When the earth trembles we don’t bow?

S
ometime last September, the earth trembled under the feet of residents in parts of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. It caused quite a stir, naturally. We are more used to politicians trembling over their being out-rigged by their political opponents than the earth trembling. The earth is solid. Something as solid as the earth should not, if nature were as perfect as we assume, tremble. But as if to underline its right to tremble, the earth trembled again last week in Maitama district, Abuja.

The Daily Trust of November 2 quoted the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency, NGSA, as saying: “Our preliminary findings indicated that the tremor occurred around 12.26 pm around the vicinity of Panama Street in Maitama District. After field evaluations, the NGSA determined that the intensity was about 3.0 on the Mercalli Intensity Scale, which means it was felt indoors and lasted less than one minute.”

Luckily, only a few tea cups and drinking glasses probably fell off cupboards and shattered on the floor in the affected areas. Splendid.

When the earth trembled in September, we were assured by the experts on the unpredictable behaviour of nature that there was nothing to worry about. People in the affected areas were safe; so were we in the rest of the country. Tremors and their very senior brother, earth quakes, have been the lot of mankind as far back as when Socrates and Aristotle were still busy trying to help us make sense of human life in the Greek city states. Earth quakes have caused unimaginable deaths and destructions in human history. They have buried whole cities and put a sudden end to civilisations. I tell you that their fury is worse than that of a woman spurned. Nature is kind, very kind. It is also cruel, very cruel.

We live with the ever present danger of the foul mood of nature expressed in earth tremors, earth quakes, tsunamis, landslides, mud slides, floods, typhoons, hurricanes and avalanches, wherever and in what manner it chooses to visit death and destruction on countries and communities. People in such countries as Mexico, India, Japan, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, the United States of America, the Philippine and China, to name a few, are not strangers to these natural disasters. Their citizens are permanently at their mercy. It seems nature tends to have behaved more kindly towards us than other countries. Evidence, if some were ever needed in our religious fevered country, that we sin less, others sin more and incur nature’s fury long before the judgement day.

Our country is lucky, very lucky. Our worst natural disasters in the last five years or so were floods. The problem with natural disasters is that it is not often necessary to investigate why they happen. It is a given, for instance, that a down pour over a period of time causes floods in flood prone areas. And it is known, according to the on-line encyclopaedia, WikiLeaks, that “an earth quake, also known as quake or tremor, is the shaking of the surface of the earth, resulting from the sudden release of energy in the earth’s lithosphere that creates seismic waves.”

I do not, therefore, expect the geological experts in our country to waste their valuable time investigating the Abuja earth tremors. However, it should be possible for us to put two and two together and come to the only logical explanation that our politicians caused the earth to tremble in parts of our country. The earth surface is sufficiently disturbed by the stream of heated words generated by our politicians. Every time our politicians make a right royal mess of the very simple act of eating amala with ewedu soup, the earth registers its disappointment by trembling. Every time our country is wracked by needless killings and violence, the earth trembles.

However, it is important that we ask the only sensible question in the circumstances. Should we trust our experts that we have no cause to fear; that the Abuja tremors served no notice that their big brother, earth quake, is about to rumble? I am afraid, we have reasons to be worried. I looked briefly into the history of earth tremors in the country and found that we have had a series of them since 1933. Perhaps, we did not notice because only a few glasses tumbled off the table in the homes of poor people. We also had them in 1939, 1964, 1984, 1988, 1997, 2000, 2006 in Shaki, Ogun State and in 2016. It is remarkable that the epicentre of the earth tremor in Cote d‘Ivoire in 1984 was located in Ijebu-Ode.

What this tells me is that there are some obvious disturbances below the earth in our country. We do not know yet what it is or what it is likely to be. But we should pray that the earth would tremble in jest, as in it trembles, we bow.

Here are two other reasons we should not treat these earth tremors as harmless jokes on us by nature. One, we have a history of poor handling of both nature-made and man-made disasters. Unlike lightening that does not strike twice, several of the natural disasters named above tend to strike several times and often in the same places. The tremor, for instance, has struck Abuja twice in a space of three months. The floods have struck every year in the last five years. As you read this, the people badly affected by the floods in Delta and Bayelsa states are still mourning the destruction visited on them.

No one would be so cruel as to suggest that the floods could have been prevented. But our reactions to them speak volumes about the state of our preparedness to meaningfully respond to disasters – natural or man-made. Floods cannot be prevented because no one can stop the rains, not even the famous rain makers. But as other countries have done, steps could be, and have been, taken in flood prone areas to minimize their damage to lives and property. We have done nothing of the sort so far here. Each year the floods come and all we do is to officially join the victims to wail and lament.

I am sure you must have seen what happens in cases of fire disasters. Fire trucks, siren blaring, race towards the scene only for the firemen to see that they carry no water and there is no water hydrant from which they could draw water to fight the fire. They watch, as the curious crowds do at the scene, until the fire burns down everything in its path.

I have always thought that nature does not give a country more than it can handle. I think the good book says so. Nature knows our weaknesses in matters of this nature and has kindly spared us the shame of trying to deal with a calamity as devastating as an earth quake. Still, I wonder if nature is trying to tell us something by letting the tremors strike twice in Abuja within three months. I fear that if it has struck often this year, it could strike again. It is possible that each new strike might be progressively stronger than the previous one. Are we going to sit on our hands and let nature do with us as it pleases?

I tremble.