Photograph — The Will

Many Nigerians are currently consumed with grief over the death of Mayowa Ahmed, the young lady whose four-year long battle with cancer created the successful #SaveMayowa campaign on social media. The sad event, which has generated the #RIPMayowa hashtag, occurred approximately 10 days after she was eventually flown out to South Africa for treatment of her stage four ovarian cancer, after the controversy surrounding the legitimacy of her fundraising campaign was resolved.

However, several upset responses to the news of Mayowa’s death showed observers who had not forgotten about the details of the controversy, or the players involved. After the announcement of the young woman’s tragic passing was made by her brother, this set of sympathisers used the platform to blame blogger, Linda Ikeji for starting a rumour that delayed the critically ill woman’s travel plans. Toyin Aimakhu also came under harsh criticism for acting on Ikeji’s assumptions and calling out the Ahmeds as frauds.

Toyin Aimakhu received a lot of credit for giving the #SaveMayowa campaign the backing that made it a success, even though Nigerians exhibited a collective pride at the show of humanity towards Mayowa. The ill lady received an impressively generous amount of about $100,852 for treatment, well over her $100,000 mark. But, just as she was expected to be preparing for her trip, a story surfaced on the internet, claiming that the entire campaign was a sham which the Ahmeds sought to profit from. One of the things provided to support this claim was how the destination for Mayowa’s treatment suddenly changed from the USA to the UAE and, finally, to South Africa.

The damning reports originated from Linda Ikeji’s blog and led to a conflict involving the Ahmed family, the police, and Toyin Aimakhu, along with concerned Nigerians who felt slighted at the deception. Mayowa’s GoFundMe account was frozen in the meantime. Ikeji soon personally wrote a public apology, explaining her initial misconceptions about the issue, as well as citing the fact that she also contributed to the campaign and meant no ill.

Judging by some of the comments following the announcement of Mayowa’s death which seek to somewhat implicate Ikeji in the matter, it appears that her apology was not accepted. One commenter even expressed disappointment at the fact that Ikeji was deleting such blameful comments from her page.

This kind of emotional reaction from people in times of tragedy and mourning might be understandable, in terms of a human impulse to single out a culprit and ascribe the blame for their pain to it. And these days, social media makes it easier for that sort of bullying to take place, with anyone being able to pass a negative comment across without pausing to reflect on its potential effects on the intended target, or its overwhelming reduction from the subject at hand.

In this particular case, besides being inappropriate and irrelevant, this approach highlights the nagging problem that we seem to have as a country – where our first instinct to blame, misplaces our priorities. Because of that, we end up losing sight of the real problem and getting angry at the wrong things or people. It is in such instances that comments such as the ones made by Funmi Iyanda and Olukemi Olunloyo concerning #RIPMayowa make sense.

As ‘well-meaning’ Nigerians resorted to bashing one person for a clueless mistake, television personality Funmi Iyanda’s tweeted about the aggressiveness of ovarian cancer, and how it remains difficult to detect it early. And although the comment does not precisely hit the nail on the head about detecting ovarian cancer, Ms. Olunloyo opines that “#RIPMayowa should not be an attack on Toyin Aimakhu or @lindaikeji. It’s a lesson for women to start getting pap smears before it’s too late.”

Their comments were two of those that took the time to express their condolences and to acknowledge that the real culprit in Mayowa’s tragic end was in fact her Stage IV ovarian cancer.

When Mayowa’s story first emerged in the media, a couple of Nigerian platforms used the [unfortunate] development to remind people about the dangers of ovarian cancer and the benefits of detecting it in its early stages. As we marked World Ovarian Cancer Day on May 8 this year, we were once again reminded that ovarian cancer is responsible for the death of about 140,000 women worldwide, and every single woman is at risk of contracting the deadly disease. Unfortunately, although there are “warning signs” such as a persistent bloating of the abdomen or an increased size of it, ovarian cancer is not easily detectable.

According to the Ovarian Centre Research Fund, “most women diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer have a five-year survival rate of approximately 18 percent.” This is in comparison to Stages I, II, and III which have survival rates of approximately 80 – 90 percent, 60 – 70 percent, and 30 – 45 percent respectively. With stage IV, Mayowa’s case had become very advanced, despite the fact that “survival rates are often based on studies of large numbers of people, but they can’t predict what will happen in any particular person’s case.”

Thus, rather than trivialise the loss of a person’s life to a disease that regularly threatens lives, by ascribing it to the result of rumour mongering, people who really care should, instead, choose a more productive and educative route in the future. For example, monitoring our health frequently and encouraging others to do the same can contribute a whole lot to the fight against cancers across the globe.

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