By Kunle Rasheed
In my country of birth, especially, the Yoruba race which I belong to, it is believed that the dead has no faults and as such my people love to paint the dead as immaculate, instead of chronicling the bad perpetuated while living.
My people believe death has a magical power of erasing the sins and wrongdoings of anyone immediately oxygen becomes useless to such person.
I may not be able to tell the way people in other lands see the dead, but amongst my ethnic group, it will be out of place to see someone die and the famous phrase ‘he was a good man’ not surfacing. That quote has remained constant like the sixty seconds of the minute from time immemorial. It has become the regular rhetoric whenever a man passes to the great beyond.
The only time my darling tribe disrespected this belief was when the hard man famously known with his dark goggles kicked the bucket through the alleged apple eating tale.
My race defiled this belief by joining others in the country to go on rampage to celebrate the death of the tough northern former military ruler.
Since the death of that brave soldier, I have personally, never seen a situation or witnessed where the Yorubas will celebrate the death of another man.
But, recently, I was shocked to my bone marrow, when a certain man around my neighbourhood took a final flight to foreverland. The man was said to be a year or two above the biblical recommended ripe age of seventy; that notwithstanding, majority of the people in the neighbourhood, especially the street where he lived before he answered the ultimate call, decided to adorn the celebration garb that ‘death indeed served him right’.
At over 70 years of age, it should be a cause for celebration knowing fully well what the life expectancy ratio is in our land, but, alas! his neighbours are not celebrating because he lived up to 70, rather they quickly echoed in unison ‘good radiance to bad rubbish’.
Intriguingly, the wailing and mourning that took over his household did not move anyone, that it started and stopped at the gate of his house as no one on the street had a good story to tell about this departed petite man.
What could have caused this, I pondered as if it was totally a strange story to me. If I decided to feign total ignorance, I won’t be playing the truth game with myself. At least I’ve heard stories about some of the bad deeds of the man who was more known for wrongs than right. But, honestly, despite the many bad tales around the late man, something in me still feel the pains of the family at this their trying moment, because, personally, I believe, losing someone close could be hell on earth.
However, many on that little Close where he breathed his last, believe he was the reason the street has not known development and communal growth and they think probably his travel to the other planet may be the final solution to the problem of unity that will bring about development around the locality.
Like I mentioned earlier, I cannot be found mocking the dead or celebrating the exit of another man because no one, absolutely no one knows what tomorrow may bring; no one actually knows who the next person is, to take that next eternal flight, since a good percentage of our population already possess the boarding pass.
The hammer of death is still very powerful and no one is immune to its blow and it could be any one’s turn any time.
However, this particular man was known, not for the right things but many wrong things so much that many couldn’t just help but speak ill of the dead which is very strange to Yoruba culture.
I became personally interested because I know for sure that some life experiences can serve as lessons so that people will know that life is indeed nothing but undiluted vanity.
He was said to be very strict. But, strictness should never amount to wickedness. He was simply wicked and no other way could better explain his acts while alive. His, was sheer heartlessness, so his neighbours say. Someone they claimed rejoiced when others were suffering. He was said to be pure EVIL.
I have often echoed my thoughts at every given opportunity on why people fail to think about that last day.
Majority of us always act as if the world is ours for keeps and things should always go our way without thinking about the day the real owner of life (IKU) will ask for it.
Whenever I (sit to) go down memory lane, I feel sad that several happenstances and experiences of life have still not been seen by many as examples to tell people about how ephemeral life is.
Aside punishing his neighbours by blocking the drain that was constructed to ease the issue of flooding that (once) ravaged the street, he also made sure that the new owner of the barren land that the little drain was built, foreclosed any attempt to reopen the drain by making sure a pillar was erected permanently on the drain lane.
How could one be that wicked?
Interestingly, the day he died has become another reference point that life indeed remains a teacher and its just we the humans that do not pay attention to its teachings.
Imagine, the pathway beside his fence that should ordinarily be a path for people to thread on (in other to avoid a puddle in the middle of the road), this son of ‘shetan’ deliberately blocked it despite knowing perfectly well that he didn’t acquire the road with his land. But he just didn’t like the idea that people walked close to his fence.
That very day when he saw a young lad riding his bicycle on that path close to the wall (fence) of his fence (house), the man got so angry that he went personally to look for tyres, filled them with sand and blocked the space so that no one will ever have the opportunity of moving any object on that path.
And like a scene in one of the movies, he stood watching his “obstacle” till late in the evening before he retired to bed.
But lo and behold, that same night, Mr ‘Alagidi’ refused to respond when it was wake-up time. He has answered the ultimate call. He decided to block a path and nature decided to block his existence.
This episode, I believe, should serve as lesson to many others around the vicinity to make them act and think right thereby affirming the truism that no one possesses the gift of immortality.
The departed soul’s story should be seen, not only to the people around that neighbourhood alone as a wake up call, but anyone who could learn one or two lessons about the twist and turn of existence .
It is one narrative that only tells us about that teacher called Life with the hope that those who have ears will listen to its teachings.
