02 Sep 2006 |
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Please close your eyes and read the following special announcement: “From now henceforth, all motorists wishing to ply Nigerian roads must paint their vehicles green-white-green. In addition, the number 999 must be boldly written on the upper right corner of both the front and back bumpers.” Sounds ridiculous, not so? Well, brace yourself; we may get there sooner than you know. And why not? In a country of lots of apparently blind people like ours, semi-blind folks in all manner of uniforms need only wave some document from the Federal Government Printer and the rest will bow down and worship! Hoodwinking on a gargantuan scale! If this is not the case, how do we, a country of incredibly intelligent people, explain the inane reflective car sticker scam being perpetrated by the Federal Road Safety Corps with little resistance from a populace that ought to guard its freedoms vigilantly? Is there a vehicle that comes out of the factory without some reflective point on its rear lights? What is wrong with seeing that those are in order? Must we allow this ‘fall-in-line-because-Big-Brother-is-watching-you’ attitude to take over our lives as if we’re now citizens of George Orwell’s phenomenal 1984? The very next thing may be a directive from the almighty Road Safety that everybody who wishes to drive must wear a blue overall with reflective name tags above the left breast pocket and little bells tied to the right wrist! Now where would this drivers’ uniform be obtained? Your guess is correct! A dangerous precedent All this tom-foolery reminds your correspondent of something once gleaned in a long-forgotten book. It seems that circa 1928, the royal Japanese police force of the era created a department for dangerous thoughts. How those with dangerous thoughts were supposed to be fished out, one couldn’t be bothered to find out. It seemed dangerous enough that the very idea of a department for dangerous thoughts had not only been considered but was brought into existence. How many of the Japanese emperor’s supposed enemies would have met their downfall on account of the department of dangerous thoughts is an open-ended matter. Why is this important here? Well, a little bird has been whispering in this corner of conspiracies in certain quarters to establish a department to arrest those with intentions to drive dangerously. How those with intentions to drive dangerously would be identified isn’t a big secret. You need only look at their bumpers: No reflective stickers and you’ve got it—those are the very ones with intentions to drive dangerously! A simple enough arithmetic, not so? Oh what interesting times we live in! The devil's advocate? Why is there a possibility that this seemingly absurd notion is already being put into action in these shores without anyone crying blue murder? Well, because we all tend to act as if it’s somebody else’s problem. “Oh, I’m too busy!” “I’ve got to attend to my business.” “I have family issues to deal with!” Good for you, people. But watch out, soon we may all wear blue overalls, have a bell tied to our wrists and have all our names prefaced by something weird like NIG/999/dash, dash, dash. Is this too extreme for you? Is your correspondent too much of a devil’s advocate? Well. Recall that several months ago, your correspondent wrote: “More than greed, unwillingness on the part of most Nigerians to be provoked enough into any sort of action is why the third term agenda will succeed.” That the third term agenda failed was largely because many Nigerians were provoked enough by the temerity of the plan to express their anger in various ways to their representatives who attentively shot the agenda down. So is there a point in killing an ant with a sledge hammer? You bet there is! Hit that ant too softly, it would develop resistance and before you know it, it’s a mighty ant! Apathy! Apathy! Apathy! So why are more people not screaming publicly about this car sticker scam? Again, let’s stroll down memory lane as we did above because it’s “typical, when you think of it. Nigerians, for the most part, are incredibly docile and cowardly. We are cheated in our places of work; our landlords fleece us; our leaders literally sell us out at every turn. Yet what do we do? Nothing! “We fold our hands. We murmur and grumble. We pray! If a man cannot fight for justice for himself in his own place of work, how is he ever going to find the courage to fight for collective justice? You see it now? Apathy! Thieves could auction Nigeria inch by inch—and they are those that would argue that the process is already on—and her citizens would shrug and carry on as if nothing untoward has happened.” Too much of a good thing is... To that you may add the fact that we may well be turned into slaves in our own land and many of us would still shrug and continue worrying about only our families and businesses. Lest the point be mistaken, this should be made abundantly clear: Every vehicle already comes with reflective points on its rear lights. Secondly, there is indeed too much of a supposedly good thing—it obviously becomes a bad thing! Thirdly, letting government agencies hide behind loosely-worded enabling acts to corral and herd us like cattle may very well confer that status on us. And if they’re already doing it with stickers, what’s to stop them from doing it with numbers? So now open your eyes, turn 999 upside down and give yourself something to think about.
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