I cringe because it hurts to see the victims of the failure of the Nigerian state. It hurts because I believe that we the citizens are complicit in the evil that has befallen our land. It hurts because I feel helpless in the face of the challenges I can see ahead, and about which I feel myself powerless to effect the changes required to reverse the burgeoning tragedy that threatens our land.
As I drove home in the Lekki traffic, the pains of my commute concentrated my mind as I pondered the intrinsic nature of the evil inherent in the hegemony that rules in the state, and the myopia inflicted on them by their greed. To spend hours on a toll road, riddled with potholes, and that is grossly inadequate for the needs of the citizens trapped within the axis.
I cringed at each of the traffic lights, it is a constant pain, to see the little beggars, the ones that looks at you with the knowing eyes. You know that they have seen horrors and have been scarred by life. They are the forgotten victims of the Boko Haram scourge, and of the grinding poverty that stalks the northern part of our country.
I cringe because it hurts to see the victims of the failure of the Nigerian state. It hurts because I believe that we the citizens are complicit in the evil that has befallen our land. It hurts because I feel helpless in the face of the challenges I can see ahead, and about which I feel myself powerless to effect the changes required to reverse the burgeoning tragedy that threatens our land.
So, as I escaped the last of the traffic lights on the route I elected to travel, through Osapa, and by the Mobil station at Jakande, I heaved a sigh of relief that I had escaped the worst of the traffic, and had only a few insouciant kid beggars to endure. But just as I came to the bridge over the Osapa canal, I saw an old friend, and he hasn’t changed much.
In the mid 2000s, and before Tinubu stole the road in and out of my neighborhood, I used to drive into VI several times in the course of the average day. Lekki dwellers travelled to VI for all our needs, ours was a transit community. We worked and shopped everywhere but inside of the Lekki in which we lived. And as the theft of the road was announced with the beginning of the road construction works on Ozumba, I started using the inner roads in VI to access Oniru beachfront, through which I’d access Elegushi, and then Alfa Beaches, thereby avoiding the worst of the traffic.
I would see this young beggar. A boy, he must have been in his late teens. He was crippled in both legs, hunchbacked, he hobbled around with the aide of crude iron crutches and some sort of metal braces. The thing about him was his smile. I found something particularly endearing about the way he’d smile as he looked to you for alms.
The incongruity of the smile he wore in spite of his station and circumstances, forced me into giving to him as constantly as I ran into him. His smile would brighten at the sight of my car, and my normal refusal to give money to beggars in traffic, born of the feeling of never being able to do enough, and paranoias about the security of my life and property, would evaporate. It was a joy to give to him.
He was standing just before the little roundabout at the bridgehead. He is not a young boy again. He has become a man. I am happy to swear that he has the very same set of crutches. And the braces looked exactly the same as the ones from years ago. Like me, he now has a beard, but the one thing that hasn’t changed at all, he had the same smile as he had, way back in the days before our beards. The smile loosened my Scrooge’s purse, and I handed him the alms, I could never deny to him. I can at least enjoy the salve to a conscience seared by the knowledge, that the corporate silence of my like, enables the madness.
Nigeria has millions of preteen children who are out of school, or have never been. They roam the streets, preyed upon by all manners of evil people. Hooked on cheap drugs, and low on hope, learning no trade, and directed towards nothing by either the state, or the society. The easiest to see, are the ones that begs, ubiquitous, aggressive, and in your face. Some I have seen hawking wares, childhood innocence all but lost. Children that have never lived the uncomplicated simplicity of the child.
They shall also age, and they will age in different ways, as life happens to them. What kind of adults, would these children become? They are becoming adults with nary any trainings, and devoid of prospects, cannon fodders for the army of criminals and vagrants that Lagos harbors and that Nigeria will harvest. What kind of changes awaits the begging urchins on Lagos roads? How many are destined for roles robbing in tomorrow’s traffic? Exactly what manner of harvest, does the future hold, for a nation of liars? I doubt that they would have changed much either, but I seriously doubt, that they would beg anyone in the years to come. They will demand, and they will take.
DF
Originally written May 2019.
