BOILING COCKTAIL

MADNESS IN THE AIR ANDREW ALIBBI (alibbie@yahoo.co.uk) One boring morning on my way to work, I was attracted to the sight of a couple mentally challenged people at different locations between my lodge in Ife and my place of work at Ipetumodu. When I got to the office that day, I decided that I would take a volume study of the number of insane people on the streets of Ife. So on my way home in the evening, while Balinga, the driver was entertaining us with Saheed Osupa, my eyes were by the window looking left and right searching for madmen and madwomen on the street. That day, I counted 10. It was a sad discovery to me because they were mostly youth. I decided to add a little flavour to my research by taking a toll of the newly recruited madmen and women on the streets of the ancient city. I swung to work from Monday through Friday. By the end of the week, I discovered that there is an average of two every day. I was discussing it with a female passenger while taking a commercial bus home one evening and she said. oga, this one na small thing. If you want to see mad people, go to Ilesha. Nothing dey for ife. With this shocking revelation, I decided that I was going to visit Ilesha the next weekend to confirm the story. I decided to chat with a couple of friends scattered across the country on social media. When I raised the issue of the rise in the number of insane people, they all told me that the rise in the number is not restricted to a particular town. Despite their position that it is a nationwide problem, I was bent on going to Ilesha by the weekend to confirm what the woman in the bus told me. I wanted to also establish if some of the mentally deranged people that I see everyday on the streets actually wandered in to the town from there since Ilesha is not quite a distance from Ife. Though I am no psychiatrist, Wikipedia defines madness as a spectrum of behaviours characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioural patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person becoming a danger to himself or others . It is obvious that based on the definition given above, mad people are not just those roaming our streets naked or half naked, they could be wearing the best of cloth and could be in the highest position in government. How can you explain why a public figure will steal so much money that he and three of his generations unborn cannot finish spending? Or how can you explain why a young man on a University campus will sag his trousers exposing a pair of boxers that he knows will depopulate the fishes in the River Niger if thrown into it? why will a man strap himself with explosives just to exit this sweet world by taking people who are not ready to embark on the journey with him? These and many such questions will help in visualising the situation we have in our hands. While the consumption of illicit drugs could be accused of being behind the increase in the number, other factors like spiritual and economic hardship have their own roles to play. Economic factor seem to be a major reason because people can do anything for money. That is why parents can agree to watch their children dancing half naked on television and smile because the child will bring money at the end. It is for this same reason that a young man will travel to the Orients to sell his kidney. It is still for this same reason that a lady can stand on the street at ungodly hours of the night to follow a man she has never met before to a location she doesnt know. The Irish poet and playwright, Samuel Beckett wrote in his play, Waiting for Godot: we are all born mad, some remain so. Based on this statement and also considering the state of our countrys

economy today, my advice is that at some defined intervals in a day, one should take time to review his/her behaviour to see if he/she is still within the scale of sanity. So while taking a bus ride or an Okada to your destination, watch out for strange behaviours from the Okada man, the driver or the passengers, if there are positive signs of insanity, you know the right thing to do. With my plan to embark on a trip to Ilesha for no other reason but to confirm a mere statement from a beautiful lady who might as well be insane, I think I need to see the psychiatrist. If for no other reason, I need to confirm if it is normal for a young man of my age to go about counting mad people on the streets of Nigerian cities. But first I have to even watch out if the psychiatrist is not suppose to be a patient instead. From all indication, madness is in the air and we need to be cautious of the things we do and also those we interact with so that we do not constitute a danger to ourselves or the society.