Tangerines or apples

I woke up around 3am one midnight, I’d been having a fitful sleep, I got into the toilet to ease myself and on coming out into my room something struck me.

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I could vividly view the entrance to the next house from my room. My room had a great view of the community where I lived as it was upstairs. I looked at the entrance to the door of our neighbours for an abnormally long time. The manner in which their doors and burglary doors were locked got me wondering “I definitely saw them last night…… are they away? Didn’t they sleep in tonight?” not that I forgot it was normal to lock doors at night but for the first time in my life, the awkwardness in the reality of locking one’s doors and gates up at night hit me. It felt rather strange that our neighbours, including ourselves and other millions of Nigerians everywhereelse had to lock gates and doors up at night. Some even had extra measures like barricades, iron bars when going to sleep. As if all that stops night marauders from penetrating. Really has anyone ever felt it awkward that we lock our doors and put up several protective measures at night just because we are going to sleep?

Another morning, few years back, I was out in a cab. We had hardly spent 5mins driving when we got stopped by armed soldiers and a group of people who looked like immigration officers. They began to ask us in our native language, who we were, where we were from, our family houses and other native questions. There were some people on the floor by the road , obviously they had been arrested as illegal immigrants. I discovered they were mostly northerners and if you ask me innocent people who were struggling to survive. My taxi was released and we had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief when we started to see people running helter skelter, soldiers pursuing them. Young children ran, looks of fear and uncertainty on their faces. The older men were caught and arrested. I didn’t know what to do, I was in a cab which managed to move amidst the tussle yet for some minutes I imagined ‘ was this the beginning of a war?” my cab driver drove out of the situation successfully, but I still felt the reality of the situation, is this what will stop the insurgence? Killings?Deaths? Will this give what we have been clamouring for, for this past few years? Freedom, liberation and security? I kept wandering ….

A week earlier, my friend and I stopped at a fruit store, we both had it in mind to get fruits as we had been clamouring for it for a while. On getting there, she opted for an apple, I wanted an apple too but I saw tangerines and was torn between buying an apple or a tangerine. I felt like I wanted both, but ‘prudence’ told me I could only get one. So I thought to myself like most economists would ‘if I could buy three tangerines for the same price as an apple, and they are both nutritious fruits, why buy an apple? So your guess was right… I bought tangerines instead. But my story doesn’t end here…. We got home, I took my tangerines and watched my friend take her apple satisfied. Despite the fact that I had saved costs for what I even felt was more, I still wasn’t satisfied!

My point exactly? Our society has a funny and awkward approach to solving problems. Why do we stick to carrying out measures which have overtime proven not to be so effective? Why do we seek the cheaper and easier way out in the name of saving costs and eventually not get satisfactory returns?

Expenses we will eventually still take.. when are we going to start seeing things as they are, doing what we ought to do, satisfying our conscience and positive persona and giving in all it takes to solve a problem the most reasonable and effective way?
I imagine if every child on wandering on the streets is catered for, commercial sex workers are rehabilitated and given another chance at living, things might turn out differently. What if prison facilties truly serve as corrective centers and not avenue for more evil expertise? what if religion isn't made a yardstick to measure proper living? what if corruption and greed is severely dealt with in our nation?

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