Recently, I received on my phone an email from the Google Maps Timeline with the subject “Abdul, your April update”. The message summary noted that in the month of April 2022, I traveled 783 km of distance within the duration of 73 hours. I wondered where I traveled to that far. I did not go out of Kwara State in April. So where did this millage come from. Later I realized that Google Maps calculated all my commutes from home to workplace along with other outings within Ilorin metropolis. Still I was surprised to see that I had traveled that far and on road for that duration.

I then clicked the message to explore the timeline for more detail. What I found was so startling: Google Maps has been tracking all my movements for the last 6 years. Perhaps that was when I activated or consented to tracking service. Though I started using Google Maps much earlier than that, I have never noticed that the service kept tracking my movements and retaining the record until recently.

All local and international trips and all notable places inside and outside Nigeria, including shopping malls, airports, cities, hotels, Tetfund intervention sites, etc., I have been to for the last 6 or 7 years were presented to me. (Unfortunately, places of worship I have been to were not captured.) So, I started to review some of them and to check Google Map’s credibility and accuracy.

Under the cities category, I noticed that I have been to 44 cities with detail of places I visited in each city. I have no time to review or verify all these cities talkless of places. Nevertheless, I noticed a place called “Iya Ibadan” which the Maps claimed I visited 3 months earlier. I could not remember anything about this place; in fact, I have never heard of such place in my entire life. Yet the Maps claimed I visited the place. “Iya Ibadan ko Baba Ibadan ni,” I murmured disparagingly!

I then clicked the list of airports. The Maps noted that I visited Muritala Muhammed International Airport. I normally go to Muritala Muhammed International Airport only when I want to travel abroad. I knew well that I did not travel abroad for the last 3 years nor did I see anyone off to that place. I simply ignored that claim and proceeded to check the credibility of other airports on the list.

Mallam Amininu Kano International Airport was listed next among the airports I visited. The Maps noted that I visited the place 8 months earlier, which was around the same time I was spotted at Muritala Airport. This I remembered when I went to Kano for the NATAIS (Nigeria Association of Teachers of Arabic and Islamic Studies) conference around 8 months earlier. It was only then did I connect the dots and remember that I traveled to Kano via Lagos Local airport. Hmm …. Amazing, I eventually agreed with the Maps report. But then I would still contend its accuracy. It is either Google Maps did not make a distinction between “Muritala International Airport” and “Lagos Domestic Airport” or the cab driver that took me to the Domestic airport passed through Muritala International Airport. I could not remember our rout precisely, anyway.

Google Maps also listed 7 sport places I visited within the duration under review. IIUM (International Islamic University Malaysia) Male Swimming Pool in Gombak campus, Selangor, Malaysia, was the earliest one. I knew well I had not been to any swimming pool to swim for years much longer than the duration under review. Much later, however, I recollected that I participated in a cross-country running in which we took off from IIUM Male Swimming Pool. I was sure that I did not swim but I could not remember whether I took shower after the race. Hmm…. I had no choice but to admit with my “spy companion”, because it did not say that I swam but that I was sighted at the place… amazing.

During the period under review, I have used around 4 phones. Through a single Google account, my activities are well kept and well connected. These reports are generally correct except perhaps the so-called “Iya Ibadan” place. I am still thinking where on earth it is located!!! Possibly, by tomorrow, I will remember. Before then what can I draw from this experience?

The Big Lesson
If all one’s activities could be tracked and kept for this period which could even be much longer, why is it not possible for all one’s activities of commissions and omissions from cradle to grave, from Day One to Day Last, being tracked and kept for the Day of Reckoning, the Day of Account “Yawm al-Ḥisāb”. If human beings can come out with devices that can track all our body outer movements (through GPS) and even our body inner movements (through what is called “in-body GPS”), why is it not possible for the Almighty God to do more?! We are told in the Qur’an (50:16-18) that Allah knows everything about us, that He is closer to us than our jugular vein and that our actions are being meticulously monitored by raqīb and ‘atīd (the duo being considered as recording agents/angels). All monitoring agents – biotic and abiotic – will be summoned to bear witness for or against every one and to partake in a free and fair final accountability. The report will be finally presented for one to read, as we are told in the Qur’an: “And We have made every man’s actions/fate to cling to his neck, and We will bring forth to him on the resurrection day a book/scroll which he will find wide open. (and It will be said to him:) “Read your (own record) book: Today you yourself are sufficient to take your own account” (17:13-14).

How prepared are you and I for such self-accounting when our records will be presented to us for reviewing and reckoning like Google Maps Timeline?

Abdul Kabir Hussain Solihu
Kwara State University
24th January, 2023

It is bewildering to watch (please also read (https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2023/01/17/the-chatham-house-effect/amp/) how our political stakeholders and major presidential candidates of 2023 General Elections across all parties are successively flooding to Chatham House in London to sell their empty political agenda to a disinterested audience while shunning the nation’s similar establishment, such as “Nigerian Institute of International Affairs” (NIIA), with real electorates and genuine interest. Where on earth, if not Nigeria, can the nation’s entire leadership celebrate such life of self denial?

For over six decades, we have been told that we have become an independent nation. Have we ever truly been so, or we are simply daydreaming all these years? What we really need is a revolutionary leadership with a clear focus and direction who can think critically and creatively outside the box to fix the crack and set a functioning system. Forget about fixing electricity, water…, fighting corruption, indiscipline etc. They are all empty promises. If our politicians do not know they have been fooling us, at least we ourselves should know we have been fooled. We should be bold and mature enough to say ‘enough is enough’. We should not continue to be deceived even when the deceitful are being deceived by their deceit. Let the envisioned leadership focus only on one thing: that is setting “a functional system” for all structures, within the first 4-year term and even for the second term. If the base is sound and solid every superstructure will blossom. Such base will celebrate and further nurture visionary leadership and dislodge lunatic leadership with myopic agenda. Otherwise, if the system allows anyone to aimlessly sail the ship of life, we’ll remain adrift forever and all things will fall apart.

Let us invest all-out effort in erecting a “Core Governance Performance Indicator” or a “Minimum Governance Performance Standard” in the same way we have been asked lately to adhere to a “Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standard” CCMAS by the NUC. Today our system, including political leadership, is largely dysfunctional; it allows anyone even with mental disorder to become the President of a country with over 200 million population as long as he can play well the camping, decamping and recamping political prostitution game. What a generation of disorientated leadership dislodged from their land!

Prof. Abdul Kabir Hussain Solihu,
Kwara State University
19th January 2023