For those who have yet to make New Year resolutions, pause for a moment to share in this funny wisdom. I first heard it in a New Year’s Eve mass (2009) homily by Rev. Father Lazarus Onu, my all-time favourite Abuja preacher.
Father Lazarus told the story of a Middle Belt cyclist in the course of his homily. And he used the story to dramatize what could go wrong with New Year’s resolutions when we don’t pay attention. This was what he said:
One day in Gboko (Benue State), a commercial cyclist (aka achapa) picked up a male passenger. The man said he wanted to go “to the next street.” Achapa in northern Nigeria is called okada in the southern parts of the country.
When the rider arrived at the first road junction, however, his passenger ordered the him to, “turn left.” Achapaman obeyed and they proceeded to the next street junction whereby he was now directed to “turn right.”
The cyclist stopped his bike and told his passenger the score. If they were going to waste that much time trying to figure out where the passenger was going, it would cost him a lot. He figured the man had lost his direction and was stylishly trying to make it look as if he hadn’t.
“How much?” the passenger confidently asked.
“That would be N500 per hour.”
As I said before, this was the New Year’s eve of 2009; it was an outrageous charge, the equivalent of N5,000 per hour at today’s rate.
“No problem at all, let’s go!” the passenger told him.
The cyclist couldn’t believe his good fortune. For the next hour, he happily followed his passenger’s unending commands:
“Turn right” “Go straight.”
“Turn left.”
After an hour and a half, the cyclist was calculating the thousands of naira he had made from this “aimless” passenger.
“He must be a tourist or something,” he thought to himself.
Two hours later, the Achapaman stopped because he was pressed. In most rural communities – and some urban areas as well – urinating in public was the norm. It still is, unfortunately.
Our man was on the side of the road doing his thing when one of his relations appeared on foot. The relation was surprised to see the “passenger-tourist” perching on the cyclist’s bike.
“My broda, how you dey?” he asked his kinsman. “Fine,” the cyclist replied.
“How family? How children?” “Dem dey fine,” replied the man, getting a bit impatient.
Then he lowered his voice on the next question.
“Abeg make I ask you someting,” the relation said, and drew the man to a “safe” corner.
“Dat man wey you dey carry, you know am?” “No, why you dey ask?” “Because na mad man ee be!”
Then Father Lazarus gave us the punch line:
“How many passengers (read baggage) did you pick up last year (2008) who took you on a merry-go-round? How come some of the things that you did were aimless and unfocussed, following a path charted by others who may not even be as intelligent as you are? Will there be a change in your life this year, even if it is something as innocuous as changing the way your apartment looks? The things you read, listen to, hear? How you will treat the family that God has blessed you with?”
How creative and productive are you prepared to be this year to force a change in your circumstances? Or are you going to graze the same useless and charted territory that made you wish for a New Year when, hopefully, “things go beta?”
Theatre of the absurd
These questions, alas, should be directed to Imo State, the self-styled “Heartland of the Nation. The home of priests and professors has become enmeshed in a farrago of absurdities.
The stories coming out of the eastern heartland are heart-breaking.
Do we talk about targeting and killing of traditional rulers by unknown gunmen? Shall we mention the targeting and killing of youths by security personnel ostensibly in search of criminals? Should we recall the blood-chilling hint of cannibalism? How do we process news of inexplicable violence unleashed on a church congregation to merely pick up an unarmed public figure from a church service?
It is almost as if the fabled mad man of Gboko arrived Imo State in 2021 waving a magic wand of absurdist tricks.
The late MKO Abiola, in one of his colourful proverbs, said we know the fish that is rotten by smelling the head. How creative and productive is Gov. Hope Uzodimma going to be in 2022? Or will he graze the same useless and charted territory that made Imolites wish for 2022 when, hopefully, things will be better?
What should the people of Imo expect to see from this administration that kept stumbling from one tragic absurdity to the next throughout 2021?
The North Bleeds
One of the absurdities we heard in recent times was this social media chant, “The North Bleeds.” It is absurd simply because this lamentation appears to have been triggered only by recent violence in Katsina and Zamfara states. The North has been a killing field for nearly a century. Is there any form of bestiality that has not been tried? People have been beheaded. There have been Sharia-sanctioned amputation and decapitation of limbs. Hot-headed mobs disembowelled pregnant women to ensure that both mother and child were squashed. Have we not seen mass killings through suicide bombings. Have our holy places – churches and mosques – not been desecrated by mad people who came with guns and bombs to kill? How many persons have perished through revenge killings in the Middle Belt? Are we discounting the ravaging of the North East by insurgents who kidnap and forcible marry teenage schoolgirls, displace their communities, rape and kill?
For the Middle Belt and the NorthEast, the North has been bleeding for more than 20 years now. For the Igbo, the North intermittently bled since 1945. If the bleeding touches Katsina and there is a whimper, then there’s hope because the person they call out is a son of the soul. And he holds the knife and the yam on the matter of stopping the bleeding.