Against The Force - My Experience
We are very delighted to have security personnels on the roads ensuring that safety and security is kept. I must say a lot of them are doing the job as they ought to do but like a popular saying goes, amongst the twelve there's always a Judas.
Honestly, in our days the Judas are almost half of the twelve, those of you that travel very well you will bear me witness with what some of these security personnels are doing on the road, instead of doing what the law demands they extort money from drivers and allow offences go scot free.
For the military, their problems is harsh and cruel human treatment, I don't know if they are seeing their self as semi god or something, they don't regard civilians especially those who don't have influence as anything. They do anything they want, embarrassed anyone and go free. They forgot that they were once civilians and are employed for the civilians.
The day that civilians stop existing, their services might be of no use, this is not for military alone, I notice almost every security person in Nigeria has that attitude once they are on uniform they disregard human persons The painful part is that most times they do it for show off.
My Experience
Some time around 2021, I was going to Jos to see my elder sister, Jos road is on of the roads I know with many check points. I have been traveling that road many tines and we never had any problem with the security except for road safety, you know those ones can't be escaped, papers or no papers you see still guilty.
That day, when we started the journey, we successfully moved out of Nasarawa without any problem. we passed several check points and we were allowed to pass freely until we got to one like that and a very young dark and handsome soldier stopped our car and asked the driver to park.
Let me tell you the truth, I am a very scared person, when that happened my heart skipped, I have heard stories of how soldiers keep people for hours on the road, make them frog jump or pick dirt. I was just praying in my heart, that no one in our car did something wrong.
When the soldier came and checked the vehicle, he said everyone should come down, Omo, that was the point the saliva in my mouth dried. When we came down, he told the driver to open the boot and he did, the next thing I heard is, who has that backpack?
Everyone was mute, It didn't even occur to me that I would have any fault there, so I was just waiting for them to finish and ask us to move, to my greatest shock, the driver called me to the scene, when I got there it was my bag. My heart cut but I managed to compose. I responded I own the bag, he asked the driver to offload everything from the boot. The guy pleaded but he didn't pay attention, we have to bring down all the loads.
After that the soldier guy said, I should remove everything from my bag, innocent me, I had to break the silence, because I knew how I suffered to package my clothes in there. I asked him what I did and the response he gave me was that my bag is a military bag. I don't have the right to use it.
He started asking silly questions, you know it's a soldier, I had to defend myself but with wisdom. I told him, how I got the bag, I bought it in the market. It was beautiful, I didn't know it was an army bag. He kept insisting I off the clothes inside and give him the bag .
Obviously, I would not, we were in the middle of no where, if I give him the bag, where will I put my clothes? Other passengers joined me and we pleaded before he allowed me to go and warned me never to use that bag again. It was funny to me because I have been using that bag for years and no one questioned me.
After wasting our time, he let us leave but before then, he collected the phone number of one of the girls in the car. I was wondering what kind of man is that, collecting number from a totally stranger, what if she was a ghost? That was how everything ended, one thing must surely kill a man though. How sure are you that it was not even the lady that made him stopped our car?