Heavy November: Many Tragedies, One Day

November has just begun and we’ve already been rocked by the news of so much tragedy. It was sad, to say the least, to wake up to the news of the passing of Afro Pop singer Davido’s three-year-old son Ifeanyi who drowned in his family’s pool. 

And then soon after we heard about a fire outbreak, actually two in Lagos that left some people dead. I have no words for how heavy November 1 was. 

What made it worse was the number of people being insensitive and blaming parents for their child’s loss. 

Nobody wants to hear about what they should have done to stop a tragedy they didn’t anticipate especially when they put measures in place to keep their child safe. 

So what do you want to say that they haven’t heard or wished they did? People need to learn that if you have nothing nice to say it is best to say nothing at all. I saw so much unsolicited advice and unfair takes on this situation. Some said it was ritual killing and the child was sacrificed. who believes something like that in this day and age? How are some people grown and still making comments like they are narrating the plot of a Nollywood movie?

Others said the parents should have taken him with them on their journey and the mother should have stayed at home. Did your parents take you everywhere they went when you were a child? Everyone forgets that he wasn’t left unsupervised, he had a nanny that was supposed to be watching him and they failed. Good thing they’ve been picked up by the police for questioning because what could you’ve been doing that’s more important than watching the child you were hired to take care of? And I think people forget that this is an unfortunate event that happened to real people because many of the comments are just disgusting. 

Also, it’s 2022 and we still have an emergency system that is inefficient and takes a long time to arrive at the scene where they are needed, sometimes they arrive when the situation has been dealt with by people around the scene of the accident. I rarely hear people say let’s call the fire brigade when things like this happen, they usually just handle it themselves sometimes I forget we have the fire brigade. I wonder if that’s going to change but I hope that it does. My heart goes out to all those who lost their lives in the fire and the family of little Ifeanyi.