WE SERIOUSLY NEED HELP

I sat beside a man who was travelling with his son from Ilorin to Lagos on Sunday. The teenager was seated behind us and I wonder what he felt when he saw his father toss an empty coke bottle out of the window.

It is indeed sad to state again that we have not had good leaders at all levels of government. The quality of roads we had to travel on clearly indicts just about anyone who has held one political office or the other of corruption. Ilorin became a home for many migrants from core northern states who fled both real and imagined threats of terror over the past few years. The city is developing fast but infrastructural development is basic and stunted. I think this is the case because the people do not complain loudly and have simply gotten used to driving their vehicles like boats driven by currents.

We were soon past Kwara and undulating through Ogbomoso. Oyo is one state I seriously doubt a governor presides over. From the moment one gets on the road that goes past the Federal Government College Ogbomoso to connect the Baptist seminary, everything appears like a war zone with craters everywhere and multiple tankers lined up as if poised to crush the smaller vehicles before them. The most aggravating thing about the state of this road is that it was probably only reconstructed a few years ago. Someone in the vehicle commented that the fellow who got awarded the contract ought to be arrested; I think everyone involved in the deal should be prosecuted.

Broken down trailers and tankers blighted the narrow road to Oyo with occasional charred remains of buses and tankers which were most likely involved in collisions and numerous deaths. We eventually made it to Ibadan and trust me that city is filthy. There were heaps and pyramids of garbage everywhere; there were movable notices written in both the English and Yoruba languages warning people against dumping refuse but this appears not to have had any effect on the psyche of many Ibadan people. The sight of this quantity of filth irked me but it did not prepare me for what I saw next at probably the Sawmill or Olorunsogo axis of the road from Iwo but close to a certain Malli filling station.

I saw people walking casually past a heap of refuse situated on the wide road divide. As I turned to focus on the book I was reading, I noticed a bloated corpse with limbs sticking out from underneath paperboards used to conceal the deceased. I noticed what looked like female clothing around the left arm and assumed the corpse was that of a woman. How people could saunter past this horrifying scene still baffles me till now. Some people could have stepped on the outstretched fingers of this poor woman and would not have noticed.

Mowe which is situated between two very prominent and immensely popular camp grounds was equally as filthy as Ibadan. I wonder how we manage to take foreigners past these roads without cringing with embarrassment. Or do we simply blindfold them or fly them from place to place to save face? I think government officials and elected leaders should be banned from flying within their geopolitical zones and for journeys not more than 4 or 5 hours. I think they spend too long with their heads in the clouds to bother about what the common people on the ground suffer daily. If their stomach contents got tossed up and down and static from chronic traffic logjams, maybe then they would do their jobs and indeed serve the people.

There was the occasional overzealous Road Safety official and the comical anti-terror policeman who greeted any potential benefactor happy weekend. These ones embarrassed themselves but the overall embarrassment ought to felt by us all. We need to own this country and all her liabilities before we can truly imbibe the change required to fix her. At the moment, it seems we are resistant to change; we have become too selfish to think outside of our comfort zones and live for the greater good.

A people who will drink soft drinks and fling the bottles or cans out of moving vehicle need to have their heads examined; it does not matter if such individuals are on their way from church or if they are top government officials. How can we best describe women with children on their backs and dragging two other infants crossing Ikorodu road with its characteristic fast moving vehicles? Many throng to dash across these roads sometimes directly under or in the vicinity of foot bridges built to safeguard lives.

We need help when our compounds and streets are filth laden and we assume that some unpaid humanitarian will pass by and clean up after us. We need help when we see people dispose refuse into drainages and say nothing for fear of getting insulted. If we do not own up to our failings we will never change; it does not matter what religious or socio-economic rights we claim. Dirt will not simply disappear, someone has to sweep it.

It was a daily requirement for students to clean the dormitory back in secondary school. We all had morning chores to do and everything we did daily was geared towards a somewhat grand inspection on the Saturday at the end of the week. We lived according to classes in my school unlike sport houses like in some other schools. The competition to win the inspections was usually keen but my set somehow found it difficult to excel in this task. We were sent back from our classrooms on more than one occasion to clean up our hostels because certain people failed to do their “portions” or a minority smeared what was already done. A few failures meant the entire crew failed; there was no need for explanations or excuses.

On one of the days we were sent back (we were in SS1 then), many of us sang songs and got together to clear the mess. We got the job done quickly instead of playing the blame game and we were back in class thereafter. By the time we got to SS3, we were able to win the weekly inspections we had hitherto struggled with on a fairly regular basis against all expectations because we had learnt how to work as a unit for the common good.

Nigerians need to believe there is a common good about this nation asides sectional interest. We have to realize that our actions and/ or inactions come around to affect us eventually. We are in need of help and an opportunity to learn how to do things differently is here. Individuals and entire communities need to have their attitudes transformed; I do not know if I will be right to suggest that an “enforced” transformation is the way to go since enforcement is one language Nigerians may easily identify with.

One more thing, we should find a solution to the amount of human beings roaming on our highways and inner city roads. We have fallen incredibly short with our handling of mental health in this country and that is a tragedy.