Issue 24: With Nigeria, there's always a disaster on the way.
I am going to tell you three stories with a singular theme.
The date is May 20, 2021 and I am going to Port Harcourt for NYSC Camp. A day to my Port Harcourt trip, I leave Ife for Ibadan because it’s impossible to get a Port Harcourt bus from Ife. So I go to Ibadan and stay with a friend at Molete. I sleep soundly. This is not the first time I’m travelling across the Niger so there isn’t much to worry about. In 2020, just months after the lockdown was relaxed, I travelled from Ogbomoso to Owerri to spend some months with my dad. Back then, I loved long road trips, I enjoyed them.
In Ibadan, I sleep soundly and wake up early the next day. I say goodbye to my friend and head to the bus park at Mokola, just opposite Kilimanjaro restaurant. It’s barely 7am but the bus is almost full. I make payment for my bus ticket, find a comfortable seat by the window and text my then girlfriend to say, “We’re on our way now, babe.” And just like that, I’m on my way to Port Harcourt.
If you’ve ever travelled from Ibadan to Port Harcourt, then you know it’s a long journey so there really is no point checking the time. The journey was very eventful but that’s not why I’m writing this. On another day, we will talk about how I was stuck at Yenagoa because there was a curfew in Rivers state so I had to sleep beside strangers in what might as well have been a brothel.
The next morning, we resume our journey to Port Harcourt. In. On the bus, I’m texting my friend to tell her that I have asthma. Going to camp was going to be my first time going to a place that is potentially dangerous to my health, all alone. I was not going to be with family so the best I could do was inform my friend who was also posted to the camp that I had a medical condition that could very well go out of hand. I had no plans to stay in camp for long. I had my health documents ready to prove that I was indeed an asthma patient so they wouldn’t keep me in camp. I was kidding myself.
At the NYSC camp at Nonwa Gbam Tai, I submit my health documents and the woman at the clinic dismisses them, calling them fake. With one hiss from an impatient and unkind woman, I am sentenced to three weeks of pain at the NYSC camp.
At this point I should mention that I really don’t care if you’re one of those people who enjoyed your camp experience or think it shouldn’t be scrapped, that’s your story and it’s okay. But to subject people to that experience when they’ve provided reasons why you should not? I find that inhumane.
On my fifth day at the camp, I collapse in front of the clinic, panting and unable to breathe. The time is 6am and I have just been chased out of the room by soldiers for some ridiculous early morning march. As I try to avoid the whip by running, I soon find myself panting and gasping for breath. In the rush, I forget my inhaler so I’m left with nothing but the terribly unhealthy air of Port Harcourt choking my lungs.
I’m gasping for breath. At the clinic, the woman [who will call the matron] maintains that I don’t have asthma and that I am faking it. Right there, fighting for my life, this woman made me answer questions about asthma, the symptoms, the causes and how an inhaler works, just so she could verify that I indeed have asthma before she finally proceeds to offer help with the nebulizer. Eventually, I am stable and before noon, I leave the camp, never to return. That is the first story.
The second story:
Two days to the end of my NYSC here in Ikeja, I am at the passing out parade rehearsal at NYSC Lagos camp at Iyana Ipaja. The time is around 8am, pretty early for such a useless gathering but what choice did we have. That morning, I discover that a woman is selling expired drinks. I take it up with her and she insists that’s how she bought them and offers to drink them before me so I am assured the drinks are not so bad even if they are expired. I make a tweet to this effect. This is 2022 and I barely had 2000 followers so I did not anticipate the madness that followed. In no time, my mentions are blowing up. By the work of my village people, InstaBlog found my tweet and posted it on their Instagram page. Linda Ikeji Blog followed suit. And then Information Nigeria. All the notable blogs. In minutes, I get a call from LGI telling me that the Lagos State Coordinator for NYSC wanted to see me in relation to a tweet I made that morning. Brothers and sisters, I was shocked.
It took them minutes to piece everything together and give me a phone call. In no time, cars start arriving at the camp. First, it’s a NAFDAC truck with officials stepping out and inspecting the folks selling stuff. Then it’s the Lagos State coordinator herself. I am brought before her and I receive the scariest scolding of my life after which she asked that I report to the NYSC office at Bode Thomas the week after and that my NYSC certificate would be withheld. That week, I was made to write an apology letter to the Federal Government of Nigeria. I received a query from the state coordinator. While my mates were snapping pictures with their NYSC certificates, I was cooking up various lies to explain to my parents why their son did not have a certificate while asking my friend, Praise, for legal advice. I had never felt so watched in my life. I put my Twitter account on private mode for weeks. I was living in fear that the Lagos state government was watching my tweets. I did not receive my NYSC certificate until three months later, all because I made a tweet about the sale of expired drinks at the NYSC camp in Lagos.
The third story:
This is a recent one. After the robbery, my parents advise me to go to the police station to make a report. I go to the closest one to my place but it’s burnt down. Rumour has it that the police officers in the neighbourhood killed a boy and in retaliation, the community razed down the police station.
So I go to my second option at Alausa. I explain to them that I was robbed two days before Christmas. They ask where and I say Anthony. Then they tell me I have to go to Anthony to make my report, not here in Ikeja. I explain to them that I live closer to this station but they said no. That’s not how it’s done. Please make it make sense. So if I live in Alagbado or Akute and I’m robbed at Sangotedo, I’ll have to return to the scene of the crime before I can make a statement? Seriously, who built this country?
Bonus story:
After the robbery, I go to the NIMC office at Ikeja to report some issue with my NIN. I get there around 10 am and I meet hundreds of people there. This is not an exaggeration guys. If you ever have a problem that requires you to visit that godforsaken place, I feel sorry for you. The next day, I left my home before day break and explain to me why there’s hundreds of people there already and my number is 189? Are people doing sleepovers here? I speak to someone and he then explains to me that even the list we are writing is not so relevant. According to him, we are writing that list to show our arrival time but the actual date we will be attended to will be determined later. Which means, you can go to lodge a complaint on January 1 and they will give you a number to return on January 15 to lodge your complaint to an NIMC official. And bear in mind that, your complaint may require that you wait some extra days before it is resolved. The entire system is soul draining and messed up.
Conclusion:
I have told you these stories to explain just one thing: this entire country is a disaster. Nigeria does not inspire patriotism and a country that does not inspire patriotism cannot make it. Note that all the stories above are instances where I had to deal with government officials, where I had to deal with Nigeria. Cast your mind back to the last time you had to deal with Nigeria and see how that played out. At the airport? With the Nigerian police? At the immigration office? There is always a disaster on the way.
Right now, we are witnessing live, people kidnapping other people and demanding outrageous ransoms. They are not doing it in quiet or secrecy. They are making bold demands and as a collective, we are all crowdfunding to free our fellow citizens because that’s what we do now, that’s what we have become; a society that crowdfunds to survive because if we leave things to the people who are supposed to do it, nothing will be done.
The people who built this country did not build it to thrive. Every four years, we come together to choose our own builders and every four years, we end up choosing idiots. We are in a Black Mirror episode, living in a scary loop and we don’t even care anymore because really, of what worth is your care? Even your life, what is the worth of a Nigerian life?
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If this was too triggering, here’s a funny read from my favourite Kenyan writer.
Thanks to Kome Olowu, Toyosi Light and Daniel Odetoki for reading drafts of this.
It’s so sad that I can relate to all this💔🤦🏻♀️
The NYSC thing is so scary. It also shows that the government can if they want to but they’d rather pump their resources into polishing their egos. Because asking that you write an apology letter on a matter that’s literally an impending public health crisis is wild.