By Kayode Ketefe
Today, November 13, 2014, is ‘World Kindness Day’ a day set apart every year to celebrate and promote thoughts and acts of kindness. It was introduced in 1998 by World Kindness Movement, which is a coalition of non-governmental organisations across the world which believed in humane, gracious, just and kind world.
Since then it has been observed annually in many countries, including Canada, Japan, Australia, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Singapore, India, and Nigeria.
According to Wikipedia, the aim of World ‘Kindness Day’ is to “highlight good deeds in the community focusing on the positive power and the common thread of kindness which binds us. Kindness is a fundamental part of the human condition which bridges the divides of race religion, politics, gender and zip codes.”
This is a kind (no pun intended) of a day that calls for sober reflection regarding the place we give to the virtue of kindness in our national life. By and large, there is no gainsaying the fact that Nigeria is a society that is wanting in kindness. Everywhere you turn to, from the leadership to the bottom of the ladder, everyone seems unkind and profoundly selfish. Daily, you encounter individuals, peoples and institutions trying to push you down just to feather their own nest.
If you leave your house in the morning you would be praying not to run into early morning robbers; you get to the fuel station, the attendants might be out to cheat you by selling gas far below your money’s worth, that is even if they don’t pump ordinary air into your fuel tank, hoping you would not discover.
Those who commute to work using public transport fare no better, they are at the mercy of greedy motorists who would inflate fares as their whims and caprices dictate. If a breakdown occurs midway, there, usually, would be no refund as the bus conductor who holds the money would have fled.
Even if you encounter no such hiatus, the bus conductor would be praying that you succumb to momentary amnesia so that you don’t remember to collect your change!
At work, you have to be alert every minute not to be defrauded by customers, clients and other people with whom you transact business. On your way home, you are weary of the men of the underworld whom, you know, would not hesitate to terminate lives just to get their hands on filthy lucre.
On the way you see policemen conducting a “general raid” by arresting people at random, of course, this offers no security assurance as you know, the net would catch more innocent citizens than real criminals, since the real object of the operation in most cases, is to extort money from cowed citizens.
On getting to your house, there is no electricity; your supply has been cut off from the distribution poll, since you had refused to bribe officers of Power Holding Company of Nigeria a few days earlier. You send someone to buy you petrol to start your generator, the set coughs twice and gives up, then you discover that the fuel you have just bought has been adulterated!
There are many other illustrations underscoring the fact that our society has become increasingly callous with milk of human kindness an extremely scarce commodity. If you trek on the street, you would encounter mad men and women trudging along in utter nakedness or clad in weird assortments of smelly rags, yet nobody cares about them.
In society where the virtue of kindness had taken roots, the mentally-challenged people are taken to sanatorium or other infirmary built for them for treatment. They are not allowed to roam aimlessly on the street until death put an end to their agony.
As I am writing this piece I have with me the report of a research institution, Internally-Displaced Persons Monitoring Centre, which stated that Nigeria has as many as 3.3 million internally-displaced persons who are victims of insurgents’ acts of terrorism and other various pogroms.
With this number the country ranks the third among the countries with the highest figures of internally-displaced persons in the world. Nigeria is only ranked behind Syria with 6.5 million IDPs and Colombia with 5.7 million IDPs.
What are we doing individually and collectively to help these people who have become casualties in their own country for no fault of theirs?. Certainly, they need more kindness from us. It is fast becoming one hell of a challenge to live in this clime because of the little premium most people seem to place on the virtue of kindness.
As we celebrate the ‘World Kindness Day’ today, let us ponder on the huge benefits we can reap if we all cultivate and exhibit the quality of kindness towards one another. If we put our default selfish temperament out of commission and show love and affection towards fellow humans, we will transform our society and make the world a better place to live.
Please, let everyone that reads this column today exhibit some act of kindness towards somebody today in commemoration of the Kindness Day.
Follow the writer on twitter @Ketesco
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