With Theo Adebowale

My friend’s brother would be committed to mother earth having been fatally injured in an autocrash not far from Central Bank, Akure. Otunba, another friend offered to take us to Igbobini for the burial ceremony. There had been a rainfall on our way to Ore. We suddenly ran into a fallen tree, Otunba dodged the three, and behold, a big truck, at top speed blasting toward us. There was pin drop silence. Temy, my friend’s wife was the only woman in the car. She did not raise an alarm, no one did. And that was our saving grace. We maintained the silence till we reached Irele where we alighted at a restaurant to take our breakfast. Without conversation, we all chose not to mention the incident. How we escaped what would have been a ghastly accident, none of us, we were five, could say. Days later when we all congregated again, I raised the issue, but it did not develop to a discussion. It remains a mystery that we did not perish. And so whenever people say there are mysteries, I know it is a fact.
This reminds me, when I was very young, I entered into the bush one day to relieve myself. I went far so as not to hear human sound. After defecating, the path disappeared, and I was stranded. It was not a thick forest otherwise, I would have been overwhelmed with fear. My parents were busy in the congregation praising the LORD, listening to messages and testimonies. I was confused and hopeless. Somehow I encouraged myself and decided to face a direction in the bush. Thank God all reptiles kept off and before too long I made it back to town. The mystery was too much for me. I could not share with my parents because it might attract punishment. It went straight into my memory, from where I now share it.
Again when I was in Form 3, Senior Ronke Odus was House Prefect Hostel A, and was also my college mother. She invited me to her birthday. I was so excited to have such a privilege that I did not bother myself with the school regulation that girls hostels were out of bounds to males. I dressed up early, did not share my thought with anybody, and headed to the girl’s hostel. The reception was too much. I am not sure I have ever experienced such a welcome elsewhere ever since. It was the only time in my life all the girls wanted to dance with a person who does not know how to dance. The party dragged on for hours. When I had had my fill, I decided to call it a day. As strict as Ife Oluwa was in discipline, no one asked me any question about the incident. It was a mystery.
Again, years ago when John Obabori, my cousin, was getting wedded to his wife in Kano, I was accompanied there by another cousin, Ibukun, a student living with me. In our hotel room in Kano, he complained that he had headache, went to purchase and take some analgesic. After the wedding ceremony, we returned to Owo. He experienced the headache again and took permission to go to his father in Benin. A few days later, he went to be with his sisters in Port Harcourt. From there, Ibukun got missing; and we are yet to see him. How would I have felt if he had disappeared from my custody? That it did not happen while he was with me is still a mystery. Mysteries happen.
In the days when General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida was president, he granted a press interview. In that interview he told journalists that he did not know why the Nigerian economy had not collapsed. Some thirty years later, no one, scientist or astrologer, can tell why the Nigerian economy has not collapsed. With unpatriotic elements in strategic points of our economy, no seer, astrologer or scientist can explain what still holds the Nigerian economy together. Some servants of God are wont to let us believe that God is in charge over our affairs and does as He wishes. But I know that it is an official policy of the United States of America that it is God’s own country. That country relies on experts, patriots, competent men and women to run their system and they are still searching for better hands to run public business. The United States of America is ever ready to pay for goods and services to make the community more comfortable and more homely. In Nigeria, there is so much impunity at all levels. Citizens are professional grumblers.
There are expert petitioners all over the place. But mystery is that status quo gets reinforced by the day. Even the plague on rampage in different countries of the world came to Nigeria. It finds no abode; our officials have to search for those suffering of malaria, insomnia, foul breath, typhoid and indigestion to clamp down on the rest of us. Those who were appointed to die refuse to. Only about 180 persons have been recorded as fatalities from coronavirus since March and yet, others believe there should be total lockdown. Those who professed almajiri as a way of life they are proud of, now violate interstate border closure to distribute their almajiri all over the land. This is a mystery. It is also a mystery that Fulani herdsmen would go to communities to kill, to rape and to destroy. Those of them that are apprehended would be released thereafter. Nothing will happen.
When coronavirus became a pandemic, some Nigerians including professors, departments and herbal practitioners came up with claims of antidotes. They are ignored. Mysteriously, in Madagascar, the President accepted the local herb as presented. It was administered to those diagnosed of COVID-19, and not a death is recorded to date. At the last count, Nigeria has taken a delivery of COVID-19 Organics from Madagascar which has been followed by a bill and the best from the seat of Nigerian government is that the local herbs would be sent for laboratory examination soon. This is also a mystery. But more mysterious is that billions of Naira is going into propaganda from public and informal organisation to terrorise the people and make them submit to the dread of coronavirus because it is killing thousands in the USA, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Ecuador as if we did not survive epidemics in recent past. But a greater mystery would be found in anybody who does not adopt hygienic procedures that are recommended or comply because Hygiene and Nature study is no longer a subject in the primary school as it was in our days.