Jeff Bezos did not set out to become the king of home-delivered paperback books. 

But we're at a point in history when an entire generation knows Amazon only as the dominant player in e-commerce, and doesn't remember the time when Amazon was that scrappy little startup that pioneered the shipping of words-on-paper to your door.

I can assure you, that was an amazing innovation at the time.

Today, when you think of Amazon, you think of it as the place to get everything you need – right now. But it wasn't always this way. At one point, Bezos had his mind fully focused on books. Everything that came later was the result of a startup strategy of thinking big and acting small. 

I'll use Amazon as the late-stage example for using the same think-big-act-small strategy – like a cake I baked earlier to show you the gorgeous final product. And I'll use two of my own startup experiences to show you the way.

From Books to Those Little Creamer Cups

So when I sat down to write this article, I had just ordered coffee pods and those little creamer cups (an indulgence) on Prime, and they arrived at my door less than 90 minutes later – before I finished my first draft. 

I can picture Jeff, circa 1994, thinking, "Joe is writing. He needs his coffee. Not in five days or even two days. He needs it now. That's how I'm going to make him and everyone else a customer for life. It's worth the extra spend to make it happen."

It most definitely cost Amazon more money to fulfill my order than I paid, and it's not a mistake, and it's not random loss leadership. I ordered golf gloves too (Amazon does everything) and those won't be here until tomorrow. But the coffee and the creamer got here right now. 

What blows my mind is the creamer cups. That's next-level data gathering and planning. 

"Coffee? Right now? We can do that. But doesn't he take it with a little splash of cream?" 

This is a micro example of the end result of a company strategy that made the company massively successful by thinking big and acting big. 

And Amazon is far from finished when it comes to thinking big. The same strategic mindset that brought about two-day shipping, Amazon Web Services, and the Delivery Service Partner program is foraging its way into the NFL on Prime Video, brick-and-mortar groceries, health care, and allegedly even mobile phone service (again).

How does this apply to you? To answer that, we go back to 1994 and delivering books – because they were flat and relatively standardized to ship, and the margins were amazing.

And to think big and act big, Amazon first had to act small. Then perfect everything.

Washing Cars to Mobile Auto Repair

So if Amazon is the pre-baked cake, this is the growth stage example. 

In 2017, Automated Insights, an NLG tech startup I had sunk seven years and all of my brains and guts into, was almost three years past having been successfully acquired by a private equity firm. My partner, the founder, had left some months prior, and the writing was kind of on the wall for me to figure out my next thing.

I decided to go wash cars.

Scot Wingo, the former founder and CEO of Channel Advisor, a company that aggregated e-commerce data that he had taken public, had been on our board through our acquisition. He had co-founded Spiffy a couple years earlier, a mobile car wash and detail company. 

I'd known Scot for about 15 years at that point, so he was the first person I sat down with to brainstorm my options. By the end of that meeting, I knew that washing cars was the books and CDs of mobile service, and I didn't want to do anything else.

In 2017, Spiffy had a couple of dozen vans and maybe 50 mobile-wash technicians, offering service in four cities. But we were collecting data, perfecting the process, building out our own vans and software. We were using some of the same strategies Amazon used when they were selling books – thinking big, acting small, and perfecting the process. 

In 2018, we started offering oil changes, then we started working with fleets, and then we added on tires, brakes, and other light repairs. Today, we're no longer mobile car wash, we're "mobile vehicle care and maintenance," in 50 cities, with 500 techs, and always hiring. 

Startup Education and Advisement Sucks

To be fair, the startup capital costs to get into the automotive space are extremely high. Spiffy has raised over $30 million to get to where we are today. 

So yeah, that's not a path most entrepreneurs can take. What about the early stagers?

Spiffy isn't my first rodeo. In fact, I've founded or been ground floor at over a dozen startups, including a few founded and funded out of my own pocket, for less than $1,000 in startup costs. 

Not long after my first startup success, over 20 years ago, I started advising other founders, because the path I had to walk was difficult and risky and stressful and the education and advice I had received was awful. 

Soon, I was being offered obscene amounts of money to advise growth-stage and late-stage startups. I was still advising early-stagers, who were mostly broke, and still writing articles like these to put out as much free, real, tactical startup advice and education as I could. 

Then my free time started drying up, and the opportunity cost of doing "free and cheap" started to compound. It occurred to me that there was a huge space between free advice, which helps a lot of people a little bit, and super-expensive paid advice, which helps a couple of people quite a lot. 

I founded Teaching Startup to bridge that gap, recruiting experienced entrepreneurs to answer questions from other entrepreneurs (experienced or not), via email. I literally started the whole thing on Mailchimp, using that platform as the product, the CRM, the subscription model – everything but the credit card swipe for the paltry $10 a month I was asking. 

And then it blew up, in a good way. I was told to go edtech, to use video consultations, to do seminars and webinars, to write books. In other words, to act big now that I was thinking big. 

But three years in, I'm still perfecting the process. I'm not trying to be the next Gary Vee or one of those people who can fill hotel ballrooms or convention centers with motivational goodness. I'm trying to make more and better entrepreneurs, as many as I can. It's boring. It's sluggish. It's not "sexy."

But neither is delivering books. 

I'm thinking big, trying to figure out how to "get people their coffee right now" by making the startup founding and leading process less painful, less expensive, and more available. But I'm acting small, sticking to email and content, real answers, and slow growth to get me to a much larger goal. 

This is how you build it like Bezos. Whether you raise millions of dollars for the latest flavor of AI technology or customize bikes in your backyard, you should be thinking big, acting small, and perfecting the process. 

Inc

Nigeria produced the first major shock of the Women's World Cup as they stunned Australia 3-2 on Thursday to leave the co-hosts' tournament hopes on thin ice and home fans reeling.

Asisat Oshoala volleyed into an open goal in the 72nd minute to seal a deserved win for the Africans after Uchenna Kanu cancelled out Emily van Egmond's opener on the cusp of halftime and Osinachi Ohale nudged Nigeria ahead after the break.

Australia cut the deficit to one goal when Alanna Kennedy nodded home a header in the 10th minute of stoppage time but Nigeria rode out the final seconds to claim one of the finest wins in their history at the global showpiece.

The victory in front of a huge crowd at Lang Park put Nigeria top of Group B level with Canada on four points but ahead on goals scored. The 11-time African champions eliminated Ireland in their last group match on Monday.

Nigeria coach Randy Waldrum said his players were in party mode in their changing room at Lang Park.

"I think they’re still singing and dancing right now," the American told reporters.

"I can’t get in there and get a word in edge-wise.

"So many people didn’t believe in me, didn’t believe in the team. The one thing we’ve done is talk about believing in one another."

The Matildas must beat Olympic champions Canada, held to a 0-0 draw by Nigeria in their opener, to be assured of making the last 16 at a tournament where they fancied themselves among the major title threats.

Lacking talismanic striker Sam Kerr and attacker Mary Fowler through injury, Australia's makeshift forward line peppered the Nigeria goal but saw a slew of chances fly wide and over the bar in both halves.

Defensive lapses ultimately cost the hosts but coach Tony Gustavsson was reluctant to find fault.

"If the performance was poor I'd say it was, but the performance wasn't poor," said the Swede.

"You look at the stats, we should walk off the field as winners of this game."

Van Egmond, brought into the starting 11 in place of Fowler, put Australia in front in the first minute of first half stoppage time with a crisp finish from a Caitlin Foord cross.

Australia's joy was fleeting, though, with midfielder Rasheedat Ajibade setting up Nigeria's equaliser with a deflected shot that landed at the feet of Kanu who scored from close-range seconds before the interval.

Waldrum had his main strike threat Oshoala start on the bench in a selection surprise but two minutes after she came on, Nigeria had the lead.

Back from suspension, Ajibade made the difference again as she headed the ball towards the far post after a corner, allowing Ohale to force the ball over the line in the 65th minute.

Under pressure, Australia's defence broke down seven minutes later as a mix-up between goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold and Kennedy allowed Oshoala to pounce.

Arnold came off her line and Oshoala swerved past her on the right to sneak in the volley from a tight angle.

Australia pushed hard in search of goals, and Kennedy popped in her late header at the far post but Nigeria held on for a huge boost of confidence before they face Ireland.

Reuters

Soldiers in Niger seized control in the West African nation after the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, was detained by the presidential guard.

The security forces have “put an end to the regime” due to “the continuous degradation of the security situation, the bad economic and social governance,” Colonel-Major Amadou Abdramane said in a statement on state broadcaster Tele Sahel late Wednesday.

All institutions have been suspended and parliament dissolved, according to the statement made on behalf of the National Council for the Protection of the Homeland, which referred to itself by the French acronym CNSP.

The group, which said it represents all the units of the security and defense forces, also imposed a curfew between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.

Land and air borders are closed until the situation stabilizes, Abdramane said. “It’s asked of all foreign parties not to interfere.”

It wasn’t immediately clear who was the leader of the coup that followed the arrest of Bazoum and the occupation of the presidential palace earlier Wednesday by the presidential guard.

The move sparked ire among Niger’s neighbors and international partners including France, the US and the European Union.

The US State Department urged “elements of the presidential guard to release President Bazoum from detention and refrain from violence,” according to a statement on its website.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday spoke with President Bazoum, signaling US support for him as the democratically elected president.

“We call for his immediate release,” Blinken said. “We condemn any effort to seize power by force.”

The whereabouts of Bazoum, who came to power two years ago in the first democratic transfer of power in Niger since independence from France in 1960, wasn’t clear late Wednesday.

Bloomberg

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has given a nationwide strike notice beginning on 2 August to protest the removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government.

Although no official statement has been issued by the Congress, its spokesperson, Ben Upah, confirmed the strike plan to an online newspaper on Wednesday.

“Yes, the nationwide strike will commence on 2 August 2023. We will soon issue a communique to that effect, ” Upah said

General Secretary of the NLC, Emma Ugboaja, did not respond to calls to his mobile phone on Wednesday.

It was, however, gathered that Congress gave the government a seven-day ultimatum to reverse all perceived anti-poor policies failing which it’ll proceeded on the industrial action.

President Bola Tinubu had, during his inauguration on 29 May, announced the removal of fuel subsidy, an action that suddenly pushed up the price of the product.

A few days later, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) announced a new price regime ranging from N537 to N600 per litre of petrol.

On Tuesday last week, the NNPCL further pushed the price to N617 per litre, saying market forces informed it.

The court had in June stopped the NLC from going on strike following a case instituted by the government.

A committee set up by the government to negotiate with the NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on subsidy removal has not made much progress.

The strike threat is coming a few hours after the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) began an indefinite strike.

NARD embarked on the strike on Tuesday night despite the intervention by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas.

The doctors are demanding implementation of a one-for-one replacement policy for healthcare workers, immediate payment of all salary arrears, implementation of a Consolidated Medical Salary Structure, and a new hazard allowance, among others.

PT

The federal government has reacted to the seven-day ultimatum issued by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) to embark on a nationwide strike over the hike in the price of petrol and the high cost of living in the country.

On Wednesday, NLC issued a seven-day ultimatum to the federal government to reverse all “anti-poor” and “insensitive” policies.

The policies, the union said, include the recent hike in the price of petrol, and the sudden increase in public school fees, among others.

In the communique signed by Joe Ajaero, NLC president, and Emmanuel Ugboaja, the union’s general secretary, the union accused the federal government of showing enormous disdain and contempt for the Nigerian people and declared a war of attrition on citizens.

However, in a statement, B.E Jedy-Agba, permanent secretary at the ministry of justice, said the union is restrained by the order of the national industrial court from embarking on any strike regarding the removal of petrol subsidy.

She said the court had on June 5 granted an injunctive order restraining the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) “from embarking on the planned industrial action/or strike of any nature, pending the hearing and determination of the pending motion on notice”.

Jedy-Agba advised the union to explore other means of negotiations with the federal government rather than “resorting to self-help and undermining the orders of the court”.

“It is noted that the issues (removal of fuel subsidy, hike in prices of petrol and consequential increase in the cost of living, etc) which precipitated the above court action are the very same issues over which NLC has now issued another strike notice,” the statement reads.

“The NLC has submitted to the jurisdiction of the court and is being represented by the reputable law firm of Femi Falana. It is therefore our minimum expectation that the NLC will allow the courts to perform their constitutional roles rather than resorting to self-help and undermining the orders of the court.

“We note with dismay that this latest strike notice is consistent with the inexplicable disdain which the NLC leadership has visited on the authority of the court in recent times following earlier inciting and derogatory remarks made by the NLC president against the court.

“Aside from the above legal inhibition against any strike action of any nature, we also note that both the federal and state governments are engaging with stakeholders to cushion the collateral effect of the removal of fuel subsidy and increment in fuel price.

“It would be a great act of service to Nigerian workers and the nation’s economy for NLC to explore negotiations rather than embark on any strike action.”

The Cable

Immediate past national vice chairman (North West) of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Salihu Lukman, has asked President Bola Tinubu to “retract from illegal acts”.

He said this in his resignation letter dated July 26, 2023.

Daily Trust had reported how Lukman kicked against the move to announce former Kano state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, as national chairman of the party.

APC insiders confirmed that Tinubu tipped Ganduje for the office of national chairman following Abdullahi Adamu’s resignation.

But Lukman said going ahead with such move was against the interest of the founding fathers of the party.

“I hereby kindly resign my position as National Vice Chairman, Northwest of our great party, All Progressives Congress (APC). My resignation is with immediate effect, which becomes necessary given my conviction that the atmosphere in the party is completely at variance with the founding vision of forming a progressive party.”

“Rather than remaining in the leadership of the party and become a source of distraction for leaders and especially for the young government of Tinubu, it is better to excuse myself and take time off from politics.

“I will however retain my membership of the party in the hope that our leaders, especially Tinubu, will retract from acts that will be unjust and illegal, which is crucial to any claim of being democratic or progressive whether as politicians or as patriotic Nigerians. I wish to convey my sincerely gratitude to our leaders in Kaduna, especially Nasir El-Rufai for finding me worthy of nomination to serve at the highest level of the party’s leadership.”

Daily Trust

Islamist militants killed at least 25 people and wounded others in attacks on two villages in Borno state, a hotbed for insurgency, a police source and two residents said on Wednesday.

The militants killed 18 herders grazing their livestock in one village and seven other people in another village, both in Kukawa district of the state that borders neighbouring Chad on Tuesday, the police source said.

Habibu Ardo, a herder in the area, said "ISWAP fighters (riding) on more than 15 motorcycles attacked our people while grazing in Kukawa and beheaded 18 of them without firing a single bullet on them in order to avoid the attention of security forces.”

Bakura Mustapha, a local vigilante who helped bury the dead, said “about 18 of the corpses were recovered in the bush and they have been buried today according to Islamic rites.”

A police spokesperson did not immediately respond to calls to confirm the incident.

Borno state is at the heart of a 14-year Islamist insurgency in Nigeria, which has spilled into neighbouring Chad and Cameroon. The conflict was launched by Boko Haram and later joined by its offshoot ISWAP, a regional affiliate of the Islamic state.

The United Nations estimates that the conflict had killed some 350,000 people by the end of 2020 and has left millions dependent on aid.

Reuters

A US congressional panel has heard testimony from former military servicemen that the American military may know far more about unknown objects spotted in the sky than has previously been disclosed.

The hearing on so-called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs – a term coined partly to avoid the stigma of “UFO” – featured several witnesses from military career backgrounds sharing stunning testimony about alleged secret military programmes, as well as personal encounters with unknown objects that appeared to defy known physics and engineering principles while flying in US airspace.

One witness was David Charles Grusch, a former US Air Force intelligence officer and whistleblower who recently went public with claims that the American military may be attempting to reverse-engineer recovered craft of no known earthly origin.

Another, retired US Navy Commander David Fravor, gave a detailed account of an encounter he and other pilots had with a UAP over the Persian Gulf in 2004.

“As we looked around, we noticed some white water off our right side. The weather on the day of the incident was as close to a perfect day as you could ask, clear skies, light winds, calm seas (no whitecaps from the waves) so the white water stood out in the large blue ocean. As all four looked down we saw a small white Tic Tac shaped object…

“As we pulled nose onto the object at approximately ½ of a mile with the object just left of our nose, it rapidly accelerated and disappeared right in front of our aircraft. Our wingman, roughly 8,000ft above us, also lost visual. We immediately turned to investigate the white water only to find that it was also gone.

The object, he said, “was far superior in performance to my brand new F/A-18F, and did not operate with any of the known aerodynamic principles that we expect for objects that fly in our atmosphere.”

Out in the open

There is significant political pressure by US lawmakers to investigate the UAP issue in detail while keeping the debate on it as rational as possible. In that spirit, some of the panel’s members sought to frame the hearing as an exposé of possible extraterrestrial visits to Earth, but an inquiry into a possible cover-up.

“We’re not bringing little green men or flying saucers into the hearing,” said Congressman Tim Burchett. “Sorry to disappoint half of y’all.”

Yet other members emphasised that part of the point of the hearing was, in fact, to understand the meaning of the hundreds or thousands of sightings apparently made by military staff and commercial pilots.

In her own opening remarks, during which she mentioned the infamous Roswell incident, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna remarked that Congress needs to understand “the magnitude of what this means not just for this nation, but for humanity”.

Thanks to a sporadic sequence of news reports and official disclosures in recent years, beginning with a stunning New York Times story in 2017, there is a greater public understanding than ever about what steps the US has been quietly taking to investigate UAPs, in particular those spotted by military servicemembers.

Millions of dollars of funds quietly allocated by the US Senate are known to have been spent on probing the matter, including via the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force established in 2020, and its successor, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, for which Grusch worked.

News reports, declassified videos and Congressional testimony have made clear that there have been many more encounters than the public has been made aware of, and that there are striking consistencies across the witness accounts that have been gathered.

And even among those who remain steadfastly sceptical of any suggestion that extraterrestrial aviators are visiting Earth, the string of still-partial revelations has raised serious alarm that advanced technology of some kind might be being used in proximity to American military assets – and that if so, it is not clear who has developed and deployed it.

Wednesday’s hearing, however, marks a new turn in the public story.

Fear and danger

Both Grusch and Fravor specifically alluded to the US government’s possible awareness or even possession of craft originating beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.

Grusch’s most striking testimony was indirect, in that he did not claim to have first-hand knowledge of the supposed objects in question. Instead, he testified that in 2019, he was “informed” of “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program” that was or is operating without Congressional scrutiny.

“I made the decision based on the data I collected, to report this information to my superiors and multiple Inspectors General, and in effect become a whistleblower,” he told the subcommittee.

“As you know, I have suffered retaliation for my decision. But I am hopeful that my actions will ultimately lead to a positive outcome of increased transparency.”

Fravor also voiced concern about the lack of government scrutiny of the reported incidents and the military’s knowledge of them.

“What concerns me is that there is no ‘oversight’ from our elected officials on anything associated with our government possessing or working on craft that we believe are not from this world,” he said in his remarks.

He also reiterated to the committee that the object he and other pilots saw in the Persian Gulf in 2004 was able to perform seemingly impossible manoeuvres that would outpace any US military assert.

“The technology that we faced was far superior than any we had, and you could put that anywhere…it could go someplace, drop down in a matter of seconds, do whatever it wants and leave, and there’s nothing we could do about it.”

Crucially, Grusch and Fravor both stressed that the objects they discussed were not only spotted by pilots visually, but also detected on radar, though that data has not been released.

The strongest running theme of the hearing, however, was that there is currently almost no way for pilots and military personnel to report sightings without attracting the stigma associated with UFO conspiracy theorists – or far darker consequences.

Grusch, for one, confirmed to Luna that he had at times feared for his life since coming forward.

There is also no reporting system at all for civilian aviation pilots. Another witness, former F-18 pilot Ryan Graves, explained that he had helped found the group Americans for Safe Aerospace to support those who had had UAP encounters, and that he had not anticipated how many witnesses would contact him.

The group, he says, has “become a haven for more than 30 UAP witnesses who were previously unspoken due to the absence of a safe intake process. Most do not want to speak publicly. They are afraid of professional consequences. They just want to add their account to the data set.”

Tellingly, the Republican-led subcommittee session featured some of the House of Representatives’ most hardcore right-wing members – Florida’s Matt Gaetz, for instance – along with left-wing figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

That is testament to the fact that the issue of UAPs cuts across party lines like few other topics at a time when Washington, and the House of Representatives in particular, is viciously divided.

As Congressman Jared Moskowitz said in his opening remarks, “it shouldn’t take the possibility of non-human origin to bring us together”.

Euro News

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian military repels ‘massive’ Ukrainian offensive – defense ministry

Russian troops have stopped an “intensive” effort by the Ukrainian military to break their defensive lines near the village of Orekhov in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region. The village and its surroundings have been the scene of fierce fighting for weeks, as Ukraine’s floundering counteroffensive drags on.

Kiev’s forces “resumed intensive offensive operations” just south of Orekhov on Wednesday morning, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that evening. Despite the Ukrainian army launching a “massive”assault with three battalions backed by tanks, Russia’s 810th Marine Brigade, and 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division held their positions and repelled the Ukrainian advance, the ministry said.

During the battle, Ukraine lost 22 tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, and more than 100 men, according to the ministry.

Nearby, Russian troops repelled an attack on the village of Rabotino, and used air and artillery power to hit Ukrainian units near Malaya Tokmachka, Yablokovo and Rabotino.

All of these locations sit within the formerly Ukrainian region of Zaporozhye, where Kiev’s  forces have been attempting for almost two months to penetrate Russia’s multi-layered defensive lines and push south to the Black Sea. If Ukraine were to succeed in this gambit, Russia’s land access to Kherson Region and Crimea would be severed.

However, Ukraine’s efforts have thus far been in vain. Russia has heavily mined the no-man’s-land in front of its defensive lines in this area, and early attempts to push through these minefields have proven disastrous for the Ukrainian military. Photos and videos from the beginning of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in June showed lines of destroyed tanks and armored vehicles sitting in minefields between Malaya Tokmachka and Rabotino, burning after they hit mines, and being targeted by artillery and Russian helicopters.

Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade – a NATO-trained unit – reportedly lost30% of its US-supplied Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles in two weeks near Orekhov and Rabotino, while the 33rd Mechanized Brigade lost nearly a third of its 32 German-made Leopard tanks in the same area in a single week.

Across the entire frontline, Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive has already cost Kiev 26,000 troops and 3,000 pieces of heavy military hardware since June, according to the latest figures from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the Ukrainian operation as “suicidal.”

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has admitted to having difficulties, saying the counteroffensive is developing “slower than desired.” Amid reports that his Western backers are displeased at the pace of the offensive, Zelensky has attempted to shift the blame for the apparent failure to the West, saying that Ukraine did not receive enough munitions, weaponry, or training to succeed.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine counteroffensive is moving, US says while pledging support

Ukraine's counteroffensive is "not a stalemate" even if it is not progressing fast enough, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.

Kirby made the remarks when asked about the pace of Ukraine's counteroffensive in a press briefing.

"President Zelenskiy himself has said that he that it's not progressing as fast as he would like and they're not moving as far every day as they would like. The United States is not going to take a position on that," Kirby said.

He added: "That said they are moving, it's not a stalemate. They're not just frozen. The Ukrainians are moving."

The White House national security spokesman said Washington would "make sure that they (Ukrainians) have the kinds of tools and capabilities they need to stay on the move."

More than $43 billion in U.S. military aid has been provided since Russia's invasion began in February 2022. The U.S. Department of Defense announced $400 million in additional security assistance for Ukraine earlier this week, including air defense missiles, armored vehicles and small drones.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that while Ukraine has recaptured half the territory that Russia initially seized in its invasion, the counteroffensive was in its early days and would take shape over "several months."

RT/Reuters

Since the ill-fated night of October 20, 2020, the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration has heavily invested in propagating its version of what went down. One press release issued by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Olusegun Ogboye, to deflate the outrage following the leaked memo revealing that the Lagos State Government planned a mass burial for the 103 victims of the 2020 #EndSARS violence punched a hole in one of their strongest arguments. From the Dis-Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, to state officials who traversed the news media circuits over the Lekki toll gate incident, one of their most vehement defences was that many deaths could not have occurred as claimed without families coming forward to claim their losses. It took only three years for the government to inadvertently confirm that some of us are actually officially faceless, nameless, disconnected from kith and kin, and can be disposed of like nothing.

As one has come to expect of Nigerian bureaucratic riposte to public disquiet, the Lagos press release on the mass burial Ogboye followed the standard format of prefacing the point with feigned anger at a misinformed public, pejoratively schooling people for what they got wrong, finally making the expected point, and rounding off with a scold. Apart from not departing from this pattern, they were also more concerned with responding to those they consider mischief-makers than reflecting on the moral import of 103 people (and likely more) dying in a single day in a single city. The way the government glibly stated that they picked up their bodies in several neighbourhoods around the city, one would be forgiven for thinking these people were merely a herd of cows struck by thunder while grazing.

If the feverish explanations of Lagos State officials fail to convince anyone of their sincerity, it is because we are reeling at the horror of the city as a sprawling necropolis. So many lives can be lost, and the government cannot stretch itself to dignify them by at least finding out their identity and killers? It must be far much easier to stick people in the ground and forget them than to take the trouble to come to terms with the cheapness of life and death under your administrative watch.

Ogboye’s write-up concludes interestingly: The government, therefore, appeals to social media rumour mongers to please allow the hapless families of the unclaimed loved ones a deserved closure. Such self-contradiction! If the whole point of mass burying 103 people is because nobody came forward to claim them, then who are these “hapless families” getting “deserved closure” on whose behalf you are appealing for sensitivity? What kind of emotional closure is possible for the families who are still out there unknowing of the fate of their deceased, and will probably never know now that those people will be undistinguishably buried in an unmarked grave with many others? If the state had truly believed some families out there deserved closure, it would have tried harder.

Of course, they claimed that they sponsored several newspaper advertisements announcing that families missing a loved one should come forward and take a DNA test to ascertain whether they are related to the people lying in the morgues. Whether the people looking for a missing person in Nigeria buy a daily newspaper every single day to get that information and respond accordingly is a question only Lagos State can answer. But waiting for people’s families to respond should not preclude giving the dead a face and getting justice for them.

Funnily enough, the state explained that some of the unfortunate victims were killed in community clashes. Were those combatant invaders from Mars that no one knew any of them in Fagba, Ajah and other communities? For the state to be certain that their deaths were a consequence of community clashes, they must also have some information on who they clashed with, where the clashes happened, who killed who, and who should be charged for murder. As for the ones that they claimed died during a jailbreak at the Ikoyi prison, finding them should not be so hard when there are prison records. Or, are they saying they throw people in jail without adequate records of who they are and to whom they are related? Regularly, we hear of the billions of naira allocated to feeding prisoners. I find it hard to believe that the government spends so much money on their food without recording their existence.

What the reality of over 100 people being unidentifiable in a modern state like Nigeria tells us is that we still do not have a proper accounting system for the humans living within our domains. We are a society where the government votes massive amounts of money to purchase surveillance equipment like CCTV and so on but without a commensurate outcome in securing lives and properties. Despite subjecting people to endless data capture for different purposes, over 100 people can still get lost within a single city and nobody knows anything about them? No wonder bandits in Nigeria make videos without bothering to mask their faces anymore. The fact that a criminal unveils their face before the public glare does not make them un-faceless to the Nigerian government.

Meanwhile, one cannot argue that the means to account for people does not exist. It does. When a young man made a snarky comment about former first lady Aisha Buhari on Twitter, the police managed to track him down to arrest him even though they had to lay in wait for him for about six months. In this Nigeria where over 100 people will be thrust into a mass grave it has never been hard to fish out people for punishment. That is the way of the Nigerian state. When they need to destroy lives, government agents can be madly efficient with their use (and abuse) of institutional resources. When you ask them to use that same ingenuity to improve the quality of life for the people they govern, they have no clue how to summon their wits. They can destroy, not create.

The fate of these poor Lagosians—to be dumped in a mass grave at a cost higher than an annual minimum wage—says so much about the operations of life and death in the Nigerian necropolis. Life and death are not necessarily opposites; they are a continuum. How a society treats death is always indicative of their attitude towards life. People who do not give dignity to the dead will hardly be concerned about life either. One of our biggest failings in this part of the world is the levity with which we take life; it is the reason we trail behind civilisation while the rest of the world soars to unimaginable heights. Everything the societies we call “advanced” have invented, from their technology to ideologies, has been to enhance life. Every use of their God-given thinking faculties has been to give life and more abundantly. Societies without a similar drive towards improving life will either be enslaved to the ones that take life seriously or perish.

 There is a reason, every year, thousands of Africans die in the Mediterranean while trying to cross over to Europe and you never hear from the government of their respective countries. There is hardly outrage at their death and there is almost no likelihood that any actionable plan to prevent a repeat is in the offing. Our leaders are often too busy trying to self-enrich to be bothered that some unfortunate people who have not yet lived are mass-buried in the cold depths of the heartless sea. Our lives never matter enough to warrant any attention. In those instances, it is still Oyinbos who will hold their leaders and institutions accountable for failing to rescue the poor souls.

Punch