Worthless People Undermining Faith in Men of Character -By Hussein Adegoke

If you deem it so that I have been involved with lifestyle articles than any other form of writing, you are not wrong. People behave in ways that you would not just want to spare your reading audience of the ‘rofo-rofo.’ Yesterday, I was poised by one man to remember the experience I had in my undergraduate days, precisely, when I was in 300 level. I had a roommate—or in fact, a bunkmate—who had the habit of swinging his mood for the most flimsy reasons. He was quite the older person. And perhaps, it was this age difference that pushed him into becoming withdrawn whenever he thought the slightest casual joke was rude. Thankfully, I had been informed about his irrationality by a colleague of mine, a former roommate of his, who came to find me.

So, whenever Denning was up to his game of moody taciturnity, I was equally up to it. I would have lain in wait in the destination he would just be planning to take me. When the great ‘Lord Denning’—a sobriquet widely adopted by him throughout the campus—saw that I was different, to cure a wound with the same sting that caused it, he relaxed his unwritten laws. Eventually, dear brethren, Denning and I became the best of friends.

I would tell you about a man I met at my workplace just yesterday. I was at the entrance before him but I had no key on me to gain access. As I saw him with his wife trying to make use of the route for their own exit, I stood up to them. “Excuse me, sir” I gesteured at him, “I work here but I have no key to open…so I would request that I …”. I guess he knew exactly what I had come for and was much unwilling to cooperate with me. So, he would rather shrug and look away, not to even reciprocate my sincerest gestures. When his wife had alerted his deaf ears to my concern (on whether or not she should shut the gate), he almost cursed her. I looked away just immediately.

After a few minutes, I gained entrance. And by the time the man would navigate this route once again—this time, he was returning from wherever—the gate so closely prioritized by him earlier on was flung open. No one needed to remind our dear Mister about the vanity in existence. He came around us and was pleading in styles. “Who was that boy?” he queried rhetorically. “Yes, one boy at the gate had mentioned that he works here”. Since we duo alone knew the story, I motioned towards him.

“Oh. It was you?! I’m so sorry. The screeches of this motorcycle would never have allowed me to hear (out) your concerns.” he explained. I just nodded. And he left. If truly the sound of any motorcycle had obscured his auditory senses, how come he knew a boy was beckoning on him and was saying “he works here”? I shall leave you to that.

But the logical correlation between Denning’s case and this latter one is the sanity prevailing for the same person each time he was caught between people who would be unsupportive. One should rather have waited for them in wherever they hope to take one. If you had sense that people’s priority is in being callous and unhelpful, you should not stress yourself about cajoling them for any assistance. You would have only lost your pride and still be unfavored!

Just as I write this, I have been confronted by another disdainful act. The car loading the materials I was bringing to my workplace broke down just in the middle of the road. The driver, a striving aging rickety man perhaps in his sixties, had tried all the laws in the book of Solomon to make the car work but all to no avail. He had left me in the car hoping to come back after a monent. I was typing inside of the car until heat would send me packing. I headed for a security house just by the roadside and had explained my dilemmatic situation to one man in a security outfit. “The car broke down…and there was heat. I just want to share your space until my driver arrives…” I explained.
“So, why didn’t you just sit back inside the car?” he was replying to my suasion, begging the same query I just answered as if he had a string in his ears. I couldn’t belief my ears. I left without mincing words in the bitter mien I wore to make him realize I was irked.

Really, as there are good people, there are demons and even monsters of men. Let me sign off with the last story now. Two days ago, all the money on me was in my wallet but it was kept somewhere far away. I needed to buy a fifty Naira item. I was stranded. To go back to where my purse was may be much stress so I motioned that the woman gives me the item on credit. I pointed to where I work…and I had a decent look, too. The woman insisted she doesn’t know me and that, after all, “worthless people have spoiled the goodness in noble men of character.”
I matched on.

In some minutes, I was back. I was somewhat around to prove a point and perhaps to assuage the belief of one who was seeing treachery in all persons. I wanted her to know, thenceforth, that worthy men, too, exist. Standing before her magistrate moments ago was a random site worker in a rough attire pleading for an item to be sold on credit. But by now, before her, is a man, the same man, putting forward the request of provisions not grossing thousands of Naira and with numerous bills of Naira on him to handle.

She was mouth agape. Her assistants who seem to be younger were immediately filled with admiration and would not mind telling it. “Ha. Bros, I like your cap o” one noted. “It’s his shoes I even admire” the other had signalled. I was seeing two women advancing their “contract bids.” In all, I gleed for having proved a point beyond spoken words.

The late great thespian and University teacher, Pa Larinde Akinleye, has ended this treatise succinctly when he noted in Thunderbolt, a movie premiered at the beginning of this millennium, that “an evil man gives a bad name to his race even when such race contains a host of angels. But (we should know that) a race is a race and a man, a man!”