EQUALITY CAN SAVE US

NWOSU OLISAEMEKA EVANS PASCHAL

INTRODUCTION

It is said that all fingers are not equal. In the human world no two humans are totally the same because some are always stronger than others, some are more beautiful than others, some are wealthier than others and some are more intelligent than others and so on.

Equality had been defined by many but according to Random House Webster’s college dictionary; it is the state or quality of being equal.

Whenever equality is mentioned people view and understand it mathematically or directly from its meaning to mean equal physical strength, every human with their abilities under a straight line which defines all their abilities not to exceed each other. It is always thought to be a flat platform where everyman’s physical features, social endowments, academic status is equal. This is not true.

In the field of mathematics it can be said to mean when things are perfectly the same without any infinitesimal difference. Equality in our world is the ability of every human to treat his fellow human not because of any added ability but because he or she is human. You don’t have to treat or discriminate anyone because he is poor, rich, deformed, weaker and stronger and so on. It should be because you are a human being and he or she is not more or less human than you; he or she is human just like you are.

Around the globe the high level of inequality and its colossal damage can never be overemphasized. In my country Nigeria; brutal police mishandling of civilians,negligence of some people who cannot provide for themselves not only by the people in government but also by individuals, people who are paid less or rewarded less than what they worked for. All these emanate from the fact that some people believe they can misuse the power they were bestowed upon to stifle others. They have failed to see the human essence that is in them in others, they cannot see the humanity in them in their fellow human beings.


XENOPHOBIA…….SOUTH AFRICA 2015

A PRODUCT OF PEOPLES HATE ON EACH OTHER


Across history all the freedom fighters and people who fought for equal treatment to two or more different set of tribes or people with different colour of the skin did not fight to have the same ability and also they were already different in terms of all the wrong measures we use to determine equality in humans like strength, intelligence, colour, wealth etc. They fought for something which is beyond any external trait or external feature. They fought and rebelled because they want to be treated as human beings because they are not less human than their oppressors. Nelson Mandela a short while after he has been released from prison, Mandela made a cameo appearance in Spike Lee’s film biography of Malcolm X. As the film ends he reads Malcolm X’s words to a room full of schoolchildren:
    “We declare our right on this Earth: to be a man, to be a human being, to be given the rights of a human being, to be respected as a human being; in this society, on this Earth, on this day which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”

Strength, endurance, intelligence, wealth etc. are not always genetic or always a trait. These external features depends on so many factors for it to be achieved and anyone can have these features so it is not determined by the colour of the skin, dressing, colour of the eye, name, country etc. Though you worked hard to be intelligent, if you did not go to school or if you do not have access to books you will not have had the opportunity to do so. You worked hard to be rich but without wisdom, opportunity and indeed the guide of the almighty God, you might had been stuck somewhere along the way to your riches.

Wealth is not only determined by hard work or only by wisdom or any static condition. Wealth is something that anybody can acquire or become anytime just that sometimes opportunity, fate etc. can hinder some people not to reach there and opportunity, fate etc. does not hinder a particular set of people, it affects all. No condition is permanent so why then do we discriminate?

    You might say that the world is not fair yet we are the ones that make the decisions that guide this world.
     We have created words like the rich and the poor, male and female etc. not only to show the difference between distinguished facts but to mean more than that. We now believe that we have worked so hard and have used our intelligence so well to gain the things and the positions that we have attained today. Yes we have worked hard, yes we used our wisdom so well but truly within ourselves we know that there is more to success than only hard work and intelligence etc. What of opportunity, priviledge, self-esteem and perhaps the grace of the almighty? We neglect these just to prove how we have toiled and suffered. Our stories seem cynical because now it is all about how we held the lion by its mane and killed it with our bare hands forgetting that if the lion have not come for us, if there was no lion at that instant and also someone might have even torn it into pieces with his two hands if he were in that kind of problem. For us it is always about how we sorted out the way to do things and how we dealt with it forgetting the fact that we were opportune to have that moment.


Oludotun Jacobs

A Thespian and Industrial Merit Award winner in 2013 African Magic Viewers Choice Award and also winner of the African Movie Academy award for Best Actor in a leading role.

    The popular Nigerian actor Oludotun Jacobs popularly known as Olu Jacobs despite studying theatre arts in England could not get a job if not for an audition he was made aware of by his friend of which he attended
     and was successful.

It is not always how you have worked so hard to get there, the thing is now you are there give other people the permission to get to their own dreams. When you see someone in need what comes into your mind is it that you are not in the person’s condition because you have worked so hard to be where you are or that you have prayed so well that God answers your prayers faster. Even when you help the person what do you think also? What was your reason? What was your attitude?

You are in government, when you embezzle public funds, when you don’t pay workers, what were your reasons? You are in the army or the police force where you have taken oaths to safeguard the nation; the people instead you have become a threat, brutalizing them without remorse, what were your reasons?

You are a man because she is a woman if her husband dies she must drink the bath water of the man’s corpse, she must not indulge in major decisions, she must marry.
       Also mind you that homosexuality and lesbianism is bad or a vice does not mean that you should lynch gays, discriminate gays. Just like you don’t lynch or kill a thief. What you owe them is your love, your cooperation, your advice. some indulge in things like these because of lack of proper advise, exposure to certain destructive things like watching pornographic videos and pictures where this kind of things are displayed when they were much younger. Some become gays by just practice or learning or the fact that no one actually educated them on the dangers of ‘gayism’ just like stealing or alcohol it became part of them or the fact that they grew up where it is accepted. Another big problem that makes this look right is that in modern times sex is now confused to be love that people who are sexually attracted to each other think they are in love. You don’t need to discriminate gays you need to advise them, pray for them and show them cooperation and love so that they can change.

The primary purpose of every human on earth is to live for another human. The earlier we start reacting at our fellow human being not because of any other thing but because the person is a human being the more united and equal our world will be.

Be nice to your fellow human being and treat him as a human so that we shrink inequality because equality can save our world from its selfishness and wickedness.
   NWOSU OLISAEMEKA EVANS PASCAL