Why did we do this to Chinelo? For fame? Money? To be heard or seen? Why? I can’t figure out why Nigeria killed another young person with dreams. Maybe she could have survived this if we were a little bit careful with our words, instead of trolling the young doctor even when we doubted her. The situation of this country has turned many into monsters and this is depressing.
“Don’t you want to know why Nigeria may never be great? This is a tweet made by someone as twitter FBI’s analyzed the post of a young doctor hoping she lives to fulfill her dreams. Dr. Chinelo Megafu, now late, made a tweet ” I am on the train. I have been shot please pray for me” this post was made shortly after terrorists attacked passengers in the Kaduna-Abuja train and blew off the rail track between Rijana and Katari, Kaduna. There was an open fire that injured and killed some Nigerians.
One could see from the comments coming from the people who engaged the post of Dr. Chinelo Megafu, that we have a long way to go. Our society is so messed up and Nigerians can no longer differentiate between what is real and what is done for clout chasing. We have lost our conscience, this is where we have gotten, due to negligence by our leaders, corruption, poverty, unemployment, insecurity, lack of order and a good working system.
Every single time bad things happen to Nigerians, our leaders release statements regarding insecurity or call for a meeting to curb insecurity but the end of this menace never comes but rather we wake up to more troubling situations.
It is not only disheartening that Nigeria failed this young doctor and everyone who was on that train and who was either injured or killed, but it is sad to see that Chinelo wanted empathy and prayers but got cruelty from the people who saw her post. Imagine knowing that you may die if you do not get help but hoping to hear people make positive comments about your situation only to get the opposite of what you were expecting.
I guess the late Dr. Chinelo Megafu wished for words like these “be strong my dear we are praying for you”, “we are putting calls across to the necessary authorities”, “in the meantime find a way to stop the blood”, “we love you” and whatever it is we could say to make someone in pain feel a little better, help her feel loved and seen.
She didn’t get what she wanted even at the point of death but rather she got comments like these; “Are you dead now?” “you are shot and you can tweet, please help us with the pictures of your gunshot wounds, but seriously were you traveling to Biafra through Kaduna or what?”, “you have been shot you still get time to find your phone, dey tweet?” , “you get strength to press the phone” someone actually said this as well “You should be able to record and give us video evidence since you still have strength to tweet”.
I wasn’t aware of this particular incident until the early hours of today when my boss asked if I had seen the trend on twitter, I said no. I did freeze some of my applications, honestly the past days have been about one heart wrecking story or the other, death, sickness, kidnapping, backslashes, killings and so on and I was definitely tired of seeing the sad stories I needed to take a break only to come online to see what the so called ” patriotic citizens” of Nigeria did to this young doctor, Chinelo.
We say a lot about our leaders but the truth is a lot of people are no different from the leaders they castigate and they are loyalists to these leaders, hence, what Chinelo’s countrymen did to her. I believe that some of the people who made those horrible comments didn’t do it because they doubted her, they did it because they wanted to defend a failed government and other than choosing empathy they chose to be apologists to these leaders and made jerks of her situation.
At the point of death, many chose to make the situation about a tribe, what’s with the ethnic sentiments when she only asked for your prayers? If saying a prayer was too difficult why not ignore without making insensitive and irrelevant comments under her tweet, I do not know why Chinelo chose to call on her twitter family for prayers but I know that her action is not far from a person dialing 911 for help, what kind of a people are we? How did we get here? A country whose state in the past is better than the present condition.
Someone really made this about Biafra, I can’t even imagine her brokenness before she finally passed on. We mocked Chinelo Meghafu to death and this is acrid.
We must get something right, the internet exists for things like this, people should be able to call for help via social media and not be seen as liars and clout chasers, if you are a clout chaser you have to stop making life difficult for people who are genuinely in need. Presently, social media is more functional than any of the emergency lines we have in Nigeria, you never get through on those lines when you need them the most.
I know that a lot has happened and people do not know what to believe anymore but this should not take away the fact that we are humans, why not show empathy till you get the facts right, for crying out she only asked for prayers, not your money, nothing but your prayers. Yes, she is dead now. I hope Chinelo’s executioners are happy now, she was not just shot to death, Nigerians executed her with their horrible trolls.
