Ife Adebayo: #RipKunleOlaifa- Dear Nigeria, how many more will you kill? (Y! Politico)

by Ife Adebayo

I got a chat message from a friend yesterday saying “we lost Kunle Olaifa to an accident”. The only reply I could give was “WHAT???”. I met Kunle Olaifa when I was in the University of Ilorin. He was a very active member of AIESEC back then and he was a role model to many. After school Kunle worked for AIESEC Nigeria and from there he moved on to work for top organizations like ADECCO, GE and Samsung. Kunle was intelligent, humble, and smart. Reading through his Facebook page today I could see that he had indeed touched lives positively, mine inclusive. At such a young age Kunle had achieved quite a lot and had inspired many. Nigeria, and indeed the world, has lost a lot in this one man. His potentials were endless and if he lived to a ripe old age Nigeria would have been the better for it. We just lost a future Ezekwesili, Fashola, Marwa, Ribadu, El Rufai, Fayemi, or Duke. Kunle had the potentials to be any of these people who have made a positive impact in our nation; he had the potential to be a lot more. But today he is no more.

 

It is sad that in 2014 we still live in a country where most of our roads are actual death traps. I made a 7 hours road trip from Abuja to Ilorin 2 weeks ago and the state of the roads are unbelievably bad. We cannot continue like this. 

 

If you wonder why my Y! Politico article today is about Kunle Olaifa you just need to go back to my first sentence “I got a chat message from a friend yesterday saying “we lost Kunle Olaifa to an accident””. It is sad that in 2014 we still live in a country where most of our roads are actual death traps. I made a 7 hours road trip from Abuja to Ilorin 2 weeks ago and the state of the roads are unbelievably bad. We cannot continue like this. The government at all levels needs to do something urgently about our roads; we cannot continue to lose brilliant Nigerians to preventable causes. It is worse that if you manage to survive a road accident there are no highway health facilities to ensure you get the best healthcare before you get to hospital, if you do make it to the hospitals, the doctors are on strike. If the doctors are not on strike, the hospital might not have electricity, if there is a generator there might be no fuel. If there is fuel then the drugs you need or the blood needed for transfusion might not be available, or you won’t get treated until payment is made. There is always something wrong that leads to unnecessary waste of lives. And my question today is this – Hello Nigeria, how many more will you lose?

This is 2014, let me make it clear – this is the year two thousand and fourteen, we cannot be living like we are in 1960, this cannot continue, there are some basic things that we shouldn’t be dealing with at this time in the life of this nation. One of them is the lack of good roads. Many Federal, State and Local Government roads are in major states of disrepair nationwide. We also need to accelerate the development of alternative means of transportation, the Federal Government, Lagos State Government and Rivers State Government are making good strides in the development of train transport, however we need to move faster and do more. If there was a fast, regular, comfortable train transport option from Lagos to Ife that would take only 2 hours, Kunle would most likely not have been on the road, if our roads were in a good state, Kunle would likely not have the accident he had, if government was living up to its expectations we might not have lost another shining star, another bright light, another promising Nigerian youth.

I pray for the family of Kunle Olaifa, I pray God grants his wife the strength to carry on. I pray for the families of many young Nigerians that we have lost to very preventable causes also. May God give them the strength. God will not however come down and fix our roads, neither will he come and lay rail tracks for us, we voted in the government at all levels to do this and we must continue to demand that it is done.

RIP Kunle, your death is a huge loss to the world but a massive gain for the heavens. You left ineffaceable and inerasable footprints on the sands of time. People like you never die, you live on in many lives you have touched and many of us you have inspired. Your death reminds me once again that we cannot, and we must not rest until Nigeria attains the heights due to it in every sector

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Ife Adebayo is an IT Consultant with work experience in Germany, United Kingdom and Nigeria. He currently runs his own IT firm in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an ardent believer in the Nigerian project and encourages all Nigerians to become actively involved in making Nigeria a better place.

Ife is a registered member of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Epe Local Government, Lagos State. He was an active member of the UK branch of the party, holding the post of Youth Leader for the year 2010/2011.

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Comments (3)

  1. I laughed when I read we cannot be living like we are in 1960. It was a sad laugh though for in 1960 Nigeria was way way better than the mess we have now. Ask the old folk. SMH. This is sad. May his soul rest in peace

  2. RIP. Amen.
    But our PDP-led FGN has since 1999, and especially NOW under the first ‘cool’ Phd holder GEJ, has been doing its best; don’t you think? Perhaps the more urgent road to complete is the east-west highway? May the Almighty God guide our leaders aright, amen; else if they stubbornly persist on the wrong path, may HE give us better leaders, amen.

    BTW, did you say you’re ACN? Isn’t that out of fashion? Or that you’re no longer in politics?
    And that would be sad, because I sense that your generation sorely needs to continue swelling the body of energetic, focused and nationalist to a critical-mass that will stand the resistance of your analogue elders to allow you move productively into the digital age.

  3. This is the saddest piece of news I have heard all year. My week has just been messed up. I am tired of all the death!

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