The road tells no lies. On one side, a convoy of tinted glass, sirens tearing through the air, and policemen armed to the teeth. On the other hand, a beggar’s crutch dragging across the tar, the sound swallowed by the roar of exhaust pipes. Both are heading in the same direction, towards the future. Yet only one travels with speed, while the other limps, unnoticed, into the dust.
This is the parable of our politics. Excess rolling past suffering, neither seeing the other. And the people clap as though they are not the ones being trampled. Nigeria has mastered the theatre of contrasts. Politicians speak of “empowerment” while speeding past the very citizens they claim to empower. They deliver speeches about “development” from podiums built on borrowed funds, while children sell sachet water outside the hall.
The convoy is not just a line of cars; it is a metaphor for distance, a state so far removed from its citizens that it no longer hears the crutch against the tar. And yet, we have learned to exhilarate. Sirens no longer irritate; they mesmerize. The masses who part the road for the convoy are the same who sleep hungry that night. We clap for our own marginalization like viewers applauding a play where they are both the actors and the victims.
A badge can be a shield, or a weapon. Nigeria must choose wisely. A society becomes truly sick when the beggar stops asking questions and begins admiring the shine of the governor’s motorcade. Poverty, then, is not just in the pocket, but in the imagination. The beggar’s crutch becomes a permanent fixture because he has been convinced that the convoy is the natural order of things.
They say power should live closer to the people; but what happens when power, instead of protection wears the uniform of oppression? Power is like a restless tenant, always moving in before the house is ready. But the road still tells the truth. For one day, the sirens will go silent, the tinted windows will roll down, and the convoy will dissolve into memory. Yet the crutch will remain, passed down from one generation to another, unless we choose to mend it.
Governance was never meant to be a parade of distance. It was supposed to be the bridge between the crutch and the convoy, between the forgotten and the fortunate. Until that bridge is built, every siren is just an echo of inequality, and every convoy is a moving monument to what we have refused to change. At the moment, drums of 2027 thunder in 2025. The ink on today’s unfulfilled promises is not yet dry, yet billboards bloom like impatient flowers.
When people forget their square, they no longer bargain for their future, they are sold to the highest bidder.
William Z. Bozimo
Veteran Journalist | Columnist | National Memory Keeper
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