The Article About Nothing.

So, after so much dilly dallying on my part, I finally decided to travel on Sunday but then, I had to put up one last show of my genius; I had to confuse "Village People" by announcing that I'd travel on Saturday...

My journey was largely uneventful majorly because I was travelling in a bus that had a more than fair share of nursing mothers strutting their respective breasts in a bid to feed their always hungry babies: this of course lacked the capability of interesting me.
Well, things took a twist in my rather boring journey as men of the Nigerian Police Force stopped our bus to carry out a thorough check probably because we looked suspicious (I'm guessing this suspicion was stroked by the fact that my eyes were as red as whatever you can imagine as a result of my "highness" and because I wore a black face cap, a black top and a black trousers).

I was searched and fortunately for me, I decided to leave my kitchen knife in school, and I had run out of supplies of my favorite weed brand, and so, despite my suspicious look, there was nothing on me.

Well, they moved on from me and found a worthy victim in a young man, probably within the same age bracket with me: his offence was that he had a Generator set without receipt but in the absence of the receipt, he was armed with a written agreement of sale between him and the supposed seller.

The presence of this written agreement meant nothing to the Policemen as they were hell bent on seeing a receipt of purchase regardless of how it originated.
At that point, I decided to "intervene" by meeting the particular unruly Police Officer and I explained to him that the absence of the receipt notwithstanding, the agreement could still suffice as all he needed to satisfy his doubts about the title of the Generator would be to call the seller to verify.

I thought I was doing great service to humanity which is what we are taught is an essential goal of the Law by making the otherwise equitable suggestion to the Police Man.

Well, I couldn't have in ten scenarios envisaged what happened next as the particular unruly Police Man made very dedicated attempts to slap me and I gallantly resisted the brutality by using my hands and legs to prevent me from slapping my fresh face and kicking my feeble legs.

If I couldn't possibly have envisaged this attempt to brutalize me, the next act by this Officer completely crushed my imaginations as for the first time in my life, a gun was pointed to my head... A cocked gun!
At that moment, my whole life flashed before me and I remembered all my sins and how I was going to run faster than Justin Gatlin to hell if he pulled the trigger.

I thought of how I would die without becoming a Lawyer, a Senator and a Father to my Children and a Husband to my wife and how my whole life was now dependent on this devilish police officer.

I had no time to rationalize what crime I had committed that would bring a cocked gun to my head and my efforts were channeled towards begging this thug on uniform. Among other things, I told him that I was the first child and on how I would die if he killed me(lol).

Eventually, he changed his mind and my life was spared but not without a barrage of vulgar abuses and defamatory statements against me. I didn't care about suing him in the torture of defamation of character as I was busy thanking God for not allowing me to die by the bullet.

After my near death experience, our bus was finally allowed to leave and for the rest of the journey, there was little to remember.

However, I sat down to reflect on how I was almost shot by one who ordinarily should protect me.
Frankly, there is so much that is wrong with the Nigerian Police Force; from poor remuneration in terms of salaries to outdated weapons that can't compare with the sophistication of the weapons of the criminals they are supposed to fight: and of course, there is the ever present problem of lack of psychological assessment of officers.

Without a doubt, I feel that the man who almost shot me had no reason to be on the road that fateful day as from merely conversing with him, he was battling a lot of psychological issues ranging from hot temper to a glaring inferiority complex.
What's more?

I feel that if he was assessed by an average psychologist, he wouldn't have been put on the road that Sunday afternoon but he was not and if not for divine intervention, he would have wreaked an easily preventable havoc.

So, what am I really saying?
From my experience this past Sunday, I'm just saying that the Nigerian Police Force is desperately begging for reforms in every aspect and unless these reforms take place, the instances of police brutality and even police murders would be recurrent in our stories as a country.

Clinton.