In a frenzy to meet up with my appointment at the National Hospital, Abuja, where I had a patient to nurture, it turned out a bizarre response. That uneasy pain came from men of the underworld. It yet difficult to call them 419ners or ritualists since they were unable to actualize their motive, going by what finally transpired.
Two men were in the front seat of this very rickety, Carina 11, car and they appeared having the sympathy of the next friend. In my innocence and crave to beat the hospital visitation timing, caution was no longer the matter for me. There was no bargain and no burden was too enormous as whatever was there bill was just acceptable but it was just the beginning of a major untoward experience that would take a long time to erase. It was also coincidental with the disastrous ousting of my friend, classmate and pastor, the then Minister of State for Labour, the unassuming but very discerning, Ocholi James who passed on a few days earlier. All the confusion was further wrapped up in the reality that I was not going to see him again, particularly terrestrially. In trying to wedge through this pain I was driven by this duo of evil men to a very unfamiliar terrain that has been described as the Gisiri, an Abuja suburb where life and activity was not near. My pain was not aided by a total loss of confidence in our livelihood which best suits this very Hobessian theory of a short and brutish world. While I caught between this confussion, I remembered I needed God because the motive of my captors was clear. But in ‘puerile’ docility, I started shouting and calling various names of God that I never deed even when I had all the freedom in the world. God became to me who I needed at critical point.
God did not come down to my rescue but people did. My shouts attracted far passers by and my abductors whose motive was then undecided took to their heels. It is way of expressing the growing appetite of money mongers. In a manner of expression, nobody is insulated from the rising menace of these evil men on the prowl. If one thinks he has averted danger by avoiding public transport, he may be again fortuitously at risk from even his next door neighbours who are not too comfortable so called ‘ostentatious’ living. It is therefore a way of caution that in this very precarious moment, the guiding principle is utmost caution, even a divine guidance imperative for many who hold high the values of spiritual existence.
I was made to understand later that unwary passengers are hypnotized as substances are sprayed on their captors sending them to a realm of inactivity. What this calls for is utter vigilance and responsiveness at any point of contact now. There are many emergency jobbers rulling the landscape and it takes extra caution to put them at bay.
I subscribe to this new notion that poverty is ruling so much of our national amid the loss normative values, otherwise why should there be a total loss of sensibility leading mindless killings, abductions, and several trade in human parts and several unnamed vices.
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