It’s not every day you witness a miracle or experience a random act of kindness, so when you do, you want to shout it out loud from the rooftop, and that’s exactly what a young man, Leo Spartani did on social media on Tuesday April 5.

On his way home from work at about 6:30 am early Tuesday morning – he had worked through the night to meet up with a deadline – Leo met an old friend who could not get off his phone for some reason, “he kept dialling emergency health services,” he explained. Not far from where they were, a lady was in labour at Anthony Bus stop, Ikorodu road. This is how Leo describes the event of that morning:

“A serpentine queue for fuel, it’s not even 7am yet, and a woman is in the throes of childbirth in urban Lagos, on the floor, at a bus stop, surrounded by women with little but their wrappers and the maternal instinct of support for one of their own.”

While some Lagosians prayed, others put calls through to emergency health services, and before one would say “Eko o ni baje,” the baby was born. The Lagos State Emergency Medical Service team arrives to pick up from where things were, “… The special forces of veteran mothers on the scene assure bystanders that all is well …” The new born was wrapped in a clean Ankara, even as news came that the new father was on his way to the bus stop.

However, the arrival of the emergency service did not stop kind-hearted Nigerians from voluntarily contributing money to the “miracle of a safe delivery”; men and women who were apparently upset about the persisting fuel scarcity, anxious people who had been at that bus stop for quite a while and possibly would not have witnessed that miracle had commercial buses being readily available, and probably those who were trekking to work in a bid to cut cost considering the recent fare hikes.

Amidst the current hardship that befalls the country, it is quite refreshing to see that people have not lost their humanity, and that the economic woes have not robbed some Nigerians of brotherly love. In that time and space, people were devoid of tribal and religious sentiments; no one asked what ethnic group the woman belonged to, no one cared if she were a Christian, a Muslim, an atheist, or idol worshipper, nothing else mattered but the well-being of a mother and child.

“We are that lovely a people,” says Leo.