How not the best versions of humans are living in the best time to be human

Good news. If you are reading this at this moment, you are statistically one of the luckiest humans in the history of the human race. Over the last four or five years, all sorts of data have been published that indicate that this period in human history, despite the gloom, the war, the pandemic and […]

Good news. If you are reading this at this moment, you are statistically one of the luckiest humans in the history of the human race. Over the last four or five years, all sorts of data have been published that indicate that this period in human history, despite the gloom, the war, the pandemic and the dreadful economic situation in Nigeria in particular, is the best time to be alive.

You will be surprised to learn that despite the rampant killings and avoidable deaths from things that no longer kill people elsewhere, like malaria and other diseases, death rates are generally low compared to other periods in human history. This is thanks to scientific and technological advances over the years, which have meant access to better healthcare, vaccines, better education and far fewer chances of being cannibalised. Far fewer than other periods of human history. (This is if you discount the few instances where infamous cannibals like Clifford Orji existed in this generation.)

In any case, imagine someone born in 1900. By the age of 14 or 15, he was off fighting in World War I, or was being ravaged by colonisation and the Spanish Flu, which killed more people than World War 1 did. The War claimed between 15 million and 22 million lives, and the Spanish Flu, which coincided with the War, claimed between 25 million and 50 million, including hundreds of thousands in Nigeria. For those who survived that War, by the age of 36, when they should be starting families and settling down, they were off fighting another World War in which 70-80 million people died. The trauma that generation bore is simply hard to imagine.

But here we are, all these years later, without a World War, with the iPhone 15, which, alongside other basic phones today, is 120 million times more powerful than the computer that guided man to the moon in 1967 and the daily entertainment of Tik-Tok and Instagram and the Come-hate-me party Jada Pinkett Smith has been unabashedly throwing, and we are in the best of times to be alive. Most people would agree, well, except if you are in Ukraine or Palestine, or the Northeast of Nigeria, or most of Nigeria generally.

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For a Nigerian who has to contend with the insane currency exchange rate that has hit 1200 naira to a dollar, climbing by over 70 per cent in the space of four months, this has to be a pretty wacky time to live. I remember once going to school with a 25 kobo coin and living like a king for a day. My friends and I feasted on masa, hanjin ligidi, cotton candy and the other treats of pupils in those days.  

The generation that has followed since has not heard of the kobo, does not even know what it means and has mostly never known or seen a Nigerian coin before. At the rate the

Nigerian currency continues to fall, falling by some 70 per cent in a little over four months, it is not likely that it ever will.

When taken in the context of the rising insecurity in the country and the apparent immortality of the Boko Haram menace, which in August alone, according to Beacon Intelligence, an Abuja-based security outfit, claimed the lives of 252 Nigerians in Borno State, the bandits kidnapping for ramsom gangs, the appropriation of control of large pockets of the country by criminal and terrorists gangs, like IPOB and the ESN, herdsmen, bandits and whoever has big guns, the idea of this being the best times to be alive seems even more far-fetched for a Nigerian.

The Nigerian media is not talking about these attacks and the killings. Nigerians are not outraged. That is not because the media and the people lack empathy, but it is because of empathy fatigue, on the one hand, and simply nonchalance on the other because every part of the country seems to have its own priority and its own wahala to contend with.

I have suffered this empathy and outrage fatigue. This thing is exhausting, wallahi. We have spent over a decade railing against the Nigerian state’s failure in dealing with Boko Haram for the return of the Chibok Girls, and this outrage hasn’t really translated into tangible changes in the way things are being done. That outrage did translate to a change of government in 2015, which claimed to have “technically defeated” Boko Haram in 2015 and had “technically incapacitated” it several times over since then. What it actually succeeded in doing was to epidemise violence across the country with various kinds of terrorist organisations, like the mysterious gunmen, the herdsmen, the bandits kidnapping for ransom gangs, the secessionist terrorists and others having a field day.

On account of this fatigue, since I wrote my column on the renewed outbreak of violence between nuclear-power Israel and stone and rocket-power Gaza, I have disengaged mentally. We all know how that is going to play out. Israel’s justification for unleashing a wrecking ball on a strip of open-air prison housing two million people will see most of the world powers excusing the war crimes being perpetrated on the Palestinian people. How many of us sincerely expected that women and children would not be made collateral damage in this conflict? How many of us genuinely expected that hospitals would not be bombed? Already, thousands of non-combatants have been killed. Women, children, the sick, and the injured seeking treatment.

Yet, the stats say this is the best time to be alive as a human. At no time has the human race come close to its pinnacle as it is now. Yet, at no time has the barbarity we continually unleash on each other been starker than what we are supposed to be. This contrast can be seen in how we have variously justified the killings ongoing in the world—in Borno, in the Southeast, in Ukraine and in Palestine.

The Nigerian government, like previous ones, have not shown any great urgency in dealing with the terrorism plaguing Nigerians, who have now also to contend with the state-unleashed economic terrorism that Nigerians are suffering. The US government and its allies have continued to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the one hand yet ironically continued to vindicate the massacre Israel is committing in Palestine. Again, to be clear, Hamas’ October 7 attack is a terrorist act, but Israel’s attacks, not just now but over the past 70 years, have been acts of state-backed terror.

So, we may argue that for those of us not immediately caught up in the scourge of war or diseases, statistically, this is the best time to be alive as a human. But are we the best humans to be alive?

Everything is set up for us to be the best humans and the most humane. Sadly, that is not the reality. As individuals, organisations and states, our complicity in the suffering of the human race and the pervasive barbarity we continue to unleash on each other through conflict and economics, and the justifications we continue to provide for them, as well as the ambivalence we have for the suffering of others should shame us. We can and should be better.