I want to tell the story of Obinna.
Obinna was born in Okija in 1990, and for most of his life had never ventured beyond a 200km radius of his run-down family home. It was not that he was unadventurous or lacking in ambition.
It was that there was precious little opportunity to do anything more than hope and dream about someday making it to the bright lights of the big city, making something of himself and helping his parents and siblings to escape the poverty-enforced geographical shackles keeping them in Okija.
After earning good grades on his SSCE and JAMB UTME in 2006, Obinna was able to gain admission into UNN in Enugu State next door.
As a Chemical Engineering student, he worked several part time jobs to pay his way through what was meant to be 5 years of university, but turned into 7 years after ASUU had its say. Finally he graduated in 2013 and started his NYSC program almost immediately. Things were looking up.
2014: The year before the election “came”
Having completed NYSC in July 2014, he began applying for jobs using the 2nd hand BlackBerry Bold smartphone he had bought with his allowee. Most of the jobs he applied for never got back to him even with a rejection mail, but he persevered until in November 2014, he got an invitation to an assessment for a helicopter cadet pilot program by an HR consultancy called Global Profilers.
He immediately made plans to travel to Lagos for the assessment. He had never been to Lagos before, and the friend he would squat with was little more than a university acquaintance, but Obinna was willing to bear the temporary discomfort if it meant coming one step closer to achieving his dream of changing his family’s lives forever. A little Glassdoor research had told him what even a cadet pilot could expect to earn on average, and he could scarcely comprehend the number of zeroes when he converted the amount to naira.
He aced the assessment and received an invitation to a “quarter final stage.” He aced that too. Then came the semi-final stage with a horrendously difficult test known as a WOMBAT (Wondrous Original Method of Basic Airmanship Testing) test. He smashed it.
Finally came the panel interview with the CEO of the helicopter company doing the hiring. He impressed the CEO and thus found himself among the 12 cadets selected to go for the 1-year training program at Bristow Academy in Titusville, Florida.
He sailed through his NCAA medical and psychometric evaluation at Kupa Medical Centre, Isolo, and measurements were taken for his cadet pilot uniform.
He was told to be on standby for an email requesting him to submit his passport for the upcoming US visa application.
Excitedly, Obinna rejoiced over the phone with his mom – her youngest son was going to be a pilot!
In his head, he had already mapped out the next few years. He was going to move his family out of their crumbling house in Okija while he rebuilt the entire thing.
Chinwe his little sister who was complaining about harassment from lecturers at IMSU, would be withdrawn from there and enrolled into a private university where she would be safe and comfortable.
Leta, his oldest brother who was an Oso Afia (marketplace hustler) in Onitsha would finally get the capital he needed to set up his own business. Obinna the helicopter pilot would make it all happen!
And then the election came.
2015: The election that “came” and refused to “go”
A month and a half into 2015, Obinna was still in Lagos waiting for the promised email. It seemed to be taking its sweet time. Ever the industrious lad, Obinna found his way to Alaba Market where he temporarily took up Oso Afia while waiting for the email that would take him to Florida.
It never came. With every passing week, Obinna grew increasingly anxious until shortly after the election results were announced in March, he decided to send an email to find out what was happening.
He never got a reply to that email. March became May. A retired Major General from Daura was sworn into office as president. Obinna never particularly took much notice of politics because he was much too busy working to feed himself and build his future, so Buhari’s inauguration barely registered on his radar.
Election will come and go, and I will still be here so why should I kill myself about who wins election? Only of course, he soon found out why he should have been concerned.
In July, barely a month after Buhari tool office, he received an email informing him that the helicopter company had cancelled the cadet program due to “financial pressure.” He would later find out that Buhari’s first action after coming in and taking the portfolio of Petroleum Minister for himself, was to run an ethnic northernisation tsunami through the entire oil industry.
Overnight, whatever contracts that were not dominated by Aminus, Abdullahis, Farouks and Ahmeds were unceremoniously cancelled.
From being a preferred bidder for multiple Chevron and Shell transport contracts in 2014, Obinna’s prospective employer suddenly found itself frozen out in the cold without a single sizeable contract. First the cadet program was cancelled, then the company downsized, then it went out of business altogether in the space of a few months.
From being on the cusp of a life-changing opportunity to become a helicopter pilot, Obinna suddenly saw his future prospects shrink into one of “stay in Lagos and continue hustling for commissions at Alaba Market” and “return to Okija and probably end up on a farm.”
8 years later, Obinna has just obtained an auto rickshaw on a hire-purchase basis after getting tired of the Oso Afia grind. His parents still live in their old, weather-beaten house in Okija.
Chinwe is now married with 2 children, but she never talks about what happened during her final year at IMSU. Leta tragically died in a 2019 petrol tanker accident at Onitsha Main Market while hustling for customers.
The big, life-changing opportunity that Obinna worked for all his life and earned fair and square – the opportunity that would have transformed his family’s lives and possibly saved his brother’s life – was taken away from him because of the outcome of an election that he did not even take part in.
For many in the leafier districts of Lagos and Abuja, the election might have been something that would simply “come and go” – something not worth jeopardising friendships and relationships over – but for Obinna and millions of Nigerians like him, it definitely came, but refused to go.
Read also: Vox pop: Nigerians speak about upcoming election, naira scarcity
2023 has come and also won’t go
“Obinna,” for those in the know, is a stylised, fictionalised version of me. Minus the poor parents in Okija, the struggling siblings and the university in Nigeria, the events described above actually did happen to me.
If the election had gone a different way in 2015, I would likely be landing an Atlantic Aviation AW-139 somewhere in Escravos right now instead of lying in my bathtub in Cambridge writing this column and hoping the editor will not give me a shellacking for missing the submission deadline.
In an alternate universe somewhere, “David Hundeyin” is a quiet nobody who only concerns himself with posting on PPRune and engaging in delightful fornication, as helicopter pilots allegedly do. Hey, I said allegedly.
In this reality however, no thanks to the 2015 election whose outcome left me profoundly dismayed, you dear reader, have to deal with the interminable aluta continua of this keyboard militant. And despite everything, I am still one of the lucky ones.
Despite losing the opportunity to become a pilot through no fault of my own, I still managed to become a very successful professional in another field.
Out there however, there are millions of actual “Obinnas” who if they are lucky, may get exactly one opportunity to change their lives, and possibly those of generations of their descendants.
When elections like 2015 “come” and result in destroyed dreams, broken lives and lost once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, where exactly do they “go” afterward?
Maybe we should ask Obinna.
