Photo credit: Humangle
I am proud to be Yoruba. We have a strong culture. Part of our culture is the use of words to capture every situation graphically. Never mind the fact that most of us refer to our mother tongue as ‘vernacular’, when it comes to teaching our children the language.
For example, there is a saying that ‘People are saying they don’t want trouble, yet the village chief’s wife is selling marijuana’.
Such is the situation we have found ourselves in Nigeria in recent times. I am not too young to tell the younger ones that there used to be a time when burglarproofs were strangers in our various homes. I could also say we did not have nightwatchmen in those good old days. Indeed, we used to sleep with both eyes closed!
On Christmas day, some gentlemen of the underworld wanted to celebrate but they did not have the means. So, they thought, in their wisdom, that it was not wrong to be part of the fun at the National Theater, Lagos.
On getting there, they just went about the business of ‘liberating’ some meagre sums of money and other minor things like chains and bangles. I trust them, being gentlemen to the core, they did not touch the food and drinks. However, they accidentally collided with the owners of the mentioned items in the course of their jobs.
Fair enough. Isn’t it?
I am sure they must have told their ‘hosts’ that they will keep on stealing if the society fails to provide for them. The lesson there is that the outcasts will keep on troubling those who are better in the society until we can find a way of integrating them into the mainstream.
If we fail to, we run the risk of sleeping with an eye open perpetually. With the indication that the price of crude oil will further plummet ànd the possible hardship that will accompany it, we need to act now.
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