The Concourse
Soney Antai
Our Uyo night road lords
It is surging, and while the commoners like you, concoursites, may hardly know their reasons for operating at night, they seem to be on this for some reasons only they and members of their group know. And perhaps security men also know. If you know you know, as our Gen-Zers are wont to say.
Now, let’s get into it. For some years now, a few young men I guess are aged about between 15 and 25 years old have embraced the habitude of riding bicycles along some major roads and streets in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, at night. This, for The Concourse raises cause for worry. Stay with me to find out why this is concerning.
As you would realise, riding a bicycle, especially by the hoi polloi, in Tinubu’s Nigeria should be more commonplace than out of place. That’s for obvious reasons. But these young men would wait until the sun goes to sleep before they hit the streets.
For them Uyo never sleeps. You find them on low and medium height bicycles along Oron Road, Aka Road, among others, at times as late as 10p.m., suggesting that they waited for the night to start greying before launching out. But what’s the news about their night rides? Stay with me.
Virtually all of them have small black bags slung over their shoulders. They are largely solitary folks, don’t mind riding against traffic, and ignore or insult those who protest against their untoward behaviour. And most curiously, their bicycles have no lights, and if they do, they don’t switch them on while on the road!
This situation has elicited some conspiracy theories. One is that these young people are distributors of illicit drugs for some barons. The drugs are said to be carried in the bags which they hang over their shoulders. It is further said that they use bicycles to be able to navigate every possible track or path with little challenges, if any.
Addedly, they use bicycles, the conspiracy theory goes, because they could abandon them in case of any security emergency and escape on foot without any trace, as the bikes have virtually nothing security agents can use to trace them to the riders or their owners. This is another reason they don’t use the lights on the bicycles even though they risk their lives and those of others while on the roads.
Pondering over this takes this column to its last week’s entry: Interrogating our rationality. Recall that we had posited that human beings, by engaging in wars and other bloody activities costing human lives have not shown that they are as rational as they often present themselves to be. These bicycle chaps just present another evidence of what we said in that piece.
Come to think of it. How rational is it for young men to ride about bicycles without lights at night? Even if they did this with lights, why do so at night and oftentimes times riding against traffic? Do these youngsters have parents or guardians? Or is it that they don’t listen to advice, or is it the handiwork of the perpetual fall guys, mbon idọñ (evil village folks)?
This phenomenon is getting out of hand, but we are at ease in Uyo Nkpaeto. So far, it’s a field day for these misguided kids of ours. But this must not be allowed to continue. Security folks should step in before these boys cause something drastic or fatal to themselves or others on the roads.
Enter night girls
What’s a young woman doing on the road alone by 10 pm and beyond? Yours sincerely has seen a number of them and have wondered what they are about. If you ask me how I know this is going on, let me tell you.
Newspaper production takes time and energy. Whenever at it, oftentimes you close from 10pm upwards. With the horrible economy, you hardly drive your jalopy. That means that you have to jump from one keke to another, walk some distance here and there, before you get home. In the course if these you see much.
The concern here is about the safety of those young people in an era when some men, many of them, young ones too, assume they can get rich by rituals involving human lives.
I hope the young women involved in this take their safety and security very seriously. Their lives are more important than whatever they chase about at those odd hours of the night.