PREPARE FOR THIEVES-20% goes to teamg-nigeria

Let me, from what happened in Lagos, paint a picture of what will soon start happening in Nigeria. I had brought out my writing pad and fired up my laptop this morning to continue the Mmasinachi story I’m doing but my people say, ‘Afu ihe ka ubi e lee oba.’

Let’s, briefly, using Lagos as a case study talk about what we should expect in Nigeria soon.
Listening to the governor of Lagos last night tell his people to prepare for a total lock-down of markets, clubs and other businesses, I asked myself, ‘Why are our leaders negative copycats?” The word negative like I heard recently on radio is the most wonderful result one gets when he/she test for HIV, Covid-19 or other dreaded diseases but it’s not a cheering news to woman who go for pregnancy test.

By the way, my heart goes out to woman all over the world particular those who are still within their right to bear children; my heart goes out to you because for safety reason, I am tempted to believe that the activity in the other room that give rise to babies has reduced. Anyway, what do I know? I’m not yet married.

Of course, I don’t need to be a governor to know that Babajide Sanwo Olu sounded really ‘stupid’ on the television last night. Before you jump into the conclusion of thinking he’s a stupid man, I want you to note that the first stupid I wrote is in inverted commas. Meaning, he’s not really stupid. Trust me, this is not the best time to be a president or a governor.

Yes, he sounded stupid because after hearing him talk about a lockdown, I didn’t hear him talk about what the government would do to make the lives of common Lagosians better____ palliative. You’re asking these people to leave the street where they earn their living without giving them a lifeline. Does the governor know that there a people whose daily hope of food is from the five hundred they make daily on the street? Anyways, what do they know, most of them didn’t grow up on the street.

One of the rule of the street is to try and survive ‘any which way.’ I even think is the universal rule of life. Ever heard of ‘The survival of the fittest? Those days in secondary school one of my classmate calls it Survival of the ‘fightest.’ For me, that expression means doing everything you can to survival. And because these street boys/girls would be cut off from their means of survival (the paltry sum they make everyday) and because they have survival instinct in them, they are going to move to the house of their neighbours to steal by whatever means they can, including the use of toy and real guns.

Unfortunately, we have a government that is a poor copycat. How would you copy the act of shutdown from other countries without going further to copy the incentives they give to their people while they’re on shutdown? The painful truth is that other negative effect this would have on Lagosians is that the prices of things, particularly food, will skyrocket. It’s unfortunately true that Nigeria is a failed state! Imagine ordinary hand sanitize that used to sell between five hundred and eight hundred naira is now two thousand five hundred.

So, my people, the painful reality is that we should all prepare for ‘small’ thieves.