Humanising Our Driver – Dr Adekunle Mikail

Dr Adekunle Mikail

Driver is a father, a parent, a son and a responsible being. He has a family to cater for like every other Nigerians. He strives daily and regularly to defeat indignity inherent in laziness and to be honourable.

But like every other Nigerians,he is an expert-the fact that he like other Nigerians has never been to the four walls of a school institution or a workshop does not matter.

For example a driver is a Mr know-all when it comes to not only how to drive,manouevere roads,zigzag corners but on how to flout the country’s law.A driver in my country is simply no respecter of law!He drives with impunity, spat venom on the passengers who have the audacity to demand the reason the driver has not bought the fuel before loading the passangers unto his bus,okada and Taxi. He the driver fights with all users of road(both pedestrians and co drivers),he plies everyday.This fight most of the time,is misplaced,vacuous and superfluous.

Most of the time,the commercial driver earns money without wanting to invest in the science of driving. He leaves his bus, okada and Taxi decrepit.Many a time too, simple personal hygiene that can make his bus,okada and Taxi habitable is left uncared for. The Bus,Okada andTaxi’s spare parts are left unattended to, as the driver acts a mechanic unto his tool!

And let the government conceives a hike in the price of petroleum; yes ordinary conceivement, you see a driver in my country increases arithmetically the bus, okada and taxi’s fee. Alas when the real increment happens, he fears no foes and courts no friend, he increases progressively the price of his bus,okada and taxi. The most hilarious of all the driver’s acts is upping the fate of his bus,okada and taxi when the civil servants demand a pay rise in their monthly salaries from the unfriendly government. Like Oliver Twist, he demands more fare from the civil servants without a qualm!

Notedly, the driver in my country is not all about negatives! He is an embodiment of hard work_ you see him sometime driving in the day and working in the night as a guard, all in the name of augmenting his pay as bad economy permeates the nooks and crannies of the nation.

Sometimes, he is a musician entertaining his passangers when driving.Besides,he drives the wealthy bussiness man who forces him to combine driving with home chores. However, this is a typical example of how bad our rich men are using drivers! It is symptomic of the poor understanding of the driver’s employers who think they own the driver’s life; both physical and spiritual.

A driver to this writer is a man to celebrate while his craft,is a thing to accomodate and recommend. For he is responsible for taking us around the world. He determines our movement and safeguards our life from the druggery accompanied using our legs to transverse the nation, thereby, improving our health!

Besides, our businesses are facilitated by the driver. From Akesan market in Oyo to Sapon in Abeokuta, to Ojaba in ilorin,it is the driver that drives us and our aspirations!

To better the driver’s lots, the buck starts with the driver himself.  He must first be his own pride before he becomes the pride of the nation. He must stop being a political agent whose acquired expertise in threatening and dangerous acts, are used to wreck havoc, rig election and main, when the unfortunate politicians, who will forget him so soon after they are elected, plan to do what they do best.

We the passangers need to be helpful to the plight of the driver too! We must stop seeing him as a sub-human. The impunity into which we use our tongue to lambaste him at a slight mistake,must also be corrected. And if he is driving our family, we must ensure will pay him as at when due and well too. We must as a matter of humanising our driver, ask about his life and that of his family. We should help him becoming more responsible by being more responsible to him!

Our government must in addition to the above, see the betterment of the life of her citizens, which the driver is a part,  as a national duty. Simply put,a driver, being a citizen must be helped. Good roads, conducive environment and constant on the job training that educated the driver on his duty and right as a citizen national ethos and politics, can be facilitated by the government as a token to salvage the driver’s life.

In closing, we should endeavor to humanise the driver’s life the more. For our own life and his,are closely entagled and interwoven while we must let the Hadith of the prophet salla-llahu alehi wasalam

” He will not be blessed who does not bless others” and ” be merciful to those on Earth ,the one in the Heaven will be merciful with you too”, be our ethos in dealing with drivers among us