CNN’s 2008 heroes

The Punch, Nigeria
By Ben Nanaghan
Thursday, 25 Dec 2008

The traditional time tested, time inured and much touted Nigerian generosity took a bashing when the Cable News Network announced its heroes for the year 2008 recently. For so long, Nigerians have won the enviable and time-tested accolade of being their brothers’ keepers. But at the much publicised CNN Heroes 2008 event, the bottom was knocked out of this claim and our emotional attachment to it challenged.

The CNN yearly celebration of heroic deeds by people from all over the world is highly commendable and should be encouraged. This year, CNN received over 4,000 nominations from all over the world and screened this number to the final 10, whose wares were displayed on the global television. Of the final 10, six are Americans, three Africans and one Cambodian. I was not disturbed or shocked that out of the commendable three African representatives, there was no Nigerian.

Let us take them in their order as presented by Ted Turners’ Global Network television.

Viola Vaughn is a Senegalese (Africa). She has immersed her entire life and resources in the training of young girls who would have otherwise ended up as prostitutes and Aids victims, turning them into successful young ladies with good education. Viola understands the chain or dominion effect of an untrained female.

Liz McCartney, an American from Louisiana, started a housing project for Hurricane Katrina victims in 2006. She succeeded in rebuilding 154 new homes for Katrina victims. She was able to mobilise 9,000 volunteers world-wide to put smiles on the faces of homeless folks who had been sleeping in public places without protection against nature or predators. These houses were not paid for by the recipients. They were freely given.

Maria Ruiz is an American of Mexican origin. She was moved to pity by poor and hungry immigrant Mexicans trying to enter America illegally. In 1996, she started “Manna from Heaven Programme” where she fed hungry, malnourished children and adults across the other side of the American border. She prepares her food in her base in the USA and drives 9½ hours to the Mexican border to meet her hungry crowd, where she feeds them and drives back another 9½ hours into the USA everyday. She has done this everyday for the past 12 years, sometimes feeding as many as 1,200 a day.

Marie Da Silva is an African from Malawi and a nanny for the past 10 years in Los Angeles, California, USA. She lost 14 family members to AIDS in her homeland of Malawi. With over a million children suffering from AIDS in Malawi, she saved nearly every cent she earned as a nanny to set up a centre for some of Malawi’s children with AIDS. She also has a school with 230 poor and underprivileged children, where the children are educated free, with books, clothes and shoes free.

Ted Agoglia, an American who specialises in risking his life to care for natural disaster victims, sold his home to buy sophisticated gears and equipment to effectively assist disaster victims. He says he is happy to make a difference in people’s lives and put a smile on their faces.

Mrs. Phymean Noun is a Cambodian who lost her mother to cancer at age 15. She was moved to pity at the sight of Cambodia’s “thrash children” who toil sometimes two shifts in thrash dumps, barely making a dollar per both shifts. She started a school just by the refuse dump and has assisted 600 children in her five years of operations. She feeds them, clothes them and supplies all their school materials.

Carolyn Lecry, an American ex-convict who revives the family links even in prison. Her “Message Project” links prisoners to their children and homes through intra-family video sessions.

Yohannes Gebregores was a children’s Librarian in USA and was caught by the idea of changing Ethiopia’s reading culture. He has a 1,500-book library especially for children, and has established libraries for 16 schools all over Ethiopia to encourage increase in the reading culture of Ethiopian children.

David Pucket, from Atlanta, Georgia, USA, has, for the past 10 years, helped hundreds of South East Mexicans to acquire mobility by constructing artificial limbs and arms to put smiles on the faces of his lucky beneficiaries. Most of the hapless victims only wish him God’s assistance. Mr. Pucket confirms that God has been really helpful.

Anne Mahlum is an American from Philadelphia. She has raised a team of joggers from a cross section of drug addicts, criminals and healthy and wealthy city dwellers. Many Blacks and Whites who had previously lost hope of living normal life have jogged into new homes, new jobs and into the good old ways they had abandoned.

One fact emerges so clearly from the above scenario: no Nigerian made the list of the final 10 and all attempts made by this writer to know how many Nigerians were among the initial nomination of 4,000 did not yield any positive results. The immediate fathomable fact we can gather from the above is that Nigerians are getting poorer as our leaders are getting wealthier by a frightening proportion. The failed and disastrous eight years of President Olusegun Obasanjo did not help matters; it rather made Nigerians hopelessly helpless as they were not able to determine who their leaders should be as a result of mass frustration of the general will of the people.

The Obasanjo regime razed and obliterated the Nigerian middle class in an unquenchable fiery furnace that left Nigerians pitched squarely in two camps – the haves and the have-nots.

The average Nigerian is not a merciless, pitiless, hard hearted man aloof to his neighbours’ suffering. He is a warm-hearted and kind, human specie who is unfortunate to be the beneficiary of all the good things God has given to mankind with the only exception of leadership – which is Nigeria’s only Tsunami. Nigerians have tried and striven to be their neighbours’ keepers but to be able to remove the peck in your brother’s eyes, you too have to remove the beam in your own eyes.

Nigerians have formed thousands of Non-Governmental Organisations, but the various governments throughout the country have not been encouraging and forthcoming as government these days spend money only when it will be beneficial to government officials.

In a new world of global change and harmony, a conducive and productive economic atmosphere must be established to enable Nigerians benefit from the advantages of global commerce and prosperity. Nigerians should have values we hold dear to our hearts. We must have basic and intrinsic values which will serve as the engine room for a moral rearmament and revolution. When morality becomes the order of the day and corruption is checkmated, then Nigerians will, like the rest of the world, have enough to eat and to spare.

Apart from poverty arising from government corruption, Nigerians must be ready to make Herculean sacrifices. All the CNN heroes for 2008 made various degrees of sacrifice, some incredibly awesome and self immolating. I believe that heroism is a divine call which, like the poet’s or writer’s Muse, is divinely directed to visit only men and women with chaste and beautiful innards. It is a virtue of an uncommon and almost Christ-like character.

Nanaghan wrote via bennanaghan@yahoo.com