Don't push me 'cause
I'm close to the edge
I'm trying not to lose
my head, ha-ha
It's like a jungle
sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
It's like a jungle
sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under
[Grandmaster Flash - The Message]
The lyrics above came to mind after I had two close
encounters with anarchy. I am compelled to share these experiences in the hope
that someone in a position of power will wake up and ‘smell the anger’.
The two experiences are tied to the perennial petrol
scarcity that seems to have become the new normal, both events played out at
petrol stations.
About 3 weeks ago, when I had avoided the petrol queues long
enough for my fuel gauge to get to empty, I decided to take my chances at one
of the stations along Ikorodu Road. The queue was single file and orderly (or
so it seemed); I brought out my Kindle to catch up on some reading (hate
waiting without having any activity to fill the time). After 40 minutes on the
queue, I was finally inside the station, success! Then it all went downhill. A
lot of bare chested guys flooded the station with plastic containers of all
sizes and the atmosphere immediately changed, there was a lot of jostling and
shouting and I silently prayed everything would settle down. Then some soldiers
got into the mix and we all know how ‘good’ they are with crowd control. The
horsewhips were out in a flash and next thing there’s a guy on my bonnet
yelling something and that was my own moment of Zen because I stopped to
contemplate the ridiculousness of some strange guy on my car's bonnet all because
I needed to get some petrol.
And then the guns came out too, and then the threats from
the battle scarred guys determined to buy fuel for resale on the streets of
Lagos. The rallying cry was ‘e fo go so wo’ (translation: break some bottles).
And then some more fierce looking young men flooded the station with different
implements, one came in with two bottles of Fanta in his back pants pockets and
I knew he didn’t intend to stop for some refreshment in the impending melee.
By this time I was frantically praying and looking for an
escape route, suddenly the prospect of filling my tank just didn’t seem
attractive any longer; I just wanted to be far away from the whole madness. But
there was no way out so I was stuck; the good thing was that the soldiers had a
healthy sense of self-preservation so they just made some halfhearted threats
to shoot but who really wants to shoot up a gas station? And when they saw
their threats were not having the desired effects on the thugs, they got their
fuel and left; the balance of power was restored. That was my first glimpse
of negative people power at work. Nothing, not even the threat of lethal force, was
going to stop the thugs from their dubious enterprise; their belligerence fueled
by ‘righteous’ indignation at the military personnel who were trying to take
food off their table.
Second episode was on 18/04/2016; I was driving down Murtala
Mohammed Way, one of the better roads in Lagos so I wasn’t looking to avoid any
pot holes and the next thing I know, I had driven over what was supposed to be
a covered manhole and immediately lost two tyres. The cover of the manhole had
been removed for some strange reason that only applies in Nigeria and I drove
over the hole at approximately 80km/hour. Thankfully, I got that sorted after
about an hour and a half. Lest I forget, I had company in my Monday morning
misery, another unsuspecting driver drove over the same manhole and guess what?
He lost two tyres too; one of the perks of living in Nigeria is that no matter
how annoying, absurd or ridiculous your situation is, you’ll always find
company in it.
When I finally sorted the tyre palaver, I decided to tempt
fate by getting on a petrol queue, I was already 2 hours late and I wasn’t in a
frame of mind for work any longer, I was upset that I was living in a country
where you could lose two tyres simply by expecting that manholes on a major
road would be covered.
Whilst on the queue, I noticed a particular bare chested young
man (I guess ‘area boys’ don’t bother with the niceties of covering up because
they expect to get in a fight at some point in time, just my own theory)
rolling a motorcycle in and out of the petrol station and siphoning fuel from
the motor bike into a plastic keg. This
made me remember an Igbo proverb I had read in a Chinua Achebe novel many years
ago - “since men have learnt to shoot without missing, the bird has learnt to
fly without perching” - this proverb encapsulates the much vaunted Nigerian trait of resourcefulness. If the petrol stations wouldn’t dispense fuel into containers
other than vehicle tanks, then we’ll simply use motor bikes even if we have to
make the trip 5 times to fill up a keg.
I also observed another one of the thugs who had finally
acquired a full keg of petrol after all his ‘hard work’ dancing in ecstasy and smoking
a roll of marijuana. Another moment of Zen to contemplate the danger of a lit roll of weed
with a keg of highly flammable liquid in hand; I guess the weed and the
prospect of profit from the sale of his petrol made him too happy to care.
After a while I got to the petrol pump and the wahala began, some armed mobile police had come into the station and spotted the ‘resourceful’
young man who had decided to use a motor bike to purchase fuel as many times as
needed to fill several plastic containers. I couldn’t hear what they were
discussing but one of the policemen suddenly splashed water in the ‘petrol
magnate’s’ face and all hell broke loose. The guy went ballistic and made to
attack 4 armed men whilst everyone watched with growing alarm because we all
know what happens when a civilian takes on armed policemen. Some of the thug’s
supporters started throwing objects at the policemen and the next thing rifle
butts were swinging all over the place but thankfully no shots were fired
inside the station. The thug refused to be pacified and was determined to fight
to protect his standing as a ‘hard man’; the fight was taken out of the station
and our trigger happy cops started shooting in the air.
Just like my previous experience, I was trapped inside the
station without an escape route. As my eyes were darting all over trying to
figure out how to extricate myself from the potentially explosive situation
(pun intended), I looked out and saw petrol boy and his goons with scarves over
their faces, containers of fuel in one hand and lighters in the other. They were
approaching the policemen and taunting them. At that point, I begged one of the
cops to clear the road and let us all leave, by this time petrol was the last
thing on anyone’s mind, people were already speeding away and thankfully I
could drive out and leave. I later heard that one of the policemen had been
stabbed and had to beat a hasty retreat.
So I had a pretty rough Monday but what struck me more was
the realization of the fact that we are living in thinly veiled anarchy; in
both events, the army and police were incapable of maintaining order even with
force of arms. Some people might dismiss this and say the police were just
being cautious in view of all the lives at risk. The real issue to consider is
that there are lots of young people in our society that have nothing to lose
and are ready to die violently along with many other innocents if their chosen
means of survival is threatened. In view of the fact that these events happened
in a space of 3 weeks, I can safely guess that these potential firestorms are
being replicated at petrol stations all over Lagos.
As Nigerians, we generally pride ourselves on possessing
great resilience; I’ve often heard people jokingly say if you push a Nigerian
to the wall, he’ll make a hole and go through the wall! The joke about this
legendary resilience is hollow in view of various manifestations of lawlessness
and hopelessness. However, the people we have elected to make life better are
still oblivious of the subtle change in the Nigerian psyche and are still
handing out platitudes like “change takes time” and “things will get worse
before they get better”. What they don’t understand is that there is a whole
generation of youth who have not experienced the ‘better’ and only the ‘worse’.
The inability of the police to arrest certain people e.g.
Tompolo; the Shia versus Army confrontation that led to hundreds of deaths; the
ongoing war against Boko Haram; the murderous Fulani herdsmen and the various
agitations all over the country are glaring signs of a country living on the edge of complete chaos.
If Nigeria were a soap opera, and events in Nigeria are decidedly more
outlandish than any soap plot, the soundtrack of our lives would be “don’t push
me cos I am close to the edge...”
