STORY OF THE DAY

I was born on 12th April, 1952.  I died
twenty-years ago on 26th December,
1993.  I was killed by armed-robbers on
the way from Murtala Mohammed
International Airport, Lagos.
My wife was coming back from a trip to
the United States and I went to the
airport with six-year-old Femi-Kevin to
meet her.  She had two major pieces of
luggage.  I put one in the boot and the
other in the back-seat of our car.  It was
around seven-thirty in the evening, and
we set out for home.
Soon, a car overtook us with some
people who were shouting at us for
some inexplicable reason.  I paid little
attention to them. It is commonplace
in Lagos for some driver to be upset
with you for some reason or the other.
But no sooner had they overtaken us
than they swerved and blocked the road
with their car.  Immediately, some men
jumped out menacingly.
Dicing with death
From that moment, everything became
surreal. Indeed, everything switched to
slow-motion.  I slammed on the brakes
and the car stopped. I switched to
reverse-gear and the car moved back.
Our assailants were banking on the
element of surprise, but my prompt
reactions upstaged them. Having
reversed the car, I again brought it to a
stop. In front of us on the road were
four armed men.
I had always foolishly believed in
myself.  I regarded myself as a problem-
solver.  True, this was a rather bigger
problem than I had had to deal with
before.  This particular one was a
question of life and death.  But it was a
problem nevertheless.  Therefore, I
decided to try and address it like any
other problem.  First; I needed to make
a quick decision.  I had to decide
whether to continue to reverse the car;
or go forward or just surrender.
I seemed to have all the time in the
world to make this split-second
decision.  Finally, I decided on a
foolhardy course of “no retreat: no
surrender.” I made up my mind to go
forward at top speed and try to avoid
their car, which was biased to the left
side of the road.  I also resolved that if
the man to my extreme right did not
get out of the way, I would run him
over with my car.
I put the car back into the first gear and
went ahead to execute my plan;
slamming hard on the accelerator.  The
man to my extreme right literally had to
jump out of the road because I aimed
the car directly at him. I managed to
avoid their car and made a dash for it.
But before I could congratulate myself
on turning the tables against our
abductors, my plans went disastrously
wrong.  A lamppost appeared suddenly
out of nowhere, and I slammed
headlong into it.
Mystery voice
I have been back on that road so many
times since then and have wondered
why I did not see that lamppost. But I
did not.  Once I hit the lamppost, I was
trapped like a caged animal. Once I hit
the lamppost, all my brilliantly-executed
escape plans turned out to be reckless.
Once I hit the lamppost, I knew that I
was a dead man. I looked out the
window to see the man I nearly ran
down now marching towards me.  I
knew there could only be one thing on
his mind: revenge.
But before I could panic, something
dramatic happened.  I heard a voice.  It
was not a booming voice. It was a “still
small voice.”  It was authoritative and
calm.  It spoke with quiet reassurance.
“Femi,” it said, “nothing is going to
happen to you here.”
Before I could even think about what
that meant, the offended armed-robber
drew near.  Again, I saw everything in
slow motion. Grimacing, he pointed his
gun at me and pulled the trigger.  I saw
a flash of light and the glass at my side
of the door came crashing down. The
bullet pierced the body of the car, came
out on the inside and killed me.  It is
necessary to put it graphically. The
bullet hit me and I bled to death right
there on the roadside.
Conversations in the morgue
Thereafter, I was no longer afraid of our
assailants.  As a matter of fact, I became
indifferent to them.  I seemed to be
abstracted from the entire incident, and
to be like someone watching an
unfolding drama from the sidelines.
And yet I knew that however the
matter was resolved, my life would
never be the same again.
Don’t ask me why, but I opened the
door and decided to come out of the
car. Only then did I realise that there
was something wrong with my left leg.
The bullet came out of the inside of the
car and lodged itself in my leg, but I
never actually felt it enter my body.  As
I came out of the car, the aggrieved
armed-robber who had shot at me
slapped me. “Why were you driving like
that?” he demanded. “Please don’t be
offended,” I pleaded.  “I was only trying
to get away from you as best as I
could.”
While all this was going on, the young
man was rifling through my pockets. He
was removing my watch from my wrist.
Another man was removing the suitcase
from the backseat of the car and loading
it into the boot of their car. And then I
heard that implausible voice once again,
defiantly oblivious to the situation.
“Femi,” it repeated, “nothing is going to
happen to you here.”
I was not really paying much attention.
My whole life suddenly flashed through
my mind. So this is how it all ends, I
thought. I looked through the window
of the car and saw my wife clutching
little Femi-Kevin to her breast. It was
like seeing the past in the present.  So
at such an early age this woman became
a widow, I thought.
I noticed she was praying.  I could see
her lips moving silently. I did not
believe in prayer and I never prayed.
As far as I was concerned, the fact that
she was praying meant she was highly
distressed. So I leaned through the
window to reassure her.  But the only
reassurance I could give was the
ludicrous one I had been given.  So I
said to her: “Karen, nothing is going to
happen to us here.”
Dead and buried
But something seemed to be
happening. One of the armed-robbers
could not open the boot.  Neither could
I give him the key because it was
jammed in the ignition as a result of my
hitting the lamppost with the car. One
simple fact completely escaped me.
Our abductors also seemed oblivious to
it. You could open the boot by pressing
a latch on the floor of the driver’s side
of the car.
I could tell that, with the frustration of
being unable to dislodge the key from
the ignition, the temperature of the
entire incident was rising.  But then,
one of them opened the glove
compartment and saw some money I
had miraculously forgotten there. It so
happened that it was a sizeable
amount. That discovery brought down
the heightened temperature.  The man
who discovered it was excited. “Look
what I found,” he shouted gleefully to
his partners-in-crime. Somehow, this
discovery was enough to atone for their
inability to retrieve the luggage from
the boot.
It was time to go.  The man who had
shot at me re-cocked his gun.  It was
one of those revolvers that you snap at
the top in order to re-load.  He pointed
it at me and barked: “Lie down with
your face to the ground.”  I don’t know
where I got the courage from, but I
refused.  I told him calmly: “You can
take whatever you want and go, but I
am not going to lie down.”  The man
stared at me.  His look spoke
eloquently. It said: “Don’t you know
that I have the power to shoot you
dead right now?”
I was already dead, so I was not
moved. For a moment, we stood staring
at one another defiantly, with him
pointing the gun directly at my face.  I
knew he would shoot again and could
not care less.  But then suddenly, he
changed his mind and walked away.
Then they all jumped into their car and
drove off.
My resurrection
There is nothing like death to make a
man to yearn for salvation. I was a man
falling down a cliff, looking for something
to hold on to.  Then suddenly a mystery
man arrived.  But instead of throwing
me a rope, he threw me a thread.
“Catch this,” he said, “and I will pull you
up.” I knew certainly that a thread
could not hold my weight.  But it was
really no time to argue.  If I had other
options, maybe I might have ignored
the thread. But as it was, the thread
was the only solution available, even if
it was absolutely nonsensical.  So I
grabbed the thread and unbelievably,
the thread; a thread, held my weight.
Once I held on to this slim thread of
hope, I was filled with an incredible
feeling of peace in the middle of an
armed-robbery attack, even with a
bullet lodged in my left leg.  But once
the robbers left, I came back to my
senses. The peace lifted and I was filled
with fear.  Clearly, I needed immediate
medical attention.  My wife jumped out
of the car and ran down the road
shouting for help. I looked down and
realised that my trouser-leg, my sock
and shoe were completely soaked with
blood.  So I said to myself: “Well, you
escaped that one.  But now you are
going to bleed to death right here in the
middle of this road.”
But immediately that thought came into
my head, the voice I had heard earlier
came back to counter it.  It was just as
calm and commanding as before. It was
no-nonsense and conclusive: “Femi,” it
said categorically, “there is nothing
wrong with your leg.”