JUST BEFORE DAWN

Too many people don taya for dis obodo Naija, I swear.

Our suffer don do!

Kole Omotoso wrote JUST BEFORE DAWN in 1988.

Just before dawn, people say, it gets really dark.

It is now nearly forty years after Omotoso thought the dawn would break on Nigeria, but no, it gets darker every second in Naija .

It is impossible to turn a medication for killing rats into an anti-depressant.

Nigeria is a medication for killing rats.

When the rats eat the medication, it tastes yummy. (There was a time, after “independence” that things looked really bright).

That was the time you could drive from Port Harcourt to Sokoto without fear, and a loaf of bread was one penny.

Stage two is when the medication hits the rats and belly ache begins.

You know what stage three does.

The Oyinbo don give us rat killer medications.

We are past the yummy stage one.

It is not Oyinbo’s fault that they gave us Naija as rat poison.

It is our fault that we keep eating rat poison and expecting that it will become an anti-depressant.

How many police checkpoints do you have between Lagos and Ibadan?

This is because the very idea of Naija is not viable.

The state does not trust the people to obey its laws, therefore, the state represses the people by subjecting them to excessive, counterproductive and punitive curtailment of movement even within the same state.

I have no idea how long it would take me to drive from Lagos to Ibadan. It would depend on how many “national borders” the police, customs, road “safety” corps, and other “border” agents set up on a daily basis.

Abeg, I know what good life means jare.

This rat poison is killing too many innocent people.