Column No.6: The tragic stories Nigerian faces tell

I’ve wondered this in the past, and this is a re-visitation: If eyes, as they say, are windows to the soul, then the face has got to be the door. From happiness and sadness, to confusion, anger, and even peace, a person’s face conveys everything that’s going on within the mind, and the heart.

Almost spontaneously, this popped into my mind, during a recent trip to Kaduna in the company of a close friend. At a popular traffic stop, while waiting for the green light, a youngster approached my car, feigning indifference, only to make a swift turn to face my windscreen, spraying on it soapy water from an old plastic dishwashing fluid container in an effort to wash it. 

My friend went ballistic, causing the windscreen ‘washer’ to hurriedly clean up his unfinished ‘job’. What stuck with me about the encounter, all fifteen seconds of it, was the face of the young man and the untold stories written all over it, all of them sad. The unsolicited windscreen washer’s face isn’t the only one with stories on it. Nigerians, every single one of us, have such a dizzying array of stories on our countenances that attempting to tell them would require an eternity. But my encounters with some interesting Nigerians recently have forced my hand to tell some, no matter how brief. 

I’ll begin with that of Agada, the Bolt driver in whose car I forgot my tab and a whole lot of important presentations during a recent trip to Lagos. When I realized my foible, I called him, and he promptly claimed I didn’t leave it in his vehicle. Now, earlier, he’d worn the face of a ‘pastor’ (his word), so he claimed he could never keep my tab after finding it, and proceeded to cry tears which sounded as crocodile-y as one could sound without actually being the well-toothed amphibian. I let it go because it seemed there was nothing I could do about it. But after Kaduna, I realized that the face Agada wore is just one of many that he – and countless others – wore due to the hardship they face daily, and their failure to face same with honesty, patience, and pride in their daily labour. 

Then there’s the visage of A’isha, the 23-year-old divorcee from whom I bought two plastic bottles of groundnuts along the road beside Utako Market, in Abuja. While haggling, the ensuing conversation grew to the point that she shared her story, of two children, an abusive, deadbeat ex-husband, and her resolve to not let her kids starve or wear rags. He divorced her after he got laid off from a poorly-paid construction job that saw the then-young family move from Zamfara State to Abuja. When I told her that her sadness showed on her face, she forced a smile that died maybe five seconds later. I paid for my nuts, and drove away haunted by the stories of sadness told by her face.

Then there’s the face of Wale, the super-talented air conditioning expert who visits my home periodically to service my seven-year-old machines, essentially keeping them in tip-top shape for that long. While he works, you could see raw talent and an attention to detail that is ridiculously high and could have been amplified with formal education. But he wasn’t privileged to go to school because his parents are poor, and free education has been a myth not worth pursuing. You could argue that at least he has gainful unemployment, yes. But pause a second to think of how brilliant he could have been at what he does, if only there was a level playing ground. Even if you don’t imagine that, his face paints that picture, crystal-clear.

Same day, in traffic somewhere in Wuse II, a horde of kids selling Gala and other snacks, handkerchiefs, energy drinks and more, crowded my side window. I looked at them, stories of hunger, neglect, desperation, exhaustion, and sadness written all over them. People their age should be in school, ideally, or home writing assignments, or playing sports to keep fit. I’ve said it before, that the staggering amount of scientific breakthroughs yet to be discovered, or the military geniuses that remain undeveloped, or the artistic or medical wunderkinds that remain unctualized in Nigeria can only be estimated when observing the many children that throng ‘go-slows’ selling bits and bobs to make ends – sometimes those of entire families’ – meet.  

I didn’t start this piece with even the faintest intention of including a mention of President Muhammadu Buhari, because the dumpster fire that our nation has become is the fault of many others as well. But as I typed I looked across my desk and saw my copy of ‘Muhammadu Buhari: The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria’, written by John N. Paden, and on the cover is a face that projected a picture of a nation’s hope back then, of the hopes of a people who have for long carried faces of despair. But given what’s going on in the country today, it suddenly became to me, simply, the face of potential, tragically unmet. 

Personally, if I hear the word ‘potential’ used in the context it usually is in our country, I might just go berserk. Studying the faces of Nigerians from all walks of life can be draining, and exhausting because of the intense stories they tell, good or bad. But mostly tragic. As citizens of a country as blessed as ours – with a robust and hard-working populace, immense natural resources, friendly geography, and a most conducive weather and climate – the only stories our faces should tell are those of progress, peace, and happiness. After all, many of us would love to leave a robust inheritance for our children when our time on earth is up. 

Repeat