I can’t recall the last time I wittingly walked in the rain. I did tonight. It was fun. One hour forty five minutes of rain soaked fun. One hundred and five minutes of solitude. No telephone calls, no street banter with neighbors. Just me and my mind. The things that the mind can do when granted leave to roam. Mine was on overdrive.

Let me start with ‘Bolorunduro’. My grand father’s cocoa farm that was inherited by my dad and his siblings was on this valley between two eerie rocks. To get to the farm one would need to climb uphill to about 100 meters above ground level and then descend through narrow paths  ‘higgy haggally’ (zig zag) downhill to ground level. Till today i still imagined that Bolorunduro was the location  of D. O. Fagunwa’s Oke langbodo’. Hmmmmm!!! Funny that I thought of Bolorunduro. Perhaps because I imagined what could happen to my people if patriotic bandits converge on Bolorunduro. God forbid!

My mind wandered to Thompson Avenue where I had a business meeting earlier today.  Thumbs up for Governor Sanwoolu for the transformation of Thompson Avenue. It could have passed for a street in any of the high brow areas of ‘the abroad’. As a 31 Kingsway Road alumnae, it was difficult to relate the well paved road to the Thompson Avenue of 1985, when as a teenager, I was part of a surveillance team that sold ice cream and gala opposite the residences of  some of the major players in the August  1985 coup detat  . Those were the days when Intelligence gathering was still an art and covers were worn like a second skin. Whats bringing this idle thought  self? Tiwa Savage will not kill me with this her song… ‘if I start to talk…’ What has she got to say that would impress a veteran like me who still  has vivid memory of a picture of the hook and the fish that was used to decorate the walls of 15 Awolowo Road… ‘that fish would have avoided trouble if it learned to keep its mouth shut’.  Oga Fish, please keep your mouth open jare. Shebi you all know that I love Isoko fish.

Come to think of it. I walked alone in the rain. Alone! At night fa! In today’s Nigeria!!! I too dey take risk sha!! If anything happen kpen!! All those people whose gaze have been on 2023 will quickly tell whoever to kukuma 🙀.  God forbid bad things. Whilst God is forbidding bad things we must all remember that ‘the crab safeguards it’s head with its very big eyes’.

Na wah o!! Nobody is safe in this mature jungle again o. Not you and not anybody. And to add to my own discomfort, some of my neighbors probably count me as a member   of the ‘dreaded’ political class.  Will they not throw me out to the hyenas if the monkeys revolt? See me see trouble for work wey no get pay. Chai!! (In the voice of the Uche Secondus) ‘this small time wey the thing reach us’ na him somebody wan scatter the whole thing? Ezioku!!  Total Chair!! I remain loyal sir!! This political class wey I come join no try at all. Our country is burning and all we think, eat and live is ‘2023’. Shame. But God is so very patient sha. If na me…

Anyway..

As I no be God, let me sermonize like the good Christian that I am… safety is of the Lord.  May God safeguard all of us.

25^th August 2021