One Fateful Day

It was Saturday, one of those days when the sun decides to go wild and leave one perspiring like someone just removed from an oven. I rarely go out on Saturdays but today was different. I decided to go do some shopping in town.

Exhausted from shopping, I decided it was time to go home and rest for the rest of the day. I boarded a taxicab popularly known as Micra in the city of Ibadan. The vehicle is quite small, almost the size of those outdated Volkswagen beetle cars that are commonly called ‘Ijapa’ in this part of the country, the name given for the car’s semblance to the tortoise.

The drivers of these mini taxis are notorious for their recklessness on the road. Their carefree driving habits have become so infamous that radio and TV stations now use it as a topic for discussion in their programmes. However, being the most available and affordable mode of transport on major roads, passengers always have the helpless choice of boarding them.

As I got into the car, I noticed that the driver was a shriveled old man. He had not a single black hair. These sights were not uncommon in Ibadan, old men riding rickety transport vehicles, ranging from Okadas, Keke Napeps and Micras around the city. People prefer getting on vehicles driven by this class of drivers as they consider them more careful than younger drivers.

It was also with this thought that I happily got into the Micra. There was only one passenger in the vehicle, a nursing mother who sat at the backseat. After telling the driver my destination, I asked to know the transport fare in the customary way every passenger is meant to ask.

“Elo ni Challenge?” I asked after having my seat.

The man replied as though my grandfather and his father have always had a generational quarrel that still remained unsettled. I was taken aback, not only by his manner of response but also by his heavy inflation of the original price. For some fleeting seconds, I pitied the man. Maybe his wife and children had all abandoned him, leaving him to rot in abject poverty. Being a poor bargainer and not wanting to infuriate the old driver, I stayed put.

“He might as well be having a bad day,” I concluded.

A short while into the journey, the driver came across some Road Safety Officers and began to mock them in his thick Ibadan accent, saying that he is guiltless of all traffic offences today and that he would watch and see which oloriburuku officer would stop him.

I was enthralled. Commercial drivers did this a lot, abusing law enforcement agents and expecting mutual support from the passengers. After the driver would have metted insults on these agents of the law, a passenger or two would then recount a not-so-good encounter with the same or some other law enforcement officers. But this driver, I thought, was supposed to be different, an old man should know better than rain unnecessary abusive words on harmless people. I kept quiet, same as the nursing mother. It was as though we were both shocked at the driver’s outburst and in solidarity to our mutual feeling, we decided to remain silent.

Soon, we were in the next bus-stop and the driver picked up another person, a disgruntled young man. They haggled over the T fare for a while. The young man didn’t seem cut out for such an argument and attempted to get out of the car. Frustrated, the old driver called him back, mumbling incomprehensible words.

Further into the trip, the driver stopped to pick up a prospective passenger, only that this time, he didn’t stop in a bus stop. He parked the car just by the road side. Almost immediately after parking, a huge truck, bearing crates of soft drinks wheezed past us and almost hit the side mirror but for the quick intervention of the driver. He quickly swerved the car to the end of the road and it almost fell into a nearby ditch.

Hell broke loose. Mounds of complaints were thrown at the old driver by the nursing mother and the young man. The driver was not one to accept blame. He didn’t take it, he responded with words of insults, claiming his innocence and shouting the two complaining passengers down. All the time, I sat down calmly, hoping that this won’t become a scene.

The nursing mother kept quiet in no time, she wasn’t the troublesome type. She only did what every other person in her shoes would have done. On the other hand, the young man was no person to give up easily. He kept on talking, asking the driver to take responsibility for his wrong action. In no time, the blame game turned insultive with each contestant trying to overshadow the insult of the other. The nursing mother became apprehensive, she begged the young man to keep quiet, for the sake of peace.

At a point in the insulting brawl, the man got really pissed off. He threw a final insult that broke the camel’s back, opened the door and got out of the old rickety taxi furiously, refusing to give the driver a dime . The driver didn’t give up. He swore to deal with the man. He stopped the car, in a bid to have a face-off with the young man. The female passenger pleaded with the driver not to fight the young man, asking him to leave the scene peacefully.

“I can’t fight this one,” the driver said. “What will fight him is stronger than the both of us put together.” I knew the man didn’t mince words, not only because I had seen an almost conspicuous piece tied with red cloth, that looked exactly like the jujus depicted in Nollywood movies in the glove compartment, but also because the man spoke with a straight face, as if he said things like that everyday, as though it were a normal thing to say.

By then, the angry passenger had boarded an Okada, ready to speed off.

As the bike passed by our taxi, the infuriated driver pointed his index finger at the man, promising to deal with him. He said it with so much certainty, so much venom and vigour that I believed him.

Sullenly, he started the car and we were on the road again. The driver remained silent for a while, then all of a sudden, he began to soliloquise. Initially, the words were meaningless to me. They sounded more like incantations. I had almost reached my stop when I figured out some of the words.

“That is how some people will just go about causing unnecessary problems for themselves. After what I will do to you, you won’t have the mouth, not to talk of the guts to abuse your elders,” he said, shaking his head meditatively.

Those words froze me. Immediately, I felt pity for that young man. I began to blame myself. I should have joined in begging him to keep quiet. Probably he worked in a small company that struggled to pay his salary, he might end up losing his job the next week. Or worse still, maybe his wedding was planned for next year, that slated day might turn out to be the burial day of his beloved, where he would cry his heart out and blame his great grand mother for his misfortune.

Finally, I got to Challenge, my destination. I hurriedly paid the man the T fare and to my amazement, he said to me in a Yoruba-accented English, “tank you sah.” I didn’t know what to make of this.

I walked home that day feeling very sad. I worried about a lot of things; about my silence throughout the episode, about the purposeless life people like that old driver led, about the fate of that disgruntled young man. Most of all, I worried about the many people who like that young man, unknowingly become the architect of their own misfortune.

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