By Funke EGBEMODE
(egbemode3@gmail.com)
Scene One:
Henry is poor and he knows it. He plays those betting games with fancy names, drinks, smokes, and loves loud music. He is in his late 30s with a wife and two children. They all live in a room in one of the new areas in Lagos, not too far from the Lagos end of the famous coastal road. Henry, according to his own account, used to work in a factory but in the last five months has been in-between jobs.
Every family falls on hard times at one point in life but it always passes, especially when the ‘sufferer’ does not sit on his hands. Bayo, Henry’s kind neighbour told me he used to squeeze N2,000 out regularly to give Henry so his children could at least buy bread and akara or something. Tired of seeing his neighbour idle, Bayo gave Henry a job, to replace part of his roof that storm just blew away, since Henry said he was a carpenter back home in Bayelsa, his home state.
Henry collected the money for the materials for the job, disappeared for three days and returned with a long story. Bayo had to look for more money to solve his problem. He was disheartened by Henry’s behaviour, felt betrayed. Here was a neighbour he knew from nowhere and he was trying to help and he duped him! He stopped giving him the ‘urgent 2k’. Henry continued playing his loud music all day, drank in front of his room. He wanted a nine-to-five office job. He refused to do anything offered him. There were building sites around him. Lagos has an estate springing up every 24 hours, everywhere there is an available plot. Henry’s children could not go to school because he had no money. They were hungry because he had no money. The landlord has since disconnected his room from public electricity because he had no money. Yet, he has refused to stop betting, drinking or smoking with the little he got from begging. Last week, his wife finally returned to Bayelsa with the children, hungry, disappointed but determined to exit a vehicle that was not going anywhere.
Scene Two:
“Driver a-beg, please increase the AC, my thing dey pain me bad bad. That guy nearly kill me.” She ordered Bolt to pick her in front of a short-let apartment around Bogije area in Lagos. As soon as she settled in the front seat, that was her first and urgent request of the bolt driver. She needed the air-conditioning vents at full blast, directly on her over-rigged rig. When I heard the story, all I could mutter under my breath was, ‘chai, someone’s bride one day.’
Yes, she was a runs-girl, an olosho, who met her match. The guy must have mixed all kinds of stuff to maintain an unnatural erection to ensure he got value for whatever amount he paid to sleep with someone he probably was meeting for the first time.
Scene Three:
Emma left his driving job suddenly and when his sister asked him why, his answer was shocking. “All my Oga’s vehicles are brand new. They are serviced by the companies that sold them. He buys full tank each time we went out, sitting in the car. How am I going to make ‘my own money’ if I have no access to the mechanic or the filling station? So he left. No thought for other opportunities a job with a man who can afford brand new cars in today’s Nigeria, can bring. He walked out of the job because ‘he’s not making anything extra.’
Scene Four:
I was returning home last Tuesday and praying that I would hopefully beat the Alexander Road stretch traffic. I had my eyes closed, head thrown back, enjoying Fujicologist from the vehicle’s speakers. Suddenly, the vehicle slowed down. There you go, traffic snarl on Ikoyi Link Bridge. I squeezed my eyes tight, opened them and then let out a long hiss that would have made any snake give me a thumbs up. What is it now? The driver told me a car had broken down. True, the driver of the broken-down car was there. But something was not right with the guy. His cap was not sitting right on his head. He kept tugging it down to cover his face. He was struggling to stand straight, struggling to bend. Then he leaned on the driver’s side door, put his head on the bonnet. The spare tire he had brought out of the trunk to probably use as C-Caution was beside him. He seemed confused as to whether to put it in front or at the back of the car. He was just there, dancing or struggling but definitely confused and under the influence of something nasty.
It is ‘kolos’.
I think it is ‘loud’.
It could also be ‘gum’
The two occupants of my car tried to diagnose what that driver had smoked. Gum, loud, kolos. Wow, these young folks have successfully moved me from confusion to wide-eyed fear. Why does an able-bodied sane person smoke or sniff hard stuff when he knew he was going to drive, be alone in the car, on a hot sunny day in Lagos Ikoyi-Lekki traffic. Traffic that is as sure as Christmas! We soon drove past the pathetic sight. Even as I type this, I am still wondering if the young man made it to his destination eventually, safely or he jumped inside the lagoon to cool off the heat in his head. The number of Nigerian young people with heat in their heads is increasing by the day. The things they do are becoming stranger and stranger. The future they may be walking all of us into definitely looks strange, very strange. I looked up the age range of people put in the Gen Z bracket and I decided that ‘what is doing Nigeria’ is more than what can fit into a bracket. These Nigerians are not just Gen Z. They are, yes, mostly in their 20s but plenty of them are in their 30s. Take the case of the Assisted Superintendent of Customs who reportedly died ‘in active service’ with three women. Reckless living really has no age limit but these young ones and the things they do baffle me. Their ways, attitudes are frightening. Let me attempt to describe them.
They love life.
They want to live on the fast lane.
They love easy life.
They call it soft life.
Life should be a little hard work and endless stream of money.
They prefer starting life with a Prado to Corolla.
They do not understand the pride the older generation take in humble beginnings, what is that?
They want to start where their bosses are currently standing.
Their idea of multiple streams of income is PoS job by day, olosho runs by night.
Or Yahoo and Yahoo Plus to speed things up.
We all love easy life. I also like soft life. Who doesn’t? But right now, we all should be more worried than NDLEA. These children, too many of them, are high on something. Loud, Kolos, Ref, Gum, all kinds of things. And when they are high, they bet and gamble, have indiscriminate, shameless sex, party until they wrap their cars around a pole or jump off a bridge or a high-rise.
Why were hard drugs so readily available on the streets like Nico Sweets and Bazooka bubble gum in the 80s? Every week, every Sunday, like clockwork, Femi Babafemi, the spokesman of NDLEA reveals how many kilograms of hard stuff the agency has discovered, again, in the most incredible places. But nobody is ashamed. It is like the harder NDLEA works, the faster the saboteurs run.
From tramadol to cocaine, everything evil in nice wraps finds its way up our young ones’ nostrils and brains. The last report I read said the agency intercepted multiple consignments of illicit drugs hidden in frozen snails, electric bulbs and female clothing! Imagine. Some people buy snails, wash them and hide skunk and canabbis in them. Just because they want to make fast cash. They want to blow today. Tomorrow is too far. One Bello Buba was caught bringing in 38, 270 pills of tramadol ‘concealed in spare tyre, boot and door compartments of his Honda Civic car’. He drove the ‘goods in from Benin Republic.’ I know everybody is concerned about those drug merchants who were granted presidential pardon. Valid concern. But our real headache should be; even if we revoke the pardon, what are we going to do with the drug-heads all over the place, the kolos-ravaged brains, our pretty girls who hawk sex in rich neighbourhoods, the supermarkets that sell hard stuff under the counter, tomorrow’s leaders already ruined by our collective nonsense and carelessness? NDLEA will announce more seizures on Sunday. Poor guys, the sniffers and their dealers don’t care. Is Nigeria beyond redemption?
