The sad story of ‘Junior Pope’

THIS week’s column was going to be about OJ Simpson, his life and his recent death, and the complex emotions you had shared that day, long ago, with the people who lined the motorway cheering ‘Go, Juice!’ as his white bronco ran ahead of the chasing police and press pack after the murder of his estranged wife and her friend, while Larry King ran a live commentary on CNN. Or it was going to be about the new, young President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, his two ‘First Ladies’, and the promise of a new beginning for Senegal.

But a news item out of Anambra State knocked everything else out of kilter because it hurt you to the bone and evoked, once again, a sadness about your country, reminding you how much would need to be done in the new dispensation to make things right. It was the drowning death of Mr John Paul Odonwodo, a.k.a. ‘Junior Pope’, and three others in a boat accident on their way to shoot a film.

You did not have the privilege of knowing ‘Junior Pope’, though a prominent figure in your household assured you he was a talented actor with a strong presence on social media. Your attention was drawn to a trending video he was reported to have shared on the same river on the day before the accident, in which he was riding in the bow of a boat, recording himself on his phone as he urged the boat pilot not to drive too fast as he had three children he wanted to be alive to bring up.

For context, in the time since the death of the Junior Pope, there have been other drowning deaths of less famous people—in Lagos and in other parts of the country. Drowning is one of the commonest causes of death in Nigeria, as in many parts of the world. It has remained so since over a century ago, when Dr. J.K. Randle, sitting on the upper floor of his posh residence on Broad Street, Lagos, observed the regular commotion as the bodies of market women who drowned on their short daily trading commute between Marina and Apapa ports were brought to the shore, with much wailing and screaming. As a concerned citizen, Dr. Randle decided to build the J.K. Randle Swimming Pool and to donate it to the people of Lagos. It was probably the evidence that colleagues and bystanders at the scene of the accident had any knowledge of how to get water out of the young victims’ lungs or carry out cardio-pulmonary resuscitation.

Instead, an unconscious Junior Pope was taken to a mortuary and a herbalist, in whatever sequence. There first public swimming pool in are photos of a beautiful Nigeria. He hoped the market hospital with neat corridors women would learn to swim and gleaming equipment and so save themselves. Sadly, where he eventually ended in the market, women did up. There is even a photo not learn to swim. But that is of him with the leads of an another story. ECG machine attached to his

It is a cause for great sadness body. But, by then, he was that four young Nigerians long dead, clearly. The ‘window lost their lives in utterly period’ for survival in a preventable circumstances drowning accident is only a in Anambra, on their way few short minutes. to Asaba, last week. It has It fell to the Federal Inland been a lugubrious exercise, Waterways Authority surveying the events and (FIWA), and not the Anambra reactions of officialdom and State government, to the public in the aftermath of make definitive pronouncements the tragedy, which suggests about the tragedy. to you that nothing has been An official statement declared learned and nothing is likely that the Anambra

nd to improve. Police have ‘begun investigation

There is, for instance, no to unravel any criminal liability in the cause of the deaths of John Pope and others.’

The unpalatable truth is that the real criminal liability belongs to Anambra State and the Nigerian nation, which have allowed and will continue to allow the various gaps evident here to happen. Citizens are not deliberately encouraged to learn about CPR. Citizens believe, in this day and age, that they should take an unconscious victim of drowning to a herbalist for spiritual’ mumbo-jumbo’ instead of a hospital. The public is not targeted with education and information to deter such behaviour, with the enforcement of clear-cut regulations, and with the imposition of stiff penalties for non-compliance. And there is an absurd ‘federal’ Constitution that takes away a state’s responsibility for regulation and enforcement on its waterways in favour of a remote ‘federal’ entity.

In such a context, the ‘Law and Order’ pronouncement from Anambra police, like the promised investigation of the Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau (NSIB), is a case of medicine after death. If there is no safety protocol that has been enacted as law in the state, it is difficult to see how anyone in this sad matter can be prosecuted for ‘negligence’. If it is not mandatory by law for boats to be of a certain standard and to be well maintained, if safety jackets of the right quality are not mandatory for boat owners and passengers, even the publicised outrage of the Actors Guild of Nigeria and its suspension of moviemaking in riverine areas will be mere knee-jerk reactions without lasting benefit.

But if the death of Junior Pope and the other young creatives in this wasteful tragedy is taken as a wakeup call to galvanise state and federal governments to begin deliberately building knowledge, structures, and services, backed by appropriate legislation, to enhance the safety and survival of riverine travellers in Nigeria, some good may yet come to the nation and its people from the tragedy.

May the souls of Mr. John Paul Odonwodo and the others who drowned with him rest in perfect peace.

“The unpalatable truth is that the real criminal liability belongs to Anambra State and the Nigerian nation, which have allowed and will continue to allow the various gaps evident here to happen”