Memory Of A Day Misery

  “Every misery that happens is blessing to the believers ‘’.

       This is the axiom of my grandmother whenever despair strikes someone close to her. When we were young, we would sit beside her while she told us many in-depth moralizing stories of the virtuous from the Holy Scripture.  As she would say, “this world is a journey for every soul to voyage. In anything you do, make sure you maintain perfect relationship with your Lord for He has your return.” We would listen with absolute earnestness while our hands were folded at the axis of our chest like someone engulfed by night wintriness and our eye balls widely fixed on her lips as we sipped from her stream of religious-coated wisdom and maintained absolute silence and decorum under the heartwarming tutelage of moonlight. These legacies laid by her are what I have built my faith and trust in God upon. And since I  have grown up to see the world as a dungeon for the pious and an abode of luxury for  the cohorts of fiend, I always  assume everything that happens to me as part of my destiny which has come to stay in the diary of my memory.

It was on Wednesday 29^th of January 2013 while preparing for semester break after going through the overwhelming stresses and lethargies of laborious reading for second semester examination of the academic calendar. I had packed my traveling luggage together with my books in one place while expecting a friend of mine whom we both agreed to take leave together and bid farewell to our citadel of mad men for a while. I went to my  department to check the  newly pasted result of one of  my courses  offered the previous semester and  used  that opportunity to cash some amounts from my bank account before setting my feet on the road back to my hometown. I came back to my hostel and found the other guy waiting for my arrival. We both took our leave to board a bus leading to school gate where I would get a direct transport going to Ibadan but I needed to hastily come back to my room for a neo-classical novel Robison Crusoe by Daniel Defoe from a senior colleague in the department and a collection of poetry, Maiden Lines by Ebi Yebo which I gave to someone before the commencement of the examination. I rushed down to the motor park to catch up with my partner whom I left my luggage with. The motor park was jam-packed by other students who were also going back to their various homes and I was fortunate to board the first bus while looking out through the open space of the door as the bus headed out of the campus to the school gate where the ‘Agbero boys’ of Ibadan and Lagos buses were waiting for students going to their various destinations.

No sooner had we alighted from the bus than two drivers came to us like hungry lion waiting for the arrival of an antelope. We considered the old bard man in a white dirty long sleeve shirt with trousers already ragged and dirty because his bus was a little bit beautiful and far from dust compared to that of the other man whose his was otherwise. He looked us with bitter grudges but we did not care who ox is gored. I quickly took the chance of the front seat beside the driver because that was only where could give me the look of everything going at the front while Tunde, my friend took his at the back.  I decided not to involve in the gossips raised by one slim but gorgeous looking woman with a young lad of two and half years on her laps but took my Robinson Crusoe while the motor moved with ease and fresh air lured some the passengers to deep sleep until we got to mid of the road where there was a fault in the engine and the bus stopped abruptly. The driver having noticed where the problem was enjoyed me and the one man who grey has filled his head to get down while other dozing passengers regained their consciousness after a short period of slumber. And within ten minutes the problem was battled down and we embarked on our journey again though I often looked back at my colleague who was busy reading another collection of poetry by Wole Soyinka.  As we covered about three more kilometers, I could not but succumb to sleep and all what required to do was to position the book I was reading somewhere at the front together with the bottled water I bought before leaving the motor park.

On getting to Iwo road in Ibadan, every passenger alighted at the same time in a motor park and found their way out of the place while I also took on my journey to where I would board another taxi going to where I could get a direct conveyance to my dear hometown which I had missed for some months back. But not too long I took a short trek over the Iwo Bridge I discovered that I had forgot the book I was reading while in the first bus. With eagerness I ran like a madman chasing nothing with my heart already taken by despair because I did not know if I would catch up with the bus. I needed to cross the road where motors and big vehicles were voyaging but didn’t care especially for the approaching of one Okada whose rider, a very obese and chunky tall man whose front tooth were gone while other were almost reduced to crumbles by marijuana and excess kola, was very eager to find his way out of the vehicle-compressed road while I found myself at other side of the road.  I quickly went to one man who I thought should be friendly but the tale was otherwise when I  asked him if one white eighteen passengers bus that just stopped there had gone or not but responded me  back with a broad petrifying cracked  voice common among those ‘union’ boys:

    ‘Eh eh, what is your problem?’  He said

        ‘Sir I just alighted from a bus just of recent but I forgot my book’. I replied him with a panic-engulfed and quivering voice. He looked at me for some seconds and said:

       ‘O’Boy forget, your book has gone. Some buses just took their way back to Ife now. But you may look around if you are fortunate. Anyway it is just a book not your manhood sha?

     ‘The book is very important to me. I am a student going home for break and I got the book from someone I promised to return it back to when we resume’. I replied him 

       ‘What is my concern, do I look like someone from university? Abeg commot!’ He said with cacophonous voice.

I was down when he said this and pleaded if he can lead me the way to the boss of the motor park. Having looked me for a while with sympathy, he directed me to a tall stunt man within the range of sixties who I quickly went to with absolute enthusiasm and hope that the driver might have dropped the book in case the owner came for it.  I greeted him with humility and he received me with a luring smile. I told him my problem and he asked if I boarded the bus from the motor park. I responded I didn’t know for we normally board bus at the front of school gate. ‘My son, I can’t do anything on this to be sincere.  Had it been you boarded the bus from our motor park in Ile-ife, we can help you keep it till your return by contacting those in charge. I am sorry.’ 

 He said with sympathy which I could see from his eye. I thanked him and left the place with my heart encumbered by sadness not knowing that was the beginning of my misery.

 I left the place with heavy heart and was also tired because the big luggage that I carried was an inevitable burden. Not less than two minutes I left the man that someone in a ragged short sleeve and torn jean waved that I should hold my feet. I thought he was a beggar because his mien typified that. He appeared empathic like someone just released from the prison looking for assistance. I went back to see if I could find something for him, hence the area is the paradise and abode for the beggars. I could remember my first day at the zone together with a brother of mine. On getting to the bridge down to the next road, some Arabian young lads came to me holding my cloth and begging to give them money. I, a good Samaritan could not hesitate to give them one hundred naira left with me on that previous day.  As we walked down a little bit, two old women already deformed had started praying and chanting an eulogy aimed at begging us for alms but I was cash-crunched so I needed to snub them after casting sympathy on these innocent women whom the economic hardship and petrifying dearth have turned to mendicants across the street.  A brother whom we were going did not care as if he knew them but however warned me to be careful because men of the gangland do make use of begging opportunity to perpetrate their evil.

As I got to that man, he fixed his big reddish eyeballs on me and asked in commanding tone to give him my wallet which I did without any hesitation.

        ‘Hey give me your wallet and your phone?’ He asked. 

At first instance I wanted to scruple and think what was going on. He gave me the rancorous and acrimonious slap of my life and I hurriedly gave him my old Nokia phone which he rejected after returning my wallet back to me empty. As if he had known I had another phone at the beneath of my trousers’ pocket, he requested I bring the second phone I had with me which I instantly delivered to him without second consideration. He looked my white chain wrist watch, and then ordered me to vanish from his front after giving back the first phone I showed him.

     ‘What else? Go! Or you want me to squeeze your head? He said.

     ‘Ah. Em’ I wanted to have a say.

     ‘And what?’ he said with a voice so chilling while he gave me another slap and used the middle finger of his right hand to show me the way I was heading to before he called me back. I looked at this man again who was following my strides like a vampire about to spring as I was going comatosely and perplexedly with my eyes looking strange on the street of rowdy and boisterous movement of man and vehicles. All what I knew was that I was going to somewhere left with fifty naira, a change remained with me since my first board from Ife.

I boarded a taxi going to Ojo but suddenly I regained my cogency and cognizance to discover that I was being subjected to the spells of men underworld who had weighted me down and rendered me hopeless in the city I did not have any relative or friend with eyes alike. I regretted that I gave attention to the man who by charm got all I had but who was there to share the pain? I was in the bus thinking of what to do and the only solution was if only I could locate a bank to withdraw money and precede my journey but I did not have a dime in my account because I cashed out all what I had before my first board from Ife to Ibadan. I held my faith in God very well-founded and went directly to a mosque nearby. At first I thought I should beg from the congregation of the mosque, but later decided to hold with my belief hence God understood all what happened to me. As I was having my prayer, a friend, a student in a nearby university called me on the other phone that he saw my post on Facebook that I would go home same day.

I told him where I was and he quickly located me after some minutes. I told him every story as it happened till where I was at the moment.

     ‘Guy you have to take heart and accept what happened as a blessing.’ He said pathetically as we were heading towards another motor park.

    ‘Thanks, my soul brother. But I am confused and still didn’t believe I am a victim of this.’ I responded with broken voice as my eyes were laden with tears.

 We arrived at the park and talked about other things while I looked someone beside me leaning on the bus to discover he was my friend going back home.

  ‘Suleiman!’ I exclaimed.

 ‘Abiola!’ he called my name with outmost surprise because it had been a long time we set eye on each other.

 ‘How are you?’ he asked as we embraced each other. 

 ‘Guy we are pulling it.’ I replied.

His whelming smiles cast the mark of despair from my face. We tried to talk a little while Malik was busy paying my transport fee to the driver who was drabbled by perspiration.  I showed my gratitude to him as he was about going back to campus while Suleiman and I had our seat at the front. He discovered that I looked dispirited and queried what happened which I did not waste time to narrate the brutal accident that struck me.

  ‘Really?’ he asked in astonishment.

    ‘Yes!’ I replied

     ‘I do hear such things happen but I haven’t met anyone as a victim. You are the first person.’ He said with brotherly empathy as he gave me five hundred naira left with him.

  ‘You can have this. I will find another means when we get home’. He said. 

As the bus speeded we enjoyed the brace of the nature and talked on other things till I got to where I alighted and bade him goodbye with handshake.

When I got home, my mother who I had told the incident while in Ibadan consoled me of my misery and advised not to think of it too much.  For three days I was buried inside by the sickness of this misfortune. That is normal by nature, but after three days of mourning and grief, I thanked God for the wise saying of my grandmother still finds a save abode in my heart. I wonder what could have been my fate if I was not pitied by heaven. Who can say if my supplication made my friend remember me at the moment I was in despair or my good intension while giving attention to the man who brought the misery to me? I believe no one knows the work of providence.  The misery is a memory that has come to live with me but I learned my lessons.   

Letter To My Country By Pious Emiala: A Review

Nigeria as a country has been going through the epoch of violence and political savagery, coupled with mind-bending and overwhelming social vices which have been webbing the nation through the decades of incessant pandemonium, hullabaloo  and socio-religious turbulence often propelled by regional crises and political egocentrism of some politicians and office-bearers.  With this peculiar and continuous disarray which has been maiming the faces of many Nigerians abroad and been relegating Nigeria to the background within the terrain of African enclave, literature as a window to life and a platform through which the world can be subjected to scrutiny and criticisms has assumed the social responsibility of beseeching the reasons why countries like Nigeria have turned an abode through which political projectiles can  be shot from the darkness into effulgence in the name of service to humanity, and thereby arisen the consciousness in writers to challenge the political menace and imbalance of their society. And as a result of this, contemporary African writers like Pious Emiala respond to this clarion call by portraying the kind of society they find themselves on the crying pages of their reactionary diaries so that positive changes can be revived back via writing as the watch-dogging fourth estate of transformation.

 Pious Emiala’s Letter to My Country is a dramatic text that calls for unity within Nigeria. The book, having portrayed the societal discrepancy cum ethno-political violence that has turned the nation to home of Grendel, also cries for sense of mindfulness within the ambit of leadership and followership which is melting down like ice in the sun.  Just like Richard Ali’s city of memory, the book resurges the memory of those whose lives have got truncated like fishes disavowed of stream by the politically backboned callousness and atrocities of the religious-coated fanatics in the some regions of this country.  It tries to date back the incident of last general election in which many serving corps members were gruesomely massacred during the clarion call for service of their fatherland while some were kidnapped and later strangled to death when the demands for ransom could not be reached; and how many Nigerians who flaunted their antagonism and grievances to these inhuman mediocrities  of the so called “Ogas at the top”  later succumbed to fate and later buried themselves in rhythmical silence when those who seemed to be the custodians of justice and fundamental human right activists turned to be wolves of the jungles waiting for marauding and jay-walking innocent fowls to devour all in the name of unity and peace.

In close respect to the storylines of the text, Alfred, Tunde, Ike, Basil, Albert, Isabella, and Vanessa are corps members who find themselves in the drudgery of national service after their university education. As other members would have got joyfully overwhelmed when it is time to reap their sowings as ones who have already passed through the toiling and lethargies of university as students and enjoy the pride of being called corps members, they are determined to render their service within the range of their capacity but these pledges vanish at the beneath of their stomachs when they are being subjected to intimidation and untimely death  by the do-or-die readiness of some power-thirsty political cankerworms who see the seats of power as the inheritance of their family lineage.  These people have some masterminds who help ensure that every vote counted is theirs through the hijacking of the ballot boxes from the innocent electoral agents in which corps members are not excluded.  This can be blatantly seen in Ike’s statement when he says:

        “Good! Was it not at the pool within the state

          of our federation they all meet their                           

          fate? You are deceiving yourself in the name of working

          for the federal government while some 

          people are at every corner aiming their

          arrow at the innocent ones to rig the election . . .”

Correspondently, the book hammers on the needs to curb the concurrent issue of kidnapping which has become the order of the day in Nigeria. Considering the vicinity of this nation, the emergence of terrorist militancy, coupled with insurgence of religious extremist, Boko-haram have made abduction of innocent individuals gain upper hand which undoubtedly is sponsored by those paddling the ship of government of this nation.  Many a time, the issue of kidnapping has been reported by the family and relatives of missing individuals to those in security sector but to their surprise nothing has been done to it.  Looking at the downy pages of the dailies, there are always reports that people who leave their home hale and healthy could not find their feet striding the corridors of their doorsteps again. Many secondary and primary students are reported to have been missing; many passengers have got landed into dungeon of death after boarding buses from the one-chance cohorts of Fiend who are shielding themselves as “Agbero guys” at various motor parks within the country.   These puzzling and bizarre experiences are what the book pictures with the portrayal of a well-known sophisticated and influential politician popularly called Honourable Honsman who kidnaps innocent school pupils for his own political sacrifice to the devil that makes him prosper in his political pursuit.    

 I commend the book for vividly looking at the circumventing theme of political corruption and incompetence webbing the security sector of Nigeria and leaving the downtrodden hoi-polloi in the smearing blur of insecurity.  Security arm is vested with the power of protecting the human right but when it seems otherwise, it symbolises that the door of new dawn is about to be locked and the arrival of nightfall is certain. The fact that the book points accused fingers on the matter of venality and degeneracy of the security sector calls for quick panacea.  Imagine policemen at the juncture of road threatening drivers because of ordinary twenty-naira but leaving the men of the underworld found with illegal drugs, or ‘human part’ to go scot-free  because they are sent by ‘Oga at the top’  who they think can render them unemployed if they voice out or dare arrest these men of gangland. This is portrayed in a conversation when policemen catch the messengers of Honsman with fresh head of just massacred school pupil:

Inspector: wonderful! (He steps back) human head? Sargent, bring handcuff! . . .

1^st Girl:  no matter how strong or a man is, he can never challenge his gods. Don’t ever dare it

Inspector: who are the gods you are talking about?

1^st Girl: knowing them is of no use, but it may please you that we are not alone. Even at this place, there are secret eyes that guide us.

Inspectors: secret eyes?

1^st Girl: secret eyes of the important personality. . .

Sgt: Inspector, this is not the first time I have met with this kinds of human beings. As you can see, they are on special assignment. Oh yes, there are brains behind their mission. You need to revisit the level of their boldness. Upon all the threats, they were not moved . . . these kinds of girls belong to men that matter in our country; however no man can stop them. If you make nay peril, it is at your peril. Day by day they are sent for ritual killing.

However I have some problems with the text despite its immense and vast look of socio-political dire in Nigeria where the book has its source.  Although the book tries to create conflict between hope and despair through its characters, its awful presentation of people of the North where uproar and upheaval coupled with misery which many Northerners are made to face is very biased and revolved by tribal sentiment.  Had it been the book considers the generality of socio-political turbulence in the country in the statement of Vanessa when she says: ‘they are known all over as the rebellious tribe as far as this country is concerned’ in page sixteen, it wouldn’t have used the pronoun ‘they’ signifying the writer’s emotion towards a targeted set of people.

Similarly, the assign of role to the characters is very puzzled.  Toward the end of the text, Patriot, the narrator of the text is seen playing the role of character which is not so at the beginning of the text. Though sometimes it happens especially in prose, I wonder how the original trend of the storyline gets broken and characters like the four corps members introduced at the beginning of the play could not maintain their role till the end of the text. And besides, the death of Omela signifies no hope for the toiling masses who find themselves in the same situation.

Finally, the language of the text is poor. The language of modern African writers is very subtle and sublime compared to the language of the text. The language, being simple and non-advanced makes it more boring. Also, the universal subject matter discussed in the text is something which requires broad consideration with sophisticated creativity and uniqueness. The book should have made the circumventing subject matter more complex.

Letter to Brethren (For Those I Know By Heart)

I
Dear brethren!

As wind enthuses the muse of promise

I wish you know how time passes here

Leaving me in frozen epoch of despair

Since creation has rejuvenated my faded vision

And set the paradise of my survival on the tome of words

I have then suffered like waif and stray

Through the decade of rehearsed pledges

I have perused through the cantos of promises

To discover my name stencilled with watery ink

On the downy page of hope

I have glimpsed through the firmament at nocturnal hour

To see my crescent veiled by cloudy haze of time

But whenever courage and spirit are depressed

And the hope of escape out of this squalor fluctuates

Like drive of ship engulfed by perplexed blizzard

I envisage the dream of serene sky and verdant field of promise land

Set for me in the prophecy of undiscovered vision

And I commit myself to paper again

II

Brothers,

Whenever I am out of your caressing sight

And left with pains of my wisdom  

I always long to tread a land

Never before imprinted by feet of men  

But the way seems snowy and my feet are scrawny

Sometimes the winter appears severe

But spring promises well

And I see myself a determined mind

Though I know I am in the arid desert of solitude

Where no one shares pain and dejection  

III

Do remember

That no prophecy comes in duet

As true vision never comes twice in dream

My life has been passed in luxury

But I prefer pain to every enticement that providence

May place on my path because of this dream

If morrow comes and this dream dies

Like that of wanderer on bloody street of Kano

Don’t whimper!                                                                                         

For not all stars have the glory of night

But if this dream survives the anguish of toiling century

Don’t let it die!

I rest my pen here, brother

For much words if said from dawn till dusk

Never satiate the craving of hungry basket

Here I pocket my pen looking towards your rejoinder

This is the voice of your apostle of pen

Your sincere brother of the same rising sun

Rabtob