Skip to main content

Help

Whenever I use the public transport system in this town I always get a story. It's because the public transportation allows one to interact with the society and feel it's pulse in a way that is almost impossible from the comfort of a private vehicle. So yesterday I got off a bus at Julius Berger round about at around 5pm, rush hour. Naturally there was a fair amount of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. I had just arrived in the city from my outpost in Gwagwalada and I was hurrying to get in a cab and out of the blistering sun. That was when I saw something that made me stop.

There was a crippled man along the sidewalk. His limbs were shrunk and shriveled and he could only manage to drag his malnourished body along the curb using his forearm while accepting alms from motorists and passersby who threw their loose change in his direction. He looked very exhausted and he had his hands full but every time a  note was thrown out of a moving car or dropped by a pedestrian he would slowly drag himself towards it and clip it with his thumb. So he had lots of change tightly crumpled in one hand and in the other deformed hand he had a biscuit. I stood there a little longer watching him and I noticed that he was drooling. I mean literally drooling and examining the biscuit as though if he stared at it long enough it would magically pop open. Another passerby dropped some change on the road and kept on walking. A cab driver was trying to get his attention too, holding out a 50 naira note but the crippled man was too weak to crawl to him. What happened next took under a minute. I put my bag down, rushed over to the driver, took the 50 and brought it over to the man. I bent over and squeezed it into his tight grip then I took the biscuit from him, opened it and opened the bottle of sprite I had with me before walking away. I did not give him a dime.

 After telling this story to a friend of mine, he had this to say "charity without humanity is a self gratifying exercise to delude oneself that they are doing good". Indeed. It is a most unfortunate phenomenon that has eaten deep into our society, the things people have the most difficulty doing are those things that don't cost any money at all. A man was starving with food in his hand and somehow nobody else could figure out that what he needed was not more money but just a little help.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The New Nigerian

Something remarkable is happening in Nigeria. There is a new generation of pan Nigerians emerging onto the scene. A group of young, driven, hopeful and hardworking dreamers, developers, and leaders who see beyond the limitations and drawbacks of political and socio-economic issues and are buying into a vision of a new world, a vision which is exploding at an exponential rate worldwide. A dream so big that it overshadows with ease, decades past of mistakes and offers incredible opportunities for the future and indeed the very present.   This group of people is not from Mars. They are amongst you and your friends. As a matter of fact, many of them have been dismissed by you and your friends as pipe dreamers or whatever else you might choose to call them. Call them what you will but they are here to stay and believe it, so are their dreams. I attended a conference recently where the majority of attendees were young entrepreneurs between the ages of 19 and 35. These folks and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spare Me Your Outrage

Whenever I see a post that starts with "Pray for so and so", it irks me. The reason is not that I am against prayers or insensitive to the plight of the suffering, but more because I find it nauseating that people only feel compelled to pray for one place or the other only when the hype calls for it. So it is 2017 and slaves are still being sold. I see people getting on their phones and going "I cannot believe this is happening in 2017".  We all want to make trendy posts about the stuff like we only realised the existence of this issue yesterday and like nobody sold slaves in the years preceding 2017. Have you ever wondered where the diamonds and jewellery you are so in love with comes from?  How many of us can claim to really care about this stuff? Because slavery is not an end in itself but rather a means to something that does not seem to outrage people enough; CHEAP LABOUR! Please spare me your outrage and stop pretending that your being outraged on Instag...
Post a Comment
Read more

Freedom of Choice

I was just on Twitter minding my own business and airing my views on a recently trending topic. Yes, you guessed right - the 'Transfiguration' of Bruce Jenner. I said that it is a disgrace to men and women alike. I also said that his action after more than 5 decades of being alive, is a perfect example of what emasculation can result to. I stand by my words because I believe that what he did is unnatural.  Some people disagree. They are of the opinion that there is nothing unnatural about a sex change. Someone even went as far as to compare the situation to barrenness. All I can say is that barrenness like many natural defects is something that should be solved because it is natural to procreate. Barrenness is a a challenge that causes families sadness and disappointment. A sex change is a whole other thing. It is a person being u satisfied with the way they are born and taking the matter into their surgeon's hand so that they can wear a bra instead of boxers or boxers inst...
Post a Comment
Read more