This is no fiction. It is not a Nollywood script. Nor a plot from my favourite Hollywood movies. This is real life. Fresh from the baker’s over. As I write this piece, I am still shaking, and the trauma of that avoidable road traffic incident is the inspiration behind this write-up.
Before I go on, let me refresh your memory with the famous speech by former United States of America President Barack Obama on July 11, 2009, in Accra, Ghana. During that visit, he made a landmark statement when he said, ‘History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change the constitution to stay in power. Africans don’t need strongmen but need strong institutions.
Without attempting to dabble into the political terrain or the puzzle of the leadership question in Africa, my question to you, which is like an excerpt from that debatable speech, is, ” Are you a strong man? Or better put in the context of road safety, are you a strong, stubborn, carefree, reckless, suicidal driver who masquerades as a strong man? One beyond counsel? Or one with a date with death?
Again, I ask you, are you the type of driver who thinks you are beyond redemption and can’t be corrected until death knocks you out? This was the tragedy that occurred just last weekend. Choosing to be a strong man, a driver lost his life in an avoidable road traffic crash, which also claimed the lives of a beloved mother and the driver, while several others sustained injuries.
I know you have read about strongmen- the ones you see in movies; the ones with an iron grip, unbeatable. The ones with all the ninety-nine packs. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Power Mike of blessed memory.The Supermen who were built to be beyond destruction. The ones who wrestle forty tons of steel through storms and fatigue and bring it home safe.
The ones with ode-eshi (bullet does not penetrate), like Kanayo O Kanayo (KOK). But here is the question: Are you a strongman or a foolish man? Not on a tarmac. Not behind the wheel of a rig. But in the driver’s seat of your car, traversing the length of our good, bad and bumpy road on a family trip or maybe on a trip to say farewell to a beloved.
Do you know that irrespective of your hidden charms or the horsepower of your vehicle, the road doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about your hurry, your deadline or the text messages buzzing on the passenger seat. It doesn’t care about the numerous times you have traversed that same road as a deviant who cares less about the rules of safety and sharing the road.
The road only cares and respects one thing: the strength of a very kind. Let’s check your credentials to see how you fit. Do you have the strength to wait? The strongman does not punch the accelerator when the light turns yellow. He knows that saving three seconds is not worth the lifetime of regret that follows.
He sits at the red light and waits, not with impatience, but with purpose. He watches the traffic, counts the beats, and moves only when the signalised traffic instructs him to move and only then does he move. He ignores every other thing that suggests otherwise.
Are you even strong enough with the strength to ignore? To ignore the phone buzz.The GPS re-routing. The kids argue in the back seat. The radio plays your favourite Bob Marley’s legendary vibes. Or maybe the best of our own Sunny Ade, or maybe the kind of rotten songs that you hate.
Distractions are the highway’s assassin, silent and deadly. Of all of these seductive distractions, the strongman does not reach. He does not multitask. He drives. He stays focused. He concentrates. That is the only task that is worth all his attention. Every other noise is a background distraction, and he has the nerve to treat them as such.
Do you even have the strength to slow down? When the rain pours out its blessings. When the suicidal drivers weave through traffic, trusting in luck. When uniform personnel who should lead by example break every possible rule. When others exhibit the Neanderthalensis behaviour. The strongman knows that speed is not courage. It is cowardice dressed in noise. Real courage to him is lifting your foot. Real courage is arriving late but arriving whole. He reads the road like a living thing, and when the road whispers danger, he obeys.
What about the strength to rest? Do you know that fatigue is not a badge of honour; it is a slow poison. A silent killer that kills like poisonous rats in Mafoluku, Oshodi in Lagos, where I once lived and saw real rats that feared no man, including the house owner and tenant. Because of this reality, the strongman knows his limit. He pulls over. He takes a real rest. He sips coffee, not pounded yams. Not a bottle of alcoholic beverages. He walks through the parking lot. He sleeps in the rest area if there is one, or in his vehicle. Because he knows that a driver who fights sleep is fighting a losing battle that may consume him and innocent souls.
Do you have the strength to yield? Do you know that pride has no place on the road? It is a silent killer, although very patient. The strong man knows this. He yields to the merge even when he has the right of way. He lets the impatient tail gazers pass. He gives way to the reckless cyclists and the pedestrians. The distracted driver. He gives way to the convoy of blazing vehicles. He does not assert dominance with his horn or brag about the number of airbags his American-spec vehicle came with. He knows that the strongest and wisest move on any road is the one that de-escalates, protects and preserves life.
How about the strength to arrive? Do you have that strength? Do you know that anyone can start a journey just like the driver I mentioned earlier? The weak and carefree drivers like him end up in an ambulance, at the police station, or in the morgue. The strongmen or wise and cautious drivers finish in the car park, with the engine off and every passenger breathing and blessing Almighty God.
He steps out with a quiet satisfaction and is excited that he fought the deadliest enemies: speed, distraction, ego, fatigue and won. He did the most unglamorous, most heroic thing a strongman can do on the road by bringing everyone home. So, I ask you again: do you have a firm grip on self-control? The will of undivided attention? The courage to be slower, safer, and smaller than your ego wants you to be?
If you do, then you are a strongman. Not because of what you drive but because of how you drive. Remember the road is patient and watching. That the lives in your vehicle are counting. People who love you and need you pray you arrive safe, not as one of the data to be reeled out by the Federal Road Safety Corps, but as a father, mother, friend, and a human being. Not as a corpse wrapped in a body bag.
So be a strongman. Every mile. Every time because the strongest thing you can do is not carry people to their grave but to their destination. The driver who died was warned against reckless driving. He was counselled by people older than him. They begged him. Pleaded with him. He ignored all the good advice. He continued in his ways. Lost control at a bend because he was speeding. The vehicle somersaulted. He died. A mother of about seventy- five years also died. There were those with numerous degrees of injuries. Those deaths. Those injuries. And the written-off bus was all avoidable.
