By Kola Animasaun
I am yielding this space today to my son, Boye, who has some observations concerning this country.  You see, Boye has been out of this country for about 13 years.

“Good people, good nation”, or             is it vice versa?  We have             been bombarded with jingles and what not in the effort to rebrand this country called Nigeria.

However, the adjective “good”, used before the nouns “people” and “nation” casts a shadow of doubt on these words.  It makes one stop to think if that is true of all Nigerians should we accept the “good nation” part of it.

Yes, this I know will not go down well with so many people who have gotten rich at the expense of the few good ones.  Why this outburst of mine?  My recent experience in the hand of V.I.Os (Vehicle Inspection Officers) has opened my eyes even wider to the cruelty of man to man, and the rotten stage this country has reached.

Can it be salvaged?  I pray so.  Do I believe it?  That is a question I have no definite answer to.  On that fateful day, my business partner and I were rushing to meet up with an appointment somewhere in Maryland, Lagos, so I drove, not waiting for the driver to return from an errand.

I was stopped by this group of VIOs who demanded for my papers.  Alas! My insurance and roadworthiness certificates, which had been renewed a day earlier, were with my driver.

Of course, I was guilty as charged! The pleas of my driver, who arrived at the scene about five minutes later fell on deaf ears as I was made to understand that the documents weren’t produced on demand.  Officers doing a good job?  I don’t refute that.  Good people?  Maybe.  May be not.

I was driven to the VIO office in Ikeja GRA, where a pot bellied man, who, instinct tells me, makes some returns to someone somewhere, immediately deflated, not one but two, of my car tyres.  Won’t one deflated tyre suffice?

Apparently not.  It was a case of why settle for one when he could charge for two!
I was infuriated.  I couldn’t take it anymore.  I had told my driver to go and pay the fine of N5,500 so we could leave the place.  My driver too had lost his cool as he started shouting, attracting a crowd.

I looked around and I couldn’t believe the number of okadas that had been impounded.  You needn’t be Einstein to figure out this place was a cash cow!  But look around and see what a run down place it was.  The stench and filth in which a governmental agency is run is unimaginable!

Of course, I made my observation known in very clear terms.  Sitting there waiting for my driver to sort out the fine, I couldn’t help but listen to the tales of the unfortunate okada riders.

If so much money is made by this agency, how come the premises remains in a state of disgust?  The government has to do something about this if we are to believe the money is going to the right source and for its intended purpose.  We need to clean up to improve our image.

Taxes and levies of various kinds are slammed on the people, but what do we get?  Good roads?  No.  Electricity? No.  I have lost count of sleepless nights caused by the noise of generators and the heat when there is a scarcity of petrol.
*Tales from the okada riders:

A man who claimed to have lost his mother just a week ago and had just N450 in his pocket kept swearing never to help anybody in his life again.  He claimed to have stopped to pick up an officer who waived him down and thought he knew but unfortunately his okada got impounded by this same person.

Another had to ask me for N200 to make up the N1000 he wanted to pay in order to get his okada out.

You had to see the faces of the okada riders to understand what they had to go through to make ends meet in a country where they are provided with next to nothing to survive.

If only the same “energy” put in by these overzealous officers is employed by government in providing basic amenities for its people, what a good nation it will definitely be!
Preferential treatment
A visit to my parents a while back made me notice that the street in front of theirs was being tarred.  I was surprised that a street that wasn’t a major one was going through this transformation.  My happiness was short-lived as I was informed that it was only gong to be that street and not the others.  Why?

Simple.  A party official lived on that one!  Of course, being Nigerian, everyone kept quiet and accepted it just the way it was.  When will we stand up and make our voices heard?  I think the time has come, I think the time is now.  We deserve better than what we are getting presently.  We should have a monitoring team.

We should know what money we have and the projects to be carried out each year with these funds.  The elected should be held accountable.
Still on roads.

Who is responsible for the road that runs off Oba Akran down to the railway crossing that links you to the Old Abeokuta Expressway?  I think whoever it is should be prosecuted.

This road which is just about 400 metres is in the worst shape you could ever find.  Once upon a time, there used to be a toll gate on it, just before Ashade Market.

Even when it was there, it never fared better.  Something tells me it was built just to make a few people much richer.  What is being done to ease the suffering of the people who have no other choice than to ply this road?  I am yet to see it.

Some people believe companies on and off this road, like Guinness and others also have a role to play.  There is something called Corporate Social Responsibility.

Whoever needs to do something should do something fast.

I still say that we need to form small groups of concerned citizens within each of our neighbourhoods.  Each group should have a representative linked to a bigger group which liaises with the local governments to keep us abreast of happenings.  This is the only way we can ensure that we get what we deserve.  The time is now!

*Boye Animasaun , a  journalist,  teaches English in Turkey.