on muddling up these arrangements where they have occurred,
whether with Virgin Nigeria or with the Bi-Courtney Group for the
Murtala Muhammed Airport Terminal Two. But, in the case of the Lekki
road, there seems to have been a structured approach to the agreement,
especially when seen in line with the massive road construction efforts
of the Babatunde Fashola-led government. In many parts of the world,
where governments seek to provide basic services such as roads, water
and electricity, citizens have found that you have to pay a little
extra for the convenience. These extras include congestion charges,
council tax, vehicle tax, road taxes and others borne from an
understanding that in the final analysis, there is no gain without pain.

At the very least,
as with MMA2, Nigerians should be motivated by the fact that they know
the services they are paying for will be delivered.

This, of course,
does not mean that the government should abdicate its responsibility to
ameliorate and avoid hardship for its citizens where it can. To this
end we find Mr. Fashola’s comments on the day of the protest troubling.

The governor, who
was held up for hours by the protestors, finally showed up and
addressed them, even though they would not listen. However, his mien
was strange for a leader in a democracy. There was mixture of disdain
and condescension, surely unacceptable since these are people he is
answerable to.

“This protest is
not necessary,” he said. “This is a commercial issue, don’t turn it
into a political issue. I don’t think it is fair to paralyse this road;
people are going to earn their livelihood; children are going to
school.” There seems to a trend with Mr. Fashola where he thinks that,
as long as what he is doing is for the public good, he owes the people
neither explanation nor empathy. This attitude, should as a matter of
urgency be discarded. In a democracy, the people’s feelings matter, the
people’s opinions – however misinformed they appear – must count.

In any case, the
protesters have a point. Has the road been completed? Is the toll too
high? And what about the promised toll-free lane that is yet to
materialise even after a committee set up by the government reportedly
agreed to this?

Add to that, the
mode of collection of the monies, as well as the apparent hurry in
effecting this (the collection of tolls is starting barely a month
after the gates went up) shows a reluctance to think this policy
through or even to engage people so that they can connect.

At the end of day,
both sides in this matter need to get off their high horses and
meaningfully engage each other to fashion out a system that is mutually
agreeable. Development will take pain and patience; and that truism is
applicable both to the concessionaires who seem a bit too eager to
recoup this investment at the expense of the people, as well as
residents of Lagos who need to come to terms with the fact that we
surely cannot conjure progress as a nation from thin air.