Are you among millions of Nigerians watching the ongoing APC National Convention in Abuja kilometres away, on television? Then count yourself very lucky.
Thousands of others currently participating in the event, have catalogues of unending tails of lamentations to treasure as lifelong experiences.
For them, the convention will go down in their memories as tears and sorrow. While the ordeals of some started along the adjoining roads leading to Eagle Square while for many others their torment started at the various stages of the entrances.
It was the type of narrow entrance gate the Bible described as being easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than to gain entrance into it.
I and a litany of my media colleagues were among those that had horrible experiences. We took several canisters of teargas, we were pushed, shoved aside and brutalised by the security agents.
Accreditation tags and identity cards were not respected in their issuing of open threats to remind us that they are licenced to shot and kill. Their actions will make one ask again and again, whether they are deployed to protect lives or brutalise them. It was a case of adding pepper and salt on a fresh injury. You are on your own if you are not a protected VIP and not strong enough to fight you battle.
But, if the maltreatment from the security agents was considered mild, the molestations in the hands of the hoodlums and thugs already high on all forms of drugs and desperately ready to steal, and maim, has no part two.
Handbags, handsets, eyeglasses, and many other valuables of the participants were stolen with ease. Security lapses to the point that the hoodlums compete for the small space with the VVIPs.
Men, women, young, old, disabled, physically fit, sick, hungry, well fed, beggars, the invalids, Igbos, Hausas, Yoruba, the convention ground was really a melting pot. Why not? Just to be part of the history or a confirmation that there is hunger in the land? Opinions will certainly vary.
Narrating their experiences, a journalist wrote: “It was a terrible experience. If I knew or had the premonition that it would be as chaotic as this, I wouldn’t have bothered coming. It was so bad that I lost my glasses and nearly my phone tab. It’s all pointers to signs of hunger in the land,” he said.
For another senior journalist: “those thugs who were shouting when we were advancing to the gate lifted me up and threw me on others, accusing me of blocking their Oga. Those who caught me while falling manhandled me and were visibly trying to maybe steal from me, but I was wearing a jacket, and I zipped up to protect my things.”
“After their unsuccessful attempts, the police now intervened by reminding them that (Elder) is an old man and should be allowed inside. I was thereafter allowed inside. At the second gate inside, another wahala cropped up where DSS agents and policemen argued among themselves about whether I deserved to enter or not. After an interlude, an operative recognised a secret sign I made and directed that I should be allowed to pass.
“I am complaining too much without realising.
But really, we can write a book out of this very experience,” he lamented.