By Debo ADEOSUN
A few days ago, I was engrossed in a heated argument with a friend who would, in a matter of weeks, be relocating to the United Kingdom. Of course, he is just one of the families I know who have concluded plans to leave. Many of my friends have since left with their entire families, having given up on their fatherland.
The argument had centred around my friend’s determination to sell his house and never to return to Nigeria for any reason in the future, kind of burning the bridges behind him. I argued that North or South, East or West, there will never be any place like home. Home? He insisted home didn’t have to be your home town, state of origin or country. Then, I remembered my late mother always saying IBI TOKAN ENI BA TI BALE NILE ENI – Home is that place where you’re at peace and your mind is at rest.
As I drove back home from my friend’s house, I began to ask myself whether my friend was not right after all. I was not home yet, when my friend put a call through to me and as if starting the argument all over, asked me, “Look, what will I miss in Nigeria when I leave? Is it the bad roads I ply everyday that has made me addicted to analgesic? Is it the consulting clinics that you call hospitals, or your universities that you have shot for six months or the insecurity that could not make you travel to Oro in Kwara State to attend a friend’s father’s funeral a few weeks ago because of the fear of being kidnapped?” And then he nailed it. “And you keep talking of hope for Nigeria, where is that hope with the type of politicians whose only agenda is to steal, kill and destroy our future and that of our children?”
All efforts to persuade him that Nigeria will come out of the present state of hopelessness, as he had painted it, fell on deaf ears. I gave up and hung up.
Minutes later, another friend called and asked what we “were doing about the menace of kidnappers in Ogbomoso, our home town.” He was calling from the United States. I assured him the situation was under control, especially with the recent arrest of the suspected kidnappers of the farm manager of the former governor of Oyo State, late Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala. I told my friend that “Ogun Fulani o le ko Ogbomoso lailai.”
I was wrong. The following morning, I got a call from a classmate of mine. He went straight to the point. “Gbenga Owolabi, our secondary school colleague and your kinsman, has been kidnapped and we need to raise five million naira as ransome to free him.”
Now Gbenga Owolabi was the man who had laboured in foreign land and made good in life. He thought of contributing to the development of his place of origin and came home to invest in it. He had a hotel, built to standard among other investments that provided employment opportunities for our youths in Ogbomoso. He was kidnapped on arrival from the US. I mean the very day he arrived in Ogbomoso. He was kidnapped along with a final year student of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso who wanted to keep herself meaningfully busy for the duration of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike in the institution and took up a part time job in Gbenga’s hotel.
Raising the five million naira ransome was not difficult to save the lives of these two patriots.
Sadly, they were killed by their kidnappers along with the bike man that took the ransom to them. The man who was sent to deliver the ransom escaped with bullet wounds and we can only pray he survives to tell us what transpired.
Gbenga was a jolly good fellow. He is humble and urbane. His friends and close associates testify to his generosity. We only communicated once in a while on Facebook as we were not really close in our days in secondary school; but from all I have heard of him, Gbenga was a nice guy. He had an emotional attachment to his roots.
My prayers go to his wife and children. I checked his Facebook page yesterday to look at his face over and over. His timeline was filled with prayers by his wife in the hope that he would return to her and the children in due course. And then she finally submitted – THE RUBICON IS 💔 BROKEN. Indeed, for Gbenga, the Robicon is finally broken – with family, friends, Ogbomoso and Nigeria and the world at large.
May the soul of the departed find rest in the bosom of their Creator. May the Lord heal our land.
Let Mr Mohammadu Buhari know that this generation of Nigerians have a choice. They cannot remain here and salvage what he and other politicians have destroyed. For those who want to ‘japa’, I wish them well. For those who have ‘japaed’ and don’t want to come, stay where you have peace and your mind is at rest. And for those who wish to help to salvage the ruins, may the Lord help us. This, definitely, is not the Nigeria of my dream.
Barrister Adeosun writes the piece on Facebook.
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