WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, MAKES YOU CAREFUL! - ODERINU ADEDAYO

I wonder how many times I have also made the mistake of echoing the quote ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! Now that I think about it, I am not really sure the quote is practically correct let alone makes real life sense. I do not want to sound like I am rebuking the forefathers who invented this saying or whoever it might be credited to, I only write about what I hold to be practically verifiable.
A young man was travelling from Ilorin to Lagos. In trying to reduce the cost of transport because he was certainly broke, he had to stand by the road side around Airport Road in Ilorin to board what Yoruba people call ‘soole’. True to desire, the fare was practically give-away and he joyfully boarded the bus. Unfortunately for this young man, he was (as you might already be imagining) kidnapped, transported to an unknown destination in the middle of nowhere. On arrival, he was tested (of course metaphysically) and found unsuitable for the ritual for which he would have been the proverbial sacrificial lamb and was set free. He had been to the house of death and he made it out alive. This story is just a mere fiction (though it has happened severally in Nigeria), but the moral of the story is, will this experience make this young man stronger or careful? Careful gets my vote.
Another young man in one of the small towns in the South-West was in a relationship with a very beautiful lady. It was a bed roses (of course we know nothing in life is) and everything seemed to be working perfectly. A date for their wedding ceremony was fixed and much preparation began towards making the day a talk of the society. Alas, on the D-day, it was discovered that the bride had skipped town with a rich man from America. Does this heart-break make the young man stronger or more careful in choosing another lady? And again, careful gets my vote!
A young soldier was going to war and as it was his first time, he was not accustomed to the real experiences of a real war situation; he had not been battle-tested. When he got to the war front, he flouted the Commander’s orders and found himself in the line of fire. As you can imagine, he got brutally wounded and was in critical condition for months before he eventually got better. Will this experience make him stronger or careful next time? CAREFUL gets my vote yet!
Since a landslide victory for CAREFUL has been recorded, I can proceed on that premise. Nigerians has been described time and again as the Happiest People on earth. You wonder why this is so? There is no other practical reason than the fact that despite the sufferings and injustice in our nation, an average Oshodi vagabond sleeping and waking up under the bridge can still wake up with a smile on his face and say ‘Oya now’. Nigerians must really be a very happy nation!
Truth be told, Nigerians have seen it all. From dictatorship, to corrupt political leadership even to an incapacitated interim government, Nigerians can beat their chest and tell the world, ‘we have tasted it all’. From Civil War to Niger Delta militancy to Boko Haram Insurgency and the rest, what else have we not seen? I think it is just safe to conclude that Nigeria is the perfect training ground for anybody willing to ‘see it all’.
However, despite all the societal problems prevalent in our country, the population is still rising; people are still pro-creating, we are still moving on. We have made bad choices in the past, choices that have left us paying back dearly for our carelessness in the past. We have made mistakes in supporting bad leaders on their quest to attain office, we have made mistakes of encouraging hooliganism in kids when it could have been curbed before it escalated into militancy, we have made mistakes of allowing religious and tribal sentiments to thrive within us when we could have stopped its spread; we have simply done it all.
The grievous experiences we have had as repercussions of these mistakes has not made us any stronger, these experiences though did not kill most of us, has not made us immune to the effects of bad governance neither has it made us immune to Boko Haram bullets nor Militants’ grenades; we are not stronger!
We can not claim to be getting immune to the adverse effects of the vices in the society; we can only strive to avoid re-occurrence in future. Here again, careful will get my vote. The times to elect new leaders approaches us very speedily and there is no best time to stand for what is just and right than this time. This is the time to rally round credibility even if it be found in Fresh Democratic Party. This is the time to be careful, the time to meticulously screen politicians who approach us for votes, it is the time to CAREFULLY correct the ills we have committed in the past, it is the time for change.
We must elect good leaders, we must discourage insurgency in any form it may arise and we must tirelessly build a new nation, one man at a time....for as IT has not killed us, IT should make us CAREFUL!

ODERINU ADEDAYO T.
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