2ND October 2009, The Accident.

Don’t want to sound like my brain is always thinking about something (it is always thinking cha), pondering on something or wondering and asking some really funny questions. Watching the news daily and hearing them say that we have experienced the worse of the recession, I wonder why I didn’t have 200naira to recharge my phone to make a very important call. I had a little change of about 170naira so I opted to go outside my estate to make the call. Just as I got outside along refinery road, I saw a very long traffic and people rushing trying to cut the traffic. It was about 8:13 am when a jeep suddenly halted at the middle of the road and people screaming. There was an accident, two motor cycles (okada) had collided while trying to avoid the jeep. Clearly it was the fault of the driver of the jeep.
I did not get up to see exactly what at happened as I was still making my call which was ringing but there was no answer. I still tried for about 5 times before giving up. As at this time the jeep had parked by the side of the road and two thick looking men came down. I still watched for about three minutes before crossing. On getting across, I saw a girl wounded on the floor sitting on the floor and an okada rider in similar conditions. As i watched a real life Nollywood scene unfold, the driver took the girl to his jeep as the other okada riders who had stopped urged the injured one to follow the driver so he gets compensation for his injury and damage on the okada. The driver was hesitant and trying to understand why he would be, I heard other okada men saying “the man na general o”, another said “he say if he blow siren before whether we for fit stop am”. Before we could say Jack Robinson, “Oga General” had taken the girl and zoomed off as everybody watched in confusion. Still trying to understand or let me say grasp what just transpired, I heard the injured okada man telling the other one he collided with “na your fault, you for jam the motor instead of make you dodge come jam me”. Another okada man quickly said “you be mumu o, who do you don drive comot and you de talk rubbish now”. Before I talk about the foolishness of the okada man, let me take a little time to wonder the heart of the general. If is truly a general does that give him the right to do what he did? General aside, is the girl’s life more value-able than the okada rider’s to him? This was just a typical example of animal farm, all animals are equal but some are more equal than the others.
I quickly related the situation to present day Nigeria in two different analogies. The first analogy takes the injured okada man as present day Nigeria. Instead of asking the right questions and seeking the right answers, we lay blame while our wound still fresh should be treated. The outcome is that our sore gets worse.
The second analogy takes the onlookers as the Nigerian people and the Jeep driver (Oga general)as the Nigerian leaders. Here the onlookers who understood the situation and knowing the right thing to do refused to do it because of fear of the general. This is the worse part of Nigeria because those that even know the right thing, don’t do it because they lack the courage. Under the nose of the onlookers the general drove off but they did not have the courage to stop him. On the hand, I couldn’t blame the people as the injured man could not speak for himself. I had a feeling that if he stood up for himself, people would have joined him. The general saw fear from the people which he exploited. The will to stop him was there but no courage. This is what our leaders see when they commit all their atrocities, the lack of courage to confront them. As he drove off, people started shouting and cursing. Typical of today’s Nigeria where we talk more, curse more than do the right thing. Is this the Nigeria we want?
The moral of the story is that as Nigerians, we need to stand up for ourselves or nobody will. We must take fear off our minds as it is only through courage we can get where we are supposed to be. To Mr General (our leaders), you can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people some of the time. You can’t keep playing on the ignorance of the masses.
LIGHT UP NIGERIA