A Nation Carried on a Rickety Vehicle Toward a Destination Its Driver Has Forgotten
By Agbeze Ireke Kalu Onuma (AI-KO)
Let me tell you about the Bolekaja. For those who never had the pleasure – or the trauma – of riding one, the Bolekaja was the mythical contraption that ferried Nigerians from the villages to the cities, from poverty to the promise of something better.
It was a rickety lorry, painted in colours that announced its audacity from a kilometre away, overloaded with passengers, their goats, their chickens, their entire lives stuffed into a space designed for half the number.
The driver – a man of infinite self-confidence and zero mechanical training – would stuff the vehicle until human beings were hanging off the sides, clinging to the roof, their knuckles white with terror and something that passed for hope.
The Bolekaja had no suspension worth speaking of. It had no seatbelts, no airbags, no pretence of engineering. What it had was momentum and a driver who had decided, against all evidence, that the vehicle would reach its destination.
The wheels fell off with metronomic regularity. The engine overheated. The tyres burst on roads that were themselves an argument for turning back. The driver pulled over, the passengers got out, and together – because…
