By: Oguntunji Abidemi Emman
Dear next abuser,
How I got your contact will remain a mystery – forever hidden! Even, I, the honourable messenger, don’t know how your contacts got into my hand. Do not take me as the all-knowing, (the one who knows the inside and outside of a human being). Well, one doesn’t fix an appointment with fate. Fate grasps whom it wants, when it wants; when it moves in the direction of your desire, it brings you plenitude. More often than not, when it crosses you, it brings you down. Howbeit, one has to endure. Dear abuser, fate brought about your contact.
Lest I become a loquacious fool, one who leaves the clear path and beats about the bush. I will introduce myself to you. I am a creation of the creations created by the uncreated creator. I am SNIPER, the honourable messenger. My mission is simple – killing of insects with no mercy. This is the job the one who created me gave to me and I always make sure I carry out my responsibility with prompt effectiveness.
Even though it is written on my label that I am meant for outdoor use (on farms or greenhouses) and I need to be mixed with water to reduce the high potency of my effect but trust Nigerians who will always act as a one. They changed my use – converting me to replace insecticides in homes even in offices. Baygon, Raid, Mobil and others have waged war against me in deviant of our close ties. My offence? Betrayal of kinsmen they claim! Nigerians neglected them due to my affordability and efficiency. My creator understood the rudiments of business, so he created me in smaller and bigger packs. A 100ml bottle of my noble content goes for N200 while that of my kinsmen cost as much as N750. Why then am I being blamed?
I thought I had seen it all until death wrote a petition against me. He accused me of not being a registered distributor of his ageing products and for sending people to their place of eternal rest without proper consultation. He complained that ‘Dane guns’, ‘hanging’ and ‘Gammalin 20’ – registered distributors of his products – have started losing customers. Nigerians now prefer to patronise me for the quickening of their eternal rest. All these accusations made the Nigerian government to place a ban on the manufacturing of my smaller packs. They posit that I have become a choice killer for people contemplating suicide. If one finger brought oil, it soiled the others. My effectiveness and affordability have brought this great disaster on me. What have I done wrong? Is it a crime to be cheap?
My dear, before you empty my content into your mouth, perhaps you should see what will happen to you after a few minutes.
Below is the testimony of April Wolf, a social media user, about me.
“Sniper is not an easy killer, it’s an organ eating, liquid monster. Sniper is a Dichlorovinyl Dimethyl Phosphate compound, produced by NDI Swiss Nigeria chemical company. When you want to kill yourself by drinking Sniper, this is what will happen to you:
1. Your eyeballs will swim in its own water as forced tears escape from its reservoir.
2. You will have serious discharges from your nose.
3. A banging migraine will set in. You will hold onto your head and scream like it wants to explode.
4. Your chest will tighten making sure that your body loses control over it.
5. You will be on the floor, screaming through all your senses, as saliva pours out from your mouth like a slow, mini river.
6. You will mess yourself up with vomits. You will long to vomit your intestines too because you are now in so many regrets for taking the sniper but sniper must finish its job.
7. The rest of the crises comes in turns as you shit all over yourself. Your life will be squeezed out of you through the shutting down of your lungs and kidney
Your friends and families will see your dead body with your eyes open and a lot of poo in your underwear. Your body twisted in a strange position as you tried to fight off the pain and crises and they will observe the signs of struggle in the room you took the sniper because you will climb the walls, tear the sheets, rip some of your hair off, just to quail the killing pain.
You are deceived when they make you believe that sniper is the easiest way out. No! It will slowly devour you from the inside, as it shuts down your organs one by one in a tearing order”.
Do you know Seun Mogaji, a popular disc jockey in Lagos who committed suicide by drinking my honourable content after an unresolved marital crisis with his wife? What about the 18year old Loveth from Ekiugbo community in Delta state? Well, she consumed three bottles of my humble self after she couldn’t meet up with JAMB’s cut off marks for her course. You must have heard about Aduba Daniel, a student at Niger Delta University, who killed himself ‘because of carryovers at school’. There are many more customers who have purchased the tickets to eternal rest from me.
Putting off the garment of satire, what about those sets of people who have refused to drink insecticides when they experienced their dose of failures, disappointments, setbacks and challenges?
Orji Uzor Kalu. This name must have struck a chord of remembrance in your head I guess. He was the former governor of Abia state. Do you know that he was rusticated from the University of Maiduguri for participating in students’ protest? What about Mercy Johnson? One of the highest-paid Nollywood actresses of our time. She failed JAMB so many times that she resulted into acting. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean, through the Sahara Desert to the other side of the antipode is Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of United State of America. Well, he endured a steady stream of failure and defeat before becoming president of the United States. He lost eight elections, failed twice in business and suffered a nervous breakdown. But did he taste, not to talk of drinking my humble self?
All of these people didn’t quit and because they didn’t, became great in life. Do you really think killing yourself will end your sadness? No! The brave faced their worst fear eyeball to eyeball while the coward quit at the mention of their worst fear.
Dear abuser, before you empty the contents into your mouth. Think of the fury I am going to unleash inside of you. But in case, you still want to go ahead with abusing me, I wish you a painless, slow tempo death.
Your best one,
SNIPER.
Abidemi Oguntunji hails from Oyo town in the southwestern part of Nigeria. He is a poet, a writer, an entrepreneur, a tech enthusiast, a satirist and a lover of God. He is currently a sophomore at the premier university of education in Nigeria Tai Solarin University of Education where he is studying English and Literary Studies. He believes in the power of the pen, as he uses it to advocate for truth, and the proper usage in reshaping the erroneous mentality of the African people as well as to expose corruption, oppression and injustice. Being a tech enthusiast, he is of no doubt interested in amassing digital skills that would be useful in enhancing the entrepreneurial ideas embedded inside of him. By and large, Abidemi is a graphics designer and dabbles into programming languages. He was the second runner-up in the 2016 maiden edition of the Triple L poetry contest, third runner-up of the 2017 The Nigerian Renaissance Initiative essay contest. He was also the second runner up of the 2019 HumbleTeejay essay contest and he was recently awarded the 2019 Overall Best Writer in his department among others.
