Ocholi, Abubakar and Naija’s harvest of needless deaths

Those who describe insanity as doing the same things over and expecting different results are not Naija. Wise people learn from their mistakes or the mistakes of others. We, the people of Naija repeat ours, expecting God to change the results. In Naija, buildings collapse and kill many, there’s noise and debates on the airwaves […]

Those who describe insanity as doing the same things over and expecting different results are not Naija. Wise people learn from their mistakes or the mistakes of others. We, the people of Naija repeat ours, expecting God to change the results. In Naija, buildings collapse and kill many, there’s noise and debates on the airwaves akin to boiling water on the heath but when the water is removed it settles into lethargy – until the next tragedy! So, another building has collapsed in Lagos, being built without permit. The same plane that demolished TB Joshua’s annex may have brought it down. Investigative panels would soon issue findings and we will return home to sleep – awaiting the next tragedy.
Let’s leave Lagos to Ambode; this ranting is spurred by another tragedy. A minister of the feral republic, his wife and young son perished in a car crash on the Abuja-Kaduna highway. You can now praise the logic that kept Sai Baba from being driven even to the airport. An inquest, perhaps the fastest of its kind in recent history, has discovered that the official driver had no valid driving license; the vehicle was doing Formula 1 like the king of the road, its tyres were not properly fitted and worst of all, the big man and co-passengers were allegedly without seat belts.
While pondering what a minister’s life is worth in a nation where the dead are treated no better than sardines, two days later another tragedy struck, General Yusha’u Abubakar, army chief of training and operations was killed in another accident on the Maiduguri-Damaturu highway. An accompanying GOC is in hospital hoping to make it out alive in a nation where public hospitals get the stationery budget of the State House clinic.
Tragic as the deaths are, we demonstrate the archetypal level of insanity. The dead get state burial, as it should be. The late minister’s surviving children have been offered automatic ticket into the nation’s evil service while those of school age get scholarship up to university level. I know Canadian readers have lost me on all these palliatives while my Naija readers are disgusted by the innuendos.
Stupid Canadians live in a system that works so well it has replaced my Naija milk of human kindness with working-system-logic. The Canadian would never accept my explanation of ‘as it should be’. They know the rules guiding driving and that when accidents happen, an inquest brings in experts, the police and insurance companies. They determine what happened and the insurance takes it from there. A public official would have life insurance, so that nobody insults his survivor with free funeral expenses or undignified sibling job offers. Ditto for the general. Chances of this happening in Canada – well, very narrow!
This is the uppity immigrant-wannabe me talking over my country like this. In the five years I have driven around here, certain anomalies are taken as given. There is no chance in hell that a government driver would have no valid license neither would he be driving his ‘boss’ to a private function. A driver’s license is the ultimate form of identification, carrying official address and other essential information. A car license plate carries a larger form of information accessible to a law enforcement officer sitting behind his wheel and desirous of knowing details about the car ahead. The RCMP or Ottawa Police does not lay ambush to check my ‘partikolas’ – no. They punch the vehicle registration on their dashboard computer and pronto – all information about the driver and the state of the car are accessible, usually including unpaid parking or speeding tickets, roadworthiness of the car, up-to-date insurance information, residential address and whether driver is a deadbeat dad, a jailbird, or an insurance dodger.
The law does not mandate me to have tools in my car, no compulsory fire extinguisher, C-caution or other paraphernalia that allows for egunje in Naija. Nobody opens your bonnet except your mechanic. No chassis number checks are necessary. From time to time, the Canadian police use radar guns to check speeding and hand out tickets. Everywhere I drive, there are signs informing me of the maximum speed. Every few kilometres, there are signs reminding me that speed costs driving points and fines ranging from from $10,000 to $200,000 including withdrawal of license. The law says that when the police use their laser gun, they must stay within view of the driver, not in an obscure corner and not to lay traps in such a way as to make the driver lose focus.
To the Canadian, I have not lost my mind. My country, Naija operates a more interesting scenario. A minister is dead, with his wife and son; and so is a general – to a needless carnage that daily claims scores. I bet it’s a unique opportunity for somebody with the correct connection to enforce the installation of speed delimiters on all cars and smile home with millions. Just like we did with reflexive stickers, we would abandon that for another moneymaking venture soon and leave the important matter of centralising licensing and digitizing it. If you’re dreaming of change, wake up and smell the coffee!