{"id":4013,"date":"2013-05-21T19:27:22","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T19:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disnaija.com\/nigerian-newspapers\/a-lucky-escape\/"},"modified":"2013-05-21T19:27:22","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T19:27:22","slug":"a-lucky-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/a-lucky-escape\/","title":{"rendered":"A lucky escape"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Taiwo Abiodun\u00a0 recounts the day he escaped being lynched while on an assignment.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

About 30 metres away from the house, the security man furiously ran towards me. As I sighted the iron rod in his hand with its head wrapped with thread, leather and other strange things I immediately knew he was up to something. He charged at me like a mad dog .The hair on his head\u00a0 stood erect while his blood-shot eyes popped out from their sockets. His veins were visible on his biceps. As he got closer to me he raised the object in an attempt to hit me. Fear enveloped me. I cringed. I was trembling like a leaf on water. I quickly pleaded \u201cStop! Stop!! Please don\u2019t hit me with that object!\u201d.<\/p>\n

I thought of running away but again if\u00a0 I should\u00a0 dash across the eight lanes of\u00a0 Ikorodu Express road ,\u00a0 I could be hit by fast -moving vehicles . Again, I thought of exchanging blows with him. But I decided against it because I\u2019ve never fought in my life. But what could I do among eight roughnecks with him now?\u00a0 I then remembered one of\u00a0 Bob Marley\u2019s songs \u201cHe who fights and runs away lives\u00a0 to fight\u00a0 another\u00a0 day.\u201d\u00a0 I \u00a0summoned courage and I continued begging\u00a0 him not to hit me with the object. But what next? He\u00a0 started kicking me in the groin and rained\u00a0 blows on me. My head began to vibrate! I kept on pleading\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was not a thief .<\/p>\n

I\u00a0 made a spirited\u00a0 effort to show him my identity card\u00a0 but he\u00a0 ignored it. He was fuming and howling. I begged him to search my bag that I had nothing incriminating on me. Yet he did not listen. By now some roughnecks with croaky voices and nicotine-stained teeth had surfaced from nowhere and in a jiffy they had surrounded me!<\/p>\n

Different thoughts flooded my mind: Will they lynch me today? Did the neighbours hear\u00a0 my screaming ? Why are people not passing by to rescue me? Why is this happening on a Saturday;\u00a0 a non – working day? I was now sweating. It is finished, I thought.<\/p>\n

Is this the end?<\/p>\n

A\u00a0 fair -complexioned young man in charge of Baba Ijebu\u00a0 lottery machine (Loto lottery) in the area\u00a0 ran up to\u00a0 the gangsters and began to warn them\u00a0 saying: \u201cStop beating him, ask him to identify himself. I am warning you o. Does he look like a thief?\u201d<\/p>\n

I quickly fished out my phone and dialled Dr. Adeneye Marcus who introduced me to the family. I told him I was in trouble. He asked me to give the security man the phone to enable him talk to him, but the security man yelled, cursing and ranting,\u00a0 \u201cWho\u00a0 the\u00a0 hell is Dr. Adeneye Marcus. Who is he?\u201d He pounced on me again, snatched my designer sun glasses and broke it. He later seized my phone. I asked him to take me to the police station if in doubt ! All my pleadings fell on deaf ears. I refused to resign to fate and kept on shouting, begging and displaying\u00a0 my identity card.<\/p>\n

The young man in\u00a0 charge of\u00a0 Baba Ijebu lottery kept\u00a0 warning them.\u00a0 He asked for my identity\u00a0 card and asked them to search my\u00a0 bag. I\u00a0 quickly obeyed\u00a0 and while\u00a0 doing this, one of the Area Boys demanded for money, I\u00a0 begged him to be patient.\u00a0 Another\u00a0 one croaked: \u201cLook at his beautiful rings and his\u00a0 golden wrist watch. I could have that.\u201d Then another interjected and pointing at my shoes said, \u201cDis shoe na correct.\u201d\u00a0 I listened carefully to their conversations and made sure I could point at them in case we all got to the police station.<\/p>\n

The great search<\/p>\n

While opening my bag, the\u00a0 security\u00a0 man removed my\u00a0 cap and flung it away. He gave me another blow. I could not utter a word. I\u00a0 showed them my identity card, iPad, midget recorder, camera,\u00a0 and the Yoruba novel I was reading. These were all the contents in my bag, nothing incriminating. I emptied my bag for them to see\u00a0 but he\u00a0 kept raging \u201cNonsense, I said you should leave this place or else I will deal with you in the native way!\u201d As I bent down to continue packing my shiff my saviour Dr. Marcus surfaced in a knickers and shirt!<\/p>\n

Freedom at last!<\/p>\n

Immediately the security man sighted him he became jittery. He started stammering like a two year -old baby who is just learning how to talk. His words became incoherent and his voice shaky.<\/p>\n

Dr. Marcus sighted the juju iron rod he was holding and challenged him. He asked to know whether I mentioned his name to the security man. He answered in the affirmative. Dr. Marcus confronted him with the fact that he heard all the uncomplimentary comments he made about him on phone.<\/p>\n

He was tongue-tied. Now, the ball was in my court, I tried to pounce on him to take my own pound of\u00a0 flesh, but the roughnecks and other sympathisers restrained me. Only God knows where the energy came from. I was now charged and energised. The strength in me bounced back and I wanted to act like my favourite wrestler, The Undertaker. I flew at him, raining curses on him<\/p>\n

Thank God for using tactics: begging and pleading as I stooped low to conquer. If\u00a0 I had argued and exchanged fists with him they could have all pounced on me and snuffed\u00a0 life out of me. And in the end they could have pushed me into oncoming fast moving vehicles along Ikorodu Express way where my body would be mutilated. They could have put tyres round my neck and burnt me alive , accusing me of being a thief.<\/p>\n

Who feels it knows it<\/p>\n

When the case of \u2018Alu 4\u2019, the four students of University of Port Harcourt falsely accused of stealing laptops was reported that\u00a0 I asked why they couldn\u2019t make an effort to defend themselves. I wondered why just one of them couldn\u2019t struggle, fight and escape.\u00a0 Now I know better. It is he that has not been confronted by the storm of life that claims to be a man;, the Yoruba proverb became clear to me. What could the Alu 4 have done among\u00a0 over 200 people?<\/p>\n

The road to House 258 Ikorodu Road<\/p>\n

The story started when I took permission from my editor that I had some stories I was working on that fateful Saturday. He reluctantly allowed me to leave because Saturday is our peak production day.<\/p>\n

Dr. Marcus had invited me to go and interview the mother of one Mrs. Olapeju Akanni who was celebrating her 85th birthday. I jumped at the offer because those are my kind of stories. I like talking to old people. I started ruminating over the questions I would ask. I would ask her how politics was in the late 40s, 50s,60s\u00a0 and 70s, her love life, her sojourn abroad and so on. But all these died prematurely when I got to the house and\u00a0 the security man told me the old woman had no knowledge of my coming. I told him the daughter was aware. I called her and she asked me to\u00a0 wait, promising to\u00a0 call me back as she was at a function. I told the security man that her boss asked me to wait, and he should talk to her. He refused to talk to her but ordered me out of the compound.<\/p>\n

I obeyed and left the premises. I waited outside. It was 5.30pm.\u00a0 The security man met me there and asked me to leave the vicinity. I told him I was expecting his boss to call me or call him for clarification, but he insisted I should leave. I left and walked about 30 metres away from the house yet he came after me and almost set a mob on me.<\/p>\n

When I later called Mrs. Akanni on phone in the evening to relate what happened to me, she trivialised it and said: \u201cMa binu\u201d (don\u2019t be annoyed). I wondered if the casual way she said it was the way to tender an apology.<\/p>\n

Although Dr. Marcus has vowed that they must replace all my lost items, I observed that $ 500\u00a0 in my bag was missing, along with my silver necklace and other things.<\/p>\n

But what occupied my mind was if they had killed me and thrown my body on the\u00a0 express road\u00a0 what would have happened? They could\u00a0 have\u00a0 lied\u00a0 against me that\u00a0 I was trying\u00a0 to escape\u00a0 and therefore dashed\u00a0 across the express road\u00a0 when I was crushed. How many would have believed that\u00a0 I was not an armed robber?<\/p>\n

When I narrated the incident to my colleagues in the office, they were shocked. My editors were dumb founded.\u00a0 All my colleagues taunted me and asked \u201cWhere did\u00a0 you keep\u00a0 your charms as Babalawo of The Nation?.\u201d Another one screamed \u201cFor a whole Babalawo,\u201d as they used to call me, \u201cto have been humiliated like this we are embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n

All professions have their own hazards, I soliloquised.\u00a0 It would have been so painful to have been killed here in Lagos by an angry mob. I have been to the Forest of Thousand Daemons\u00a0 (Igbo Olodumare)\u00a0 in Oke -Igbo, Ondo State, to Igbo Aiwo ( Forbidden Forest)in Ijeru , Ogbomoso and recently to Igbo Agala (Agala Forest) in Ibadan\u00a0 to do stories, nobody\u00a0 harmed me nor\u00a0 was I attacked physically. I have written stories about spirits, the dead and elves yet I was not threatened with any juju. How will a man threaten me with juju just because I was doing my job?<\/p>\n

I have had series of\u00a0 close shaves\u00a0 with death: at the Shaki border\u00a0 in Oyo State , was I was shot at while taking pictures on the okada that took me to the border. I almost drowned in the sea when the wooden canoe engine\u00a0 stopped in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean\u00a0 while travelling from Ugboland to Aiyetoro town to do a story on the collapse of\u00a0 communalism\u00a0 in the community.<\/p>\n

In my sober moments I reflect on how I escaped jungle justice while on a legitimate search for stories and it occurred to me that many innocent people have been killed or lynched. The cause of my brush with death has not even thought it wise to apologise. But what apology do I need when I can thank God for saving my life?<\/p>\n

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Posted in Nigerian Newspapers. <\/a>A DisNaija.Com<\/a> network.<\/p>\n

Source: The Nation Newspaper<\/p>\n

DisNaija.Com<\/b> publishes regular posts on Nigeria News,<\/a> Nigerian Newspapers,<\/a> Online Nigeria Gist.<\/a><\/p>\n

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