CONSIDER this scenario – the landlord made a fifty percent increase of the house rent; electricity supply to the house has been disconnected for three months, out of four children, two are out of school because the Okoguns cannot afford the school fees and worse still, after six months of unpaid salary in the office, the courier company where Mr. Okogun works as a supervisor has been threatening to lay him off due to financial crisis in the office.

Consequently when Mr. Okogun alerted from the bus that fateful Wednesday morning and gave the conductor a two hundred naira note expecting to collect a fifty naira change but the latter refused to oblige hell broke loose.  In addition, the teenager wide-eyed conductor replied, old man, you have no change.  Are you the only stranger on this route?  Go home and rest jor!

In a jiffy, Mr. Okogun’s mind went wild. He felt so wounded and oppressed that, he hit the conductor severally with his clinched fist. It was other passengers who rescued the boy from his hands.  Normally, Mr. Okogun would never (and excepting for this occasion) engage in such a barbaric act.  He is a phlegmatic and taciturn gentleman who could hurt no fly.

However, the accumulation of several distresses and denials, troubles and trials plus the mounting challenge of his inability to confront them created the underlaying foundation to use the undesirable encounter with the teenager conductor to dispense his anger. The idea is that if he couldn’t handle these other huge economic challenges because of the stronger personalities involved, he can as well channel his aggression towards this weak one, he could handle.

Displaced aggression is a form of defence mechanism (the means whereby an undesirable stimulus can be avoided or controlled).  Defence mechanisms are meant to be temporary avenues of handling stressful stimuli in one’s environment.  Individuals who resort to habitual use of defence mechanisms end up as dysfunctional personalities.  There are several other types of defence mechanisms such as denial, reaction formation, repression and their likes.

Specifically displaced aggression refers to substituting the object of one’s anger with another, preferably, a weaker one.  It involves redirecting one’s anger and frustration from the original stronger target (usually the source of the frustration) to a substitute target (usually, a weaker one).

There exist some conditions that fester or motivate the occurrence of displaced aggression. First, the personality who manifests displaced aggression is offended.  He is disturbed and distressed, troubled and tested.  In the case of Mr. Okogun, financial crisis was the source of his distresses.  Again, the individual is involved in a form of trouble that he perceives is beyond his ability.  Several unsuccessful attempts to solve the problem create greater discouragement and in some extreme cases, depression may set in.

Furthermore, the victim also cannot confront the perceived offender and consequently, seeks for another avenue to vent his anger.  In this case, Mr. Okogun couldn’t confront his landlord, employer nor the officers in charge of electricity in his area.  Even if he did, he would be polite and solicitous in his approach.

Operating from such a disadvantageous mental and emotional repertoire, Mr. Okogun was already a time-bomb waiting for the right moment to explode.  Displaced aggression is one of the explanations for such ugly situations when noble minds turn around to become ignoble, temperate become intemperate and the disciplined succumb to corruption.

All around us, we see the manifestation of displaced aggression – some husbands defeated outside, turn around to harass their wives; wives in turn, pour their anger on the house helps while the latter violate the children.  In the office, the chairman and board of directors harass the chief executive, and the latter turns to the management team and the unpleasant aggressive mood goes down until the staff in the last rung of the organogramme is poisoned with anger.

The questions are; how should one handle displaced aggression?  Caught up in the web of aggression, what should one do?  Most of the time, victims are either ignorant of their condition or they deny it entirely.  Therefore solution will begin by first acknowledging or recognizing that one is a victim of displaced aggression.  For instance if Mr. Okogun was conscious of the fact that he was acting under enormous economic pressure, he wouldn’t have attacked that teenage conductor.  At other moments, he had received worst treatments from conductors but he neither displayed any sign of anger nor violence.  Our people say that it is the pressure of fire that makes crayfish to bend.

When the pressures of life accumulate or pile up, it is better to handle them in a positive and creative way than to resort to violence.  One of such positive approaches is dialogue.  Create opportunity to discuss the source of the trouble.  Dialogue is the soul of progress among contending parties.  It has solved several human problems and continues to stand as the honey which cements human relationships at various levels.  Even if the discussion leads to violence, it will still come under control.  It is always better to discuss than to disband.  We can agree to agree or disagree or even disagree to agree or disagree.  Yet, it is crucial that the offender and offended hold a discussion.  Where this fails, displaced aggression is inevitable. The unexpressed displeasure must find an outlet; and sometimes in the form of undesirable and destructive form such as murder, arson, genocide, or other atrocious crimes.

Finally, each of us should understand that violence can never solve our human problems. Violence leads to more violence.  We need to exercise self-control as well as help others to do so.  Live and let others live.  It is only in an atmosphere of peace that significant progress can be achieved.

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