By Isqil najim
Living is now expensive and risky. We are all vulnerable to some risks from someone's action. They may be near or far away. But someone is always closer to them who watches these things and keeps quiet.
Everywhere you go, you face situations that are far beyond your control despite your best efforts. Surprisingly, solution is simple. if every man can play his and be honest.
Everyone monitors their health. They do their very best to ensure they comply with every observable health etiquette. But once you step out of your house, there is air flowing around you. There are spaces you have to touch: the door, the car, the chair, the table, the handshakes.
Last week, a sight caught my attention. A man, at a junction as I passed by. He was well suited and well dressed. He had stepped out of his car to obey the call of nature.
The sight of his hand shaking his "gun" as he finished the exercise and heaved relief caught my attention. I slowed down as I passed. He tucked in his shirt, adjusted himself, and turned toward his car where his driver was waiting. He opened the car with the same hand he had used to shake his naked gun earlier.
Then he entered and slammed the door as his driver zoomed off.
The thought in my head was how many of the staff he will handshake when he gets to work before he washes his hands. Yet this is common. He is of course clean and suave.
The trust in us toward people who are well dressed is absolute. We see only the outside after all.
Yes, we can avoid this by washing our hands frequently, but can we wash the air we breathe before we inhale? Because someone somewhere may have polluted it with plastic or other toxic chemicals, even the fumes from our vehicles and more.
Then another thing came to mind. You can be a good and very careful driver and still get involved in an accident that is no fault of yours. A failed brake from a driver who was a victim of bad mechanic repairs, or a reckless driver who was distracted by a phone call while you were observing all cautions. It is not your fault, but still, many have paid the price for things that were not their fault!
And then you get home after a long day of hard work, with your hard-earned earnings. Now you want to show love and reward your family with share of your daily proceeds, only to hear that what you used to buy at say, 200 naira is now 400 naira!
That is 200 innocent naira about to fly out of your pocket despite your hard work and good financial planning.
That is 200 naira closer to poverty for many people who have a fixed income and in lower economic ladder.
That 200 naira is small, but its complexity when factoring other goods and services becomes huge!
If you are a fixed salary earner, you have to find a way to close this gap and ensure that extra "200 naira" is either replenished or you also make some for yourself in the system, most likely by also adding a few naira to your side gig or demanding salary rises. Someone must pay!
That is passed on to someone else too. Everything becomes more expensive, and that is how inflation grows. It really doesn't matter who started it, what caused it, and who is responsible for fixing it. We all pay.
Then the innocent you. You have done everything well and fixed your finance. But a stubborn mosquito managed to bite you. You didn't notice until you started running a temperature.
You, being very careful of your health, visited a qualified doctor. You paid in full. He asked you to buy an anti-malaria drug and also insecticide to get the mosquito out of your crib. You obeyed the expert. You did everything right. Bought in an approved pharmacist shop.
The following day you started noticing a reaction, and before you know it, there is a complication. You ran to the doctor again. He said you had consumed a fake drug.
There began another race to live. Lucky for you, the doctor gets you back to sound health. But millions of people were not lucky! The fake drug silently ruined their health. Some may not even trace the source of the reaction because impacts show up long after they have forgotten about the drug.
We were told: eat more vegetables, buy more fruits.
In our society, there are many fruit sellers who have mastered the art of preserving their goods to prevent them from perishing quickly. They want to make a profit, and in so doing, embraced the use of harmful chemicals.
Is it sachet water and bottled water? Even the ones in factories can be corrupted by a negligent staff, or someone fakes them and sells them as original.
We are in an ecosystem where dishonest and negligent people could make a nuisance of our efforts to keep out of trouble.
I was reading about what happened in Nepal and then something struck me. The country that is paying heavily for climate change contributed next to zero to climate change activities! The countries that contributed 30%, 40%, etc., continue to ratchet up their production.
We can only be careful.
This is why we all must not indulge those minor lapses from those around us, even if we face no immediate risk. The person preparing our own pot may be somewhere else being indulged or overlooked. That is why most engineering firms make HSE mandatory.
When we talk about corruption, we often focus on stolen money and contracts. But the biggest corruption hurting everyone and the environment is the one we pay little attention to. It is ethical, it is moral, and it is daily polluting our society in little ways, waiting to become bigger and out of control.
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