A requiem for my town
By Stephen Gbadamosi
When the poet, John Pepper Clark, wrote in his poem, Ibadan, that the city is a “running splash of rust and gold,” it was not lost on those who could read between the lines that he was not merely referring to the spread of rusty roofs that one sees in and aerial view of the city. Clark knew that Ibadan had potentials; gold! He also knew that despite hosting the first university in Nigeria, Ibadan, lags behind in finesses, erudition and ‘civilisation’.
But then, poem connoisseurs thought that as time went on, ‘the rust will eventually turn to gold’. It is not my argument that Ibadan has not produced sons and daughters who can hold their heads high in any segment of the society, but we should look around us, several years after, the rustiness is still with us.
A few days ago, I was returning from the office on a chattered motorcycle, okada, several of which are rode by our brothers who are still of school age as a means of livelihood. We got to Mapo and ran into a traffic gridlock caused by hundreds of adherents of a local god who are celebrating a festival. Again, it is not my argument that our culture should perish, but that 90 per cent of those revelers were youths in the age bracket of 13 to 25 was a cause for concern. More worrisome was the fact that the festival offered them the impunity to do what even their parents should be ashamed of doing, were they to be more civilised. Apart from chants of sexual obscenities that should be a taboo for their age grade, I saw many scantity-dressed girls smoking indian hemp and cigarettes in the crowd! Reaching in his pouch of experience, my Okada rider quickly warned me to put away my mobile phones and wrist watch. But for him, I would have kissed them bye-bye, because, right in front of us, a rider lost his to hemp-wielding teenagers without complaining.
A sitting commissioner recently told the Nigerian Tribune that Ibadan, my cherished town, was the dirtiest city in Nigeria. “Take a ride from Molete through Idi-Arere to Oje and so on, your vehicle would match on nylon bags and it would burst; it’s human faeces that’s inside,” he said.
Yes, the present government is trying to address the situation, like the emptying of their thrash bins in the gullies when it rains? In Ibadan, the most popular professions are commercial vehicles driving, bus conductor work, Okada riding and meat selling. Alas, gone are the days when you find such professions being manned by the aged like our own good Baba Eleran of the 3SC fame (may his soul rest in peace). Today, it is illiterate teenagers that populate such occupations. It is not uncommon to find behind the steering wheel of your commercial bus, a boy using pillow to support his seat so as to view through the windshield. Bodija, Itamerin, Oje, New Bola Ige and many such other markets are where you would find most of Ibadan school-age persons today. Yet, it is said that the future belongs to this category of people. Where then lies the future of Ibadan?
The people of Ibadan, one must say, need to wake up from their slumber. Gone are the days when, in other climes, residents organised parties on major roads, creating headache for other road users. In Ibadan, it is still in vogue. The worshippers earlier referred to blocked the Bere-Oje-Gate road from the roundabout to Kanike junction because of an organistic party to herald the worship of their deity. Theirs was on a Wednesday. On Saturdays, when school compounds are usually free for party goers to use, the people of Ibadan would prefer to block a major road for the sake of partying. They would rather party in front of their fathers’ houses.
To a considerable percentage of the economically useful populace of Ibadan, education is not a necessity. It is the ability to earn money on a daily basis that matters most. Even those in primary schools close to take up the work of bus conductor and, sometimes, petty trading. For how long do we continue to blame poverty for the result of our own lackadaisical attitude?
The truth is that, we are daily breeding thugs, miscreants and potential armed robbers. Beer parlours and paraga joints are being proliferated in the town and it is these school-age persons that you mostly find there. Most school compounds in the city serve a secondary purpose of hemp joint in the evenings, at weekends and during holidays. You would be amazed to know how many children visit such joints regularly. Ibadan is on the tentherhook.
Woe betides any woman that passes around Bere, Oja-oba, Bodija, Alaro in Sango, Oremeji, Olorunsogo, Iwo Road, Gate and such other areas of the town around 12:00 p.m. Night life in Ibadan has turned into nightmare. A lady recently told a gory tale of how she closed at her shop in Alaro area of Sango at about 10:30 p.m. and as she was waiting for an Okada to board home, two young men alighted from an Okada and demanded for her money and cell phones. She was recalcitrant until she received a deep matchet cut on her back after which the boys made away with her phones and bag. Ibadan, where do you go from here?
The political upheavals of the 2007 elections were unleashed by teenagers mostly. At the governorship primaries held in the town in December 2006, precisely at ward four in Ibadan North Local Government area in Yemetu, a man in his late 20s, an alfa (an Arabic scholar), was seen wielding a machete to scare away members of another political party. Ibadan is playing with its future.
Let the people know that poverty, their usual alibi, will not be there to answer to any charges when the doomsday comes. May it never come. But Ibadan is dying; if my people are listening, they should please help save the precious soul?
Gbadamosi is on the staff of Tribune |
