The extra mile

with Charly Boy
yarnwithcharlyboy@yahoo.com
07026028479
Life is unpredictable, life has a twisted sense of humour, and life is a driver with a bad attitude; life is a long lonely river. When it dries up, the show is over. When it stagnates, like our capital territory’s man made pond beside the bridge to Gwarimpa, it loses its appeal, and when it rushes, as it will, into the bigger ocean, it merges into the force of similitude, the imprisoning source of all equivalence, forever.
This is your boy, Charly, at the watchtower, hailing all you small and mighty ogas. This week, for me, is cast in a retrospective mould, because I’m like you; I want to know what makes one’s life different from another, what makes America different from Nigeria, and what makes selected dictators different from the democratic elect. I want to laugh in the face of history, our antagonistic nemesis, by remaining a living proof, of how we can break away from the strong hold of ignominy.
The bottom line is that life is like a boxer in the ring; it keeps coming at you with sucker punches. You get to duck, swerve, take it as it comes until you drop from your place of glory or fight back. Most of us fight back, because the human genealogy is made like that; we are programmed to overcome; we are engineered to stretch our endurance to that breaking point and beyond, which is why we can hope, for 50 years in the darkness, still expecting daylight. Going the extra mile means a lot of things to some people, but to me, it’s what distinguishes the sands from the mountains.
My friends; I am a conqueror; I don’t know how to give up. This doesn’t mean that I stand feet apart atop Kilimanjaro and beat my chest twenty-four-seven. No! Actually it’s more than hard work; it’s more than good luck; heck, it’s a hustlers unending war. Of course, it should be much more, because bulldozers, like me, don’t wear our badges as we do cool clothes. Our badges are like scars, like historical landmarks, there’s no washing or taking them off. Going the extra mile, to a lot of people, means a sacrifice they just can’t make.
It’s risky, for a political hound dog to go against the policies of the other goons in the caucus, especially when it will spell his expulsion from the land of milk and honey, but if and when he weighs the balance, and takes into consideration the effect his disloyal position has on the general populace, if and when he factors into his get richer equation the greater benefit of the nation, which puts so much trust in his sorry hide, and if and when he decides that he would rather see the advent of real progress in the back seat of a beetle, than shamefully face a people’s steady decline at the wheel of a custom made jaguar, then he is going the extra mile with his hope for a better future.
Yes, my friends, sometimes it means having no friends, because you might be required to go against the trend, and that has always been one of the defining attributes of a new era.  It’s obviously something that we haven’t seen before, this new era. We are wowed by the possibilities, thrust into the next level with amazing ease, yes o; light can shine on without blinking, without ceasing, without going on a three week vacation, without higher taxes or higher charges, without the biting fangs of capitalism’s market strategies. I believe; the question is; do you? Do you think you can make it?
Have you, O tired and downtrodden, weary soul, given up already, concluding that the alien government hierarchy will never crumble, will never give way? Have you marched through the hot desert in search of the river, but found only silent sand dunes? Are you about to let the desert take you, and make you part of its past, part of its genealogy? Maybe what you need to do is go the extra mile. You need to stand against the sucker punches till the fists that rise arise no more. You need to truck it farther than you ever did before. But why, why do we always have to exceed the preset boundaries? Why do we fight to achieve peace? Why do we endure to rest? Why give the rushing river a run for its pressure, against the constant high tide and the raging waves of a deep, turbulent sea, against the looming waterfall and the jagged rocks below the cliffs, why do we always have to surprise nature and the elements with our best of the best?  Yes, you are welcome to share with me your unique experience, but I think you know that I know that you know that I know we were made to astound creation. Is there any other explanation, for why the scientist maintains we are prone to using only ten percent of our brain capabilities? What’s the other ninety percent doing, sleeping?
Wake it up! Shake it up! Dish it up the way Mohammed Ali did every time he entered the ring. Those sucker punches? They only sting when you blink.  And so I said to myself, Charly, I said, these candidates promising to take us over the bridge, over the bigger ocean, over the bigger wahala, into the future, how long can they truck it? Have they understood the aim of the game, or are they playing another demo re-run? Do they have what it takes? Are they ready to go that extra mile, and are they ready? Some people need fame and money to procreate; others need status and power to concentrate.
All it takes is for you and me to be ready, and we don’t have to be the next president or vice president to stand out. Care more, share more, be honest and think of every great and good thing you can think of. Well, just do it more. If you have been sitting on tax payers’ money it’s time to stand up and let it go where it was supposed to go. If you are a senator cooling your butt for five minutes twice a year, talking rubbish to collect what your whole village needs to step into the millennium, then go the extra mile, get a bill signed that will prevent you and your kind from crippling the nation.
You’ve got to sacrifice for the dream, and join the People’s Army. Check it out yourself; no race ever made it this far without breaking away from the clutches of sycophants and narrow-minded issues. Germany lost Hitler. America released the slaves and let the plantations rot. Great Britain finally stopped trying to colonise everybody and beat a wise retreat into their own backyard. Ghana called a spade a spade, and because they did they are doing so well today. Name names, browse through the civilisations, you’ll see this rugged road stretch out ahead of mankind like a mathematical formula surviving on the strength of its validity.
You’ll hear foreigners sigh; they’ll shake their heads and say, “Nigeria has a long way to go…” We can’t catch corruption two steps down this road. We can’t see the Promised Land fixed like monuments on this hard cobalt, gazing into the horizon, wondering where this audacious road leads. We can’t keep pretending to be moving, standing still.