The friendly people in this rickety church building let their mouths lose as you announced: “You men, do you know that tobacco takes away your manliness, leaving you with not only stale breathes and lean pockets, but also killer cancer?”
They better take that as a life-saving gospel. What else would make a young woman come, on a Sunday morning, in dilapidated buses across pothole-ridden roads to this long forgotten village? It’s the burden for a smoke-free Nigeria.
Legun is only two hours away from your Lagos home yet it appears 200 years away from civilization. It speaks eloquently of grinding poverty, a poverty perpetuated by a government that remembers them only every four years, on the eve of elections, when it hands out salt sachets and sparkling corrugated iron sheets in exchange for their votes. It’s a poverty allowed by the ‘goddess’ of the sprawling Ogun River, that gives out so little to this village of ragged fishermen, pot-bellied children and sore-eared dogs.
Legun, next door neighbour to Lisa, the village which popped up on world map a few years ago, when a Belleview Flight Boeing 737 plunged into its backyard killing 117 persons, is an enclave basking in sedate obscurity. It’s a village that must be saved an added burden: tobacco. Legun, situated in Ifo Local Government of Ogun State is famous not only for its cat fish and ewedu leaves underpriced by cantankerous Lagos traders, but is also known for the planting of tobacco leaves, and in hushed tones, Indian hemp, the latter publicly condemned by authorities. Smoking is a pastime in this village where electricity is as rare and as celebrated as the new moon.
You decided that it was an ideal place to take the gospel of a smoke-free world to after a senior friend who pastors the True Light Parish, an RCCG mission outreach there, hinted you of its situation: many of the youths were addicts; most had not heard that tobacco kills; to them, it’s a hip trend to emulate, to at least feel like the city big boys.
It didn’t matter that for many, education was on the down side. So, on the way, as the bus grunted, jerked and made one of its many break dances on the yawning pot holes at Matogun, a relatively big town, you jumped down to give out campaign materials on tobacco and also of ERA works to a group of boys sweating it out on a football field on a Sunday morning.
They seemed more fascinated with the exercise books, jotters and the latest ERAction magazine edition than anything. You were nearly mobbed with requests, but you squeezed out time to tell them that tobacco, or smoking of whatever substance for that matter, takes away their dreams, their finances, and ultimately, their lives. They are loud, unruly and energetic.
The Parish, the main target for today, is an uncompleted building with about 40 members. Every Sunday the congregation prays fervently against the rain. In this village of mud houses, run down school blocks, sleeping goats, and no health centres, you have listening ears.
You spoke for 30 minutes, illustrating with a poster, and handing out campaign materials. A Yoruba interpreter did a good job. This church with attentive members is a microcosm of a lacking land. Lacks, lacks, lacks… sticking out, as they say, like a sore thumb. Verily, tobacco or any other substance use will be an added, needless burden. But the main targets were the youths. A post-service meeting attracted other boys from the village.
You had nine exuberant converts who would form the pioneer members of a tobacco-smoke-free club in Legun, who would bring in others and spread the Good News to nearby villages, to schools and other such places where youngsters congregate. Dominic Emmanuel, 26, an articulate and personable young man is apparently the leader of the pack. His lips are as dark as charcoal, but the Kaduna-born fish pond worker insisted, walai, that he last smoked a stick of cigarette in Kwara State in 2001 as a saw mill worker, when a friend saw him pull a drag and say, “So, you want to die young?” He promised to bring in more friends and other smokers in the village.
Perhaps, like him, they could also win campaign face-caps for answering questions correctly.
Rashidi and Musa, the restless teenagers giggled as they listened, then pinched each other. The last to come for the half-hour meeting, they literally foot dragged into the place and it took lots of persuasion that the gathering was for everybody, including Muslims like them. They walked home gleefully to show off their exercise books and jotters and stickers to their slim sisters hiding behind their red mud compound. Abednego David, 25, swore he last smoked a year ago. The Benue State-born vegetable farmer echoed the others to request that you come back fortnightly with the smoke-free gospel. ERA or Legun Smoke-Free Club? What name do you give this new-born? No, names are mere semantics; Life is precious. This ‘gospel’ is more urgent than elegant names.
Legun-mission possible.
*Ms Abah, project officer with the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, is presenter of “Tobacco and You” radio show aired in Nigeria.
Comments