By Maryam Ogunremi
If I were you right now, I would be asking why this writer is so confused. The confusion is likely to stem from the heading. How can you say life is mine, but not totally mine? Then, who am I sharing life with? Who owns the totality of life?
Well, let me start with that last question. No one owns life. Only God has the totality of life in his hand and no one can take it from Him. Boom! There you have the essence of this article. You can run along now, but before you do, let me interest you in this short journey.
This journey starts with a Yoruba saying that decided to live rent-free in my head tonight, Sunday 5th April, 2026. The saying goes thus – ENIKAN O L’AYE – it means that a single person does not own the world. I have known this to be true for years, but tonight, it hit me in a way I have never felt it before. Tonight, I lived fully in the reality of that saying. Tonight, I saw the saying in all its glory. How did I get here?
So, a religious organisation that I know so well started its annual convention on Sunday 5th April and I have been a part of this convergence of great servants of God for years. This organisation takes its time to provide everything for its members to be a part of this annual event. The provision of free transportation is one of those provisions.
In times past, this was mainly in the care of an individual. This individual sourced the drivers, repaired the buses, got additional drivers and made every needed arrangement to ensure the transportation system did not fail. He was hands-on with the job left in his care. At some point, he was seen as the irumole – god – who understood the language of the buses and could only appease them.
Then came a time when we, the association of free bus riders, stopped seeing him. We started seeing new faces managing the transportation system. At first, it felt like it would all come crumbling down without the input of the man that we used to know. It felt as if they needed to reach out to him for support, or else, it would fall apart. To the surprise of all, it all worked out.
And here I am in one of the buses, with different faces at the bus park and a different person from the person we used to see back then, driving us to our destinations as the organisation wrapped up its day one of eight days. At this exact moment, this Yoruba saying, ENIKAN O L’AYE, came to my mind.
Like always, I will link this to Nigeria. To our current state as a nation. I will definitely link this to the current political happenings. I will link it to the gradual dying state of opposition in Nigeria. Please don’t stop me from linking this to the past 25years of democracy in Nigeria.
The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) got into power in 1999 and held on till 2015, and because ENIKAN O L’AYE, the All Progressives Congress (APC) took over in 2015 with the support of the people. That was when people felt they’d had enough. That was when there were options. The options that the PDP left unhindered.
The APC has had and is still having its day in power, but as the next election year approaches, it seems the APC owns the totality of life with the opposition battling one crisis or another. With over thirty governors on the APC side of the divide, this got me thinking if the saying that ENIKAN O L’AYE will fail in this case come 2027.
Maybe it will not fail. MAYBE ALL WE NEED TO PROVE THIS SAYING IS YOUR PERMANENT VOTER’S CARD AND YOU PARTICIPATING IN THE NEXT ELECTION.
So I ask, DO YOU HAVE YOUR PVC?
Maryam Ogunremi is a broadcaster, writes from Abeokuta.
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