Life in Nigeria will always have its downsides. But we can all embrace these fleeting moments of live music and concerts.
Nothing was on my mind as I walked down the crowded sandy beaches via Hard Rock Café for the ‘Wiz on the Beach Concert’. An hour later, a girl pushed out of the crowd, tears in her eyes. I instinctively moved towards her, asking for the cause of her woes.
“They just stole my phone in the crowd. They stole my phone,” she sobbed.
I understood her pain. I have lost devices before, I still lost one this year. The connection between a person and their phone is a spiritual and essential one. Each entity depends on the other for nourishment and maintenance. To cut that off is a sacrilege, the highest height of disruption, and tears are only the smallest price to pay as you start the journey to a new device. On stage, Wizkid was in his element. He was performing his hit single, ‘Ojuelegba’.
“Ni Ojuelegba oh, my people dey there, my people suffer, dem they pray for blessings.”
Ojuelegba wasn’t the only place with suffering people. Nigeria was suffering. The start of a biting petrol scarcity had just begun. All around the country, people lined up at fuelling stations, cars and kegs parked in hope and sadness. The owners stared into space with sadness in their hearts as the queues disturbed traffic, and slowed down productivity and merriment. Sadness can turn into anger, and it did when a soldier beat up a young man at a petrol station in pursuit of fuel. By the next morning, Christmas Day, the boy had died. Death came to their family at Christmas. Another hope cut short, another dream killed.
Life shouldn’t be this hard. We deserve better, we have earned better as a people and country. The day before, Wizkid had headlined his concert, ‘Wizkid: The Concert’, where he brought happiness to the hearts of millions of Nigerians with a reconciliation with Davido, his arch-rival. The excitement of seeing these two great artists coming together to declare peace flooded the country. And on social media, everyone jerked off to the promise of a peaceful future in music. No more ‘frog voices and duck faces’. The art united us all in happiness as it has always done.
But it has been a sad year. It would be impossible not to think about Nigeria, and the mass loss of lives at the hands of terrorism, the police and just about everything else. Everything in Nigeria is trying to kill you. It is a reality that we live with every day of our lives. Half the time, living here feels like playing the game ‘Pac Man’. You have to run from numerous bogeymen and their traps all year. This causes us to ache, and our families to worry. That’s why we gather around tables at concerts, open drinks and toast to God and ourselves for the gift of being alive. Blood have been spilled, but ours still flow through the right channels.
We mortals can’t avoid the cycle of death and life, but we can prolong the time of our passing, and enjoy the wait between now and our deaths. Falz offered that in his ‘Falz: The Experience’ concert.
On the December 27, I woke up to news of President Buhari’s son, Yusuf, fighting for his life. He had been in a bike accident, hitting his head, and gasping for life. The news made my heart sink. I didn’t know him in person, but he was just like all of us. Another soul, pushing to enjoy this one life. I still remember the first time I was in an accident. A car hit me, and as I bled from different holes, people rushed me to safety. I still feel the helplessness as I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, hoping that this wasn’t the end for me. I can write this article because I survived, and that’s why I connect with Yusuf and the pain of being physically broken.
That night, I watched Davido on stage, as he celebrated life and love at the ’30 Billion’ concert.OBO brought on Wizkid again, performing ‘Manya’, a song about love and the beauty of enjoyment. “Oya take all my money put am for your head oh…” they sang, danced and put on a show for the living. Still, at that concert, another lady was screaming in crystal clear phonetics, “someone’s got my phone!”
Sorry, my dear. They have stolen it. Another device parted from its owner. Sad.
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