The concept has served an undeserved purpose to its exploiters over the years, as an abstract sign that ties down to no signifier. Public is an abstracted abstraction in the diction of English. It is not the only English word, though. People is another. Many English words begin with p but not many can be as immaculate as public people, person and place can be related.
Public and people are two of the many abstract nouns that make frequent faceless characters in the drama of Nigerian English of the potbelly vocals in the public arena. They are two of the few, often abused words. Or deliberately used in connotation to the conscious belligerence of the user?
But unlike other abstract nouns, public and people are related by fate – two sides of the same thing. But their fate hasn’t saved them from the injustices of the users who don’t respect their relationship, until; perhaps, this notice brings it to their attention just now. Public is the place. People are the persons in the place. Normally, they are just persons – the most innocent plural a person ever had. But it is a taboo to call persons in the public so. You can only call those in a place that.
When you hear a Nigerian politico-elite uses it, people depicts nothing tangible just like public is used. It represents nobody, nothing. That is why when a Nigerian bad politician says I love my people; they mean they love nobody, no one. And this is why it is an easy synonym to public or a plural form of it? Well, that is not as important. But the place and the person hypothesis is a good working tool.
What is important is to use public to make sense, make it make sense on its own, or make a sense out of it or out of its use. Anyhow, the aim is to make the word matter, or make it tangible to tie it down to the tutelage of the fabric that holds together our human society. No word is ever useless. Not in English.
Never again. The adjective very used to be. It used to add no value to any word it precedes. We use it say is most useless adjectives. But not again. Knowledge has improves that very can now add an iota to a word it can proceed but. But then it does, sometimes, make sense, at least even by way of taking a useless space on a line.
Public is an innocent English collective noun that is attributed to a number of persons in a community or society who have common ownership of certain materials and have common concern of life, usually geographically expressed, a group of people, if you like. The latter part of the definition also suggests, then, that the public can have more commons – common tradition, heritage, culture, values, norms and some set of dos and don’ts.
That means the word is not a useless, stupid abstraction in the careless and cruel way it is often used. It is likely that it is always abused, yes, may be with the contempt of the cruelty of the wicked user. It is not a dead casket empty of nothing. It is not the hard part of nothing. It is the soft touch part of something then. It is actually a concept that depicts reality. It is a reflection of a true, real, and so tangible group who have a right to recognition, identity and respect and can claim a right, privilege or honour.
Public is then the collection of all the personal pronouns – singular and plural – which I, you, we and they can claim. If the personal pronouns represent any of us, then the collection that contains all of their contended meaning must be something bigger, stronger, more meaningful and most important than any representation. The public means all of us put into a bottle and closed. It should therefore be as sensitive a referent as the condition we all share inside a closed bottle.
Public means more. It means a great possession that binds me and you; them and us. It means all the possessive adjectives – singular and plural – that we all and each use to take or claim ownership of possessions. Public is me, you and them all put together in the wallowing vastness of the world of materialism we cannot finish wanting, needing, getting, and claiming in this world until another.
As a collection of interest and possession, the public must be custody then. As mine, yours, ours and theirs, the public must be personal to each and all of us. The Public is us, ours. It is mine, yours. It is them, theirs. It is our custody. We should take custody of it then. It is our life. It is our concern. It is our future. We ought to be. We should be. We should have been.
The human story is amazing. The story of the life of humans is systemic, orderly. It connects, ties, forges, builds, forms and stands out to time. We have been conceived, nursed and born as individual units of our families but as elements of the public. We are public properties entrusted to our families for time and we shall return as we grow, not as permanent dwellers but as responsible family who care, visit, help and contribute to take care of the bigger family – the public that is..
God creates the world in pairs in respect to His best creation – humans – and for them. The pairs of two that God creates the world like tall and short is depicted in the body of man – two of each of the organs in order to drive the lesson home that in matters of the public or matters that have to do with the public there is always an exception of idea, argument, action and judgment.
We are also two in one. There are two referent of each of us. The first is individual. The other is person. As individuals we are bound by and responsible to ourselves because whatever we do or refused to do has a beginning and end of action or effect on ourselves only. The object of the verb of our action or inaction as individuals has no effect on other. It stops and falls on us.
That is good reason why what we do or refused to do has no problem but to us and as much as we are okay with the effects there is no problem, no matter the short or long term consequences that may eventually accrue. We are, we will be both the cause and the effect of our own action. There is, there will be, no problem. And even when there is, the problem lies low, silent and dies in the eerie of that silence.
As subjects and objects of the sentence of our life as individuals, nothing can bring us into clash with other members of the public. This is because they are not affected, not even touched, by the result of what we do or don’t do to our selves. We are in it alone. The result can only eat us alone. Except family.
Those who care for us are too close to call our individualism. Our family can feel the heat of what we do or refused to do right on time because they are directly involved in our lives. But then we always handle the family. We quarrel, fight, beat, punish but at the end, with time, we are back walking together. We amend and move.
The other part of us is person – a longer word than public but not by number of letters in it. No. It has the same number of letters – 6. It is longer only by the structure and size of the letters the English alphabet gives it. It is just the ideal singular of the shorter plural. A person is a unit of the larger public, an iota of the fabrics of both the sign and the signifier; the reference and the referent.
We are not individuals the moment we step out of our privacy, our room. Outside, we are seen and judged at an instant in relation to, with others. We are seen as good or bad in everything in relation to others. That is why we are good when someone isn’t. We are bad when someone isn’t. We are what the other person is not and vice versa.
And judgments about us outside the self and the individual is not always funny, favourable or simply good. Not always. It is always subjective. It can be bad, too bad or worst. We may not even imagine to be heard any where near. But it is actually salient; it is transitive in the true sense. We cannot hold, control it. It can go, pass and travel. It can go places we don’t want; it reaches persons we don’t want, we don’t expect to hear.
As persons the action of our verbs is transitive. What we do or refused to do has direct or indirect effects on others, other members of the public, starting, first from our family. There is always an effect, irrespective of the impact of depth of action or inaction. That is reason we must watch each time we are throwing water down the stairs. Someone may be walking under.
That is good reason the action and inaction of a person must be critically decided so that its effect, good or bad, can have a mild or strong impact on the public. You can see why we need to be careful with whatever we do as persons because we are going to make or mar others in our custody of public that has to do with us, that is ours.
We mean the public is a sacrosanct sphere each of us owes so much that we must think times before we throw opinions, information or sentiment down. We cannot act the same way we use language in the privacy of our room or family house. The public is a sanctity that me and you must protect because it holds the sky together above us as a shade of life.
That is what many of us don’t understand in Nigeria. And that is the reason for this piece – to help push a sense for the comprehension of the sanctity of the public we must all respect. In the sanctity of the public and public issues, there is no individual, group or organisational claim to right, freedom, or privilege no matter the form of democracy we practice. Some of us will not understand the sanctity of a nation is the public sphere is a trash to them.
Look at the DAAR’s saga. See how democracy is abused to a level. Each time we pull to move an inch as a nation, some few men and organisations will try to pull us back. Raydokpesi, Raypower, all AIT stations and all their audience cannot be more important than the peace, unity and stability of the Nigerian public and the sanctity of the nation. Nigeria, they must understand, is bigger than any one organisation.
They have dragged us back many a time in the mud waters. What they keep doing is to keep silent each time the DAAR towers are misbehaving but will bark out loud each time patriots are complaining or this time the Government’s agents are taking action. They are truncating every attempt at improving the institutions and strengthening them, after years of ruins.
The NBC would not be able to be so bold in the past, to stand up to such immense national responsibility. Thanks to the President Muhammadu Buhari years. Capacity building in our institutions is yielding now, and they are angry that the result is paying the nation off. Who said what when the DAAR group was broadcasting nonsense defaming the person of the then candidate of the opposition in 2015? They were silent when we complained.
Who went to court for defamation then? Thereafter, they kept the campaign of mischief. Who said anything to ask them to stop? Or you think someone would not win? Ok. What did the opinion mongers say in defence of the poor Nigerian being attacked then? Who did? Why is it that they always love a system with special favours for the bad and cruel only? What is the price if this grand advocacy of impunity?
The PDP and its cohorts are trying to use anything to disrupt the Government and the nation because they lost everything and they cannot maintain their egos in the new Nigeria. Some old dying crooks among them that squandered their goodwill and are hunted by the spoils and horrors of their evil pasts are supporting the case for DAAR just in attempt to try to frustrate the man who frustrated them to the point of no fight back, and want to die with everyone in the process, including the nation, by trying to pull the sky down on all.
Now this is not about an individual. It is not about the person of PMB. It is not personal. He has forgiven all their past intrigues. He has no time for their personal antics of hatred and anger. It is a clear public issue, a public case of national jeopardy. The nation and our great public cannot afford any further security risk. It is an institutional action against a subject public organisation.
The NBC must be supported to get this public infringement well punished. Others are watching. If they get away with this, trust that many media and self-appointed, nongovernmental personal organisations will try their own hands on the peace and progress of the public. The stakes are higher for the common man on whose behalf the PMB government is acting. Many of us don’t have a voice. This is for them. Respect it.
Democratic abuse is one of the tragedies of our time. See where the douse of public abuse of democracy had landed Somalia and Libya. Sudan is a case in the process now. We must not allow the manipulation of democratic agencies to reinforce the abuse of extra-freedom and extra-rights fights of the insatiable greedy to take us back to the abyss of no return.
We must continue to strengthen and empower our public institutions, organisations and even individual who are patriotic and would want to walk along others in the great march to a public place in a stable platform of decent human society with good persons in charge of the most critical public sectors such as the mass media.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
