Straight Talk: The Problem With Our Society

Just the other day, I was driving along the Lekki-Ikoyi link bridge and there was a long queue of cars approaching the bridge, no thanks to the evening rush - lots of cars and a somewhat narrow bridge. I suddenly noticed a bike rider zoom past the queue of cars on the pedestrian walkway! I was annoyed. It was just a bike, even if the rider hadn't wanted to sit in the traffic with the cars, all he had to do was wriggle his way through on the road designed for tyres, rather he decided to go startling unsuspecting pedestrians going along the walkway. 

I was pleased to see, when I got to the toll gate that the rider had been apprehended by a police man and was being forced to wheel his bike all the way back and then come back riding on the road. "Very good!" I said to the person in the car with me, "I hope he won't do it again". Interestingly, Classic FM was also doing a program on traffic and the wrong things road users do, and just at that moment, the presenter asked a question that he wanted people to call in and give answers to.

"A man is driving on the right lane of a narrow road, when suddenly another driver coming from the opposite direction swerves off his lane and faces the man on the right lane. Both of them refuse to back down and soon cause a gridlock for other road users, if you had the chance of calling just one of them a fool, who would you call a fool, and why?"

I wondered why he was asking such a question at all, the answer was obvious to me! Any way, radio stations just need to get people to call in. So people started calling and I was surprised by some of the answers. Quite a lot of people said they would call the man on the right lane a fool and not the one on the wrong lane! Why?! You might ask, Well, most of them said the man on the right lane was the fool for wasting his and every one's time on a pointless argument when he could just leave the other guy to his folly/craziness and go.

I wondered at that line of reasoning, why would you put the blame on someone who was obviously in the right? If the guy on the wrong lane got away with stuff like that each time, he would never stop doing the wrong thing and feeling justified. He will only get more brazen with time! In my opinion, it is a social responsibility that we all owe each other and the society at large not to condone wrong doing from any member of the society!

There is a new incoming Government now that seems to have a vision, but it does not take just a Government to build a nation, it takes a people! There is a popular saying that you can't continue to do things in the same way and expect different results. We need to change on an individual level before we can change the nation.

Be the change you want to see!