I was roused from my bed this morning by a familiar nuisance. I’m on my bed sleeping like a baby who took fresh breast milk the previous night. My old pyjama feels new, and my bed is comfy. My dream approaches its climax as the beautiful damsel offers her lips for a kiss. This is so until the familiar nuisance makes an awakening call. My dream is interrupted, and sleep is over.
(This is a guest post written and shared by Edidiong Edet. Link to his Facebookk account is HERE)
My familiar nuisance, my foe, is a bird. Yes, an African Thrush. It is a hell-sent creature that constantly wakes me. It has made itself into my alarm clock; chirping and tweeting on my window every blessed morning. I don’t know if it’s a way of saying good morning to a kind neighbour that I am (yes I am, I’ve fed it my leftover rice once or twice), or it is a conjugal call to its mate. The first assumption makes me smile and blush a little (that’s if you have a microscopic eye to see my skin fluster with red, cause I’m the definition of African). Always a delight to be called affable. The second assumption – a call to its mate- draws a little outrage from me. I frown at the thought of suffering from another creature’s quest to satisfy its libido.
“Don’t let your business be mine; your pleasure my headache. Especially when there’s a chance of coitus being involved, and in your favour. I don’t let mine be yours.” This, I think to myself concerning the wake-up call of the African thrush.
I wake up. I have my bath at about half-past five and sit to write a little Election Day article to my lazy Facebook friends (young people mostly) who’d be nonchalant about voting. I post the article with a flag of Nigeria and don’t even care to look up how many likes it gets. If they like, they will like it. Even at gunpoint, I won’t believe that they’ll read it.
I message that hot lady I’ve had in my crosshairs for a while. Of course, what did you expect? She replies with: “hi”, “fine”, “cul”. I realise its a monologue and I’m no Shakespeare. Besides, the hip parlance of hers irks me a bit. I am bored, so I log out.
I decide to take a walk around the neighbourhood because it is eerily quiet and I’m a curious cat who wants to get a glimpse even if the bullet hits me in the eye. A second thought comes to mind: “why not visit your polling unit?” It is an amiable thought, so I oblige. I walk slowly with my hands tucked in my university cardigan. It is a lovely cardigan made of pure cotton. But this is not the reason I walk with the moxie of the last cock standing after cockfight. I believe the gesture makes me look like a New York gangster. But, there is no snow here and the early morning sun is threatening to hit its zenith. This is dreadful because I sweat more than a Nigerian Judge can be incorruptible. My “swag” is about to lag. What a pity!
By the bend in the straight road where the middle-aged newspaper vendor sits to offer his ware, I see a shocking sight. The newspaper vendor is reading a newspaper. This is a sight as rare as honesty is from a Nigerian politician. I like the newspaper vendor; he is an affable man who seems to like his job dearly. But I have never seen him read. He is absorbed intensely in the paper. The papers must be reporting on an interesting piece about the election. It is my belief that newspaper vendors are the true intellectuals of the era. I believe that vendors spread truthful rumours. I am yet to see anyone as close to information as this hucksters. This strengthens my resolve to visit my polling unit (polling Unit 20). I walk slowly down the road.
All the while, peace and quiet presented themselves to the environment like palm wine in an African traditional marriage. The first violence I witness in this election comes from a bird, an African Thrush. It stormed out suddenly from a lawn which I was walking beside. My heart skipped a beat, yet no Grammy for me. I can’t help but feel unsettled. What was that little avian doing in that lawn?, I ask myself. I looked around me only to see two Laughing Doves perched on an electric line. When they saw me one pretended to do a conjugal dance, crooning and humming. I saw some crows circling the vicinity. That’s when it came to me: “Birds are trying to hijack this election.” I recollected suddenly that all morning, in the solitude and quiet of the election day, birds have been the only noise makers, chirping, crooning, tweeting, cheeping and chirruping.
As I walked on, circumstances made it feel as if the birds were the Domestic and International observers rather than the culprits in election malpractice. Birds were everywhere. Vultures were circling the sky. They thought me foolish. They pretended to be casual and all. But, I couldn’t be fooled.
A group of African Thrush were chirping loudly on a tree. I know them to be busy-bodies; they want to be noticed by all means. With their white underbelly and black feathers, they remind me succinctly of a group of security personnel well known to us all. Guess who? Some African Golden Oriole were having a nice time too. They must have been supporting one of the obscure parties that turned our ballot paper to NaijaBet slip.
I saw a laughing dove perched on a tree branch. This comedian didn’t look funny at all to me. It looked at me like a peevish old man would. With its head sunk in, fully relaxed, it looked at me suspiciously like a DSS agent would. The little idiot was trying to show me that it could do a 270′ head turn, gazing at me as I walked on. I don’t even want to guess what it was thinking.
Finally, I reach the polling unit. As the French would say, Voila, the INEC personnel are not here, and it is quarter past eight. Now, I am persuaded beyond conviction that the birds, the early risers, are to conduct, rig, and secure my polling unit.
As a twenty-six-year-old man, I am humbled as I see aged, married and responsible-looking men and women sitting outside the premises waiting to carry out their civic duty – to vote. They came way earlier than myself. I am surprised and humbled at the same time. I smile; I grin; I do not know exactly why I smile, but it must have something to do with patriotism and civic duty which I now feel so strongly about.
No kerfuffle in my polling unit, peace reigned (I can’t claim this for other polling units), and I learned more about democracy than I ever did from a textbook. The vote counting was another lesson in electoral matters. The zest of ordinary citizens to see their rights respected (young and old), solidified the idea I once heard the late Christopher Hitchens say: that in every age and place on earth, however, the repression of liberating ideas, oppression of a people, humans have an intrinsic tendency to resist their oppressed, to want their voices to be heard and rights respected. I saw this human ideal in my polling unit. Politicians in this land cannot and will not always keep us in the dark, make us into their personal lump of fufu to be moulded and remoulded at their will.
I am twenty-six; I am Nigerian, and I voted. Did you vote? #NigeriaVotes#ElectionDay#CivicDuty#GubernatorialRace
