Spare Me Your Outrage

Whenever I see a post that starts with "Pray for so and so", it irks me. The reason is not that I am against prayers or insensitive to the plight of the suffering, but more because I find it nauseating that people only feel compelled to pray for one place or the other only when the hype calls for it.
So it is 2017 and slaves are still being sold. I see people getting on their phones and going "I cannot believe this is happening in 2017".  We all want to make trendy posts about the stuff like we only realised the existence of this issue yesterday and like nobody sold slaves in the years preceding 2017. Have you ever wondered where the diamonds and jewellery you are so in love with comes from?  How many of us can claim to really care about this stuff? Because slavery is not an end in itself but rather a means to something that does not seem to outrage people enough; CHEAP LABOUR! Please spare me your outrage and stop pretending that your being outraged on Instagram has the capacity to stop this practice. It does not. You and I know that you only posted that picture with the caption "pray for Libya" because that is the topic on everyone's lips and you want the likes and views. I do not even understand why Libya is getting all your prayers when they are the ones hosting this particular marketplace but that goes to show the unrelenting power of the hashtag. What is worse is that while many people are online being outraged, they themselves have confined people to some form of slavery or the other in their homes and places of work. Stop pretending that if those photographed migrants were in your own backyard you wouldn't neglect and disdain them, which is why they fled from their home countries in the first place!

The hypocrisy and selective ignorance are very frustrating to listen to. I cannot count how many times I have seen a truckload of people including women and children, packed like sardines and being transported across states here in Nigeria. We see these things on the road every day yet nobody ever asks the obvious question of who these people are and where are they being taken to?! We ignore the look of abjectness and fear on their faces, turn our heads the other way and wait until they are on CNN before we acknowledge that there is an evil being done. Only then do we take out our phones and start to make posts and sign meaningless petitions which have no bearing on the outcome of things. I was damn near incensed when I saw a blogger posted the following: "Thank God our cries have been heard". She went on to post a video of the UN secretary general  "condemning" the situation and urging the "appropriate" authorities to take necessary actions and bring perpetrators to justice. How many times have you heard that speech and how often do you see perpetrators of anything being brought to justice? Obviously, like many people on this issue, my blogger only cared about being heard and I wonder what it is about being heard that matters so much to people in this day, especially if your being heard has no bearing on the outcome! Only one answer comes to mind and its narcissism. It is enough for her that a man in a suit comes out to give a press conference. It satisfies her need for approval and unity of purpose and now she can go to sleep feeling like she is a part of and has accomplished something while Jaja makes his way into Libya in the dead of night to continue business as usual.
I have no desire to be agreeable or agreed with, especially not with the lost who do not even understand the nature, history or effects of these practices but are in this for the hashtags and Instagram likes,  so you can take this post in whatever context that allows you sleep at night. My point is that we need to learn to stop taking things at face value. Question everything! The fact is that these people were members of a society before they opted for what they thought was a better life. Why did they suddenly feel like their home states had no place for them? At what point do our authorities have to take responsibility for the trafficking in persons within and through our borders? Can we stop making it an African Issue especially since people are engaged in this practice in various corners of the world? Can we address it as a global issue rather than make it us versus them struggle?
More importantly, can we demand better social conditions from our own states so that our brothers and sisters do not feel the need to embark on such doomed expeditions? And furthermore, can we learn to truly care and sustain our outrage to last longer than the hashtags? Can we be our brothers' keepers and question and report abusive activities, suspicions movements and trafficking in our neighbourhoods? That is where it starts from. It does not start from Libya. Nobody will hold a gun to your head and sell you for 400 dollars if you are holding down a source of living in your home country where your dignity matters for something!