Nigeria is like a Gwuragwura (irreparable secondhand vehicle)

By Okechukwu Nwafor

Nigeria is like a rickety secondhand vehicle sold to our people in 1960. Since then we have been trying to keep it moving and now it has dilapidated to the level of gwuragwura (an Igbo slang for an irreparable old car). What do we do? Of course, no one can buy Nigeria. It is like buying a gwuragwura. It is like buying trouble. And continuous repair is also not the option. It is like pouring your money into the Atlantic Ocean. So the big question is what do we do? Just sell it to Mgbuka people so that they can dismember it and resell the parts. Then buy a new car. We need to buy a new country. God, we need a new country. Period!

The tragedy of being a passenger in a gwuragwura is that it entails higher risk than having no car at all. You would prefer to walk on your two legs than commute in a gwuragwura. First, the unbearable quaking will leave you in a state of anxiety. You will be perturbed. You would think that the car will shatter on top of your head. Sometimes the smoke from its faulty exhaust pipe will asphyxiate you, even while you are inside the car. Under the harsh sun, you will be sweating like a Christmas goat. Sometimes the car will cease to move, and all passengers will alight to push it. Woe betide you if a gwuragwura breaks down in the middle of nowhere. That is along Abuja-Lokoja road. Or in the middle of Sambisa forest. That day you will recite your chaplet a hundred times.

Even the driver of a gwuragwura is confused, most of the time. When the driver of a gwuragwura is confused, what will be the fate of the passengers? Currently, the driver of our rickety car is confused. That is why Nigeria is in a state of confusion. Nigeria is so rickety that all the car mechanics brought to repair it since 1960 have given up. Britain sold a rickety gwuragwura country to us. Yet the driver of this gwuragwura doesn’t want to accept this hard fact. The driver has been managing the rickety car since 1960. The passengers have witnessed hell.

The question is why a normal human being should drive a gwuragwura for 60 godforsaken years! Are you kidding me? And the driver is still ever ready to continue driving this gwuragwura. And I know that passengers in such a vehicle are usually abnormal. No sensible human can remain in a gwuragwura for 60 good years. At worst you abandon your money for the driver and enter another vehicle.

Inside such a gwuragwura bus you find different shades of characters. It is a sanctuary for the counterfeit economy. You find counterfeit hawkers, counterfeit preachers whose prowess lies in the amount of money their sugarcoated tongue can attract, counterfeit teachers who teach English yet speak bad English grammar, Doctors who sell a single drug that cures all illnesses. These manners of people abound in our rickety gwuragwura called Nigeria. You even find counterfeit students who read the back of their books instead of the inner content. Inside a gwuragwura, anything goes. Please let us sell this gwurgwura to ndi Mgbuka and buy a new vehicle before October 1 this year. Or, at worst, we disembark and abandon the vehicle for the driver.