My experience on Tuesday, 11th March 2003 with our company driver, Mr. Godwin Irabor, along the Ijebu-Ode-Shagamu Expressway, while on an official assignment to Lagos, made me to remember the motto of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka — “To Restore The Dignity Of Man” and Professor Chinua Achebe’s book, “The Problem With Nigeria”, I think that’s the title.
Late Doctor Nnamdi Azikiwe, who allegedly coined the University of Nigeria, Nsukka’s motto, must have observed that there is something seriously wrong with the dignity of man, most especially that of the black man which needs restoring! This therefore means that originally man acted in a dignified and decent mainner.
Right from the time of the first Adams and Eves (earthmen), who first set feet on this earth, man has been known to be no respecter of laws and order, even God’s! At the slightest opportunity man, especially the Nigerian specie is ready to disobey or choose not to obey any law — human, natural or God’s!
Chinua Achebe’s book, “The Problem With Nigeria”, was written in the days of War Against Indiscipline (WAI) when Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon held sway as Nigeria’s military Head of State and Chief of Army Staff respectively.
In that book Chinua Achebe described the indecent behaviour of a Mobile Policeman who was urinating from atop a mobile truck conveying him and his colleagues to an urgent assignment!
This was what I experienced on the afore-mentioned date! However, there was a different category of the culprit! This time it was a bloody civilian!
We were driving behind this blue 911 lorry in our company’s pool car. We were faster than the lorry on the fast lane. We therefore signaled the lorry driver, by flashing our headlamps and horning, to move over to the slow lane but he did not bulge! This is one of our Highway Code rules that most of our country drivers love to flout! However, we decided to trail behind it for a while, avoiding over-taking him on the right lane. We feared that he might suddenly decide to change his mind to move over to the slow lane at the same time that we might also want to. As we were driving behind the lorry we noticed drops of rain on the windshield. Mr. Irabor, our driver, confirmed that it was a sign of impending rain. However, I had a close look at the happening by putting my head out of the window. I noticed that the rain wasn’t coming from the sky but from the right side of the closed lorry’s tailboard! A closer look shows that the Motor boy or Driver’s Mate was urinating inside the lorry! At first I could not confirm categorically that he was doing so. This was because he was merely standing near the right body of the lorry facing the racing bushes absent mindedly. However, the gestures of completion of urinating, which men usually exhibit and the continuous flow out of the urine at the tailboard end of the lorry, gave him away! The dripping of the urine stopped immediately he stepped out from that side of the lorry.
When I alerted Mr. Irabor that it was urine that was dripping from the lorry to our windshield, in anger, he wanted to double-cross the lorry to stop it! I cautioned him that that would be suicidal. Thereafter, we decided to drive alongside the lorry to alert and stop the driver by waving him down. But he refused to stop. May be he thought we were robbers — you may never know, anything can happen in Nigeria nowadays! Finally, we decided to drive ahead of the lorry and its occupants in anticipation that we will reach a police checkpoint on the expressway — they are numerous on that road.
Luckily we saw one and reported the incident to the Mobile policemen on duty. We waited for the arrival of the lorry. Within a short while the lorry arrived! One of the officers on duty stopped it within the barricade they had erected along the expressway after we have identified it to him. He asked one of the passengers to alight from the lorry a guaranty that the driver will not speed-off after crossing the barricade — while the driver negotiates the winding barricades to park far after it beside the road.
We and the policeman approached the alighted occupants of the lorry who were five in number. I immediately recognised the culprit and pointed him it to the officer.
“Officer, that’s the offender! I shouted”.
“Wetin I do?” The unkempt boy of about twenty years asked in bewilderment!
“Were you not the person urinating from your moving lorry a while ago! I thundered.
“We tried to stop your driver but he refused to stop”. Mr. Irabor interjected.
“Oga, I no piss from the lorry. Na water I drink remain na im I pour tro wey”. The boy tried to explain. Suspecting that the boy was now trying to extricate himself by lying, I probed him further.
“Okay, if you are saying that it is water, can we see the container — pure water sachet or bottled water container which you used?”
Thereupon the Motor boy started to prostrate on the side of the expressway begging for forgiveness. The driver and other occupants of the lorry joined him.
“Oga, I dey sorry. I no go do am again. Please forgive me”.
“If you were pressed you should have alerted your driver to stop for you to ease yourself’, the police officer tried to admonish him.
Seeing that we were running late for our scheduled meeting in Lagos I told the officer to take over the case, as the boy has pleaded guilty of the offence.
Thereupon, the officer decided to mete out punishment to the offending Motor boy by asking him to kneel down on the granite filled curb of the road!
However, before we drove off to Lagos, I tried to educate the offender and other occupants of the lorry about the health implications of the boy’s action — urinating indiscriminatingly from the top of the moving lorry - to other motorists.
• As we drove off to Lagos we already knew in our minds that the police officer was not going to charge the boy for the offence. Rather he is likely to ask the boy or the driver to bail themselves by paying some money to the policemen on duty at the checkpoint before they will be let off the hook!
In a lawful society, the offence will not be treated lightly like this. The boy will be charged with the police prosecuting while I and our driver, being eye witnesses to the offence, will be required to give evidence!
Lawlessness is indeed the problem with Nigeria. Obi Egbuna in his novel, “The Madness of Didi”, put this succinctly when he ascribed the trouble with Nigeria to the fact “that it is inhabited by Nigerians. The land is beautiful, but the wrong people seem to live on it. We have more lawyers everyday, and less justice. More doctors, and less doctoring. More intellectuals, and less intelligent men. The masses cannot read, the leaders cannot lead, and the led are bad followers”.
If we all obey the laws of the land and link it up with that of the Natural Laws of God, Nigeria will be a better place to live in.
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