Manna from hell

By Tatalo Alamu

If one were Nigerian authorities, one should now begin to wonder about post-Covid-19 realities and how they are going to impact on governance in this benighted land. As if we are under the additional spell of a metrological curse, rainfall has been rather fitful and in between casting a bitter shadow on agricultural produce along the old corridor of the famed Western Region.

If you are a regular traveller along this busy corridor, you would have noticed that around this time of the year, the vegetation is verdant and luxuriant with farm produce and overhanging fruits as Mother Nature in Africa plays out its allotted role as a spoiling matriarch.  But if you travelled this corridor this past week, you would have noticed shrivelled maize plants and withered vegetation.

It does appear as if creeping climatological changes combined with Covid-19 trepidation which has turned farming into a most hazardous business in the country may end up in the worst famine in the history of the country. If you are a traveller along the Ife-Ibadan corridor this past weekend, you will weep for the country and a people sentenced to a prolonged nightmare as a result of incompetent governance.

It happened just before the approach to the Ishasha Bridge as you bid farewell to the precincts of the historic junction town of Gbongan. As soon as a trailer conveying frozen fish and other refrigerated products overturned and burst into flames right in the middle of the road, stricken humanity from outlying villages began arriving  to help themselves to fish strewn across the road.

It was as if the demon himself had taken over the populace. They came from everywhere:  Oluwada, Ashipa, Akinlalu, Ogbaaga, Kajola, Wakajaiye and Kinkinyiun. The whole place smelled of roasting fish and inflammable materials.

It soon became as surreal as anything that ever came out of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation combined. Right there in the middle of nowhere and against a background of eerily quiet wild tropical forest, a Fish Bazaar was being enacted. Old men, young lads, fetching damsels, ancient maids and enervated suckling scooped fish with feral relish even as the smouldering carcass of the huge trailer belched smoke and thunder.

It was as if this portion of the road built by the Israeli firm of Solel Boneh had been converted into a thriving fish market. With traffic diverted by men and women of the Road Safety Corps, the passable stretch of the road was clogged with vehicles and passengers who had alighted to help themselves to the manna. It was like a meeting point of absconding war refugees. Bemused and bewildered, the Road Safety people looked on at this bizarre benediction straight out of ancient Israel. A solitary policeman was sighted with his pocket bulging with fish and the day’s offerings.

No, this cannot be true. It was an epic film in the manner of Ben Hur and The Fall of the Roman Empire, or probably a troubulous dream. But it was actual reality which, as Kafka and Trotsky famously noted, can be trusted to progress from farce to tragic monstrosity as things took shape. The hazy twilight of a setting sun and beleaguered humanity against a landscape of withered maize plants added to the sense of fantasy and unreality.

It was a haunting image of a blighted landscape and a famished countryside. If this is what hunger and biblical misery do to people, if this is a sneak preview of post-Covid-19 realities, then we have entered a truly uncharted territory.