When it comes to keeping the peace, I’ve also had to do things that I’m not happy with. This is because when I weigh my options and consider both sides of the divide, I realize that I stand more to lose when I’m fighting than I stand to gain when there’s peace.
Of course, there are times to fight, but I’m of the opinion that fights should only be a last resort, never the first thing that crosses a person’s mind. There are people who always seem to be boiling for a fight. Just one little misunderstanding or infraction, then they’re ready to go all out on you. Say something out of turn, what a simple “sorry” would have fixed would be blown out of proportion and before you know it, relationships are ruined. It’s never worth it.
We all have to know that it’s not every call that we’d answer, it’s not every battle that we’d fight. There are some fights you’ll read about that when you figure out what really caused them, you’ll be shocked. Ordinarily, such things should never even start a fight to begin with. Fighting is never the solution and we should always be strategic about it. As Thomas Shelby said in Peaky Blinders, “The only way to ensure peace is by making the prospect of war seem hopeless.”
We should know the kind of battles we fight, we should know when we speak out, and also when we take up arms because being rash can ruin great things. It won’t make sense when you lose a valuable relationship and when you’re asked why, you can’t give the truth because you know it’s a silly reason.
My story is about the time I almost got into a fight with these IKEDC officials. Here in Nigeria, they go from home to home, once a month disconnecting people from power poles. So, the only way to avoid this is to pay your electricity bills. They come towards the end of the month, or the beginning of the next month, this is during the period when salary earners will have their money and paying it would be easy. It was all good.
However, in my area, they started coming twice a month. They were coming every two weeks and it didn’t make sense. You see, there’s a rule in Lagos State that states that you have to be owing the bills for more than three months before your house will be disconnected from the power pole. So, people try their best to make sure that they don’t owe for more than three months, and also they keep their debts below the average bill accrued in three months.
At the time, this was what we were doing, so we never really had issues. Other than that, we paid our bills on time and kept them up to date. But during this period when they started coming twice in the month, we were shocked for a reason. They told us that the first group that came was those who made sure that all bills for that particular month were paid. Then, the second group was to ensure that no home had any outstanding debt. So, since we were owing for at least a month, they were going to disconnect us from the power pole.
This didn’t make any sense to me and I told the officials. They couldn’t just spring such a rule upon us like that and expect us to go with it. The official who was to climb the pole was adamant, he said that he was going to cut the pole, he was already climbing up and I warned him not to touch our cables. You see, these guys were only after the money. They’re always quick to cut your cables because they know that you’ll have to pay a reconnection fee, and that’s what they’re always after. That’s why when you’re still talking to them, one of them will quickly climb up the pole and cut it.
Anyway, our conversation got heated because the guy started asking me if I knew his age and why I was disrespecting him. I too told him that he was trying to get money off me in a way that would never make me respect him, regardless of his age. I was angry enough, that I was ready to fight him. He was already shoving me on my chest. Thankfully, I was pulled away before I could do anything. A neighbor spoke to me and calmed me down.
Even though I wished to, I didn’t lay a finger on him. Would I have beaten him? I doubt that. He was bigger and older than me. However, that wasn’t the reason I decided to back off. The power officials are government assets and are protected by the law, laying a finger on any of them would have landed me in jail. And if you know anything about our police system, things would have gone from bad to worse then.
My neighbor got me to realize that it was a fight I wasn’t going to win. If I did manage to beat the guy up, police would be called and I would get arrested. Still, I could get beaten up and still arrested. It would be their words against mine. I didn’t want to put my family through all that stress.
So, I backed off. The neighbor that spoke to me also ended up speaking to the officials, I don’t know how he did it but he got them to leave without cutting any cables. They took their ladders with them and that was it. I was glad the event went without incident, if I find myself in a similar situation today, I’ll probably make the same sacrifice. Because it’s just not worth the trouble.
In the coming months, other agents came with the same silly reason, but not those particular agents. I didn’t see them again until I left for school. And today, when I think back to that moment and how close I came to falling into a police net, I realized that my temper could have gotten me into major trouble.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case.
