I am one person that believes in paying up all bills on time & I always make sure all documents legalizing things that I employ for every day life are in place. “Pay your utility bills on time; obtain your Tv & radio licence; do not drive out without your vehicle particulars & your driving licence ,” I always say to myself. Apart from the fact these are your civic responsibilities more important to me is the fact that the extortionists from the various agencies will not have a chance to harass you. The palaver these people can put you through will make you wish you had done the right thing in the first place. You get to realize that playing Roger the dodger is not worth your while. Persons that you would normally have authority over will belittle you but because you have compromised yourself they will take total charge of you & your soul; you will have that sinking feeling & even after regularizing your documents, which you probably would have done by offering something in exchange, you would have lost face. Despite all of these, there are people who abhor paying bills; you will find water bills that come at no more than N500.00 a month accruing to over N24, 000.00. Why I ask myself & I say, it is a disease & it is not a rare disease. Go past your Nepa office and everyday there are long queues of people begging to be reconnected. Of course, some are there to correct errors but a majority is looking for an illegal way out.
For people who drive without complete documents I cannot understand. The fact that they inconvenience themselves would be of no bother; more annoying is the inconvenience to others. At a police checkpoint, one driver with irregular papers can cause a traffic build up going back a mile not to mention accidents arising from these checkpoints. The commercial vehicle (danfo, molue, taxi) drivers are slightly better because they have their contributions for the day or trip ready. With extended hands out of the vehicle, they hand over anything from N10.00 to N100.00 to the policeman or traffic controller and just keep moving. The fall out of this is that they develop such audacious & indifferent attitude to the flow of traffic. They stop, park, embark, disembark, off-load, load etc, anywhere while the traffic controllers turn a blind eye. It is not unusual to find both the supposed law enforcer & the commercial vehicle drivers totally stoned out of their minds by drugs or alcohol or both. It is frightening to think that some of these police officers are heavily armed while under the influence of drugs or alcohol & quite a number of people have lost their lives in circumstances that never warranted the use of arms. The police force, on most occasions, has referred to such incidents as ‘accidental discharge’.
My experience on a not so very nice day was devoid of any serious incidence & all because I was very much under the weather. I was suffering from my usual gouty arthritis, which has been my ailment since I was 27, some 35yrs ago. My wife’s driver took me to the hospital because this was a serious attack & on our way back we ran into a police checkpoint. I told the driver to get all particulars ready and paid no further attention. I raised my head from the paper I was reading to notice one officer getting into the passenger seat. Being one not known to be tolerant of police harassment, I aggressively asked the officer to get out of the car. He turned round, faced me & what I saw told me to cool down. He had bloodshot eyes & what looked like fumes were coming out of his nostrils and ears. When he opened his mouth, the putrid & pungent smell of cheap alcohol rocked me. This man could have been used as a caricature of the fire-spitting dragon that St. George slew. He got out of the car and with his rifle swinging in every direction he told me that he was taking us to the police station because my driver did not have his licence on him. The driver had told him that he left the licence in the other car. I told him I would wait there while the driver goes home to fetch his licence. This he said was not possible as the driver was the culprit. I was not ready to succumb to him so I said we should go to the police station to which he responded that that would be at 4pm when he finished at the checkpoint; time was still 10.30am. His mate now playing good cop approached me, condemned his action and advised that I give him something to end the matter. The audacity of this cop; he wanted N10k but at the end of the day I parted with N2k.
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