By Tony Eluemunor
Actually, I never planned to dwell on a sad topic on this last Saturday of the year. Since 1999 when this column started in the Saturday Guardian (thank you Editor, Banji Adisa who called me to ask if I could turn my essays into a regular column and also, chose the Abuja Notes title) I have refrained from dwelling on sad or regular (read political) topics on such Saturdays but would always try to take my readers to a bright new world on a voyage of discovery.
On that last Saturday of 1999, talks about the millennium ricocheted around the world. As religious sages pontificated that the end of the world was near just as pseudo-scientists warned of an impending computer meltdown, I took my readers to the world of the calendric, the calendrical and the calendarial in the making of Julian and Gregorian calendars, leap years, and the overlooked fact that the new millennium would not, mathematically speaking of course, incept in 2000 but 2001.
Enough, we don’t want to dwell on the story of the two Catholic monks, Dionysius Exiguus and the Venerable Adam Bede, who gave us the BC and the AD systems of numbering the centuries or on Emperor Julius Caesar who gave the world the solar calendar instead of the lunar one and Pope Gregory XIII who introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582 to replace the Julian one, which had been in use since 46 BC. The Gregorian calendar introduced the leap year idea and sliced off two whole weeks from that year to correct the lapses the non-observation for the leap years had caused.
For this Saturday, I had planned to dwell on a particular Christmas carol, Felix Navidad, which Mr. Douglas Mogekwu, a budding football superstar had sent to me. The Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia government of Mid-West State had taken notice of Douglas even in the primary school and had started grooming him for stardom. In 1973, he was at the Afuze Sports Camp for the Mid-West under-13 soccer team. Then suddenly, he hung up his boots. He had decided to face his academics squarely and wanted no distractions…or could it be that his mother did not want to risk the limbs of her only son on the football field? One day, I’ll revisit this topic because Douglas had uncommon talent; which was recognized around the Aniocha Division (now LGA) by then where he had gained name recognition.
Today belongs to the late Princess Stella Godwin, from Enugu state. Thursday, 19th December 2024, she left her Abuja home, flagged down a car and her lifeless body was later found in the Gwarinpa area. Finish. Case closed! In that casual way a life that God created had been snuffed out, her dreams wiped off the slate of life, her certificates nullified, her labours rendered useless. In a way, I wish I never heard of her because her death hit me like a sledge hammer. The dedicated and caring Rev. Father Jude Alih, who has been knitting together a family of worshippers at the Missionaries of St. Paul building in Garki District, Abuja, posted it on a WhatsApp group forum…and that spoiled my Christmas. Where was she off to? Her age?
Her occupation? Family details? Suddenly none of them seemed to matter really. That she was dead simply because she boarded a “one chance” vehicle, is the entire issue. You could blame her all you want because, one, she could have been more careful, two that she could have…done what really? What? We should stop blaming victims whose only mistake was that they believed in the shared humanity of their fellow citizens and beloved that Nigeria was a lawful society.
The plain fact is that Nigeria failed her. A citizen of Nigeria should have a modicum of security in her country. The security agents out-peacock the peacocks in their unbridled pride in their uniforms, claim all sorts of privileges because of those same uniforms, yet, Nigeria is about the most lawless and the least safe place globally.
The “one chance” syndrome whereby criminal transporters pick up passengers, rob and or kill them has been rife in Nigeria for decades. Yet, little or nothing is being done about it. The stop and search dark ages style of fighting crime is what the Nigeria Police Force has remained wedded to. Even the Police has remained totally unable to Police itself, so the bad eggs, the barbarians in Police uniform have not been fished out. Then, once in a long while, one of them would be forced out by the sheer iniquity he or she has committed and the Police Force would issue stringent statements that means nothing beyond hot air. That there is a great need to weed out the bad eggs there has not occurred to the Police top brass. Bribe taking is still being done openly on Nigerian roads by those in Police uniforms.
Nigeria appears not to have heard there is something called the modern age. The CCTV cameras on Abuja streets are lies the government have told Nigerians. They do not work. They have never worked and they were never intended to work. But Nigeria contracted Chinese entities to mount them. They cost millions of dollars in tax payers’ money. But they were connected to nowhere. Not one crime incidence has been solved with the help of CCTV cameras in Nigeria.
So, too, the stampede victims who died in Ibadan, Abuja and Okija in Anambra state. Many have blamed Prophetess Naomi Sinekunola for the Ibadan mishap. Poor, poor her. She had planned to give N5,000 to 5,000 children. As long as money was involved, something would still have gone wrong. Some of her workers could have stolen part of the money.
It is not her fault that Nigerians have never learnt to queue properly, even inside the banks, at ATM machines, at supermarkets, any and everywhere. Nigerians refuse to obey traffic lights and when those lights go off, they form multiple lanes until the entire road is blocked. Nobody does anything in the right way. RIP, Princess Stella Godwin.
Tony Eluemunor is a syndicated columnist
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