Cincinnati and Nigerian zoos

Who hasn’t heard about the recent incident at the Cincinnati Zoo in the US which made news headlines throughout the world? What came to your mind when you did?

I was not only shocked by the media coverage of the Cincinnati Zoo incident but also by the activism of zoo lovers in the US, most of whom were against the decision to kill Harambe, a Gorilla, that mauled a four year old boy that slipped past a fence and into a fort encircling the ape when his mother looked the other way momentarily.

There was an outbursts of emotions which I saw via a Twitter hashtag #justiceforharambe with folks cursing the boy’s mother for being so careless enough not to know when the boy slipped away from her into the zoo’s enclosure( you would think they were never once children). Trust the abuse of the first amendment, some called for social services to take custody of the child because the mother lacked parenting capability. Many others, went a step higher, they called for the prosecution of the child’s parents under the state’s criminal law. And other criticised the zoo for its lack of organisation. Americans!

Harambe is dead but the young lad, having been dragged around and had his head banged repeatedly on the concrete by Harambe is still alive with no serious injuries. No one is celebrating his escape from the claws of death.

Supporters of animal rights are pained at the execution of Harambe and I am as well. The U.S. must have many animals in her zoo enough to exterminate one involved in a major accident. I reflected on the image of the empty zoo in Port Harcourt with only a handful of animals(while the incident in Cincinnati was played over and over), a zoo where the empty forts outstrips the animals in the entire zoo and I was not happy about this fact. It is no different in many zoos in parts of Nigeria.

Imagine the liability of having zoos in Nigeria without wild animals. Might it not be better for the few animals in their cages to be turned loose to the wild where they belong so we could stray in the bush if we have the guts to and hope to happen upon a Komodo dragon, pythons that swallow human beings instead of a commute to the zoo to stare into space?

A zoo is a place where young lads have the chance to explore the environment and nature but it seems so elsewhere and not here. Did I say young lads? A four-year-old? Ha! But it isn’t a place for only young lads but a fun place for throng of people of all ages and social status. If you think it’s a place for only little children so they could go there and romance appealing symbols and be educated in the animal world, then you are wrong.

Wait until you are bored with no place to go to and a zoo flashes through your mind. Try visiting a zoo on a public holiday here and you will see religious groups, school groups, families, children, interested in the outdoors with nothing to wet their eyes on in the Port Harcourt zoo. It’s so out of place.

This, I believe, is a problem, especially since we are mouthing the campaign to divest the economy and yet tourism sector is overlooked.

We need to do better and take a bigger picture approach. Please how do they manage to get tourism right in Zanzibar Island? Let’s be frank with ourselves, small is beautiful. They started small. Why can’t we? It doesn’t have to be all about oil. Now you see why the “Delta Avengers” can hold country by the jugular – what with only one major stream of income.

Instead of pointing fingers and engaging in metaphors, we should instead be looking at ways to boost our tourism sector by developing our zoos.

Now people emotionally attached to Harambe are daily mourning the loss of another life, a life they don’t consider different from a human one. You can see why those who love animals find it easy to love life.

A little child left a card at the zoo: “We are so sad that you had to kill one of your gorillas – we love the gorillas.”

Can we provide the environment for Nigerians to not only love animals they see in the zoo but honour them when they die like Harambe?

• Abah, a writer and teacher lives in Port Harcourt
@abahsimon1