Novel Approaches To Demobilization
If I were to pop the following question to you; "How would you immobilize a man?" What would be your answer....or perhaps answers? Chain him up! You might be tempted to reply in a hurry. Of course, that is a true but rather simplistic answer. Prisons and other detention authorities have evolved novel chains and chain combinations....leg chains....leg chains coupled to handcuffs.
You might quickly add that you would put him "behind bars"....an aphorism for confining detained persons in rooms or premises whose doors or/and gates have steel columns erected in them. These are firmly embedded in reinforced walls, columns (pillars), beams, and beds of steel.
Still too simplistic an answer, I might respond in retort....
For modern science has over the years, dreamt up many imaginative methods of rendering humans immobile. It all depends on who....or which....authority is privileged to detain you!
If you were a patient on admission, the very fact of your fractured leg may just suffice to hold you down. Hmmm... Broken legs. Natural maiming....
Or the doctor might just instill some mydriatic eye drops into your eyes. Mydriatics dilate the pupils of the eye and prevent them from conscricting in response to bright lights....such that as maximum amounts of light are directed into those eyes, the normal brightness of a not-too-sunny afternoon might just appear like a harsh beam of light! You try to open your eyes, the harsh light forces you to briskly shut them back and literally bounces you back to bed! Ingenious! Is it not? What won't doctors do!
Back to maiming and broken legs.... If your detention authority were to be the Nigerian Police...and your suspected offense were to be "armed robbery' or "blowing grammar".....the trigger-happy cop may just decide to "inject" you...a euphemism for driving a bullet into your leg to prevent you from skipping away! This is a technique the average Nigerian policeman is ever eager to deploy!
And he might just direct that bullet into your chest, your abdomen, your crotch, your neck, or even your skull. It all depends on his whim. Still demobilizing you, is he not? Only that a bullet lodged in your brain may just demobilize you permanently and dispatch you to heaven....only for your official killer to tell your relations..."o ti gba visa"....on their next visit!
While the foregoing techniques are generally applicable, there is a particular method reserved for the insane....sorry, mentally challenged. Times are gone when violent and hyperactive psychotic patients were bound to their beds in chains. These days, the chaining is medical. They are grabbed by the strong arms of male wardens and male nurses.....only for the doctor or another nurse to deliver copious doses of tranquilizing drugs into their buttocks....or indeed any safe ample muscle he elects! Such drugs are classifiable as Major Tranquilizers. Examples are legion....the commonest being Chlorpromazine....mostly branded as Lagactil.
Don't think I have exhausted the list of such methods or you might be mistaken....for I just "discovered" a "new" one. Money!
Keep a man totally devoid of money...
And you have delivered onto him the ultimate demobilizer.
He can't move. He can't think straight. Even if he manages to think straight and come up with ideas, he may not be able to actualize those ideas. He may just not be able to function!
The bane of the thieving rogues we are accursed to be ruled by.....
Or our bane?
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.