Dear God,
The fact that the Nigeria Police is deeply messed up cannot possibly be news to any human being, so I believe You already know it. After all, it was on pages of the newspaper I work with only a few days ago that we reported to the public that there was a corpse in front of the Lagos Force Headquarters, and nothing was done about it. It later emerged that the poor bloke had actually been lain there for a very, very long time before he gave up and passed away, in front of Kam Salem House. May You receive the poor geezer into Your bosom.
What annoyed me about the reaction of the public to the story when it was published on NEXT's website was the seeming levity with which quite a lot of the respondents treated it. I mean, some nits even had the guts to ask our reporter what he did? He did his job, and reported the gross incompetence of our police forces. But in any event, my prayer for them is for another day, and I would pray that You visit Your wrath upon such people, but please hold that for now, I want to tell You my own story of an experience I had last night...
Lord, it is no news that the roads in Lagos are probably the worst in Nigeria bar the roads in Anambra which require a prayer session of the type that sinner that I am, cannot begin to perform, but would very willingly attend if some pastor calls one.
It is also no news that the stretch which serves as the entry point to Nigeria if one chooses to come in from the Republic of Benin is deteriorating everyday. I tend to feel a lot of sympathy for people who live in Lagos at any point beyond Orile, most especially those of them who have to work on the Island. They spend a good number of hours each day in traffic. My little lady whom I have dedicated to You is one of those, and whenever I can, I take her home after work. Yesterday was one such day.
Yesterday night I took her home then made the U-turn to head back along that Badagry Expressway with all the craters which masquerade as potholes. Anyone would have noticed that it is an exercise in futility trying to avoid the bad sections of the road as they in more than ten instances between Satellite Town and Festac Town stretch across the entire road, so one has no choice other than to slow to almost a halt and navigate through. Our friends in the police have decided that those 'natural' speed breakers are the best place in which to have a chill and wait for potential victims of which me, Your son appears to be a natural choice.
Yesternight as I was returning to Lagos, I noticed dead ahead in front of me, a trailer without its lights on. Initially I was not sure, but as I got closer to it, I found that the trailer was coming in my direction in my lane. Of course Lord, my natural reaction was to swerve out of the way of the coming behemoth as in the event of any collision I would have come off worse, and would have come to meet You a lot earlier than I have planned. Unfortunately, my evasive action landed me straight in a crater, and my poor car exhausted by years of driving overtime in an environment that she was simply not built for, promptly gave up her exhaust pipe. If You are there Lord, You were definitely watching over me last night as I could easily have somersaulted. For that I must say a big thank you.
I must also report that trailer man because behind me, the man who had caused this accident trudged on, either oblivious to the fact that he had just caused some trouble, or not having a care in the world. I like to think that he didn't give a damn. So please Lord, I am requesting that You send a thunderbolt after him.
I checked the car, and saw that poor thing, she still had some life in her. At least I would be able to drive home, so I got some of the local area boys to help me push her out of the ditch for a small price of course. Dear Lord, why is it that my people always congregate to Your houses on Fridays and Sundays but can never lift a finger to help their fellow citizens out of human compassion?
I then walked back to the scene of the incident to pick up my car's exhaust pipe. When I got back to the car, there were some policemen waiting for me there. They had seen what had happened, including a trailer driving in the wrong direction on my lane in an expressway, and the fact that I had just inadvertently fixed a date with my mechanic. Yet all they were concerned about was the fact that in pushing my car out of the crater, we had parked it in the wrong place. That was when I lost it...
...thank you Lord that the idiots did not shoot me, but instead let me go when they saw that I was not willing to give them a little something. Of course I had been insulted thoroughly by them before that, but to me that does not matter. What matters is that I got my car home in one piece (well, the exhaust pipe was in the boot).
As for those policemen who were stationed at Mile 2 last night, I want You to punish all of them. Amen.
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