Your Human Years In Impala Years -By Kehinde Oluwatosin Babatunde

I saw my younger brother after a while over the weekend. After our usual exchanges he went into the banter that I came to see him only because of party. “Nítorí óunje lese wá láti èkó óga ò!”. After the bants, my brother went into a full dossier of over a dozen exceptionally brilliant chaps of his Alma Mater who are now fully into Yahoo Yahoo (Fraud). 

“Bòdá mi sé e mo, lágbájá, bòbó tó ní “A” méje ní set wa, ó tín se Yahoo”. Some of the people he mentioned are mutual brothers whom I can attest to their brilliance, these were people who topped their classes over and over again. In my mind, that part of me that believes no challenging situation is beyond the human spirit to transcend was about settling in.

I was about to tell my brother why his colleagues are complicit in the situation, with impatience and and a super taste that outweighs their legitimate earnings. However, I was smart enough to know my brother wasn’t ready for such circumspect retailing of morals. 

Also I have been in Nigeria for quite some time to understand that the dynamics of patience and hope have changed from what it use to be in the wake of our crises of hope. For instance I remember how my RCF background made me purposed in my mind to be a perfect man as it’s God’s standard and say no to all iniquities.

But that young RCF boy has taken bribes some few occasions and I have even used the prebends of bribe to write an exam whose founding ethos is “Integrity”. Where did the rain start beating us unaware?. 

What could have lead an absolutely brilliant chap into the murky waters of internet fraud?, Why did he lose hope in the sanctity of education and its possibility of producing a good life but comfortably settle into yahoo?. 

While I will not absolve the young of blame given their impatience and passion for all that is glossy even at the expense of responsibility, I will hinge most of the blame on Nigeria. When Nigeria happens to you, you become unpredictable. Nigeria will turn your human years into Impala years, this she does by wage inequality, privilege inequality and purchasing power disparity. 

Nigeria is like a school system where J.S.S 3 students permanently stays in J.S.S 3 and S.S.S 3  students stay in S.S S 3,  this implies that what your best effort and aspiration can do to you is to take you to J.S.S 2 and S.S.S 2 respectively. It’s not that Nigeria does not know that 30k a month cannot do anything for your life especially in the wake of the failure of the social contract, she knows that in that 30k you will pay rent, feed, buy fuel because you will not have light even as you concurrently pay PHCN. 

It’s not that Nigeria and her confederacy of ‘big men’ does not know that the gloss they paint in your eyes is not strictly a result of hardwork, the gloss heightens a desire for more in your spirit while you earn that 30k. 

The 30k job sef, you are only there in your body, your spirit still resides in fraud. You’re a crime waiting to happen every time you behold the gloss of the Nigerian ‘big man’. However in Nigeria we are all codedly corrupt, and for every deficit in earnings, we have a herd of other dishonest ways for which we make up for it and those who cannot cope with this pseudo-righteousness go into full blown Yahoo. 

How do we navigate this impasse? First everything noble must be beautifully remunerated. This is one area Nigeria eternally come short. I once narrated an anecdote of the ‘runs girl’ who is in the arms of  a Nigerian bàbà àlàyé, as she rubs bàbá’s tummy, bàbá pets her asking for what she likes to eat, she tickles bàbá’s erotic desires and bàbá remunerates her handsomely and sometimes request his driver to take her home. 

Let the same girl apply for a job as an office cleaner, she’s underpaid, disrespected, deprived of aspiration, if she’s attractive she becomes the object of cheap sex even in Nigeria’s assumed sane officialdom. 

The church part of you will condemn the runs girl and bàbá for engaging in the works of the flesh, but when you open your own company you treat your staff with disdain. A nation state where all that our cultural norms condemns as negative is all that brings wealth, then we are all doom. 

We often talk of brain drain occasioned by emigration, there is a subtle brain drain driven by hopelessness and it’s our greatest crisis of hope.

Kehinde Oluwatosin Babatunde is a prolific writer and public speaker based in Lagos.

Email: kehindeobabatunde@gmail.com