I recall having an interesting — slightly unfriendly conversation with a dear feminist friend on a hot afternoon sometime in the past. I do not entirely recall the day, but it felt like a Wednesday, so let’s pretend that’s what it was. Anyway, I must make it clear that I entirely agree with the idea of feminism. However, I find that I often disagree with the ideas feminists may have, especially about men.

In fact, without meaning to lend myself too liberally to the use of hyperbole, I may even suggest that I have found some of these ideas completely preposterous. Take, for example, the idea that the male gender of the human species is the most dangerous creature on earth. This was the gist of my debate with my feminist friend that Wednesday. I’ll call her Natalie.

I am willing to concede that Natalie’s argument was not without its merits. As she put it, men are the direct or indirect cause of most major calamities that have befallen the world, whether it be wars, capitalism-driven climate change, violent crime, and so on. If there’s an ill in the world, there’s a man behind it, if Natalie were to be believed.

I, of course, disagreed and pointed out the great good men do, arguing that, on the balance of contributions, good and bad, the good men do and have done to the world far outweighs the bad. Besides, I further countered, it is not as though women have not contributed their fair share to the ills that plague the earth. I have not strayed significantly from this philosophical position; however, thanks to certain events, I am now increasingly willing to entertain a pinch or two of salt on the meat of my dogma. 

I recall walking a female friend home at about 12 a.m. not too long ago. We’d been together at a get-together that evening, and we’d both lost track of time. By Nigerian standards, this wasn’t exactly wise. In countries with relatively good security, perhaps a couple of friends taking a casual stroll in the dead of night might seem a little odd but would not necessarily be a big deal. Nigeria, however, isn’t a country with relatively good security.

From armed robbery to kidnapping, the dangers of falling prey to anti-social elements are quite vivid. Just the other day, a girl on her way to her brother’s house was kidnapped, raped, and killed while transiting on a public transport bus, at about 9 pm. And this, in Lagos, the city that supposedly never sleeps.

In Nigeria, people go missing all the time. If she hadn’t had the awareness and composure to make a video and send a voice note to her friend before she was assaulted, it is doubtful that anyone would have known what happened to her.

Fortunately for my female friend — let’s call her Ann — and I, Abuja, where we lived at the time, was — at that time — relatively safer than most parts of Nigeria. You’d hardly even hear any reports of petty burglary, let alone crimes of the more felonious flavours. Sadly, all this has changed for the worse and quite dramatically so, as all sorts of criminal elements have since assailed the once-tranquil capital city of Africa’s most populous State.

Ann and I walked down approximately one kilometre, from where we had met that evening, to her place. Fortunately, my home was just another 300 metres from hers.

As we approached her gate, Ann urged me to leave so that she could watch me get home from the constructive safety of her gate. I found her concern both touching and amusing. Touching because, well, she cared, but amusing, because, well, I am a man, and one could argue — as Natalie did — the most dangerous creature on earth. Surely, I could take care of myself.

As amusing as I found her touching feelings of concern, the encounter made me realize just how different the concept of personal safety was for her than it was for me. Not that I wasn’t aware that women are vulnerable to violent crime, but while I have always sympathised, I cannot truly claim to have empathised. Empathy, I think, requires the ability to step into the shoes of the victim, to feel, viscerally, what they feel. As I now see it, this is only possible if you’ve felt it before.

The gift of a companion on a late evening walk didn’t mean much to me beyond the enjoyment of the sort of pleasant conversation that turns two miles into one. As we say in these parts, “If you want to go far, go together.” But Ann’s concern for me made me realize that the idea of companionship on a late night out meant safety — which in a country like Nigeria, very often translates to the difference between life and death.

Yesterday, too, I was out with another female friend — and by the way, I find myself compelled to issue this disclaimer: I have met up with just as many male friends as female, lest the reader suspects the writer of belonging to the particularly womanising strain of the male gender. As this tale pertains more relevantly to empathy with the female one, however, the preponderance of incidents involving said gender is clearly justifiable, as the wise reader will surely agree. I digress.

At the time, I had only recently moved to Abuja and didn’t quite know my way around. When I needed to move around the city from my home on the outskirts of town, I would either charter a cab — at quite some cost- or tag along with a more locally acclimatised acquaintance if I could find one going my way.

While Abuja was relatively safe at the time, one still needed to exercise some caution. I had only recently arrived in Nigeria and had been informed that many dangers lay around lurking at every turn. New entrants into this maze of dangers are particularly warned to be alert while commuting in any form of public transport, as these are a common medium for violent robberies and kidnappings, colloquially called ‘one chance.’

The practice, across most of the country, is for passengers and transport vehicle operators to congregate at often informally designated parks or stops. The drivers of these vehicles and their conductors wait patiently — or impatiently more often than not — for their vehicles to fill up, and then they leave. To hasten the process, the conductor might yell out, one more space — or “one chance” signifying to anyone in a hurry to leave that this would be their chance. 

Over time, kidnappers and armed robbers figured out that they could make their victims come to them by cleverly posing as commercial vehicle operators. To lure victims in, they would yell out “one chance!” Once their unwitting victim was in the vehicle, they would then drive off to commence whatever dastardly plans they had laid up in store.

For some reason, I decided to get a little adventurous by taking public transport on my own. Because my acquaintance, let’s call her Tolu, closed work after five pm and needed to get home to freshen up first, we decided to meet at eight pm. For me, that meant leaving home sometime after six in the evening to make the 45-minute commute into Abuja proper. The merits of travelling after dark in Abuja for someone who is not familiar with the area are debatable, and I did debate the idea internally. As it turned out, my adventurous side won the debate, and off I went.

As a concession to my smarter, more cautious mind, I resolved to take either the front passenger seat or the rear window seat, as these could give me an advantage if anyone tried to start anything funny. In Abuja, the taxis are either minivans or, more commonly, five-seater sedans that are used to seat six passengers. In the front passenger seat, two strangers are joined together almost as in a forced marriage. Skin to skin, thigh to thigh, and breath to breath, more than occasionally of the foul kind. Cabin conditions in the back are only slightly better. Four passengers have to share the usual space for three but that’s slightly more manageable.

On arrival at the taxi park, I got a space at the back and decided to pay double the fare so I could have two seats to myself. As fate would have it, the passenger who eventually sat next to me turned out to be a little too robust for their own health and for my comfort, and I still ended up being squeezed much like the forced lovers upfront. But that’s all by the way.

While waiting for the taxi to fill up, I had stood by the door, passing on the message that any incoming passengers would have to sit in the generally undesirable middle seat. There was on male passenger already seated at the back so that made two of us, with one middle-aged female passenger seated up front.

In a few minutes, a younger lady approached us and insisted that she be allowed to sit by the window. Though she didn’t give any reasons, I suspected they were security-related. I sympathised with her internally. I mean, sandwiched between two members of my oh-so-dangerous gender would be the worst place to be if said members of said dangerous gender had any dangerous intentions.

I briefly considered letting her sit by the door, but I had paid for two seats and wasn’t going to let her fear interfere with my comfort. I mean, I knew that I meant her no harm. I then thought to myself, perhaps if I spoke with her she would be reassured by — what I imagined to be — the soothing, intellectual inflection of my slightly accented speech, delivered in what I’ve been told is a quite sonorous voice. Ha!

I tried to tell her that I only wanted the window seat because I had paid double the fare. My interference only seemed to aggravate her, as she grew more animated in her refusal to sit in the middle. Suddenly, I realised, now it wasn’t just sitting in the middle she was afraid of, but she was also particularly suspicious of me and my motives in trying to convince her to sit in the middle.

Stung by her insolence in even considering me to be any sort of threat, I sullenly resolved to ignore her. Shortly after this, the robust chap of whom I spoke earlier would come along, and we would leave the unfortunate young lady behind to take another taxi.

We got to Abuja after an uneventful drive. This was where things got a little interesting for me. The cab stopped at the popular Gwarinpa bus stop, which meant I had to find my way to Wuse 2, where I was meeting Tolu, on my own. I had studied the map beforehand so I knew I only needed to get to the popular Berger junction, some 15 minutes from Gwarinpa, and then take another cab to Wuse 2 which would be about five minutes from there.

In the evenings, the bus stop at Gwarinpa, virtually at the entrance of the city, is a mass of human traffic with seemingly one thousand moving parts moving in one thousand directions at the same time. If you’re loose with your belongings here, you may find yourself relieved of the trouble of caring for them in no time at all. The bus stop is an informal one developed under a pedestrian crossing due to the density of foot traffic at that spot and its strategic access to the heart of town. There’s very little organisation as individual cab drivers pull up yelling the names of the places they intend to drive to.

If you’re lucky, one will be going your way very quickly, and if you’re not, you might have to wait a while. I wasn’t so lucky, but that wasn’t really a challenge. I knew I would eventually find a cab going my way.

The real challenge was that, even if I theoretically knew the names of the places I was going to, I would have no idea what they looked like even when I got there. The driver could decide to drive off somewhere else, and I would be none the wiser for it. To make matters worse, it was already getting dark. I started to feel a sense of urgency in getting away from Gwarinpa.

And that sense of urgency drove me to do something I would not have done otherwise. As I stood there by the roadside, a minivan pulled up, heading to Berger junction. “Perfect,” I thought to myself! I could get out of Gwarinpa and away from the chaos of its moving human parts, and on with my journey.

Except, the minivan was filled with men, each one looking gruffer than the next. The driver himself looked much like what I imagined professional kidnappers look like. Never mind the fact that I’ve never seen a professional kidnapper in my life. Now that the mental fog of fear has long been dispelled, I confess the driver was perfectly unremarkable in his appearance. He was just another man.

At the time, though, I felt a soft pang of apprehension settle into my belly. A voice in my head said, “Don’t do it, David”. But I needed to leave Gwarinpa. As I went back and forth on the merits of trusting these dangerous-looking fellows. I observed that the front seat was vacant. I jumped into that, feeling some measure of safety. At least, I wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of those criminals — criminals whose conviction had been secured only, to the best of my knowledge, by the Court of my apprehensive mind.

In that moment, I think I finally truly empathized with the young lady from earlier. She must have viewed me and the other male passengers in exactly the same way I saw these men. Snapping back to the present situation, I took stock of my surroundings. I was in the front seat so I could wave out of the window to attract attention and shout for help if need be. But sitting in the front seat also meant that the dodgy-looking chap behind me could possibly strangle me from behind. The thought made me quite uneasy.

At this point, I resolved within my mind that an armed robbery appeared imminent. I began to take appropriate measures. I had only two valuable items on me, which were my wallet and my phone. My wallet did have a little money in it, but nothing that would change my life if I lost it. I considered, on the other hand, that losing my phone would mean losing my sim card, which could give the robbers access to my bank account. I decided that if I were to get robbed, I would rather sacrifice my wallet while protecting my phone.

To achieve this trade-off, I surreptitiously knelt over and stuck my phone into my socks. This way, I could claim to have left my phone at home, and it would be unlikely that any robbers, being pressed for time, would think to search my socks to find it. I doubted that if these men were truly robbers, they would want anything from me beyond my material valuables. So, having safely stowed my precious Samsung A10 with its cracked screen where few robbers might think to look for it, I felt much more comfortable but not entirely safe.

As the van drove towards Berger, I remained fully alert. The guy in the seat behind me was my most immediate concern as I had no fond feelings for the idea of asphyxiation. At that moment, even if he had announced himself to be the Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force, I doubt much could have been said to disabuse me of my belief in his intention to wring my neck at the earliest opportunity.

While these thoughts ran through my mind, the bus, fortunately, ran through to the next stop. Realizing that we were close to Berger now, I decided to end my mental torture by getting down a little earlier and chartering a cab to myself. With all the boldness that Nigerian life will teach you, I deployed that sonorous cadence of which I spoke earlier, deepening my voice as I asked him how much my fare was.

Usually, the fare is negotiated before you get into a public transport vehicle of any kind. But I had refrained from doing so earlier, given the peculiarities of the situation, so as not to give away the fact that I was a newbie. “Three hundred,” he said, to which I retorted in my most desperate imitation of a Nigerian street accent, “It’s 200!” I handed him a 500 naira note, and as he handed me back a 200 naira note, 100 short of the 300 naira change I had demanded, I jumped down from the front seat, pretending not to notice, just grateful to leave with my wallet, phone, and neck intact.

Perhaps, for the first time, I felt what women feel. At least, at the time, I was convinced I did, but even as I write this, I wonder if it could ever really be the same. My most treasured possessions were my old phone and my wallet with less than $50 equivalent in it. In a country where certain lunatics believe that female body parts possess certain mystical powers, and where there is so much sexual and gender-based violence, it occurs to me that a woman in the same position as I was, just like the young lady from much earlier, would have naturally felt much greater apprehension than the fear that I had for the preservation of my net worth.

So while I may never aspire to genuine empathy, I do understand, now, how women may sometimes feel threatened by men. We are, after all, supposedly the most dangerous creature on earth.

P.S

I get it, Natalie, but you were still wrong.