Injustice has many guises, but this has got to be unique to here. I am still in shock and unsure of what I am feeling right now, hope is gone and I mean literarily. To get inside my head, you need to hear me out.
My salary is twenty thousand a month, exactly what it costs to transport my miserable self to work, yet I take it. How? I just stay on the office premises and beg every one that passes through the gate I guard, for money. I live with the disgust people throw at me and off the joy of generous givers. There is no dignity in what I do, but it's better than been a lazy Nigerian. To make matters worse, the agency that pays me and employed me owes me three months at a time. Their excuse, they fix the joint forty people salary to gain an interest that allows them keep us employed. It is a human rights violation, to withhold our earnings illegally. Yet, that is what employers get away with in this country.
Before now, I didn't mind. I tell myself that it is a way for me to save my hard earned salary. I have a wife that sells rice, beans and fish to my colleagues and the work I keeps us fed and there's a little profit. The harsh reality is that our daughter, Hope is sick. I have begged, cried and borrowed to keep my only child alive. This is the second month and I have my salary now, but the doctor says it's too late. The typiod has perforated her brain and like they predicted, she squeezed my little hand for the last time. Hope is truly dead and as I cry at work and tell my horrible tragedy...
I was only there to meet the C twins, to be sure the outfit I made was perfect for the seminar they were going to give on creating wealth. It was here I heard this horrid take about Hope. It was the kind of Nigerian Tragedy that rang and echoed all around and springs tears to my eyes. I asked about medical insurance and was asked how that could be paid if salaries were owed.
This situation I had to get involved in, I wanted to know if two thousand naira was alright to start an insurance package and liked the odds. Forty staff members, that's eighty thousand for a month. That is nine hundred and sixty thousand Naira for access to medical care. That was my entire profit for the collection of clothes I sewed for all nine sisters. I had to do something and I marched up to their supervisor and finally the owners of the contract company.
It was messy and they act was if I was trying to make money off them. It took me threatening to take it national for them to agree. I made sure they signed an M.O.U. o
One that ensured that the two thousand Naira was not deducted from their salaries. The owners had the guts to ask why I was not paying for their medical insurance. I point out that their allowances and bonuses catered for that. I believe they were trying to provoke me and stalk the deal.
As all the contracts were signed and staff filled forms, I hug the father of Hope and accept a free meal from the mother of Hope. As I sit and eat the will peppered meal, the boss asked if I had heard the end of the tragedy. I shake my head and watch him signal to Hope's father.
You know how you hear a tale and think it can't get worse, well it did. I could no longer eat my meal and stared at the temporary road side food stall.
The C twins showed up and bought take away meals and insist, we all go to the hall. I have kept my guest waiting long enough.
I tried hard to focus but could not, I truly feel that this is a special circumstance and only in Nigeria can this happened.
Hope's father and mother were grief stricken when she died and as they carry the corspe out they are approached by a man. He prays with them and asks if they believe in God, it was an odd question. Because all Nigerian's believe in God, not like that he says. And just like that, their faith is tested. Not to look like unbelievers and not to admit they had doubt, they start to ask what if. The man insists that they may bury their two year old without giving God a chance.
Hope's father did not buy into the gimmick but her mother did not want to accept death. So she was told to back the child and head to Oshodi, where a massive crusade was happening. They chatter a tricycle and head there, the traffic is intense and they have to walk into the crusade. They were going to meet a man of God, a pastor with a 'mantle' that could wake the dead. The flyers said so and people testified to his miracles.
They stood in line and watched people in wheelchairs approach the alter of the man of God and stand. Women with fibroids had organs drop from between their legs and were healed. Crippled men with bent legs, straightened and stood and miracles of job testimonials, where ritualists faked so as to lure people to their deaths told tales of their escape. Just as Hope's mother and father were about to climb the alter, the pastor screamed and points at them.
Men of wicked intensions, backing the dead. Here to try to disgrace a man of God. Ungrateful people that want miracles and will run to other churches after he has performed magic. Your time is up and just as you are climbing up the stairs, walk back down and go and bury your decaying daughter. Your Hope is gone.
The parents freeze and the crowd around them disappeared. Quietly and filled with shame, they walk away. Just as camera's filmed their walk of shame and on the large church monitors, Hope's head bobbed and her lifeless face was zoomed on. The pastor then asked people to pray against death, part against evil tests sent by the devil and to cast and bind away demons. The congregation points at them as they hurriedly left the hall.
I was looking at the crowd of people at the wealth seminar, could they have been part of the crusades. Were there spies sent to this office space by Bloody False Prophets
to feed him information about Hope's fathers dead child? Or are there medical practitioners or people who work in the office feeding these magician information? I could not be sure of anything, but I did know that Nigeria was going back to the days of Salem. To the time of witch hunts, miracles and crowd mentality. The harder the economy, the easier people were manipulated.
I just hope not to fall victim to any one of these fanatics and I am glad I could help, but what about the millions of people that can't be helped. Those ones that only the so called miracle workers can get to, we truly need help and I can only do my part, what are you doing about this?
**"ADE'S JOURNAL", Season 3, Episode 24**
*"ADE'S JOURNAL", 24, COPYRIGHT 2018*
**BUSOLA ELEGBEDE, COPYRIGHT 2018**
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