TGIF.

Pajawiri weekend dash to Toronto. I decide to go by train. I was surprised by how affordable the business class ticket was as I scanned the rail website.

Shior, Madam says, business class ko, Dangote class ni. You just must do Naija big man sha and throw away money. Oga, you can go be my king of economy.

Economy is all filled up. We buy economy escape – technically inferior to economy.

I board the train. I see what oyibo is calling economy escape. Sadness overwhelms me. I decide that my eyes alone will not see what I am seeing. I put Bamidele on camera. She does teeth gnashing. I call Nduka Otiono, he does teeth gnashing.

Truth is, the business class of the junk plying Kaduna to Abuja and other places is nowhere near this economy escape that will be my home for the next four hours till I reach Toronto. It is not even close. It is the difference between life and death.

Yet, it took two administrations – Jonathan and Buhari – to complete and launch mediocrity with fanfare. And personality cultists on both sides have been fighting bloody battles ever since over who should claim credit for mediocrity.

Ten years from now, when the owners of this economy escape coach decide that it has fallen beneath the human dignity of their mekunu, some idiot in Lagos or Abuja will come here and ship it down to replace the junk that their supporters are currently fighting over.

They will call it business class.

They will say they bought ultramodern coaches as part of a ten-year renewal plan of trains.

What will it take to get the personality cultists on all sides to see the bigger picture about their country?

Fighting all the time and dissipating energy over who gets to claim ownership of mediocrity.

My hero started the train project.

My hero completed it.

My hero renovated and resurfaced a runway on time. Hurray!

Then I lie in wait, waiting for the runway to start cracking after a year or two so I can say ntor! See what your hero built!

There is no way to get the two sides to see that an airport runway is the responsibility of the maintenance department of the local authority in civilisation and that coming to bask that it took more than 15 years for your Federal state to resurface just one runway in the 21st century is a monumental embarrassment.

Something that should be within the routine remit of the local Abuja municipal authority becomes one of Nigeria’s federal achievements of the year, with vuvuzelas of the current administration even going for photo-ops on the runway for social media promotion.

It should embarrass the two parties that are always quibbling over puny personality matters.

This is all about human dignity.

Human dignity has no political party.
Human dignity has no religion.
Human dignity has no ethnic identity.

You either have human dignity or you don’t.
Shey you understand now?

The state whose name you answer as citizen owes it to you. She owes you human dignity as it is understood in the 21st century. Don’t always be celebrating the Mama Put crumbs of human dignity that Nigeria gives you just because the man in charge is your infallible hero.

Do not tolerate, excuse, accept, justify, rationalise celebrate mediocrity just because your hero is in charge.

Do not notice mediocrity, condemn it, only when your hero is not in charge. When you do this, there is mediocrity in your future because you are only waiting for a supervisor of mediocrity who fits within your ethnic, religious, and political biases before you start hailing mediocrity all over again.

Nobody has ever been in charge of Nigeria who didn’t believe that you are only good enough for Western detritus.

That should be the bottom line for you. You should see what Adeola Fayehun tries to do in Episode 258 of her show. She is Plato’s returnee to the cave, showing why your schools, roads, hospitals, trains, are like this instead of being that. That is Plato’s allegory broken down into image and comedy for effective mass delivery and public education.

Can you watch that episode and see transcendence?

If you watch it and see transcendence, Allah be praised.

If you watch it and still see my hero versus your hero, kontinuu. Me I cannot come and go and die. Let me leave you and enjoy this train ride.

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

Pius Adesanmi, a professor of English, is Director of the Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada