A vest to prevent accidents

If Wole Soyinka had put this as a central theme in any of his classics, we’d all be out by now asking the Nobel Committee to withdraw his prize. It is simply implausible as a plot for a serious novel except that it is happening live in Nigeria. It is not the first time too. […]

If Wole Soyinka had put this as a central theme in any of his classics, we’d all be out by now asking the Nobel Committee to withdraw his prize. It is simply implausible as a plot for a serious novel except that it is happening live in Nigeria. It is not the first time too. Brain fag syndrome affects governance in our most wonderful country.

Our federal education ministry has found the most scientific of ways to put a stop to the evil phenomenon of accidents involving school children. According to usually reliable news sources, (including government megaphones), Nigeria is distributing oversized reflexive vests to keep 40,000 students safe to adulthood. We have achieved such feats with agriculture under President Jonathan.

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The initiative comes with a catchy phrase – go to school, be seen, be safe! This is the catchiest of phrases ever coined since APC elevated the theft of catchphrases into a national pastime.

As citizens and loyalists of our government, we would never raise up our hands to ask the question – how much each vest costs. We would never ask where it is made or who got the contract. It is unlikely that this is the brainchild of Zainab Buba Galadima.

We would not ask these questions not because we are afraid of the answers or that the response might demonstrate our government’s lip service to integrity and accountability. Patriots do not ask questions on magic schemes meant to ensure the safety of our dear children who are sometimes kidnapped while we nap; slaughtered by ritual killers or sold to the highest bidder.

We love our children so much and their education is paramount to us. We have demonstrated this in the number of children roaming the streets hawking or begging and sleeping rough. Those in schools are learning in the open air on bare floor and under leaking roofs where applicable. We shall remedy all that when the UN declares another magic year of free everything.

Some people might not know that Nigerian roads are the most dangerous in the world. Every year, they are budgeted for, but the more those budgets increase, the more the damage. Incontrovertible facts bear us out that the evil spirits on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway have defied the exorcistic powers of all the religious groups located on that 131-kilometre stretch. This is why it has taken over a decade to successfully construct.

Thousands are wasted on Nigerian roads without scruples except the casualty is a member of the one per cent that ruins the show. Unserviced and unserviceable vehicles run over students on their campuses without repercussion. Ordinary Nigerians are disposable beings by successive regimes that see only votes and not responsibility.

The last time anyone checked, getting a driver’s licence in Nigeria is more difficult than plunging a hot knife through a lob of man shanu (or cow milk butter). A foreign diplomat once demonstrated this by procuring a drivers license for his dog!

Road safety is an important issue in Nigeria and we established a corps to tackle it with Soyinka as pioneer head. That agency, the Federal Road Safety Commission has transmogrified so much that only the concept remains. Among its own magic moments was its romance with mandatory reflexive stickers miraculously designed to prevent accidents. The FRSC has made millionaires of government officials and regime lackeys by changing vehicle number plates instead of tackling the root cause of road accidents on our roads.

This new scheme is bound to work because Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, state minister for education revealed its magical insights. Hear him: “This initiative is to prevent children from sustaining injuries while trekking to and from neighbouring schools…. The initiative is designed to primarily aid the protection of schoolchildren from road accidents associated with motor vehicles, motorcycles, tricycles while crossing our busy network of roads to and from their respective schools.”

This indeed is a thoughtful scheme that is not to be compared with those worn by construction workers and bikers abroad. The Nigerian school reflexive vests are specially designed (probably in China) to safeguard students from accidents. Usually, unreliable ministry of education officials would explain that when a vehicle that has lost control approaches a child wearing these vests, it halts halfway! If the errant vehicle approaches from behind, its proximity to children induces the deployment of an automatic parachute, which then lifts the child over and above the potential accident.

Our humanitarian affairs minister, Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq could not hide her excitement at this scheme. The last time she exhibited this level of myrrh was when her ministry deployed several millions of Naira to bluetooth beneficiaries as COVID-19 palliatives. She even tells us that this is a Goal 17 scheme under the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Aren’t we lucky? The Indians who lead the unenviable record of highest road accidents must be jealous of our feat. The Indians could lead the world of information technology; they’ll never beat us to road accident prevention using reflexive vests. They are not that smart.

With the potential success of this scheme and judging by the fact that accidents are a dozen a penny on our roads, it shouldn’t be long before loyal citizens all kitted with these reflexive parachutes. I for one would love to wear one because the Abuja-Lokoja-Kabba-Okeagi road is as intractable as it’s been since the 1980s. Kogi witches, aligned with their FCT counterparts, have made the access road between the federal capital and the confluence capital a death trap. What is left is usually under the control of armed robbers, kidnappers and ritual killers. If I succeed in getting one, I promise to wear it to bed too, because it’s a miracle to sleep in peace and wake up in peace in Kogi State.

With a project like this, we should scrap road safety and liberalise the process by which anyone with the right cash and connection should be able to procure a license for their dog, cats and pet monkeys. This should be a right endorsed by animal right groups.

Indeed with time, potholes should no longer be levelled. Nigeria can boost its foreign earnings by telling all those car manufacturers simulating accident prevention techniques on mannequins to close down their factories in Europe, Asia and America. They should move to Nigeria to test-drive their inventions on our potholes. Since every good thing happens to senior government officials first, we should pack the indulgent children of our ministers to go first.

If it succeeds, as it should, the children of political office holders should go next. A slogan like ‘a minister’s child that accidents cannot kill’ would be appropriate. Imagine what Nigeria would have saved if this vest had been invented when the first son crashed his multi-million Naira austere motorbike! He’d be a good poster boy for these reflexive vests.

Minister Nwajiuba sir, you deserve a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for innovation in governance. I hope the government packages this invention to Norway so that, with magic on our side, we would have the second laureate on our shores.