It’s a pretty wet day in the middle of nowhere and you are all by yourself struggling and battling to keep an 18-gear gigantic behemoth straddled to a rig bearing a 40ton cargo on a long patch of road that looks like a cut-through mud and gravel; wheels sounding like they were getting tired of staying on the road and the huge gulf below seemingly eager to receive the giant anytime the will of the wheels expire! This probably sound like one of those days that makes you wonder whether you are in the right career. You might even begin to wonder whether it was the best part of you that actually pitched for this job. Worst of all, you may even imagine that fate landed you this job in recompense for the sins of your ancestors.
Whatever it is that the extremities of your calling are foisting on your thoughts, please do keep this in mind:
Regardless of the company you haul for or the category of goods you help deliver, you are also assisting other companies in having a chance at survival and growth. Whenever you carry that mast or several numbers of generating sets or metric tons of diesel, know for sure that you are undeniably the reason why we all can talk effortlessly today; why MTN, Glo, Etisalat, Airtel e.t.c. are growing at astronomical rate and smiling to the bank; why a good number of graduates in the employment of these companies now have a better chance at rewriting the destiny of their generations for good and why families are now closer than ever just because the power of communication has demystified the phobia of physical distance!
The many that queue up for their regular dialysis at the teaching hospital in Enugu now have a new shot at life; the grandpa and grandma in the village that regularly make a call on the village pharmacy for their prescription drugs now look forward to a couple more years in the land of the living; the young man involved in a village brawl can now confidently walk to the general hospital to have a CT-Scan done in order to know what that nagging pain in the head is all about- without you, all these would not have been possible. You moved the dialysis machine, the CT-Scan equipment and several kilograms of village medical supplies from the ports and straight to the place of need. Your efforts made the above testimonies possible!
You are the reason why many more hamlets and villages are being delivered from darkness that appear like a generational identity for ages. Many now know that the best folklore is not told under the canopy of darkness. In fact, tales by the moonlight now come out better on the Big Screen all thanks to you. The transformers you carry ensured this; the prefab concrete poles you deliver ensured this; the tons of raw cement, sands and silver steel coils you move over several hundred kilometers help made it a fait accompli.
Your cargo built roads; your goods gave us a beautiful city like Abuja; your sweat delivered some of the best places in the world. Without you, there wouldn’t be a Tinapa; but for you, Obudu transformation would have been a dream on paper; Lagos mega-city would have been a still-born; your tons and tons of delivery of huge stone cores is giving us an Atlantic city out of water and your relentlessness tells us that very soon, trains will start flying over our cars in Lagos! That is the extent of the price you are paying for our liberty; liberty from strangulated ideas and vision; liberty to dare to dream!
You and several other light and heavy truck drivers help nourish the next generation of champions. Your willingness to take risk help give the farmers some hope; help deliver groceries in many markets all across the federation; without you, the ‘balance’ would have disappeared from our balanced diet; in fact without you, those young lads that just made our nation proud at the Under 17 youth football championship would probably have join the long list of ‘abikus’ that traumatized families for ages out of poor nourishment for pregnant mothers.
And now without you, there wouldn’t be cars on our roads; we’ll probably be riding donkeys or walking in the company of several other ‘Ogboju ode n’inu igbo irumole’ to move from the ‘Moniya’ rainforest in Akinyele LGA to the marshy lands of ‘Epe’. With rail lines fast rolling away and air planes kissing the ground more than kissing the air, your will help keep the energy drive of the Aba business man alive and the confidence of the Eket oil magnate well oiled! The unending activities of vandals and saboteurs have not dampened your spirit; they shot down Atlas Cove and you rose to the occasion, queuing for several days in the hot and cold just that you may keep our cars on the road; ‘Mosimi’ was rendered comatose and you took upon the responsibilities of chunking up extra more miles to keep the engine of our industries running. Even when our leaders become irresponsible typically by making sure all our investment in boosting power supply comes to naught, your gusto help fire the resilience of the companies that are yet to join their colleagues in escaping to safer haven.
What you put up with is only fit for the best part of horror movies; You drive across some of the worst road networks in the world; crater-ridden roads perpetually in pitch-darkness walled on both sides by thick bed of wild forest readily providing coverage for the evil men that live among us; you live in constant fear of some bad fuel shutting down your engine in the middle of nowhere; you are constantly daring the threat of brutal savages operating either as daredevil armed robbers or the nemesis of western education. You are ever ready to brave the constant harassment of some law enforcement agents who see the cargo you are carrying as another opportunity to earn some ‘shandies’ forgetting you are not the owner but only rendering a service. Some even demand you pay association levies for the protection of rights that they barely understand not to talk of protecting; you live life on the road, miss the warm embrace of dear wives; miss the opportunity of watching your children grow; never enjoy the luxury of a warm bath after a hard day’s job and most likely living off some of the worst wages in the world!
And you know what; it’s not just here at home. World over, in every nation and in every language, there are millions of truck drivers getting fertilizers to farmers, blackboard to schools, medical equipment to labs and teaching hospitals. Truckers are strategic to every dimension of our existence from as little as delivering wheelbarrows through which a young lad is eking out a living for himself at New Bodija garage in Ibadan to moving some of the heaviest turbines to National Integrated Power Project sites just that many more towns may ‘see the light’.
Many homes are standing today on account of the cement you deliver; many companies you assist to grow through supplies you deliver are now hiring many more people that work on machines, move files, cork bottles or load crates.
The above is just a little of the much that you do in driving the economic and social engine of this nation. You’re tremendously important to all the rest of us, by making our lives work, and our work produce a living, providing for families and even the dogs helping to guide the council chairman living in your neighbourhood! The dearth of vision has killed the railways; the greed of investors is almost choking the life out of airlines. But you have remained steadfast; you are not bothered by the extremely bad roads; the contaminated diesel doesn’t even scare you again; the marauding bokoharam killers haven’t yet killed your will; neither have you allowed the greed of some owners who sees you more as a tool to be used than a strategic partner to be nurtured to knock the wind out of your wings!
You are indeed the unsung heroes of our time. Someday, a day will be dedicated to the celebration of your valiancy. Someday, it will surely happen…..someday!
