HINDSIGHT BY INNOCENT AGBO.

HINDSIGHT

Setting: The Future(25th Century Nigeria, Year, 2479)

The children of Dr. and Dr. (Mrs) Ezugwu are watching the tempovision. Just like the television, the tempovision is a household leisure gadget. In fact, there isn't much difference between the two in outward structure except that the tempovision is more portable and easier  to operate.

The actual difference is in the function; whereas the television shows events that are actually recorded, the tempovision can show both recorded and unrecorded events. Thus, you can tune to all the annals of time; you can tune to the past, present and the future and right there before you, the events of the desired period would appear on the screen.

The youngest child, Betty, was insisting on watching the happenings in the spheres, in Mars, precisely. The two elder children said they would rather watch events in 20th Century Nigeria, which they said were far more thrilling than the happenings on Mars. What was on Mars except the multocars and the John Kennedy pleasure center and a few other places. A multocar, by the way, is a car that move-in road, in water, as well as flies, invented by a Nigerian roadside mechanic, half a century after the establishment of the Iron and Steel Industry and approved by modern technology, especially with the use of solar energy.

Dr. Mrs. Ezugwu met the children haggling and told them to sort their differences without breaking their heads.

"You wrangle like leaders in the same party in 20th Century Nigeria. What do you think you are doing?"

There was a guilty silence.
"Now who wants to watch the spheres?" Betty showed her finger.

"And who wants to watch the 20th Century Nigeria?" The two elder children showed their fingers.

"This is democracy, Betty. You sit back and watch 20th Century Nigeria like the others."

"I am sorry, Mum." Betty apologized.

"O that's alright dear, have a happy viewing."

She turned the tempovision far into the second half of the 20th Century Nigeria and left. The first episode they watched was FESTAC 77. the children laughed and laughed. Those ancient dancers. Did they have to be so wild in the way they danced? The oldest child, Sage, said that he wasn't surprised that most ancient Nigerians did not live for a hundred years, when they had to dissipate their calories in wild dances like that.

They saw some cities and laughed and laughed. See how filthy they were. Rubbish thrown about everywhere. Look at the markets: muddy and full of rubbish with disease carrying flies infesting the articles for sale. No wonder they died in large numbers from diseases like cholera, typhoid, et chetera.

Betty leapt back with fright as she saw a thoroughly dirty, scruffy, nude person leer at her, making wild disjointed sounds.

"Who is that?" Betty asked.
"Samboyemi." The others chorused.
"The mentally sick person Mummy told us about, the other day." Nneoma added.

"How can one be mentally ill?
"One can be fatigued in the brain to the extent that one doesn't know what he does. Such people were called 'Mad People'

"Why didn't they give them a psychoprop?"
There was no reply.

A psychoprop is a medicine discovered by a Nigerian traditional medicine man, Opata, which cures all types of mental cases. It surpasses all known mental case drugs. It cures all minor forms of mental imbalance like uncouth manners in the office, or a husband and wife shouting at each other, a driver running into another vehicle or a traffic staff arresting traffic offenders only to collect a fifty Naira, you name it!

They watched the 1979 general elections and laughed.
"Those ignorant ancients." They said.
"Why waste all that effort, old men plodding that vast country wasting energy and resources? Why didn't they use the psychoscope?"

The psychoscope is an instrument, much like the stethoscope, used in detecting personality. It is widely used in offices for employment of staff and in government for choosing public officers. With this, we would merely summon all the candidates to a large hall and  when the inappropriate candidate was tested, a red light would show. This would mean several things. The candidate was likely to be greedy, unlikely to fulfill his political promises and likely to divert all development projects to his village, etc. In the case of persons with balance and uprightness, a green light would show. Simple, no voting and time wasting and fraud.

In another scene, the children saw a typical execution of armed robbers by a firing squad. They were horrified.

"How ignorant and crude the ancients were." The children cried.

In their time, there was no case of robbery. For one thing, the psychoscope was there to detect those with robbery tendencies and they were immediately whisked off into a state residence (a place where mentally dense citizens were assisted to cool off. They were paid social allowances and given gainful employment)
Of course too much individual wealth was roundly discouraged. You couldn't have more than one house, more than one wife or husband, more than one car; you couldn't deposit more than 10 million Naira in your account. The State owned all wealth. So, citizens were not too psychologically oppressed as in the 20th and 21st Century Nigeria.
Hence,  to shoot people and defile the flesh and blood that God made with His own fingers for whatever offence or reason, was strange and unreasonable to the 25th Century generation of Nigerians.

The bell rang. It was a call on the children to go for their supper.

#Fantasy #Sciencefiction #Wishes