SUNRISE FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE BED

Iniye drove past the red traffic light on the very busy Ajose Adeogun road in Lagos State. According to a sub section of a section of a very annoying Nigerian constitution, she had just broken a traffic law, but she couldn’t be bothered. The CEO of Geoporte Oil and Gas in Lekki, Ajah had just called for a meeting, and she had to be seated at the CEO’s office by 1 p.m. It was 11. a.m, and looking at the already built gridlock on the major junction, she concluded that she was unlikely to get her one chance of reinforcing her company’s value proposition to Mr. CEO.

Amazingly, she was not discouraged by the pot-bellied policeman, popularly called Baba Faru, who flagged her vehicle down, and suggested a brain evaluation test at the spot, or by the nausea caused by the horrible stench from his police uniform, as he made his way into the passenger seat of her Toyota Corolla. It was the yell of a driver from a passing commercial bus that got to her, resurrecting her painful memories from the previous night that resulted into a morning of frustration.

“Madam please reverse, we are going to Alausa to test your brain, because only a mad human being can try this nonsense. Your own don end today”, the policeman bellowed, looking like he had just won a million naira stashed in a treasure box, and Iniye had a key to his prize. As she drove past the third mainland bridge, she thought about what the nosy driver had said to her. “Na woman”……”she be woman”, “Idiot, see as you drive like woman”……. Because she was a woman, she was told to give up civil engineering for business administration, because women do not gain employment in that field. She was made to marry Timipreye  Pepple at the age of twenty-two, against her wish, because according to her mother, time was no longer on her side, and she couldn’t give any achievement a name, until she was well settled in her martrimonial home. The weekly beatings she received from her husband every day, was enough reminder of how she should have stuck to her instincts, and refused vehemently. Most importantly, the fact that she was on a shitty 9-5 job as a sales representative of Zion Savings and Loans, so that she could save as much as she could, because her and her two daughters were not entitled to any of her husband’s properties, as females.

From his side glances at perhaps, a very angry woman, Baba Faru realized that he might not get his meal ticket from her. “Madam, I neva chop since morning. Find me 1,000 make me and you waka dey go our own”, he suggested. However, Iniye was not about to budge, as she intentionally drove past the nearest police station, towards the short cut that led to the front of the Lagos State  Secretariat.

She had barely pulled her key from the ignition, when a female LASTMA official roughly pulled her out from the car and dragged her. Apparently news of her bad behavior had angered the senior LASTMA officials who had summoned her, amidst clamour for her to be sent to jail for insubordination to a police officer, and her vehicle impounded indefinitely. All was in noise and sound, but Iniye, who looked as peaceful as she has ever been. Maybe jail was a relief from her life’s troubles, as she smiled in wry. If she had come out strong in her travails as a woman, how hard would dealing with the law, and this policeman? Her scowl was only visible when she thought about the horrible things she would do to the next person that would question her womanhood.