In recent times many people have called me to agonize over the current stay at home period and are obviously getting stressed up not so much by the fear of the disease but the discomfort of the lockdown. Some of them may without knowing it may be, effortlessly, developing hypertension. This I dare say, is very sad.
Any one who has heard of the biblical directives- “In every situation, give thanks” and “rest still and know that I am the Lord”and still worries, needlessly, has not really internalised the eternal value of those messages.How does your worrying help you? My experience has taught me that in the end, everything passes away. COVID-19 is a huge pandemic but it will pass away. For those who worry, this may be the beginning of their passage. Each of us will be well advised to exercise restraint in any trying circumstance. To do otherwise is to be a weakling and a worrier.
The first thing to do is to stop agonizing over this period. As trying as Covid-19 is, the heavens are not about to fall. Let me share my little experience with you.
I was 37 when the military struck in 1983. I had been in government for 4 years and 3 months. To this day, I am grateful to God for the opportunity I had to have served the people of Ogun State and how I wish I had the chance to do more. I gave the very best of my life in service. Service was always the purpose of my life, what I wanted to do and when the chance came I grabbed it with both hands.
But I received an unjust, crude and inhumane recompense from the military government headed by General Muhammadu Buhari. Col. Oladipo Diya who was Military Governor in Ogun State thought I was so close to Chief Olabisi Onabanjo the immediate civilian Governor he succeeded that there was no getting Onabanjo without getting Adefulu his political son, so the story went. It was clear from their venomous mission that they were playing to a script. The whole purpose of Diya’s governance was bile. He came with vengeance in his heart. He was brash and sadistic. If he was a good student of history he would have known that those who seek to destroy what others built don’t go far. No wonder he left no major influence and is no more than a footnote in the history of Ogun State. The people of the state, in turn, judged him very harshly. His name “Diya” meaning the avenger, was turned round to “Kunya”, the persecutor.
I was subjected to the most scurrilous of interrogations, mental and physical torture. But my interrogators soon learnt that they had a wrong candidate. Chief Bisi Onabanjo had run an admirable and the most accountable of administrations and his accomplishments, to this day, remain a reference point.Their intense search found that I had been prudent in my affairs before and during my days in government. My affairs were so scrupulously recorded that I dazed their several investigating panels with documents and a level of accountability they couldn’t believe. At a stage a Col Adeleke ( I think that’s his name from Ondo town) after the final interrogation of the SIP- State Investigation Panel of which he was a member said to everyone, “now this is off the record- I want to learn from this young man. How were you able to keep records like these? If anyone had asked me to account for how I spent my salary in the past 6 months, I would not have been able to do it. Yet you have given us compelling records of several years many of which predated this job. Did you expect that this day will come? You were obviously doing well in your profession, why did you accept a thankless job like this?” I will leave the story of my answer to the panel out of this short discourse which is already getting too long.
Suffice it to say that I was in detention for 18 months 16 of which were spent at the Abeokuta Prison and 2 earlier months in detention camps. They preferred no offense and no charges, not one accusation. I woke up from day to day with no idea of when my nightmare would end. I just stared at the streets daily from the elevated grounds of the prison and life went on without me. It was obvious that if I had died nothing would have stopped.
I could see across the road the gate of the Governors Lodge which, in my hey days, swung open any time my car was spotted, for 16 months. I no longer mattered. The truth about life is that no man really matters. With or without you, life goes on. “Life’s but a walking shadow………..a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing” Shakespeare calls it.
Now back to my story, how about that for the Covid-19 worrier? As I said, I was 37 with a young wife of 5 children the youngest of whom was barely two months old. Getting heart attack from my experience or ending in the Aro Psychiatric Hospital would have been very easy to accomplish. But, fortuitously, I had learnt from very early in my life that “it is not life that matters but the courage you bring into it”. Faced with challenge one must never forget to look at the good or positive side of any situation or the lesson embedded in it. I therefore summoned courage early in my ordeal and said to myself “even with all the terrible injustice being meted to me, somehow this may be an opportunity which I may someday be sorry I wasted.” That meant I must use every moment well.
From that moment, I ended up going to bed exhausted every night. At a stage I started reading the Bible determined to read it from cover to cover ( I skipped the very difficult parts) complete with commentaries here and there. I learnt to speak French taught by a prisoner from Togo, studied case files of prisoners on the death row and wrote unsolicited legal opinions for their lawyers.I wrote to some Attorney General colleagues of mine seeking reprieve for well reformed prisoners and this got quite a few of them pardoned. Mrs. Airat Balogun the then AG of Lagos State was particularly helpful.
One of my prisoner friends was a man called Baiyewu who was a childhood friend of Ayinla Omowura the celebrated Apala musician. When Ayinla became a famous musician Baiyewu was his Manager. They were both from a similar rough background. Quite often they fought with knives and bottles. On one occasion they had one of their scuffles. Ayinla had sacked Baiyewu and desperately wanted to recover the motorcycle he had bought for him. Ayinla rode in his Mercedes Benz in search of what was, probably, a wretched motorcycle. They met and a fight ensued. Baiyewu hit Ayinla with a bottle on the head he fell and died instantly. By the time I became a guest in Abeokuta Prison, Baiyewu had given his life to Christ and became an incredible influence in the prison. Every prisoner felt the influence of Baiyewu. He had become an authoritative priest from the innermost depth of the prison, the death row. He was hallowed and respected. He called them to prayer very early in the morning and late at night. This condemned prisoner became a good friend of mine. If any man was ever totally and completely changed by the in living of the Holy Spirit, Baiyewu was a truly changed man. He saw Christ before he saw death because he told me, in confidence, a week before his execution, that his end was near. I don’t think I believed him. Three days later Col. Diya came on a visit to the prison and immediately after signed the papers that all the “fat” prisoners on death row be hung. His predecessors had left the prisoners alone but not Diya. Baiyewu was hung along with 13 other prisoners in Abeokuta Prison on a Saturday morning wearing his best prison gear leading the others in song as they matched to the gallows. It was an incredible sight.We were devastated and we wept bitterly. But the rest is a story for another day.
Needless to say that despite the terrible condition of Abeokuta Prison, I was a very busy man. It is interesting that today, those who are in the comfort of their homes for the COVID-19 lockdown for barely one week are complaining, so loudly, that they are tired and breaching the curfew. If there was a battle on the street would they have got out of their homes?We must always learn to accept the things we cannot change and to rest still.
My conclusion and counsel to everyone caught in the Covid-19 lockdown is to enjoy the opportunity while it lasts. Their immediate challenge is to stay safe and ask themselves “what can I do at this time, how can I profitably utilize the time in my hands?” You may want to re-arrange your wardrobes or kitchen, get rid of the many things you have around which you don’t need or do some reading, learn some gardening or baking etc. You may even want to think about your future or rebuild the broken walls of your life. One thing I am sure of is that no matter how long this lockdown lasts, I will not be able to finish the assignments I have set for myself. This can turn out to be a wonderful time you will never forget. It will not come again. The secret is to use this time well and profitably. Do enjoy your COVID-19 Lockdown.