One Second of Madness Can Give You One Year of Pain
Jide had never been a reckless man. At 32, he had built a stable life—an office job, a modest apartment in Surulere, and a fiancée, Tolu, who loved him despite his occasional stubbornness. But one fateful evening, a single moment of madness unraveled everything.
It started at a bar with friends. Just one drink to celebrate Tolu’s promotion, he told himself. But one became three, and soon, he found himself behind the wheel, insisting he was fine to drive.
The red traffic light ahead glowed like a warning from the universe, but Jide, in his intoxicated confidence, barely noticed it. He sped through the intersection. A blinding flash. A screech of tires. Then darkness.
When he woke up in a hospital bed, the truth hit harder than the impact itself. The nurse’s expression was unreadable, but her words cut deep.
“You hit a pedestrian.”
Jide’s breath caught. “Are they okay?”
She hesitated. “A young woman. She survived, but her legs… she may never walk again.”
Guilt clamped around his chest like a vice. He tried to sit up, but his body ached—a small price to pay compared to what the woman had lost.
The court case dragged for months. Tolu left, unable to stay with a man who had destroyed someone’s life. His employer had no choice but to terminate him. Even his closest friends distanced themselves.
One second of madness. One second of arrogance.
And now, one year of pain.
Each day in prison, he replayed that moment—the red light, the speed, the flash. Regret became his only companion. But regret couldn’t undo what had been done.
Would he ever be free? Maybe. But some prisons aren’t made of walls and bars. Some are built within the mind, where guilt is the warden and the past is the only inmate.
And for Jide, that sentence would last far longer than a year.
PRESS
You see this thing called emotional intelligence, if you don’t have it, you’re not different from an animal that acts on instinct. Anything can happen to you at any time.
We stopped for a traffic light. One dispatch rider was trying to squeeze himself in a small space beside my car. I warned him that the space won’t contain him. That he should exercise a little patience. Just a few minutes and we all would go.
He refused. When I saw that his madness wasn’t abating, I tapped the button and my side mirrors folded. Even at that, he still scratched the side mirror and a little mark on the fender with his courier box.
There was a black, unregistered muscle car occupied by young men ahead of me. He tried to do the same thing he did with me. One of the guys gave him a Stern warning and he was shouting at them. Abusing them seriously. He went ahead and the courier box bent their side mirrors outward.
I don’t know who sent him to even call them yahoo boys on top of the mistake he had made already.
Immediately the traffic light showed green, they moved with an indescribable speed and hit this guy mercilessly. If you see the way he fell and his bike and the courier box scattered, if he survives it, he may be paralyzed or at least have multiple fractures, if at all his ribs would remain.
The guys ran away and Everyone else ran away too while the typical Nigerians were pulling out their phones to record.
I wanted to stop and help but I remembered that in Nigeria, VOOM is better than statement.
I remembered my bad experiences trying to help accident victims and officers arrived, I was told to follow them to the station.
They later changed it that I was the one that hit the accident victims even when people saw the man that hit them before he escaped. It was not a palatable experience.
An uncle spent almost a year in detention despite our efforts and huge amount spent to bail him, for conveying accident victims to the hospital and one of them died in his car before they got to the hospital. The police turned everything upside down. He was not even there when the accident happened. He got there and there was nobody that agreed to take them to the hospital. He regrettably did.
Before he was released, his car taken to the station was badly vandalized that we abandoned it for them there.
Remembering everything as if it happened just yesterday made me to increase my speed before story go enter.
But you see what happened to the dispatch rider, it was completely avoidable if not that he lacked emotional intelligence and he met his match, I’m not happy about it though.
When you think you’re mad, you’ll surely meet who is madder.
In all you do, have emotional intelligence, it will save you a lot. Those who lack it will see you as weak or a coward, but they keep plunging themselves into avoidable problems. Some are still in prison now while others have been seriously wounded or kill_ed because of lack of it.
Avoid road rage if you can. “Do you know who I am?” Becomes irrelevant once you kill or get killed.
