Few weeks ago, I rushed a domestic accident victim to one of the government hospitals in the city. Based on the circumstance of the accident and the wound sustained, I came to realize that of a truth, there is just a small thin line between life and death. It is possible that a neighbor, a friend or a close pal whom you greeted few hours past could be reported dead. That is the mystery of death. It can come any time. That is why the Holy Book enjoins us to be always prepared.
However, while I waited for the accident victim to be attended to, I kept my eyes busy with the pictures on the wall in the Emergency ward. In the process of looking, my eyes caught an instruction on the wall. It has to do with cost of treatment. The inscription read: Oxygen for adult per minute = N250.00. Children, 1 minute = N180.00. The sight of those figures and the message they conveyed quickly set my brain rolling. At first the task ahead of me was tedious since I am not a good mathematician. For an adult what it means is that, considering the fact that 60mins makes one hour which is N250 x 60mins = N15, 000 x 24hrs = N360, 000.80k for every single day, a person who is sick and needs artificial oxygen spends as much as N360, 000. 80k should the person require to have the oxygen for seven days, it will be N360, 000.00 x 7days!! You can help me in the calculation and produce the answer because sincerely my head is running riot.
Dazed in that deep thought, I pondered over God’s marvelous investment in us through His natural oxygen which is the air we breath every day! Should God ask us to pay for this oxygen, imagine what will happen! What it means is that if you are thirty years it will be N360, 000.00 x 365days x 30 years. If you are fifty years, it will be N360, 000.00 x 365days x 50 years. You can do the calculation by yourself and you will know how much oxygen you would have consumed as a person since you were born. For children, it is N180 x 60mins = N10, 800. If you are a parent, multiply that with the number of your children. You will marvel at the amount of oxygen you and your family consume every day. But that is if God is benevolent enough to leave it at that N250 for adults and N180 for children, because I guess that natural oxygen should be more expensive than the artificial.
Having made the mental calculation, I came to the realization of the fact that should we be allowed to pay for the natural oxygen we take in every day, the cost will be enormous and no one, no matter how rich can afford the price of oxygen in a week and yet this is what the Almighty God in His benevolent spirit has given to mankind freely. Yet a lot of people move around as if there is no God.
Yes! When you encounter some human beings and their attitudes towards fellow human beings, you can’t but ask where they are coming from? You will wonder if they are beasts or human beings. Some, their wickedness is so much that taking another person’s life means nothing. To such they can easily kill, hurt and maimed with or without provocation.
What explanation does a retired school principal have to give as a suitable reason for taking away the life of a woman, who gave birth to him? She carried him in her womb for nine months, went through excruciating pains of labour to push him out into life and existence. What about the sleepless nights the mother had to nurture him into existence? How about the food he ate for several years from his mother’s pot? Typical of every mother, as long as she lived, her son chimezie was still a child and given the opportunity, she would still have been providing for him if necessary.
I learnt that all his siblings are overseas; surely they do send some money to their mother. Chimezie being the only one at home must have enjoyed that money also, because she cannot have dollars and allow his son chimezie and his children go hungry. Yet, this devil’s own son had the guts to lay his filthy hands on an innocent old Woman. Only Heavens can attest to what the woman went through on the day of her death. She must have in her helpless state pleaded passionately to the baby that sucked her breasts to allow her have the free oxygen given to her by God, but No!, Chimezie at 54years then and after ten years turned 64, who knows the value of that oxygen hardened his heart and plucked the oxygen away and the mother of 73years died just like that all because she gave birth to the devil’s own son since no true son can stand the cry of a mother much more being the hand that causes the cry.
The irony of the matter is that up till the day Dr. Chimezie Osuigwe was caught, he has guarded his life jealously; because he had certain charms that helped him disappear at will in the face of any danger. The devil will always lure man to atrocities but he fails to remind man that one day, will be a day of reckoning when man will be made to face the reality of life. Today, a retired school principal who is not ignorant of the law but went ahead and snuffed life out of a dear mother is cooling his heels in the police net. The good thing about this is that the person who brought this news to the notice of the public is his flesh and blood, his 21 years old son; meaning that what goes around always comes around. Dr. Chimezie or whatever you are called; I have one petition to the Almighty God and that is that you be allowed to feel the weight of the atrocities you have committed against your mother.
A fundamental question I asked myself was, Is Chimezie the only person in this devil’s business? The answer is surely no. There are killings going on in several quarters. Everyday people die not of natural causes but deaths caused by fellow human beings. In my surprised state, I imagine how killers sleep at night? Do they really move on the face of the earth with Joy? The Holy Book answers those questions because in the Bible the word of God states that there can be no peace for the likes of Chimezie and Madam One Thousand.
It is not only when you kill like Dr. Chimezie that you can be seen as a murderer. A lot of people kill with their hearts and tongues. When you see a friend who is progressing and you wish that he should die, you are invariably a murderer. But why wish another person death? It is all because of envy and Jealousy. Every one’s destiny is not the same. God has designed a course of existence for everyone and every design once from God is good. He said in Jer. 29: 11 that he knows the thought he has for us, thought of good and not of evil. Why then do you think and plot evil against your fellow being? Remember that if your life is sweet, another’s own is likewise. Why will you take another’s own life and still guard your own? That is nonsense and senseless. And for those in positions of authority, do you know that you are indirectly killing citizens you are governing? Yes! When you deny the citizenry their fundamental rights of good health, access to electricity, good water, and refuse to pay salaries and entitlement you are indirectly killing them and God one day will visit you with his record book. When the book of activities of life is opened what will be your score?
A lot have died in the hospitals because they cannot afford their medical bills and as we now know, oxygen costs that much in the hospitals and yet their money is in the hands of the Government. Government can make provision whereby a poor man who comes to the hospital can receive treatment with little or no charges at all, because there is money from the Government purse that should take care of such situations. However, the price of the oxygen you take in everyday is very expensive; do not take another’s oxygen because posterity awaits whoever that does that. Government should look into our health centres and help poor citizens because not everyone can afford the artificial oxygen. The citizen’s life should be secured because the price of oxygen is indeed enormous.
God’s grace!!
