By ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE

When China in 2020 sent the whole world into a turmoil, they never believed the COVID-19 laboratory virus they were researching on would send the entire world packing.

They were in the country with a sovereign state, but the effect of what they caused in their country affected the whole world.

In Nigeria, people believe that you have no right to caution or question anything they do in their compound. They could ask you, “Am I in your compound doing what you are cautioning or complaining about?” They do not take into cognizance that a country like China with no borders with Africa caused the continent mayhem with COVID, which they laboratorily promulgated in their country.

With such a mindset, such as Nigerians, anyone can set up a party hall or religious houses anywhere within the neighborhood without blinking an eyelid. Someone can switch on his or her radio when others are asleep and wake them up without a conscience of the disturbance his actions have caused others. After all, “Am I in your compound?” will be the next response should any of the disturbed persons react.

Given that everyone is working hard to have a compound of his or her own—to continue with the disturbance. As you might know, many feel free enjoying their disturbance that irritates and keeps others in a state of discomfort. When you reciprocate, they code name you, but they won’t say what they have been doing to you.

In most cases, you are asked to relocate to the GRA because that’s where “sane people” live. The people asking you to go to the GRA know that they are just apparently animals who want to live anyhow they want. We are increasingly going down by the day healthwise by the increasing disturbance here and there within the Nigerian environment.

Some people can’t sleep except they have tablets in their mouths. This is a daily thing, and they can’t live without their medication. That’s the environment we have found ourselves in with infertility, dementia, kidney, liver, and other heinous sicknesses on the rise due to environmental factors.

Arinze told me of a story in the north where a young man was always seen at the riverbank, and the residents thought he was mad. “It is just now that I understand that the man was not mad but needed a quiet place, always. The noise in Nigeria is too much. The young man is now studying in India, and people are like, Wow, they thought he was mad.”

In this country, the few who behave like the young man told by Arinze are tagged mad, whereas the majority mad enjoy making noise and think that only in the GRA can you find reasonable people enough.

The government Is not reorienting the public. Just a day ago, due to lack of reorientation or a enough of buffoonery, a couple of people died in a petrol tanker explosion. In a video, the tanker is in flames; instead of the Nigerians around there to run away, they watched, and it exploded, consuming their lives. You can imagine that!

If they were cautioned by anyone or government authorities to leave the scene before the disaster, they might question the right you have to ask them to leave the scene.

Dee Nnanyere once told me that in Europe, hardly any motorists use their car horn because they fear who the sound might disturb. In most cases, most cities are like ghost areas because you can hardly hear noise. In Nigeria, when you caution a motorist to step down on the abuse of a blaring horn, they will blow it higher and higher. After all, the car is his or her own. And the authorities have not effectively been to duty to checkmate the public nuisance and domestic noise.

While children should have their liberty, in Nigeria, most parents keep deaf ears to the noise of their children around the neighborhood. Either they are playing football inside a residence occupied by people (tenants), or they are hitting one object or the other that keeps you restless and awake. Should you complain, the parents may ask if you don’t need the freedom and liberty of their children.

Due to there has been no effective law enforcement agency on noise pollution and reorientation you have no option but to see yourself dying slowly without rest and sleep while the parents of the children beam smiles to their children’s public upheaval or even fan the embers of the noise.

The children grow with such a mindset. When you ask them to be civil with their conduct, they rain abuse on you because they learned it from their parents, who prefer to tell you to go and live in the GRA if you enjoy and love a serene environment.

•Odimegwu Onwumere is Chairman, Advocacy Network On Religious And Cultural Coexistence (ANORACC).