I remember a journey to Benin I once went on; while we were in between Ore and Benin, all the buses in front of us started turning back and like true Nigerians we turned around too and took the other road without knowing why the people were turning. Using the other lane, we got to the place where the supposed obstruction should have been and there was nothing there (imagine how stupid we felt). We figured the first bus turned back for some odd reason and the people behind him copied without asking why. The funny thing is, we actually did ask another driver and he said something like “I no know why them dey turn oh but e be like say something dey for front“. Don’t give me that look, what would you have done? Well, there’s no use crying over spilled milk (which in this case was about thirty minutes of our travel time).

On another occasion, I was going out with my uncle when again people started reversing, he wanted to join them at first but decided to get to the front and see the blockade with his own eyes before turning around. (Was I scared there were gunmen in front? Yeah, but we just got out of church, my faith bar was still full). We got to the front and again there was nothing there, the blockade was on the lane our fellow Nigerians were going to use. We saved ourselves time and fuel and got a good laugh at the expense of our “brothers”.

What I’m trying to say is, when you’re working towards something people will tell you all sorts of things, there will be setbacks that could have been avoided, sometimes there will be longer routes that look like shortcuts (flee from them), and there would be presumed danger close to the end of your road that would cause you to turn back but don’t, get to that point and see the danger for yourself, it just might be nothing (but if it turns out to be real don’t say I’m the one who told you go oh). Press on, don’t stop or reverse, if you don’t push through the storm you’ll be stuck in it forever. Long story short, like my favourite saying goes, “Keep Moving Forward” or KMF for short.