My introduction to vehicle ownership was a harsh one.
Although I considered it a self, premature introduction, it was an experience I would not want meted out to even someone I don’t like.
But something caused it.
On 24 August 2008, A Sunday afternoon, we were back from church, my dad was napping in his room and I had to pickup my laptop from a friend, a girl, as I had either project or seminar related stuff to do on my system that day, I don’t remember now. All I had on me was the ₦200, so I went to my Dad’s door and took the keys to his car. A 1992 Toyota Camry, I think it was the very last batch. A smooth car he had maintained save for when he changed the transmission from automatic to Manual because someone whom borrowed the car some 3 years prior had messed the car gearbox up.
Armed with a car key, dressed fine to go meet a girl with just 200 naira in my pocket, I snuck out of the house.
My siblings knew what I had done, but the plan was to return before popsy woke from siesta. A plan indeed.
I had not driven up to 5 minutes before hitting the road. We lived in new market lane at the time and it was a minute drive to Douglas road. Now I’m headed to ikenegbu, so I opted to use the mbaise road junction. Remember it was Sunday afternoon and the road was a tad free.
I noticed a difficulty with shifting from gears 1 to 2, or downshifting from 4 to 2 or 3 to 2. So I decided to always shift from 1 to 3 and only downshift when it was absolutely necessary, since it meant going all the way back to 1.
So on approaching mbaise road junction, I was on gear 4, and instead of slowing down and taking the bend, I only stepped down to 3, with that high RPM, I took the turn. Lo amd behold, congregants from a nearby church crossing the road. It would have been a massacre, so I braked then swerved left, that swerving hit a motorcyclist (okada man), now as a reaction, I swerved right, by this time, the people crossing had crossed and others ran for their lives, I hit a static vehicle parked on the road, the one hit another one in front of it, and while trying to run away from the scene, a man had a tree branch tear a part of his face just beneath the left ear.
When the car stopped, the motorcycle was under the front bumper. Passers-by gathered around the car signalling me to calm down and not come out of the car. It was a disaster. I didn’t have as little as a scratch. The car was a mess. The other 2 cars were messed up, the okada guy had bruises all over his limbs, but he survived. One of the car owners I had hit was a policeman and had asked for my license. He was there screaming he would make sure I was locked up for driving without license. That I intended to kill.
As customary in the east, Sundays are for meetings. My mum had gone for her meeting, and my brother Ashimole Ndubuisi was on an okada heading for a meeting when he passed the scene and saw me. (He was also the person who saw us first many years later when my dad had a crisis on the steering). He called my mum who also got to the scene. Then my dad was called.
My father asked them, did anybody die? Answer was No. Did He (me) die? Answer was No. So just cars got spoilt, answer was yes. He then said I should sort myself out. In his words, anybody old enough to put a car on the road should be man enough to cater to the vehicle and everything that comes with it including accidents. He did not come. Well, not until much later and with plenty disturbance from my mother.
When he got to the scene, I knelt down to beg him first to forgive me for taking the key without his permission. Lol. Medicine after death. My father took his leg from ky hands and asked me to stop embarrassing myself in front of people. He told the folks there nobody was going to any police station. Took the details of the affected car owners, took the okada man to the hospital, called his mechanic and panel beater who appraised the cars and subsequently took them for repairs, then made us push his own car home.
The next morning, I greeted him he didn’t answer me. This happened for 2 days, and I decided to leave home. Nobody knew where I went to.
They searched for me all through that week. Nobody could say they saw me. Meanwhile, I was at my maternal home in isu njaba and just my grand mother and one of my Aunties who had come from town who saw me. It was she who told my mum she saw me at her maiden home.
My dad and mum came calling that fateful day. On seeing me, my father said, in Igbo, onye gbaga ọsọ, gbaga ibe nne ya,ọ na gbaala ọsọ? A person who intends to run and runs to his maternal home, has he really ran? 🤣🤣🤣.
My maternal uncles, my grandmother and some other relatives of my mum intervened and begged him.
On our way back to owerri, he said he had spent over 150k naira fixing those cars, and I already know he would be taking it out of my school fees account. I didn’t say a word.
It was then I made up my mind I was not driving my father’s car or any body’s car again. A decision that would lead to the very harxh experience of car ownership I cored in the first paragraph.
Please keep reading.
As a result of this, I started saving up to buy my first car. 😁. I undertook project writing jobs for my seniors in school then for a free, laboratory works (I was studying microbiology, and I dare say I was also very good at it) for different people for a fee, and many other tasks including using my free time to merchandise supplements and viagra from office to office. You’d be amazed at how many corporate men patronised my viagra business. Coming from a medical background and with what people called a sweet mouth, I sold the highest viagra for the company amongst my peers. I digress.
So I saved up some 150 to 160k then and saw an old Honda civic. The civic really appealed to me but the car was a manual and I didn’t want to get a manual car, not with what had just happened mo this prior. So the other option my money could afford was an Omega opel. The car my father nicknamed my coffin.
“Ehe Junior, igbe ozu Motor gị ahụ, Fuel ọnọ ya”
He would tease. Junior, that your Casket of a car, is there fuel in it?
Truly, that car wanted to kill me. Fuel was 44 naira at the time, but bringing out 440 to buy 10 litres then was hard because I can’t recall driving that car for 3 straight days without problems. , it was either the coil distribution was bad, or carburetor was bad, or something was always wrong. Yet in all of these, the mechanic kept saying the car was a good car. Lol. Good car and na my blood e de collect so. Pride won’t even let me ask my dad for help either with his mechanic or for money. I was still at war with him. Hahahaha. Person wey I de war with go still send me message, amd I go go albeit frowning all the way. My father no sabi look person face. It was my mum who had compassion on me on some days, assisted with either fuel money or money for fix. In her defence, I ran errands for her with the car too. Eventually, I got around enjoying the car, cruising it around town until I sold it to a guy who said he would die if I didn’t sell to him. This was in 2009.
I sold because I got a deal on a Honda legend, a 1986 model. The car was too clean and good but it had no engine. So I bought the car for ₦80k and got an engine from onitsha at ₦45k. Car was set and sounding fine. The day I took it home was the first day I drove it. A heavy ran started on the road, the wipers weren’t working, no air-conditioning, and the windows won’t wind up. So parking and waiting was not an option as the car would be soaked right there on okigwe road. Luckily I had a face towel with me. So while driving with the right hand, I used the left as a wiper. 🤣🤣🤣🤣. People outside would have been better than me if they stood directly under the rain without an umbrella, but here I am, driving and being heavily drenched while in motion. I got home, my father laughed me to scorn. He was like, you didn’t learn from the first one. He checked the car out and said it was a good car but had seen better days. He didn’t enter any of those cars. I’m not sure I recall him doing that. He said instead of me to save my money for better things, I was frittering it away on dead cars.
Well, that would form the basis of the insistent financial education he started giving me. He saw that if he left this boy, he would kill himself with cars. 😁
During my NYSC, he gifted me his Camry as he was no longer driving as advised by his doctor having been diagnosed. I would go on to use that car for less than a year before selling it and sharing the proceeds with him.
My sojourn with cars didn’t start today. And even though it was not a wholesome experience, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. I always jocularly tell my friends, when motor for kill me Don pss, e nọ succeed. It cannot succeed now.
