OPINION: Life is yours, but not totally yours

From Maryam Ogunremi

If I were you right now, I would wonder why this writer is so confused. The confusion likely comes from the title. How can you say that life is mine, but not totally mine? So who do I share my life with? Who owns the totality of life?

Well, let me start with this last question. Nobody owns life. Only God holds the totality of life in his hands and no one can take it away from him. Boom! That’s the gist of this article. You can run now, but before you do, let me interest you in this short journey.

This journey begins with a Yoruba saying that decided to live rent-free in my head tonight, Sunday, April 5, 2026. The proverb goes like this – ENIKAN O L’AYE – means that one person does not own the world. I’ve known this to be true for years, but tonight it hit me like I’ve never felt before. Tonight I fully experienced the reality of that saying. Tonight I saw the saying in all its glory. How did I get here?

So, a religious organization I know so well began its annual convention on Sunday, April 5, and I have been part of this convergence of God’s great servants for years. This organization takes its time to provide everything for its members to take part in this annual event. The provision of free transportation is one such provision.

In the past, this was mostly left to the care of one individual. This individual selected the drivers, repaired the buses, recruited additional drivers, and made all necessary arrangements to ensure that the transportation system did not fail. He was hands-on with the work left in his care. At one point, he was seen as the irumole – god – who understood the language of the buses and could only appease them.

Then came the time when we, the Free Bus Passengers Association, stopped seeing it. We have started to see new faces in the management of the transport system. At first it seemed like everything would fall apart without the contribution of the man we knew. It seemed like they needed to turn to him for support, otherwise he would collapse. To everyone’s surprise, everything worked.

And here I was on one of the buses, with different faces at the bus park and a different person than we saw then, guiding us to our destinations as the organization concluded its first eight-day run. At this very moment this Yoruba saying, ENIKAN O THE AYE, came to mind.

As always, I will link this to Nigeria. To our current state as a nation. I will definitely connect this to current political events. I will link this to the gradual decline of the opposition state in Nigeria. Please don’t stop me from linking this to the last 25 years of democracy in Nigeria.

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) came to power in 1999 and held on until 2015, and thanks to ENIKAN O L’AYE, the All Progressives Congress (APC) took over in 2015 with the support of the people. It was then that people felt they had had enough. That’s when there were options. The options that the PDP has left open.

The APC has had and is still having its time in power, but as the next election year approaches, it appears that the APC owns the entirety of life with the opposition battling one crisis or the other. With over thirty governors on the APC side, this made me wonder if the saying that ENIKAN OR AYE will fail here will come in 2027.

Maybe it won’t fail. MAYBE TO PROVE THIS SAYING WE ALL NEED YOUR PERMANENT VOTER CARD AND YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE NEXT ELECTIONS.

So I ask: DO YOU HAVE YOUR OWN PVC?

Maryam Ogunremi is a broadcaster, writing from Abeokuta.

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