BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

Or if you like, Between The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea. Potato Potahto.
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2020 is a lot of things. How best do we describe? It is an assessment and report sheet year. As I’ve always said, Life is a school. Always has been. #LagosUnrest

2020 is that tough school year where there’s an extremely tough course handled by a wicked lecturer. That tough 4 units course that is a prerequisite, and whose lecturer only ever came to class a few times so that not everyone is prepared for the difficult exams that comes.

But prepared or not, every student must sit for the exam and will be damned should they fail. Let’s talk in more plain terms then.
Here’s a number of things I’ve come to understand & learnt in recent days.

Yes, there is a virus ravaging our world as we know it. While this virus

is deadly, it is known that there’s so much more that its presence entails. Therefore, the difficulty the world faces (per society and civilization) are numerous and vary in severity.
For Nigeria, a third world country where even without existence of a virus we have always been

in the deepest of shit, this pandemic is on an entirely different level of viciousness. Scripts are being marked world over, and we are seeing our scorecard in real time. #COVID19 has exposed us to more grievous consequences of the rots in the fibers of our societies.

I will in this thread try to mildly bring us closer to our new realities. This I’ll do under headings.

• SURVIVAL: Sometime ago I did a post I titled “Survival is Man’s Strongest Instinct”. We pray to not ever be in a situation where we have to choose either life or death.

While it is the same virus dealing with us, the effects are not same across the demographic of any place. Some of us are either less or more affected than others, and thus, our experience and reactions will certainly be at variance.
Social distancing has been agreed to be the

best way to lessen the spread of the virus, hence the lockdown orders across the world. However, survival rests solely on certain prerequisites, and availability of these prerequisites vary from people to people, and class to class.
If Nigeria is a country of almost 200mill ppl

I can tell you that less than 20million of those people are actually living comfortably. There’s a reason why we are the poverty capital of the world. Saving is an amazing culture which I myself have benefited from so well. But, can everybody save? While you think about this,

let me remind you that plenty of Nigerians live on as low as a dollar per day. That a huge chunk of Nigerians live on daily earnings. They have to work to eat. Lets say these guys had some savings & had stocked up with all they had before the lockdown came into effect, what now?

Stores are closed. Money is tight. Hunger whacks the bellies of people. Even if stores or markets are opened, a great percentage of the population cannot afford anything. And, they must survive. They must survive this indefinite pandemic. So, tell me. Now what?

• A DEAD SYSTEM: This point needed to be close to the one above. It is also one with subheadings.

a) [Provision]:
The best bet for any system or nation to make this effective and feasible is to provide for the people. I MEAN, REALLLY PROVIDE! To touch down with the ppl

and make as much necessities for survival available to them. Create set rules for the consumption and management of supplies, so that people know they have a responsibility of managing what they get through a certain duration. Whatever pattern works. Just, something!

Nigeria however has left the people to suffer. Not that that is a new thing, but then, one would expect a shift at a time as unprecedented and difficult as this. All we have heard thus far are billions of donations to the fight against the virus, and audio stimulus packages for

the people.

b) [The Steep Price For Unemployment]
Like I said earlier, this is a report card year where you see yourself in the mirror. This is the time we will feel the real consequences of the unbelievable level/rate of unemployment in the nation. When the larger % of a

population is unemployed, such that eligible people are jobless, and businesses don’t thrive so much on the average, and the economic cycle is fucked up, sustainability is an elusive idea. The crazy part is, employed or not, SURVIVAL IS A MUST! So I ask again, now what?

• VICTIM ON VICTIM: This is an idea I have always talked about. The movie “The Platform” painted the best representation of this phenomenon. When the people are neglected and not looked after by their govt. and hardship is their way of life, it is a no brainer that they soon

turn on one another and punish victims just like themselves for the crimes and failures of the govt., because this seems like an easier route than fighting the powers that be. This is a reality that has always obtained in the Nigeria we know. Kidnappings, ritual killings, scams,

robbery, etc. we turn against one another, hurting fellow victims. In a time of great difficulties as this, it is bound to SKYROCKET! And it already is manifesting. We have started hurting other victims like ourselves. Punishing your own kind for the failures they also suffer.

For over a week now, the streets have become dangerous. Strolling have become risky. A trip to the atm has become a terror. Snatch and grabs are on the high. People’s phones and anything deemed valuable are collected at mostly knife point IN THEIR OWN AREAS.

Don’t even dare wander into unfamiliar territory. Sorry is your christen name. You can be mobbed for the littlest of possessions. IT IS AN APOCALYPSE.

• JI MASUN (Stay alert, don’t sleep): This funny slang that became popular in recent years now seems to be the most appropriate

to describe a certain situation that has become rampant. It first got pronounced in Ogun State. Some close relations complained last week that they no longer sleep in most places, because there’s sure to be a robbery every night. Robbers come to raid houses for food supplies.

Some even pour your soup and go. They stab and club and cut if you have nothing to give or prove stubborn. So, residents started staying up at night, ergo Ji Masun.
This trend has spread wider now. It is in full effect in many LGAs in Lagos. In fact, it was live in my street.

I myself recorded videos and voice notes while keeping vigil last night with over 200 others in Shagari Estate. Burning tyres, blowing whistles, clanging metals and so on to ward off the hoodlums.
Speculations are that these perpetrators are a mixture of cultists, agberos and

urchins. It makes sense that agberos will resort to something like this. They make a living by collecting from the profits of honest transport workers on a daily basis. What’s left for them to do now?

• OVERPOPULATION: Nigeria is TOO populated for such a poor country!