Chinchi si na ihe di oku ga-emechaa juo oyi.
The bedbug said that whatever is hot would eventually
become cold.
At first, it was difficult. Composing cock-and-bull tales, with every single word an untruth, including ‘is’ and ‘was’. Blasting SOS emails around the world, hoping that someone would swallow the bait and respond. But I was probably worrying myself for nothing. They were just a bunch of email addresses with no real people at the other end anyway. Besides, who on this earth was stupid enough to fall prey to an email from a stranger in Nigeria?
Then, someone in Auckland replied. And another one in Cardiff. Then a lady in Wisconsin showed interest. Soon we were on first-name terms. It was almost like staying up to watch a dreadful movie simply to see what happened at the end. I continued stringing the sucker – the mugu – along. Then a Western Union control number arrived. Unbelievable. I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, had actually made a hit!
No oil company interview success letter had ever given me a sharper thrill of gratification. Like an addict, I was eager to recreate that thrill again. And again, and again, and again. Gradually, it occurred to me that I had discovered a hidden talent. Over the past year, I had adapted and settled into my new life.
At the office, I went through my emails, deleting messages, typing out some new ones. I spellchecked the document on my screen, making double sure all information was correct. To make a clear distinction between my mail and any subsequent replies, I changed the document to uppercase. Most people tended to write in sentence case, but once in a comet-across-the-sky while, I encountered some of the world’s weirder people who wrote regularly in all caps. In that event, I switched back to sentence case.
I read the letter one last time.
SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE/BUSINESS PROPOSAL
DEAR FRIEND,
I DO NOT COME TO YOU BY CHANCE. UPON MY QUEST FOR A TRUSTED AND RELIABLE FOREIGN BUSINESSMAN OR COMPANY, I WAS GIVEN YOUR CONTACT BY THE NIGERIAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY. I HOPE THAT YOU CAN BE TRUSTED TO HANDLE A TRANSACTION OF THIS MAGNITUDE.
FOLLOWING THE SUDDEN DEATH OF MY HUSBAND, GENERAL SANI ABACHA, THE FORMER HEAD OF STATE OF NIGERIA, I HAVE BEEN THROWN INTO A STATE OF UTTER CONFUSION, FRUSTRATION AND HOPELESSNESS BY THE CURRENT CIVILIAN ADMINISTRATION. I HAVE BEEN SUBJECTED TO PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE BY THE SECURITY AGENTS IN THE COUNTRY. MY SON, MOHAMMED, IS UNDER DETENTION FOR AN OFFENCE HE DID NOT COMMIT.
THE TRUTH IN ALL THIS IS THAT THE CURRENT PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA WAS JAILED FOR PLANNING A COUP AGAINST MY LATE HUSBAND’S GOVERNMENT. HE WAS ELECTED AS THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA WHEN HE WAS RELEASED. I AND MY CHILDREN WERE NEVER PART OF MY LATE HUSBAND’S REGIME. YET, THE NEW PRESIDENT HAS SUCCEEDED IN TURNING THE WHOLE COUNTRY AGAINST US, AND IS TRYING DIFFERENT WAYS TO FRUSTRATE US.
THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT HAS GONE AFTER MY FAMILY’S WEALTH. YOU MUST HAVE HEARD REPORTS OVER THE MEDIA AND ON THE INTERNET, ABOUT THE RECOVERY OF VARIOUS HUGE SUMS OF MONEY DEPOSITED BY MY HUSBAND IN DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES ABROAD. MANY OF MY LATE HUSBAND’S REAL ESTATE HAVE BEEN SEIZED AND SOME AUCTIONED. ALL OUR BANK ACCOUNTS IN NIGERIA AND ABROAD, KNOWN TO THE GOVERNMENT, HAVE BEEN FROZEN. THE HUNT FOR OUR MONEY IS STILL ON. THE TOTAL AMOUNT DISCOVERED BY THE GOVERNMENT SO FAR IS ABOUT $700 MILLION (USD) AND THEY ARE STILL TRYING TO FISH OUT THE REST.
MOST OF OUR FRIENDS HAVE EITHER ABANDONED OR BETRAYED US. I AM DESPERATE FOR HELP. AS A WIDOW WHO IS SO TRAUMATISED, I HAVE LOST CONFIDENCE IN ANYBODY WITHIN THE COUNTRY. OWING TO MY PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES, I AM AFRAID THAT IF I CONTACT ANYBODY WHO KNOWS US, I MIGHT BE EXPOSED. PLEASE DO NOT BETRAY ME.
SOMETIME AGO, I DEPOSITED THE SUM OF $58,000,000.00 CASH (FIFTY EIGHT MILLION USD) OF MY LATE HUSBAND’S MONEY IN A SECURITY FIRM WHOSE NAME I CANNOT DISCLOSE UNTIL I’M SURE THAT I CAN TRUST YOU. I WILL BE VERY GRATEFUL IF YOU COULD RECEIVE THESE FUNDS FOR SAFE KEEPING. FOR YOUR KIND ASSISTANCE, YOU ARE ENTITLED TO 20% OF THE TOTAL SUM.
I NEVER REALLY INTENDED TO TOUCH THIS MONEY WHICH IS VERY SAFE AND SECURE IN THE VAULT OF THIS SECURITY FIRM. BUT OWING TO OUR PRESENT SITUATION, I DO NOT HAVE ANY OTHER OPTION. WE ARE BADLY IN NEED OF MONEY. MY SON MOHAMMED IS VERY SICK IN PRISON AND HIS LAWYERS ARE RIPPING US OFF. THE PROBLEM IS THAT I CANNOT LAY MY HANDS ON THIS MONEY OWING TO THE FACT THAT ALL INTERNATIONAL PASSPORTS BELONGING TO THE MEMBERS OF MY FAMILY HAVE
BEEN SEIZED BY THIS GOVERNMENT, PENDING WHEN THEY FINISH DEALING WITH US.
THIS ARRANGEMENT IS KNOWN ONLY TO YOU, MY HUSBAND’S YOUNGER BROTHER (WHO IS CONTACTING YOU) AND I. AS SURVEILLANCE IS CONSTANTLY ON ME, MY HUSBAND’S BROTHER WILL DEAL DIRECTLY WITH YOU. HIS NAME IS SHEHU. SHEHU IS LIKE A BROTHER TO ME. THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THIS MONEY, NOBODY ELSE KNOWS ANYTHING, SO THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.
IF YOU ARE NOT WILLING TO HELP ME, PLEASE DO NOT EXPOSE ME. JUST ASSUME WE NEVER DISCUSSED THIS MATTER. BUT I WILL BE MOST GRATEFUL AND WOULD SHOW MY APPRECIATION IF YOU CAN HELP TO RESTORE LIFE AND HOPE IN MY FAMILY AGAIN.
ADEQUATE ARRANGEMENT HAS BEEN MADE FOR RECEIVING THE FUNDS. IT IS TOTALLY RISK FREE.
I AWAIT YOUR URGENT RESPONSE. PLEASE REPLY THROUGH THIS EMAIL. SHEHU WILL RESPOND ON MY BEHALF.
YOURS SINCERELY, HAJIA MARIAM ABACHA
I watched my cursor hover on the Send icon. Out of the thousands of messages I blasted out every day, very few were replied to. But once an initial contact was established, there was a seventy per cent chance that I would make a hit. Even after all this while, I still felt a slight apprehension about the sudden changes my emails could bring about in a stranger’s life.
The lady in Wisconsin had gulped down my story about a businessman client of mine who had died suddenly of a heart attack while vacationing in the South of France. My businessman client had not listed any next of kin. His domiciliary account fixed deposit balance currently stood at $19 million (USD). If she agreed to bear the huge burden of next of kin, we would share the proceeds 60/40. But she must first sign an agreement promising to send my sixty per cent as soon as she received the money into her account. After a few email exchanges, the kind lady granted me permission to doctor some documents that would qualify her to claim the money. Then, I went for the hit.
DEAR MIRABELLE,
THANK YOU FOR YOUR KIND ASSISTANCE AND YOUR AGREEMENT TO PARTNER WITH ME OVER THIS VERY DELICATE BUSINESS. I HAVE ALREADY INITIATED PROCEEDINGS FOR THE TRANSFER OF THE FUNDS. COULD YOU PLEASE SEND FOUR THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($4,500 USD) FOR THE PROCESSING OF THE DEATH AUTHORISATION FORM? ALSO SEND ALONG FOUR COPIES OF YOUR RECENT PASSPORT PHOTOGRAPH. PLEASE DO THIS IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID DELAYS. THE DEPOSIT WILL BE RELEASED TO YOU WITHIN SEVEN WORKING DAYS.
I AWAIT YOUR URGENT RESPONSE.
YOURS SINCERELY,
OSONDIOWENDI
She played volleyball.
When the Western Union official removed his five percent silencing fee and handed me the rest, I clasped the bundle and shut my eyes tight. I am not sure for how long I stood there. Eventually, I regained consciousness and opened my eyes. The money was still there. I wanted to jump, to shout, to run through the streets crying, ‘Goal’! At last, the Book of Remembrance had been opened and Fortune had called out my name. The sun peeped in through the windows of the dank collection office and flashed me a smile. I counted the cash two more times before I left.
After Protocol Officer had removed Cash Daddy’s sixty percent, I counted the bundle again. Several times throughout the rest of the day, I hauled the notes from my pockets and recounted. That night, I lay in bed with the wad cradled neatly under my pillow. At 2 a.m., I woke up and recounted. I did the same thing at 4 a.m… By 7 a.m., I had scrambled out of bed and confirmed that the money was still there.
Two thousand dollars had not been enough to buy my mother a brand new car. I bought her a jar of cooking gas, some new wrappers, and a bag of rice instead. For a change, I was giving. Not taking.
I felt like a real opara.
Over a period of two months, Mirabelle sang dough-re-mi to the tune of about $23,000. For processing of a Death Authorisation Certificate, Next Of Kin Affirmation, Bank Recognition Form, and Deceased Demise Declaration. Then I sent another email explaining that $7,000 was required for the Fund Transfer Repatriation. This, I promised, would be the very final payment before she received the $19 million. Her reply shocked me.
Dear Osondiowendi,
I’m so sorry to cause delays but I’ve spoken with a close friend who’s promised to lend me the $7,000 but he says he won’t be able till next weekend. Don’t worry, I didn’t breach your confidence. He’s my ex-boyfriend and I told him some BS story about how the money was to start IVF treatment before my partner will be ready with the money at the end of the month. He didn’t ask too many questions when I promised to pay him back double:).
Could you also please let me know when exactly the money is going to be in my account? The reason is I’ve been taking out of the money me and my partner are putting together to move into our own home and I want to be sure to replace it before he notices it’s gone.
Yours,
Mirabelle
This note caused my heart to crack. The poor woman would find herself in a cauldron of debt and disaster when the money she was expecting did not show up. Who knows what comforts the couple had forfeited in saving up to buy a house? What if she was actually hoping to start IVF treatment? Here was a real life happening behind the curtains of an email address. It was a bit unrealistic refunding what we had eaten so far, but I thought, at least, we could shred the job. I spoke with Cash Daddy about the unique problem on our hands.
‘Kings,’ he said when I had finished explaining.
I waited.
‘Kings,’ he called again.
‘Yes, Cash Daddy?’
‘This woman… what’s her name?’
‘Her name is Mirabelle.’
‘No, no, no… what’s her full name? Her surname?’
‘Winfrey. Mirabelle Winfrey.’
He sighed deeply and shook his head remorsefully.
‘Kings.’
‘Yes, Cash Daddy?’
‘Is she your sister?’
I did not reply.
‘Go on… answer me. Is she your sister?’
‘No.’
‘Is she your cousin?’
‘No.’
‘Is she your brother’s wife?’
‘No.’
‘Is she your mother’s sister?’
I got the point.
‘Go on… answer me.’
‘No.’
‘Is she your father’s sister?’
‘No.’
He shrugged. Then as an afterthought: ‘Is she from your village?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you swallowing Panadol for another person’s headache?’
‘Cash Daddy,’ I persisted. ‘The woman borrowed the money she’s been using to pay her bills. Her life is going to be ruined.’
He laughed.
‘Kings, with all the school you went, you still don’t know anything. These oyibo people are different from us. Don’t think America and Europe are like Nigeria where people suffer anyhow. Over there, their governments know how to take good care of them. They don’t know anything about suffering.’
He leaned closer.
‘Do you know that as you are right now – thank God you already have a job – but if you were a young man without a job abroad, the government will be giving you money every week? Can you imagine that? So you could even decide never to work again and just be collecting free money. They’ll even give you a house.’
I was not pacified. He must have seen it on my face.
‘OK,’ he continued. ‘You, you went to school. Did they not teach you about slave trade?’
‘They did.’
‘Who were the people behind it? And all the things they stole from Africa, have they paid us back?’
‘But Cash Daddy, can you imagine what will happen when her…,’ I knew about husbands and boyfriends and sugar daddies, but the word ‘partner’ was alien to my vocabulary, ‘… when her man finds out? At least let’s leave her with the one we’ve eaten so far and try and-’
‘Kings, sometimes I get very worried about you. Your attitude is not money-friendly at all. If you continue talking like this, soon, whenever money sees you coming into a room, it will just jump out through the window.’
He had glared for a while, then shrugged, as if finally willing to concede.
‘OK. Since you don’t appreciate this opportunity God has given you to abolish poverty from your family once and for all, continue worrying about one oyibo woman in America. Be there worrying about her and leave off your own sister and your mother.’
Cash Daddy was right. Not being able to take care of my family was the real sin. Gradually, I had learnt to take my mind off the mugus and focus on the things that really mattered. Thanks to me, my family was now as safe as a tortoise under its shell. My mother could finally stop picking pennies from her shop and start enjoying the rest of her life. My brothers and sister could focus completely on their studies without worrying about fees.
Mirabelle had her problems, I had mine.
Suddenly, I heard a mouth-watering sound. My head snapped up from the computer screen. In this business, the ringing of a phone – whether cellular or land – was the sound of music. It was also a call for order. Buchi, who was sitting at the desk with the five phones and the fax machines, removed chewing gum from her mouth, pasted it onto her wrist with her tongue, then clapped her hands quickly to catch everybody’s attention.
‘Shhhhhhh!’ she shouted.
All talking ceased.
There were five of us who shared this room that Cash Daddy had called the Central Intelligence Agency. The receptionist, the menial staff, the dark-suited otimkpu whose main duty was to herald the arrival of their master and to make sure his presence was well-noticed, all stayed in the outer office. Buchi received all incoming calls before passing them on. At different points in time, depending on who was calling, she could say she was speaking from the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation, the Central Bank of Nigeria… Now, after ensuring that the noise in the office had reduced to a more conducive level, she cleared her throat and lifted the receiver.
‘Good morning. May I help you?’ she asked in a clear, professional voice.
Buchi was a graduate of Mass Communication from the Abia State University, Uturu.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
While listening, she nodded and scribbled diligently in a jotter. Buchi took her job quite seriously.
‘All right if you could just hold on for one second, please, I’ll pass you on to the person in charge of that department.’
She pressed the mute button and extended the appliance in my direction.
‘Kings,’ she whispered as an extra precaution, ‘it’s Ben’s Port Harcourt Refinery mugu.’
Ben was one of our office cleaners. As well as those of us in the CIA, everybody else – the otimkpu, gatemen, drivers, cleaners, cook, receptionist, the boys who lived in Cash Daddy’s house – was entitled to compose their own letters and blast them out to whomever they pleased. Like Cash Daddy always said, there were more than enough mugus to go round. But as soon as contact was established and it looked like money was on the way, whoever had initiated the correspondence was supposed to let me know. Only I and Protocol Officer had keys to the cabinet where we stored the letterheaded sheets, death certificates, bank statements, call-to-bar certificates, proof of funds, money orders, cheques, and any other documents that might be required to prove the authenticity of a transaction. Only I and Protocol Officer could make the phone call to authorise our Western Union official to look the other way.
Some weeks ago, Ben had sent out letters claiming that he was the head of a committee that tendered for and recently completed some construction work on the Port Harcourt Refinery. The project, he stated, was purposely over-inflated by $40 million and he needed help to smuggle the money out of Nigeria. All the recipient had to do was to claim that his business had been awarded the $40 million contract and provide a bank account detail for the transaction. For that, he would keep twenty-five per cent for himself – as long as he transferred the remaining seventy-five per cent to Ben’s bank account. This mugu had agreed and was told to fax his business details so that his business could be registered in Nigeria. He had sent the $6,000 required for the process last week.
The Corporate Affairs Commission registration documents had been faxed back to him yesterday. I took in a deep breath as I grabbed the receiver from Buchi.
‘Good afternoon,’ I said after letting out the air from my lungs, ‘This is Mr Odiegwu on the line. How may I help you?’
‘Hello,’ the Englander replied. ‘I have a document here that shows my business has been registered with the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission, and I just wanted to confirm my registration details.’
Naturally, he had rung the number on the CAC letterheaded sheet.
‘May I have the registration number, please?’
He read it out slowly, careful not to miss any slashes or hyphens. I repeated after him without making record anywhere. What he did not know was that the registration certificate had been faxed from this same office. Dibia, our document expert, was quite good. All the logos and stamps on the documents he supplied were authentic, and so were the signatures.
‘Could you please hold on while I go through our records?’
While waiting for a plausible length of time to elapse, I admired the Atilogwu acrobatic dancers on the wall calendar in front of me. I had seen their energetic and entertaining dance on television several times before. Their uniforms were remarkably colourful.
‘Is that Mr Del B. Trotter?’ I asked at last.
He confirmed his name eagerly.
‘Yes, we have the documents here,’ I said. ‘The registration was processed on the 12th.’
I could almost hear the splashes of the grin that swam out onto his face. After all, every Homo sapiens – whether Englander or Burkinabe – had the natural right to grin over the prospect of colliding with $10 million for doing almost nothing.
‘Thanks for your kind assistance,’ he said.
I returned the phone to Buchi and made a mental note of the fact that I would still need to speak with this same mugu soon. If Ben successfully convinced him to send another $9,000 for the contract documents to be drawn up, Mr Trotter would probably want to ring the Port Harcourt Refinery office to make some further enquiries.
The clicking of gum and the talking resumed. I was about to return to my screen when Wizard let out a high-pitched cry.
‘My lollipop is awake o! My lollipop is awake!’
All of us recognised this as our daily call to amusement. We rushed over to Wizard’s desk. The words he typed onto the screen sent everybody quaking with laughter.
‘Oh lollipop,’ he had written, ‘am really scared, hun. Am really scared that I ain’t gonna see you again no more, my darl. These people are really threatening me. You know how wild these Africans can be.’
My laughter became the loudest of all.
Wizard had been conducting several online relationships with randy foreigners he met in chatrooms. His romance with this particular American had been going on for six weeks. When their loooove blossomed to the point where the man proposed to ‘Suzie’ that she travel from East Windsor, New Jersey to visit him in Salt Lake City, Utah or vice versa, she informed him that she was just on her way to Nigeria on a business trip. She was a make-up artist, you see, and had an offer to transform girls strutting down the catwalk for an AIDS charity in Lagos. She had arrived in Lagos two days before, and had her American passport stolen in a taxi. Now, she had no way of cashing her traveller’s cheques and the proprietor of the hotel was threatening arrest.
‘Oh babe,’ the man replied, ‘what you gonna do now? Ain’t there no way of taking it to the police?’
‘Sugar pie, all they gonna want is bribes,’ Wizard replied. ‘Hun, I’m gonna really need your help right now. I wanna see if you can show me that you really love me and that what we share is real. Can you do me a real big favour?’
Wizard must have been watching a lot of American movies. His gonna-wanna American-speak was quite fluent.
‘Sure, babe,’ the man wrote. ‘Anything I can do to help.’
‘Honeybunch, I wanna send the traveller’s cheques to you to pay into your bank account. Can you do that and send me the cash?’
Wizard broke off typing and turned quickly to us. ‘How much should I write? Is $2,000 OK?’
‘That’s too small,’ Ogbonna said. ‘Double it.’
‘Yes, double it,’ we concurred.
Wizard resumed.
‘What I’ve got in cheques is about $4,000. Honey, I gotta have some help real quick. Can you be the one to help me out here?’
Suzie went on to explain to her beau that the cheques would arrive within three days; she would send them by DHL. He should deposit the cheques as soon as he received them, and then send her the cash by Western Union. Since her own passport had been stolen, she would send him the name of one of her colleagues at the charity event so that he could send the Western Union in the colleague’s name. The lover boy, swept away by the current of true love, wasted no time in responding.
‘Anything for you, sweetie. I ain’t got that much in my cheque account right now but I could get some from my credit card and replace once I’ve cashed the cheques.’
All of us screamed the special scream. Wizard had made a hit.
It would take about eight days for the bank to process the documents, before the man realised that the cheques that had been paid into his account were fakes. I looked in a corner of the chat box and saw the photograph of the bearded, voluminous Caucasian. Then I looked in Wizard’s own box and saw the photograph of the trim, buxom blond who had no resemblance whatsoever to the V-shaped eighteen-year-old clicking away at the keyboard. My heart went out to the lonely man, but Wizard was untroubled.
‘Thanks honeysuckle,’ he wrote. ‘I knew I could really count on you. Please get it done ASAP cos I ain’t got nothing left on me no more.’
‘Sure, Suz,’ the man replied. ‘By the way, babe, you gotta take good care of yourself and watch out, OK? Maybe I should’ve warned you when you said you were going. I saw on CNN sometime that the folks in Nigeria are real dangerous.’
‘No problem, love,’ Wizard replied. ‘I’ve learnt my lesson and I’m gonna take real good care of myself from now.’
‘I love you babe,’ the man wrote. ‘I really can’t wait to meet you.’
‘Me, too,’ Wizard replied. ‘I promise we’re gonna have a swell time and you’re not gonna wanna let me go.’
Wizard wrote something vulgar. The man replied with something equally vulgar. Wizard topped it with something much more vulgar which Azuka had suggested, and then added one or two more unprintable things that he was going to do to the man when they met.
‘By the way, hun,’ the man added, ‘while you’re out there, you’d better watch out for diseases, especially HIV. I hear almost all of them over there have got it.’
All of us standing round the screen stopped giggling. In the ensuing silence, I could almost hear the whisperings of our National Pledge.
I pledge to Nigeria my country
To be faithful, loyal and honest
To serve Nigeria with all my strength
To defend her unity
And uphold her honour and glory
So help me God
Wizard seemed to have heard it as well. The faint voice of patriotism must have ministered to the young Nigerian.
‘It’s not like that in Nigeria,’ he replied. ‘It’s in South Africa that they’ve got it so bad.’
‘Is it? Anyway, you still be careful. All them places are all the same thing to me.’
Suddenly, I stopped feeling sorry for the mugu and remembered something I had to do. I went back to my desk, clicked the Send icon, and wished my urgent email Godspeed.
This business of being a man of means had taken me quite a while to get used to. Sometimes, I even forgot that my circumstances had changed. I was about to pass out on the floor the day my first cellular phone bill arrived, when I remembered that I could afford to pay it. I was storming my way out of an Aba ‘Big Boys’ shop in protest at the obese price tags, when I remembered that I had nothing to quarrel about, went back in and bought my Swatch wristwatch. My mother was also having a hard time getting used to the better life.
She had been delighted the day I visited home with the cooking gas and the wrappers and the rice, she told me how much I reminded her of my father when I brought a variety of McVitie’s biscuits and Just Juice for my siblings, but when I presented her with a bundle of oven fresh notes, her feelings took on a different shape.
‘Kings,’ she asked with fear, ‘how did you get all this money?’
‘Mummy, I told you I’ve been doing some work for Uncle Boniface. This is from my salary.’
‘What sort of work do you do?’
I had told her before.
‘I help out at his office. I take phone calls. I run small errands. I help him organise his business meetings…’
‘So how much is this salary he gives you for running errands?’
‘Well, it varies,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s all done on a commission basis.’
‘Commission – on errands?’
I fumbled with my shoelaces, pretending I had not heard.
My mother continued staring at the bundle in her lap without touching it, as if she expected the cash to rise up on its two feet and bite. She was about to ask another question when I laid firm hold of her Achilles’ heel and twisted.
‘Don’t worry, Mummy. I know how much you miss having Daddy around, but I’m your opara and I’m really going to take care of you. Very soon I’ll get my own house and all of you can come and be spending time with me.’
My mother smiled. For the first time since the money took up residence in her lap, she invited it into her fingers for a proper welcome. My dear mother had probably never handled so many notes at any one time in her entire life. Her smile grew very fat.
‘But make sure you keep looking for a proper job,’ she said. ‘You know this work for Boniface is only temporary.’
‘Mummy, don’t worry. I’ll keep looking.’
‘OK, come let me bless you.’
I knelt on the floor in front of her. She placed her right palm on the centre of my head. Legend had it that her own father had done the same thing when she brought him an envelope containing half of her very first salary. The other half had paid obeisance to her husband.
‘You will have good children who will take care of you in your old age,’ she began.
‘Amen,’ I replied.
‘You will find a good wife.’
‘Amen.’
‘Evil men and evil women will never come near you.’
‘Amen.’
‘You will continue to prosper.’
‘Amen.’
‘Wherever this money came from, more will continue to come.’
‘Amen.’
My mother’s prayers worked. A few weeks later, I made a $27,000 hit and moved from Cash Daddy’s mansion into a rented four-bedroom duplex in Aba.
Shortly after, I travelled to Umuahia.
My family rushed out when I arrived. Eugene and Charity hovered around my brand new Lexus. They stroked the body, sat inside, took turns at pretending to steer the wheel. My mother admired the car briefly and stood by the front door watching them. Odinkemmelu and Chikaodinaka peeped from behind the living room curtains. When my cellular phone rang, the excitement was just too much for my siblings to contain. They squealed like toddlers being tickled in their armpits and navel.
It was my Lufthansa airline pilot mugu whose $27,000 had rented my new house and contributed towards my Lexus. I asked my family’s patron saint to please ring back later. Under the best of conditions, I required superhuman faculties to unravel his guttural accent; with my mother standing beside me, I was certain not to extricate a word. My mother was staring at the cellular phone and then at the car. She looked slightly disturbed. There was no need for me to worry too much about her mood. Wait until she saw the surprise I had in store for her.
‘Are you people ready?’ I asked.
My mother and siblings threw their bags into the car boot. They were spending the weekend with me.
‘Mummy, sit in the owner’s corner,’ I said.
‘Yes, sit in the owner’s corner,’ Eugene and Charity chanted.
With a modest smile, my mother went round to the back right of the car where people who could afford chauffeurs usually sat. Eugene held the door open for her.
‘Mummy,’ I said, looking up at her image in the rearview mirror as we sped off, ‘I forgot to tell you. Please can you arrange for some relatives – at least two – to come and live with me? It’s a big house and I’ll need help.’
‘OK. I’ll ask Chikaodinaka’s mother. I think she has some younger ones.’
‘No, no, no. I don’t want people that are too young. I’ll prefer people who’re older. Or people who’ve already lived with someone before. I don’t have the time to start teaching anybody how to flush the toilet and turn on the gas.’
Everybody laughed. Once, we had a help from the village who mistook the china teapot as an exotic drinking cup. And another one who blocked the toilet with sheets of my father’s Statesman newspaper which she had ripped out to clean up herself. These helps were as useful as oxen, but they came with their own variety of headaches.
‘How big is the house?’ Charity asked.
‘You mean the one we’re going to or the one I’m planning to build?’
‘The one we’re going to.’
‘Don’t worry. You’ll soon see it.’
She bounced about on her seat and beamed. Charity was such a big baby. She leaned forward on the back of my headrest and played with my ears. I felt like a real elder brother.
‘OK, how about the one you’re going to build?’ Eugene asked. ‘How big is it?’
‘It’s double the size of the one you’re going to see now.’
‘Wow! I’m so glad my school hasn’t yet resumed,’ Eugene said. ‘I wrote to Godfrey to tell him that we were going to your house this weekend. Once he gets the letter, I’m sure he’ll go straight to Aba.’
Eugene was in his first semester at the University of Ibadan. My mother had tried persuading him to choose a university that was closer to home, but he remained adamant that the medical department in Ibadan was the best. Nobody had any argument with that; it was the distance that troubled us. Plus, Ibadan was a favourite hotspot for trouble. As soon as the elections gained momentum, the place would be boiling with bloody riots. My father would never have allowed Eugene to go, but then, there were so many other things my father would never have allowed if he were alive.
My mother reminded me to drive carefully about five hundred times before we finally arrived. When I honked, my gateman opened. I parked in the middle of the compound, some distance from the closed garage door.
‘Aboki, come and take these bags into the house.’
The man rushed to the boot and started manoeuvring the bags. I went ahead and unlocked the front door. After taking my mother and siblings on a tour of the exquisitely furnished living room, the ultramodern kitchen and the four en suite bedrooms, I led them back outside.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ I announced.
I unlocked the garage. Inside was a brand new Mercedes-Benz V-Boot.
‘Mummy, this is for you.’
Charity burst into tears. Eugene ’s eyeballs popped out of their sockets and bounced off the shiny, grey body of the car. My mother used her two hands to cover her face. Gradually, she dragged the hands down towards her mouth. I tucked the keys between her fingers and hugged her.
‘Mummy, whatever it is you want, just let me know. I’ll buy it for you.’
Charity and Eugene were jumping all over the garage, but my mother just studied the car in silence. Eventually, she hugged me back.
The rest of the day was almost like the good old days. My mother cooked, we ate together on the dining table, we sat in the living room and watched television. Back in Umuahia, the only channels we received were NTA Aba and IBC Owerri. Both commenced daily broadcasting at 4 p.m. and usually ended at about 10 p.m… Their primetime serving largely consisted of government-sponsored documentaries and repeats of locally produced sitcoms. But now that I could afford the pricey satellite TV subscription, I and my family laughed loudly to Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
‘I’m going to bed,’ my mother announced during the commercial break.
We tried persuading her to stay. But since my father passed away, she hardly stayed up to watch television once the seven o’clock news was over. Not long after she left, I heard her voice from the top of the stairs.
‘Kingsley!’
‘Yes, Mummy!’
‘Please come.’
I ran upstairs with the television remote control still in my hand. I did not want to miss what would happen to Will Smith when his uncle found him performing in the strip club.
‘Yes, Mummy?’
‘Come and sit down,’ she said softly.
I was tempted to tell her that I would come back later. Instead, I sat beside her on the wide, sleigh bed. First class design, imported from Italy.
‘Dimma has been complaining that Ogechi doesn’t read her books,’ my mother began. ‘She hasn’t been doing well in school.’
‘Really?’ I said with false shock.
‘Please try and call her from time to time to encourage her to read.’
That could never be the reason why my mother summoned me to this closed-door session. I continued playing along.
‘Tell Aunty Dimma not to worry. I’ll talk to Ogechi.’
We chatted more about Aunty Dimma, but soon, that bogus topic had certainly come to the end of its lifespan. My mother adjusted her feet in her bathroom slippers and scratched the back of her head.
‘By the way, Kingsley,’ she said as if it had just popped into her mind for the first time when her fingers jogged around her scalp, ‘what type of work is it you say you’re doing for Boniface?’
‘I told you I help him run his office.’
‘What type of business exactly is it that… that you help him out with?’
‘With contracts and investments.’
‘Contracts and investments? What type of contracts and with whom?’
I fiddled with the remote control and laughed without looking at her.
‘Mummy, why are you asking all these funny questions?’
‘Kingsley, they’re not funny questions. I want to know exactly what it is you do for a living… how you get all this money.’
‘Mummy, I’ve told you what I do. And you know Uncle Boniface is very generous. He gives me money from time to time. Just relax and enjoy yourself. Let me spoil you.’
‘Kingsley, that’s another thing,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t want the car.’
I felt as if I had noticed a trickling of blood running down my leg right after giving her a hug. My mother saw my face and withdrew her knife.
‘I don’t really think I need a car right now,’ she said. ‘You know that at my age, I need exercise and the only exercise I get is by walking about.’
‘Mummy, what does that mean?’
She took a deep breath.
‘Kings, I don’t want the car.’
‘But-’
‘Whatever work it is you say you’re doing for Boniface, I think you should just get a proper job and leave that place. Don’t forget you’re from a good home. Don’t forget where you’re coming from. And you promised your daddy before he died that any other job was just temporary. You promised him you would get a Chemical Engineering job.’
That conversation with my father could certainly not count for a deathbed promise.
‘All right, I’ve heard you,’ I finally said. ‘Come, let’s go downstairs and watch TV.’
‘No it’s OK. I’m a bit tired. I want to rest.’
The sound of my siblings’ merry laughter rose from downstairs. At least, some of my efforts were not in vain.
Dear Shehu,
Thank you SO MUCH for your email. I’m HAPPY to say that
I CAN HELP! I’m SO SORRY to hear of the persecution of your relatives, the General’s wife and son. It must really be HORRIBLE for you all.
Please let me know how I can be of assistance in HELPING you obtain the funds.
Best,
Edgar Hooverson
PS: You mentioned you were going to give me 20% of the total sum. Does that mean I get $11.6 MILLION (eleven million six hundred thousand dollars)? Please clarify. Thank you.
It was not stem cell research or landing a man on the moon, but packaging a mugu was a science of its own. Whenever I did not handle things properly, my mugus became sceptical and vanished into thin air.
I had to explain the transaction in terms Edgar Hooverson could easily understand. I had to convince him that it was risk free and transparent at the same time. I had to make him feel that I was someone he could trust. I had to make him think that he was special, that Fate had recognised his significance in the universe and had decided to reward him at last. I had to make him see how vulnerable I was. I had to make him know how desperately we needed his help, how grateful we would be for any action he took on our behalf. I had to finetune him into believing that every word of my story was true. And then, of course, I had to emphasise my access to a lot of funds which I would gladly share with him as soon as our temporary predicament was resolved.
DEAR FRIEND,
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR RESPONSE TO MY DEAR SISTER’S EMAIL. YES, MR HOOVERSON. IF YOU HELP US WITH THIS TRANSACTION, WE WILL GIVE YOU 20% WHICH COMES TO $11.6 MILLION (ELEVEN MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS). I HOPE THIS AMOUNT IS SATISFACTORY.
MR HOOVERSON, FROM NOW ON, BOTH OF US MUST WORK AS A VERY CLOSE TEAM. I HEREBY SUGGEST THAT WE CHOOSE A CODE WHICH SHALL PRECEDE EVERY ONE OF OUR CORRESPONDENCES. ALUTA CONTINUA, IS MY SUGGESTION, UNLESS OF COURSE YOU HAVE ANOTHER PREFERENCE.
THIS IS MY CODE NAME OF CHOICE OWING TO THE FACT THAT MY FAMILY IS CURRENTLY ENGAGED IN A STRUGGLE AGAINST INJUSTICE. BUT WE SHALL CONTINUE FIGHTING, FOR TRUTH MUST ALWAYS PREVAIL IN THE END. AS THE LATE UTHMAN DAN FODIO, ONE OF OUR GREAT LEADERS, SAID, ‘CONSCIENCE IS AN OPEN WOUND; ONLY TRUTH CAN HEAL IT.’ THIS CODE NAME MUST BE CONTAINED IN ALL OUR CORRESPONDENCES AND PHONE CONVERSATIONS. THE ESSENCE OF THIS MAY NOT BE IMMEDIATELY EVIDENT TO YOU, BUT MY DEAR FRIEND, UNFORTUNATELY, THERE IS A LOT OF CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA AND PEOPLE GET UP TO ALL SORTS OF DEVIOUS THINGS.
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS OWING TO FRUSTRATIONS AND BETRAYALS FROM PEOPLE VERY CLOSE TO MY FAMILY THAT WE ARE THROWING CAUTION TO THE WIND AND TRUSTING YOU DESPITE THE FACT THAT WE HAVE NEVER MET. BUT
AS THE SAYING GOES, SOMETIMES, STRANGERS ARE EVEN TRUER THAN FRIENDS. AFTER ALL, THE GOOD SAMARITAN WAS A STRANGER TO THE MAN HE HELPED. I WILL BE MOST OBLIGED IF BOTH OF US HAVE TRUST AND CONFIDENTIALITY AT THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS.
MY SISTER DEPOSITED THE SUM OF US$58,000,000.00 WITH A SECURITY COMPANY IN EUROPE. THE GOVERNMENT OF MY COUNTRY IS UNAWARE OF THE WHEREABOUTS OF THIS MONEY, IF NOT THEY WOULD HAVE CONFISCATED IT ALONG WITH THE REST. HENCE, THE REASON WHY CONFIDENTIALITY IS NECESSARY IN ENSURING A SMOOTH COMPLETION OF THIS DEAL.
FURTHERMORE, I SEEK YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRAVEL DOWN TO EUROPE AND ACT AS THE BENEFICIARY OF THE MONEY, SECURE THE MONEY IN CASH, AND THEREAFTER, OPEN AN ACCOUNT IN EUROPE TO LODGE THE FUNDS IN AND SUBSEQUENTLY TRANSFER IN BITS TO YOUR VALID ACCOUNT IN YOUR COUNTRY OF ABODE.
HOW DO WE PLAN TO ACHIEVE THIS? MY PERFECT MODALITIES TO ENSURE A RISK AND HITCH FREE COMPLETION OF THIS DEAL ARE AS FOLLOWS:
1. I WILL SEND TO YOU AN AGREEMENT WHICH MUST BE RETURNED VIA EMAIL/FAX, INDICATING THAT AFTER YOU MUST HAVE SECURED THE FUNDS IN EUROPE, IT WILL BE SAFE IN YOUR CUSTODY AND SOME USED FOR FURTHER INVESTMENT.
2. AFTER I RECEIVE THE AGREEMENT FROM YOU, I WILL THEN INSTRUCT MY SISTER’S LAWYER TO DRAFT A POWER OF ATTORNEY, CHANGING THE BENEFICIARY’S NAME TO YOUR NAME/COMPANY, AND I WILL SEND YOU A COPY WHICH YOU WILL SIGN AND SEND BACK TO ME. I WILL IN TURN SEND IT TO THE SECURITY COMPANY IN AMSTERDAM, NOTIFYING THEM OF THE CHANGE OF BENEFICIARY FROM ME TO YOU.
3. THE SECURITY COMPANY IN EUROPE WILL NOW TAKE CARE OF ALL THE PAPERWORK DOWN THERE AND IN DUE COURSE, YOU CAN BOOK AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEM WHENEVER YOU ARE READY TO TRAVEL TO EUROPE. I WILL ALSO BE IN ATTENDANCE AT THIS MEETING, SO THAT I CAN HAVE IMMEDIATE ACCESS TO SOME OF THE FUNDS.
4. WE HAVE AGREED TO GIVE YOU 20% OF THE TOTAL MONEY AS YOUR COMMISSION FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE AND COOPERATION.
5. YOU ARE ALSO REQUIRED TO SEND ME YOUR COMPLETE NAME AND ADDRESS WHICH I WILL USE TO REFER YOU TO THE SECURITY COMPANY IN EUROPE, AND ALSO A PHOTOCOPY OF YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT OR DRIVERS LICENSE TO ENABLE US TO KNOW YOU, THE PERSON WE ARE DEALING WITH.
I AWAIT YOUR URGENT RESPONSE. AS YOU MUST BE AWARE, TIME IS OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE AS CONFIDENTIALITY IN THIS TRANSACTION.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME AT ANY TIME TO ASK QUESTIONS.
REGARDS,
SHEHU MUSA ABACHA
ALUTA CONTINUA!
Mr Hooverson would probably need a little bit more time to chew and swallow – or spit. This was the crucial point. Many keen mugus swiftly lost interest as soon as they learned about their expected role in the whole affair. Did they really expect to receive so much money without doing anything substantial? Thankfully, there were the few who made all the efforts worth it, the true believers who swallowed hook, line and swindler.
I strolled across to give Wizard the list of names I had copied out while watching television last night. He was our cyberspace harvester. Using software that could crawl through hundreds of servers, he fetched thousands of email addresses in one go. I encouraged him to always be on the lookout – in movies, newspapers, magazines – for rarer names. At some point or another, the average John or Peter or Smith had probably been blasted by a great number of 419ers, which is why all we were likely to receive for our effort was hate mail filled with four-letter words and clear directions to hellfire – one mugu had even assured me that I would share a stall in hell with Jack the Ripper. But a Wigglesworth or an Albright or a Letterman would most likely be receiving their first ever email blast of all time.
‘Kings, please come and tell me what you think,’ Ogbonna called out from his desk.
I went and studied the letter on his screen.
DEAR FRIEND IN CHRIST,
CALVARY GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD.
I AM FORMER MRS MARIAM ABACHA AND NOW MRS MARY ABACHA A WIDOW TO LATE GENERAL ABACHA. I AM NOW A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. I INHERITED ALL MY HUSBAND’S WELTH WHICH I INTEND TO SHARE OUT PART OF IT AS MY CONTRIBUTION TO EVANGELISATION OF THE WORLD BECAUSE I KNOW NOW THAT WELTH WITHOUT CHRIST IS VANITY UPON VANITY.
YOUR CHURCH WAS SELECTED TOGETHER WITH OTHER-
The grammatical errors stood up from the page and punched me right in the middle of my face.
‘Please, move,’ I said.
Ogbonna shifted away, allowing me space to take over his keyboard. Unlike Azuka and Buchi, he had never made it to university. The level of language in our emails did not matter, though. It was probably just the purist in me. Apparently, mugus were never really surprised to see an African emitting dented English.
When I finished with the corrections and returned to my desk, Mr Hooverson’s reply was waiting. Perhaps it would simply be a ‘Get lost, you orangutan! What a load of balderdash!’ Well, life would simply go on to the next mugu. A new one was born every minute. With heart pounding against my teeth, I opened the email.
Dear Shehu,
ALUTA CONTINUA!
My heart REALLY goes out to you people. I’m not going to pretend that I know what you’re going through, though, but it’s at times like this that I’m THANKFUL for the USA being such a free country where JUSTICE and the RULE OF LAW prevail. Like I said before, I’m WILLING to do whatever it takes to HELP.
You could not have made a BETTER CHOICE. I am a business EXPERT and can give you some PROPER ADVICE on how to invest your money. Along with copies of my passport and driving license, in my next email, I’ll also send an attachment with some IDEAS I’ve come up with for INVESTING your money right here in the USA. I have INSIDE INFORMATION about a few business deals that should interest you especially if you have your eyes on REAL ESTATE. Let me know what you think after reading the document.
I do some business traveling, but I don’t get to go to Europe very often. I am a part owner of LUMMOX UTILITIES and our offices are in Mississippi. It shouldn’t be a problem for me to take some time off and do a SPECIAL TRIP to Europe on your behalf.
Don’t forget to have a look at my business ideas and LET
ME KNOW what you think.
Best,
Edgar
Each word was as pleasant as the clinking of dishes on a tray. A fresh rush of that good old thrill coursed through my veins. No one could accuse me of being dishonest when I addressed Edgar Hooverson as ‘my dear friend’ in my next email.
MY DEAR FRIEND EDGAR,
YOU SOUND LIKE A VERY TRUSTWORTHY FELLOW AND I’M HAPPY THAT I MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE. HOWEVER, I WANT YOU TO FURTHER ASSURE ME THAT YOU WILL NOT DEPRIVE ME OF MY SHARE OF THE FUNDS WHEN THE MONEY GETS INTO YOUR ACCOUNT. ON THAT NOTE, I HAVE ATTACHED AN AGREEMENT FORM. A SOUND BUSINESSMAN SUCH AS YOURSELF MUST KNOW THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE OF CONTRACTS, EVEN IN BUSINESS DEALINGS BETWEEN TWO CLOSE FRIENDS.
AS SOON AS I RECEIVE THE AGREEMENT, I SHALL IMMEDIATELY INSTRUCT MY ATTORNEY TO PERFECT THE CHANGE OF BENEFICIARY, AND WITHIN 4 WORKING DAYS, YOU SHALL BE CONTACTED BY THE SECURITY COMPANY FOR COLLECTION OF THE CONSIGNMENT IN AMSTERDAM.
THANKS ALSO FOR THE BUSINESS PROPOSALS. I WILL GO THROUGH THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK.
PLEASE CALL ME ON MY CONFIDENTIAL CELLULAR PHONE FOR A BRIEF DISCUSSION (090 893456). I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH CALL TIME TO CALL YOU.
GOD BLESS AMERICA! GOD BLESS ALL OF US!
I AWAIT YOUR IMMEDIATE RESPONSE.
REGARDS,
SHEHU MUSA ABACHA
ALUTA CONTINUA!
I was finetuning the email for the billionth time, when my intercom bleeped.
‘Kings, Cash Daddy wants to see you,’ Protocol Officer said. ‘Now.’
I clicked Send before I went.
Cash Daddy had recently taken an excessive interest in newspapers. He had a vendor deliver ten different dailies every morning, which he perused page by page. He ran a commentary on and generated fresh topics from the headlines. He asked me to read lengthy opinion-editorials and give him a verbal summary of whatever the writers had said. Unlike my father, instead of throwing tantrums when he read something outrageous, he nodded his head and saw a new perspective on life.
‘Well,’ he once said after reading about a reform-minded gubernatorial aspirant who had been assassinated in Ekiti State, ‘at least it will always be remembered that he died for the cause of democracy.’
Now, his eyes remained transfixed on whatever he was reading on the front page while I sat beside Protocol Officer and waited. At last, Cash Daddy snapped up his head.
‘Government,’ he said. ‘That’s where the real money is. Do you know how much money Nigeria makes from oil? Billions and billions of dollars. And it belongs to all of us. There’s no reason why people like me should not be able to taste some of it. After all, we’re all Nigerians.’
He tossed the newspaper on top of the thick, black Bible that was open to the book of Ecclesiastes on his desk. I glimpsed the bold front-page headline of the story he had been engrossed in.
SCOTLAND YARD ARRESTS NIGERIAN
STATE GOVERNOR IN LONDON WITH
£2 MILLION CASH
‘Kings, you’re no longer a little bird,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘It’s time for you to fly out of the nest. I’m having an important meeting with a mugu next month. Ask Dibia to start sorting out the documents for your UK visa. You’re travelling to London with me.’
My heart jumped twice and somersaulted thrice. My intestines started tying themselves up into tight knots. I had always wondered what England, the celebrated land of my father’s traveller’s tales, was like. But for the first time ever, I was going to be face-to-face with one of our mugus.
‘Why is your face like that?’ Cash Daddy asked.
I must have looked as if I wanted to run up a tree and hide, then uproot the tree and pull it up after me.
‘Kings, there’s nothing to be afraid of. What can a white man do to you? Oyibo people are harmless. It’s not today I started dealing with them. There’s no reason why you should be afraid.’
Yes, I had reason to be afraid. The Columbine murderers and the Unabomber and Dr Harold Shipman. I forced my face to look less terrorised.
‘Where are those documents?’ Cash Daddy asked.
Protocol Officer whipped out a sheaf from a folder in front of him. This one must be big. Cash Daddy had boys working for him in Amsterdam, Houston, London. As a godfather, he hardly ever got directly involved in a job unless the dollar prospects were colossal – large enough to require a foreign bank account. He was the only one who knew the details and locations of these foreign accounts, the only one who dealt directly with the bankers.
‘Kings, read them,’ Cash Daddy said.
I started with the business proposal on top of the pile. The left corner of my mouth twitched slightly.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘No… nothing.’
‘Why were you laughing?’
‘I wasn’t-’
Protocol Officer chuckled. That gave me the confidence to tell the truth.
‘Is that his real name?’ I asked.
‘No, no, no, no,’ Cash Daddy reprimanded in a soft, serious voice. ‘You people shouldn’t laugh at him. Do you know that this is the man whose money is going to feed your children and your children’s children and your children’s children’s children?’
On that note alone, the mugu could be forgiven. After all, his money was all that really counted. But what on earth had the man’s ancestors been thinking when they took a name like Winterbottom upon themselves?
Satellite TV bought me my freedom from the national prison sentence of having nothing else to watch at 9 p.m. every day, when all the local TV stations in the land switched to Lagos for the Network News. Occasionally, however, it made sense to touch base with home, irrespective of how doctored the local news might be. I reached for the remote control and flicked from BBC to NTA.
A disgruntled Senator from the thirty-third largest political party had decamped to form a brand new party of his own. Another billionaire had declared his intentions to join the presidential race. Exactly as I and my mother had warned Eugene, the Wild, Wild Western Nigeria was a-boiling. Apart from the usual riots and disruption of the voters’ registration process, this morning, yet another House of Assembly aspirant in Oyo State had been assassinated. This recent killing brought the total number of politically motivated assassinations in the country to twenty three. Within this election period alone.
Different public awareness campaigns had been encouraging people to turn out for the voters’ registration process. The posters, the announcements on radio and television, insisted that it was a civic responsibility and the only opportunity to make a change. Apparently, the public were responding well. A reporter had turned up at one of the voters’ registration centres in Enugu and was interviewing the masses.
‘How long have you been waiting here?’ she asked.
In the background, a multitude was buzzing around.
‘I’ve been here since 6 a.m.,’ the man replied.
‘That means you’ve been waiting for about ten hours.’
‘It’s my civic responsibility,’ he replied proudly. The haggard man had my father’s Nigeria-is-a-land-flowing-with-bottled-milk-and-jarred-honey tone of voice. ‘This current regime has done nothing for us and it’s time for change. I’m ready to pay any price to vote.’
Pity that such a well-spoken man had been taken in by all that hogwash. The only power to change anything that needed changing was the power of cash.
My cellular rang. I reached across the vast mattress and grabbed it from the edge of my sixth pillow. Real feathers. John Lewis, House of Fraser.
‘Where are you?’ Cash Daddy bellowed.
‘I’m at home.’
‘I’m just coming from the golf club,’ he said. ‘You know it’s not everybody who wants to join that they allow. I’m going to see one girl… that beautiful girl from Liberia who’s been begging to have a baby for me. Today’s her birthday.’
He paused. I knew he could not have finished.
‘Honestly, I won’t mind allowing her to have a baby for me, but Liberia ’s too far. You know how these women behave. One day she’ll just wake up and tell me she’s taking my child back with her to Liberia and I don’t want that type of rubbish. You know they all have one kind of funny accent. I won’t spend long at the birthday. I just want to show my face and dash her some small pocket money. From there, I’ll go straight home. Come and see me.’
At Cash Daddy’s mansion, the gateman threw open the gates before I honked the horn. I parked my Grand Cherokee Jeep beside Cash Daddy’s latest Acura. I strode inside and headed for the stairs. The four young men seated at the dining table greeted me fervently. I mumbled a reply and marched up, taking the stairs three at a time.
In Cash Daddy’s bedroom, I glanced around. Then I pushed the door of the bathroom. He was scrubbing himself in the shower.
‘Kings, Kings! How are you?’
‘I’m fine, tha-’
‘Have you heard from Dibia about the documents for your UK visa?’
‘Yes. He said they’ll be ready soon.’
‘Very good, very good.’ He looked me over from top to toe and wagged his finger at me. ‘Make sure you buy some proper clothes before we go. You can’t follow me around looking like this.’
Cash Daddy paused to scrub under his arms while I surveyed my shirt – new, but obviously not good enough. Well, truth be told, despite my Swatch and my Lexus, I had not yet completely relaxed into the habit of lavishing things like clothes on myself. Some of Wizard and Ogbonna’s shirts could have funded my siblings’ tuition for two whole semesters.
‘As soon as we come back,’ Cash Daddy continued, ‘tell him to start working on documents for your US visa. Those ones might take a little longer. You know the Americans are much more difficult.’
I nodded. I had heard that the American was the one embassy where no officials agreed to have their palms greased in exchange for visas or for keeping closed eyes about spurious documents. Even booking an interview date with either of their embassies, in Abuja or Lagos, could take several months. But Dibia’s skill was truly a gift from God. It had never failed.
‘Honestly, America ’s the place,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Not just that the people are very generous, you can’t even say you’ve ever been abroad until you’ve been to America. Kai!’
He stopped scrubbing and jerked his head as if trying to contain the weight of the memories that had just come upon him.
‘Is it the houses… is it the food… is it the roads… is it the women…? You’ll see all types of women with all types of complexions; you won’t even know which one to choose. In America, you’ll understand why it’s good to have money, because you’ll keep seeing things to spend it on.’
He stepped out of the shower and yanked a large towel to start drying his body. Once again, I wondered how the scrawny urchin who had lived with my family all those years ago, had metamorphosed into this fleshy edifice. Cash Daddy’s cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long. I half expected his bloated belly to wriggle free of his body and start break-dancing on the tiled floor in front of us. It seemed to have a life of its own. He dropped the used towel on the floor and grabbed one of the many toothbrushes in a glass mug on the washbasin.
‘Come and put some toothpaste for me,’ he said.
I reached out for the tube of Colgate. Despite my extreme carefulness, his belly still brushed against my hand. He held out his toothbrush while I squeezed the white paste. When I had finished my task, I withdrew to a less discomforting distance.
‘By the way,’ he continued, in a more subdued and official tone. ‘I have an emergency meeting with the police commissioner tomorrow and I want you to be there.’
‘Do we have any problems?’ I had never accompanied him to see the commissioner before.
Cash Daddy grated his throat twice and spat.
‘One should remove the hand of the monkey from the soup before it becomes a human hand. The main reason for the meeting is for us to make sure that there’s no problem. He didn’t tell me much, but it looks like there are some places where we’ve made one or two mistakes and he wants us to take it easy.’
His cellular phone rang. I rushed to pick it up from the bathroom mat and held it out to him. Cash Daddy glanced at the screen and made a quick sign of the cross like a priest being pursued by the devil. I knew immediately that it was his wife calling. Something to do with the children. Conversing with his wife was one of those uncommon occurrences when Cash Daddy did more listening than talking.
When he finished, he chuckled, and asked if I had seen the latest photographs of his children. I had not.
‘Ah. I just got them. Come let me show you.’
He led the way out of the bathroom, stopping briefly at the door to scratch the inside of his thigh. He opened his bedside drawer and extracted some photographs. He handed them to me with the sort of smile that you have when presenting a beloved friend with a priceless surprise gift. I tried to appear commensurately keen.
In the first one, the five cherubs and their mother were all dressed up – the two girls in long, flowing frocks, the three boys in black dinner jackets and red bow ties, their mother in a clingy, sparkly red dress that made her look like a tall goldfish. He explained that they had all attended some ceremony in the eldest child’s school. This eldest son was enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Oxford.
‘He even won an award,’ Cash Daddy beamed proudly. ‘Anyway, I’m not surprised. Whatever the python gives birth to must eventually be long. I know that boy is going to be great in this world. Greater than me even.’
The children all looked like distant cousins of Princes William and Harry. Graceful and illustrious. There was not the slightest trace of that untamed look on their faces, the look that neither diverse currencies nor worldly comforts had quite erased from their father’s countenance. I tried to imagine the distinguished accents that would come forth when they spoke.
Interesting – these offspring of Uncle Boniface, the money-miss-road, were the aristocrats of tomorrow.
Cash Daddy’s voice smashed into my musings.
‘I’ve told you to hurry up and get married,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you’re waiting for. The advice I always give young men is: once you start making money, after buying your first set of cars, your next investment should be a wife. You should have been married long ago.’
He was right. I should have been married a long time ago. I should also have been working in Shell or Mobil or Schlumberger and coming home to Ola every night. Unfortunately, that was life.
He inspected his physique in the full-length mirror. While he squeezed into a pair of Versace jeans and a silk Yves Saint Laurent shirt, he talked about business and some new ideas.
‘I’m also thinking of employing some more of these young boys who know more about the internet. The only person we have is Wizard. He’s good, but the boy is a thief. He can even steal from inside a woman’s womb without anybody noticing. And two things I can’t stand are people who steal and people who are disloyal.’
He turned away from the mirror and looked at me.
‘What of your brother?’ he asked.
I blinked.
‘I mean Godfrey,’ he clarified.
‘Never.’
‘But he appears quite sma-’
‘Never.’
He must have understood that the matter was very closed. He stopped talking and looked back at his image in the mirror.
My phone rang. It was my father’s third sister’s son.
‘Ebuka, please call me back later. I’m in a meeting.’
‘Kings, go on and take your call,’ Cash Daddy said.
‘No, it’s OK, I can-’
‘Take your call.’
Ebuka needed some money to buy his GCE forms.
‘But I sent you money to buy forms a short while ago,’ I said.
‘Brother Kings, that one was different. That one was for my SSCE. I’ve already bought the form and filled it. If you want, I can bring the receipt for you to see.’
‘OK, come and see me in the house tomorrow evening and collect some money.’
There was no need giving him my address. All my relatives from far and near now knew where I lived. There seemed to be a benevolent fairy whose job it was to pass on my contact details to any two-winged insect that flew past.
‘Brother, thank you very much,’ he said.
Cash Daddy was brushing his eyebrows and flashing his teeth in front of the mirror. His grooming was always lengthy before he got satisfied.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘has it occurred to you that I’m now too big to be chasing dollars around? Come.’
He held me by the upper arm and escorted me to the window. He walked very close, almost leaning his chest against my shoulder. For a while, we stood and stared out of the glass panes without speaking. The window overlooked his front gate.
Almost all the buildings on Iweka and on farther streets were in total darkness. NEPA had struck. In the distance, I made out the bright lights of World Bank’s humongous house. Like Cash Daddy, he had a power generator. After a while, I peeped at my uncle. He had a faraway gaze on his face, like an emperor wondering by how much more he should reduce his subjects’ taxes.
‘Kings,’ he said suddenly, ‘do you sometimes feel as if God is talking to you?’
I gave it some thought.
‘No.’
He turned away from the window and looked at me.
‘Kings, don’t you read your Bible?’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘You should read your Bible often and memorise passages,’ he said, shaking his head slowly and wagging his finger at me. ‘It’s very, very important.’
Sermon over, he returned his eyes to the window and took in a deep breath.
‘Kings,’ he exhaled, ‘each time I stand and look out through this window, I feel as if God is talking to me. It’s as if I can hear Him saying that He’s given me the land as far as my eyes can see, just like He said to Papa Abraham.’
He paused and looked at me.
‘Kings, I’ve decided to run for governor of Abia State in the coming elections.’
The fact that I did not drop to the floor with shock was simply supernatural.
My regular visits to Umuahia came with mixed feelings. A blend of nostalgia about the good old days – the times spent there as a child – and anger about the hard times – our poverty and my father’s illness and premature death. These days, a new feeling had been stirred into the concoction – apprehension about facing my mother.
Heads turned as my Lexus sped through the streets. Eyes followed in wonder and admiration. Without braking, I honked at some pedestrians occupying the better part of a pothole-riddled road. The three men jumped away in fright. My windows were up and the air-conditioning was on full blast, so I could barely make out their invectives.
I noticed that the scallywags had now gone beyond traffic signs and dustbins. There were election posters on the face and torso of the bronze statue in the Michael Opara Square. To think that Cash Daddy’s face would soon be joining them. He had not yet made his gubernatorial aspirations publicly known, so none of his posters were out. If not for the potbellied, important-looking strangers with whom he had been holding endless meetings at the office, I would have assumed he had changed his mind.
I parked beside Mr Nwude’s blue Volkswagen. The back windscreen of the faithful car was completely gone and had been replaced by a cellophane sheet. I made a mental note to greet his family before I left. As usual, I would pretend it was a gift for the children and give them some cash.
As soon as I switched off my engine, Charity screamed. Nanoseconds later, she dashed out of the house.
‘Kings, I didn’t know you were coming today!’
We hugged.
‘How’s school?’
‘We’re closing soon,’ she said with excitement. ‘Kings, I’m coming to spend my holidays with you. I’ve already told Mummy and she said it’s OK.’
My siblings could go in and out of my house anytime they pleased without giving me notice. I had reminded them several times.
‘But that means Mummy will be at home alone,’ she said with concern. ‘ Eugene is not likely to come back till after Easter.’
‘Don’t worry. We can both drive down to visit her often. What of your JAMB forms? Have you bought them?’
‘Since last week.’
‘OK, we’ll fill them together before I leave.’
I gave Charity the McVities biscuits and the pair of high heels I’d bought for her. She accompanied me to my mother’s bedroom.
‘Mummy, Kings is here,’ she chimed.
As I was about to open the door, Charity held back my hand.
‘Kings,’ she whispered with tilted head and pleading eyes, ‘can I use your phone? Please?’
Two of Charity’s friends had land phones in their houses. Each time I was around, she wanted to ring them with my cellular, never mind that she saw them in school almost every day. I handed her the phone and she scampered back to the living room, gleeful as a fly.
My mother was lying in bed – staring – with her upper body propped up on two pillows. For a widow whose first son had come to visit, her smile appeared some seconds too late.
‘Mummy.’
‘Kings.’
I sat beside her and entered her embrace. Even that was not as cosy as it should have been. Her face appeared more furrowed than on my last visit. She was wearing one of her old dresses stained with the sticky fluid from my father’s unripe plantains. Maybe it was her age, maybe it was her grief, but the hair on my mother’s head was taking its time in growing back. And I could see her scalp clearly through the grey strands. Unlike the former, the new growth was scanty.
‘Mummy, how have you been getting on?’
‘I’m fine.’
With cheeks pressed against her face, I scanned the room with my eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been when my father was alive. His jumper was still hooked to the wardrobe door. His bathroom slippers were arranged neatly at the foot of the bed, as if he were about to step right into them. A half-empty bottle of Old Spice aftershave lotion was sitting beside a half-empty Vaseline hair cream jar on his side of the dresser. In a corner of the room, I sighted the machines I had recently purchased for my mother’s shop. The large, brown cartons were sealed and unopened. I pulled myself away from her and walked towards them. My suspicions were confirmed.
‘Mummy,’ I asked wearily, ‘what about these machines? Haven’t you started using them yet?’
My mother bent her eyes to the floor. She was composing another lie.
When I replaced the television in the house, came back to visit, and saw the old one back in its place, my mother had said it was because she could not figure out how the new one worked. When I mentioned repainting and refurbishing the flat, she had said she preferred if it remained the exact way it was when my father was alive, never mind that I had promised not to tamper with his favourite armchair. When I bought a generator to supply electricity when NEPA took the light, she had said it made too much noise. I hated seeing her put herself through all this just to make a point. Now I watched her struggle to make up another excuse.
She raised her eyes.
‘Kingsley, the only thing that can make me happy is if you get a proper job. You know I’m very uncomfortable with whatever work it is you say you’re doing for Boniface.’
‘Mummy, I’m working and I’m doing this for all of you.’
‘Kings, if you really want to make me happy, you’ll stop it.’
She said the ‘it’ with force. My mother was a person who could provide a euphemism for every embarrassing word that existed. Her cache included at least fifty different replacements for sex and for the various private body parts. She had more for single mothers and divorcees. But when it came to 419, this ability had completely failed her. She never had a name for exactly what it was that she wanted me to stop.
I was tempted to change the topic by telling her that her brother was planning to be the next governor of Abia State, but that would simply be kindling another inferno. On behalf of her absent husband, my mother would probably explode with outrage. It was better to just go straight to the point of my visit.
‘Mummy, I came to let you know that I’m travelling abroad next week. I’m going to London for a meeting.’
‘Is it with Boniface you’re going?’
‘Yes.’
She sighed.
‘How long are you going for?’
‘About a week.’
‘So how do we contact you if there’s something urgent?’
I told her that I would ring Aunty Dimma to check in. My mother had also refused a land phone.
‘Kings, whatever it is you people are doing, please be very careful. Be very, very careful.’
Aha! We were making progress. If she wanted me to be careful, that meant she accepted I was in the speed lane. It was only a matter of time before she completely came around.
‘Of course, Mummy,’ I said.
She sighed the world’s deepest sigh.
It was my first trip on a plane. I waited for Cash Daddy to settle down into his first class seat and left him with Protocol Officer. Then I walked towards the back to find my own place.
‘Don’t worry,’ Cash Daddy said as I left. ‘Very soon, you’ll be able to join other big boys and fly in style.’
Had I not already seen what first class looked like, I might have thought nothing of it. But when I swept the separating curtain aside, I was startled. The people in economy were packed tight together, like a set of false teeth. After much probing, I found my seat in between two men and settled down to enjoy this new experience. But one of my neighbours refused me the enjoyment. Every few minutes, he would release a silent dose of effluvium, powerful enough to disperse a civil rights protest march. It became worse after the elegant, blond air hostess served minor portions of rice with a suspicious-looking green sauce that tasted like nothing I had ever eaten before. Bland, raw, and chalky. Could this really be the sort of Western diet that my father preferred over African food?
At Heathrow Airport, the immigration queue did not recognise first class or economy so, once again, I was reunited with Cash Daddy and Protocol Officer. The stern immigration officers were scrutinising passports, interrogating coldly, and whispering amongst themselves. Some from our queue were asked to stand aside and wait while an immigration officer took their passports and disappeared. I wondered what they had done wrong. I had heard all sorts of gory stories about desperate immigrants who had their hopes demolished right here at Heathrow – escorted onto the next plane back to Nigeria without even as much as a glimpse of the greener pastures beyond the airport. What if the same thing happened to us? What if they suspected that we were 419ers? I shuddered.
Finally, it was our turn. Protocol Officer quickly stepped forward and handed over Cash Daddy’s passport.
‘How long do you plan to stay in the United Kingdom?’ the officer asked. His teeth were brown and misaligned.
‘Two weeks,’ Protocol Officer replied on Cash Daddy’s behalf. ‘He’s here on holiday.’
The immigration officer stared back into Cash Daddy’s passport. Then he stared directly into Cash Daddy’s face. Cash Daddy glared back. The man shrank and took his stare away. He looked back at the passport and flipped the pages. He cleared his throat, brought out a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket, and looked through his glasses and over them. He cleared his throat again and looked over his glasses again, then through them once more.
He opened his mouth to ask another question.
Cash Daddy stared right into his face.
The man withered.
‘Welcome to the United Kingdom,’ he said.
Cash Daddy ignored him and strode past. The man spent some extra time staring at Protocol Officer’s passport and asking questions. Many of Protocol Officer’s answers missed the truth by about five kilometres. For some reason, the officer did not think I deserved too much scrutiny. He welcomed me without much ado.
‘Nonsense,’ Cash Daddy said, when I caught up with him. ‘Witches and wizards fly in and out of any country they want to without going through immigration. Why should I be harassed?’
The important thing was that we had made it through.
‘Anyway, by the time I become governor,’ he continued, ‘I’ll have a diplomatic passport so nobody will be able to talk to me anyhow.’
I knew that we were in the white man’s land. Still, I felt a slight shock at seeing so many white people walking about in one place at the same time. It was extremely rare to see a white person on the streets of the average, small Nigerian town. So rare, in fact, that sometimes in Umuahia, people would stop and stare at a white person, some chanting ‘Oyibo’, hoping that the white person would turn and wave.
When I was in primary four, there was a German girl in my class whose father was an engineer with the Golden Guinea Breweries. Several children spent their spare time surreptitiously running their fingers through her hair just to taste the straight, blond strands. Being the cleverest pupil, I was assigned by my teacher the prized sitting position right next to her. Standing up to answer a difficult question one day, I pressed the heel of my shoe against her toes. I just wanted to hear what it sounded like when she screamed.
The driver of the hired limousine also had brown and misaligned teeth. And so did the hotel concierge. My father had not mentioned any such anomaly in his traveller’s tales. How could English people have such bad teeth? Or perhaps these were just immigrants, and not real English people.
After settling into our different rooms, we converged in Cash Daddy’s suite for a final briefing. I and Protocol Officer stood by the bathroom door while Cash Daddy addressed us from the bathtub.
‘Like I told you people, this one is not the type of job that you chop and clean your mouth and shit and it ends there.’
He shot one leg out of the soapy water and draped it over the tub.
‘We have to package this mugu very well so that we can keep chopping him for a very long time. Once things start off well, Kings can just be talking and meeting with him regularly. That’s all.’
Sometime ago, Cash Daddy had instructed Protocol Officer to send letters to foreign businessmen who might be interested in investing in Nigeria. Protocol Officer wrote that, as the CEO of Ozu High Seas Construction Company, he had a strong government contact who could guarantee access to juicy contracts. All he needed was a foreign partner with a muscular bank account to act as guarantor. Mr Winterbottom had responded. He was the director of Hector Bank International and the CEO of Changeling Development Cooperation, Argentina. Because he had partnered extensively with South African businessmen, Mr Winterbottom was willing to peep into Nigeria. He and Protocol Officer had had several discussions over the phone before agreeing on this meeting in London. Protocol Officer told him that the current Nigerian minister for aviation was attending an economic summit in London over the next two days. The minister was, he said, his former boss, and Protocol Officer wanted both men to meet. Because of his limited time, the minister had asked them to join him for breakfast at his hotel tomorrow morning.
I nodded calmly as Cash Daddy went through each person’s script line by line, also giving instructions about body language and general demeanour.
‘Kings,’ he said, pointing at me, ‘all that big grammar they taught you in school, this is the time to speak all of it.’
But a riot had begun in my endocrine, nervous, and digestive systems. Not only was tomorrow going to be my first, real, live episode with a mugu, I had a few other worries. For example, the real Nigerian minister of aviation was actually attending an economic summit in London. It had been on the news.
‘Cash Daddy,’ I said, shifting my weight from one foot to the other to conceal some embarrassment I felt at my cowardice, ‘what if he sees the real minister on TV?’
Both men laughed as if I had just cracked a splendid joke. Cash Daddy cleared his throat and wriggled the toes of the foot dangling over the tub.
‘Let me tell you something,’ he said. ‘Me, I really like these oyibo people. They’re very, very nice people. See how they came and showed us that the ground where we’ve been dancing Atilogwu has crude oil under it. If not for them, we might never have found out. But Kings,’ he dragged in his dangling foot and sat up in the tub, ‘white man doesn’t understand black man’s face. Do you know that I can give you my passport to travel with? Even if your nose is ten times bigger than my own, they won’t even notice.’
It was my turn to laugh.
Despite the plush beddings of my five-star hotel room, I had a turbulent night. My slumber was besieged with nightmares about officers from Scotland Yard chasing me in and out of dark alleys. Most of the officers were female. All of them knew my name. One who had a striking resemblance to Margaret Thatcher had just made a wild leap at me, when I woke and saw that it was morning. My heart was throbbing like a drum warning a village against danger. I sat up in bed and pondered.
What was the best way to break the news to Cash Daddy that I had changed my mind? Should I tell him the truth or just lie in bed, pretending that the airplane diet had turned my digestive system upside down?
Slowly, I threw the bed covers aside and went to the bathroom. After a cold shower, I dressed in the Armani suit and Thomas Pink shirt that Wizard had accompanied me to purchase from an Aba ‘Big Boys’ boutique. It would be idiotic and cowardly for me to back out now. Plus, my uncle would be enraged.
When we stopped by his room, Cash Daddy swept his eyes over every inch of my body.
‘Keep it up, keep it up,’ he said, nodding.
Walking with Protocol Officer towards the elevator, I could not help but smile. Cash Daddy had actually given me sartorial approval.
The hotel restaurant was quiet, with just a few people sitting at the dainty tables. Sitting alone, sipping from a teacup and darting his eyes about like a pickpocket, our mugu was easy to identify. He waved his hand shyly and eagerly, like a man who had just spotted his thirteen-year-old bride disembarking at the bus station. He stood as we approached. A chubby, well-dressed man with brown hair, Mr Winterbottom had glittering dollar signs stamped all over him, even his smell.
‘Good morning, Mr Winterbottom,’ Protocol Officer said.
‘Hello, Mr Akpiri-Ogologo,’ the mugu replied.
We shook hands. Protocol Officer introduced me.
‘This is engineer Lomaji Ugorji,’ he said. ‘He’s the liaison officer in charge of our international operations. He’s our point man in all foreign transactions.’
‘It’s my pleasure to meet you,’ he said.
I wondered for how long the pleasure was going to last. We sat and ordered tea. There was something about Mr Winterbottom’s total comfort in our company that made my fear flee.
After we had exhausted the topic of the London weather and completed a comprehensive analysis of the climates in Argentina and Nigeria – apparently, Argentina was at its winter peak in July, while the sun came all out in December – Mr Winterbottom asked us about the minister’s arrival.
‘Why don’t you give him a call to let him know we’re waiting?’ I suggested to Protocol Officer.
‘Yes, why don’t you?’ Mr Winterbottom seconded.
The minister had given us an 8 a.m. appointment. It was 9 a.m. and he had still not appeared. Protocol Officer dialled, spoke briefly and snapped the phone shut.
‘He said he’ll see us in five minutes.’
Mr Winterbottom nodded happily.
Half an hour later, the minister entered. In his flowing, white, embroidered agbada and grey cap, Cash Daddy looked like the man who was in charge of formulating key policies for some major oil-producing economies of Africa. He smiled at us and sat at a different table. We abandoned ours and hurried over to him, with Protocol Officer leading the stampede.
‘Good morning, Alhaji,’ we all said in greeting. I and Protocol Officer genuflected for emphasis.
‘Alhaji, this is Mr Winterbottom,’ Protocol Officer said. ‘Mr Winterbottom, this is Alhaji Mahmud, the Minister of Aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.’
‘I don’t like that place you were sitting because anybody passing can see me,’ Alhaji Mahmud said.
Arriving late, no apologies, it was typical. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you a bona fide Nigerian top government official.
‘And once people know I’m in town,’ he continued, ‘they start disturbing me for one favour or the other. Government is a heavy burden. Sometimes one needs to rest.’
When we were all seated, Cash Daddy looked at the menu with disdain.
‘Rubbish,’ he declared.
‘Sorry?’ Mr Winterbottom queried.
‘Rubbish. You white people eat all sorts of rubbish. There’s nothing like Nigerian food. Anywhere I am in the world, I look for a Nigerian restaurant where I can go and eat real food. It’s just because of you people that I agreed to eat here.’
All three of us apologised.
‘It’s not everybody that I can make this sort of sacrifice for,’ the minister said. ‘You know Mr Akpiri-Ogologo here used to work under me in the ministry long ago, before I became Minister of Aviation. He’s very close to me.’
Mr Winterbottom looked at Protocol Officer, his eyes shining with a new kind of respect.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ Protocol Officer said humbly.
Cash Daddy proceeded to order almost everything on the menu, and shocked me with the genteelness of his feeding process. He took slow, small bites like a well-bred little girl and chewed without enlarging his mouth.
Over breakfast, we chatted about the wind and the waves and about life and times. Throughout, the minister was jolly as a shoe brush. He told anecdotes and cracked jokes and laughed with all his might. The white man consumed several cups of coffee without touching his food. He kept hopping about on his seat and giggling long before the minister’s punch lines. Clearly, he had other things on his mind. At the end of the meal, the mugu offered to pay the bill. Nobody tendered a word of argument.
‘So let’s get on with business, shall we?’ Alhaji Mahmud began.
Protocol Officer got on.
‘Alhaji, like I was telling you, Mr Winterbottom is very interested in the development of Africa. His company has invested in several projects in South Africa and Uganda.’
He went on to elaborate on Mr Winterbottom’s sound qualities, speaking humbly and sparingly like a man who knew that he had limited time to make his case. He had started mentioning the bid for the Akanu Ibiam International Airport project, when Cash Daddy truncated his speech.
‘Where did you say you’re from again?’ Alhaji Mahmud asked. ‘ Czechoslovakia, was it?’
‘I’m Argentinian,’ Mr Winterbottom replied. ‘My parents were originally English and then they lived in Uganda where I was born. But I moved to Argentina in the seventies.’
‘Unbelievable!’ exclaimed Alhaji Mahmud. Three diners and four waiters shot glances at our table. ‘I’m very excited to hear this! A real international citizen! And you’re also one of our African brothers. Unique. We don’t only have black Americans, we also have White Africans.’
Mr Winterbottom giggled. We smiled.
‘With our young democracy,’ the minister continued, ‘ Nigeria is ripe for huge foreign investors like you right now. And we’re trying as much as possible to diversify. Most of the big contracts my department has awarded recently have all been taken by the Germans. I don’t want them to start thinking that Nigeria belongs to them. If it took so long to chase out the British, who knows how long it will take with the Germans?’
It sounded like a joke. I and Protocol Officer laughed. Mr Winterbottom did as well, after looking round to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping.
‘It’s time to open up our country to others,’ the Minister continued. ‘What better place to start than with a white man who is even our own African brother?’
Cash Daddy slapped Mr Winterbottom on the back. The giggling and smiling resumed. Abruptly, the minister sobered up.
‘Mr Winterbotom, let me tell you something. This Akanu Ibiam Airport project is very close to my heart. The Igbos have been advocating for their own international airport for a long time, and I’m delighted that in my tenure as Minister of Aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, their dream is being fulfilled.’ He turned to me and Protocol Officer. ‘You’re Igbo, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, Alhaji,’ we said.
‘Ah.’ He shook his head with pity. He kept on shaking his head. ‘Mr Winterbottom, do you know what a nigger is?’
The white man recoiled, as if a viper had briefly flicked its tongue out of Cash Daddy’s mouth. He shifted his eyes to me and shifted them to Mr Akpiri-Ogologo, then back to the minister again. He seemed unsure as to whether this was a trick question, whether he was supposed to admit knowing what the dirty word meant.
‘Do you?’ Cash Daddy insisted.
‘Oh, it’s a term that never finds its way into my vocabulary,’ Mr Winterbottom replied.
‘But you know what it means?’
‘Errrrrrrrrrrrr… Yes.’
‘The Igbos are the niggers of Nigeria,’ Cash Daddy declared, pointing at us. ‘They’ve been maltreated and marginalised.’
He stopped and drew a valiant breath.
‘Ignored,’ Protocol Officer quietly added.
Cash Daddy glanced quickly at me.
‘Forgotten,’ I mumbled quietly, too.
‘Do you understand that they live in the only geopolitical zone in Nigeria without an international airport?’ Alhaji Mahmud continued, still pointing. ‘This one is going to be their first.’
‘Thank you very much, Alhaji,’ we said.
‘I’m not Igbo,’ Alhaji Mahmud lowered his voice modestly, ‘but I feel so honoured to be part of this historical event.’
The white man opened his mouth and swallowed the noble proclamation like a seasoned ignoramus. How could anybody look at Cash Daddy and imagine that his name could ever be anything like Alhaji Mahmud – a name that was more likely to belong to a Hausa person from the northern part of Nigeria? Cash Daddy had the unmistakable thick head and chunky features of the Igbos. Plus, a concrete Igbo accent. It did not matter whether it was a three-letter word or a five-letter word, each came out with its original number of syllables quadrupled, and with so much emphasis on the consonants that it sounded as if he were banging on them with a sledgehammer. The Hausas had more delicate and slender facial features, and the phonetic structure of their mother tongue gave them an accent that sounded almost Western.
Cash Daddy was right! The white people did not know such things.
‘I might be a Hausa man,’ the minister continued, ‘but I have always believed in One Nigeria. That’s why I’m so glad that Biafra didn’t succeed.’
He went on to narrate details of the Nigerian civil war with tears filling his eyes. How, as a child growing up in Kano, Northern Nigeria, he had watched a Hausa man slit open the belly of a pregnant Igbo woman with a dagger. The woman had lain there in a pool of blood while the baby wriggled about and gasped for air.
‘Why?’ he asked with tears in his voice. ‘After all, we are all one. One flesh, one blood.’ He sniffed. ‘Why?’
‘Oh dear,’ said the mugu.
‘They are our brothers and sisters. Why must we treat our own people that way?’
I could hardly restrain my admiration for Cash Daddy. His tongue must have been made of silver. If this was a rehearsal for his live performance as politician and future governor, my uncle was sure to win rave reviews. And there was something about his voice. It had a certain irresistible attraction like the smell of fried chicken. He could probably even talk a spider into weaving silk socks for him. The same magic was in his face. Under his gaze, you felt like the most important figure in his life. From Mr Winterbottom’s face, I could see that his soul was being thoroughly converted to mugu.
‘The time for unity has come,’ Cash Daddy proclaimed. ‘Allah has given the call. Unity amongst Igbo and Hausa, amongst Hausa and Yoruba, amongst Yoruba and Igbo. One Nigeria! My dear friend, it’s at times like this that I understand why America had to fight the Cold War. You understand what I mean?’
I did not. The white man, on the other hand, was several scales ahead of me in the evolutionary process. He understood perfectly.
‘I’m with you,’ he replied.
Cash Daddy speechified some more. By the time he stood up, ready to leave, even I was convinced that we had been breakfasting with the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
‘I have a meeting with the British transport secretary later this morning,’ Cash Daddy said, ‘to finalise discussions on the Nigerian-British Bilateral Air Services agreement. I need to make some phone calls before then. Mr Winterbottom, it’s been nice meeting you.’
The minister departed in a whirl of good humour. We were left sitting around the table in silence.
‘Quite a remarkable man,’ Mr Winterbottom finally said. ‘I like him. I like him very much. Very friendly and down-to-earth.’
Mr Akpiri-Ogologo reminded Mr Winterbottom of something.
‘Oh yes! I almost forgot.’
Mr Winterbottom leaned under his seat and brought out a carrier bag. It contained the two Rolex watches, one Sony camcorder, and two Nokia handsets Protocol Officer had told him that the chairman of the Contracts Award Committee had specifically requested as part of his bribes. Thanks to Wizard’s online search, Protocol Officer knew the exact high-tech models to ask for.
‘I hope I got the right ones,’ Mr Winterbottom said.
Protocol Officer dug his hands into the carrier bag and inspected each item.
‘I won’t know for sure until the Chairman sees them,’ he replied. It was always wise to make allowance for future requests.
Back upstairs, Cash Daddy flung one of the Rolex watches at me.
‘Throw away that toy on your wrist,’ he said.
I switched watches immediately. My new Rolex was as fabulous as Aladdin’s ring. But instead of throwing the Swatch away, I would pass it down to Godfrey.
That was one thing everybody liked about Cash Daddy. He was not a cheat. Unlike some godfathers who reversed tongues when good things came in, Cash Daddy always made sure that each participant in a job received his fair share.
In his own special way, my uncle was an honest man.
Everybody poured outside to look. Ben, the office cleaner, had bought his first car. It was a tokunbo, secondhand, Mercedes-Benz V-Boot. Smuggled across the border from Cotonou. He had driven it to work that morning, dashed into every room in the office and invited us out to see, declaring that he was hosting the whole office to free lunch.
‘Well done,’ Wizard said.
We all stood around, admiring the car and congratulating Ben. But there was no way he could maintain such a car on his cleaner’s salary. He had been working in this office for the past three years and the Port Harcourt Refinery mugu was his first ever hit – a very humble one, for that matter. Unless he made another one pretty soon, he might have to exchange his wife and nine children for spare parts and fuel to keep the V-Boot running. But then, who was I to worry about how another grown man had chosen to spend his hard-earned dollars?
‘You need to see how everyone in my estate came out to look when I parked the car in front of my house,’ he said. ‘From now on, they’ll all be calling me “Yes sir!”
We laughed. Everybody except Azuka. He declined the free lunch expedition, and so did I. Finally, both of us were all alone in the Central Intelligence Agency.
‘Azuka, are you OK?’
He sighed.
‘What’s the problem? You’ve been moody all morning.’
He hissed. The sound was thick with regret.
‘Kings, my brother. I don’t know what is happening to my life. Ben has already bought a car. Me, I’m still here writing letters and receiving insults from white people. Anything I touch… kpafuka!’
Actually, Azuka’s history was pathetic. He added a more unfortunate detail each time he narrated it. In his final year of studying Law, he had been rusticated from the University of Calabar for involvement in secret cult activities. He migrated to Spain. Two years later, he got stopped for a driving offence, and was arrested for not having a valid visa on his passport. He was deported to Nigeria after spending months being tortured in a Spanish prison. He resumed work with Cash Daddy and, in the past four years, he had not made a single hit.
‘Azuka, listen. This thing is out of your hands. You have no control over whatever mugu comes your way. All you need to do is just pray that whichever one falls into your hands is the right one.’
He snapped his head abruptly.
‘Kings, this thing is not about mugu or no mugu. It’s not. Just before I started work with Cash Daddy, I managed to hit four hundred dollars from one mugu I met in a chat room. As I was coming out of the Western Union office, the police stopped me and collected all the money from me, as if they were just standing there waiting for me. This happened on two different occasions.’
It did not require any special kind of bad luck to have had such an experience. It was for such reasons that people sought refuge under godfathers like Cash Daddy. Cash Daddy had enough clout to keep the police eyes closed and the Western Union mouths zipped. Such services were incorporated in the sixty per cent he scooped from every dime we made. His percentage also covered the expenses for forged documents, phone bills, internet connection etc. This business of ours was expensive to run. You had to have the financial ammunition to keep the cannon booming.
‘That could have happened to anybody,’ I replied.
‘But there are some people who never have problems. Why do you think Cash Daddy takes you along on big jobs? He knows you have good luck.’
I laughed. Cash Daddy had once told me that I had an honest face. He said it was good for business. Pity that my supposed good luck and honest face had not done much for me in all the oil company interviews I had attended.
‘Kings, you’re finding it funny but I’m not joking.’
‘OK, let me see the replies you received today.’
He shifted to allow me to view his screen. Each email was more vitriolic than the other. Finally, I came across one that was mild.
Dear Sheik Idris Shamshuden (or whatever your real name is),
Your letter is a classic 419 scam. I can smell these things a mile away.
I love Africa and Africans. Please stop harming your economy by causing any more people to distrust Africans. I know this is a way you can make some quick money, but the long-term effects to the African economy are terrible.
I am not against you. If we met in person, we probably would have a wonderful conversation. I really do hope that you turn from your illegal ways. Please use your obvious talents and creativity for things that will count 1,000 years from now and throughout all eternity.
God bless you,
Condoleezza
‘Please, move,’ I said to Azuka.
He allowed me more space to take over his keyboard. I hit reply and typed. This woman was clearly not the greedy type, but she had another human weakness. She was caring.
DEAR CONDOLEEZZA,
PLEASE FORGIVE ME. YOU MIGHT NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE FOR ME. YOUR EMAIL HAS CHANGED MY LIFE AND FORCED ME TO RECONSIDER MY WAYS. I KNOW I HAVE THE POTENTIALS TO DO THE RIGHT THING IF ONLY I COULD BE GIVEN A CHANCE.
CONDOLEEZZA, PLEASE IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN POSSIBLY ASSIST ME TO START SOMETHING USEFUL? I WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL FOR ANY HELP
YOU CAN GIVE. I LOOK FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU. THANK YOU FOR TAKING TIME TO WRITE ME THAT LIFE-CHANGING EMAIL.
GOD BLESS YOU.
YOURS,
DAVID
On second thoughts, I deleted ‘David’ and wrote Azuka’s real first name. After all, there was absolutely nothing irregular about an African begging for foreign aid.
I definitely had the Midas touch. This 419 thing was my calling. Condoleezza sent him $600 the very next day and a letter full of advice on how to turn his life around. Dollars were hard currency, no matter how small.
Azuka was overjoyed.
‘Make sure you keep in touch with her,’ I advised him.
‘But, of course,’ he replied, still grinning.
Condoleezza would be delighted to receive updates on how much progress her African mentee was making down the straight and narrow path. If her delight translated into Benjamin Franklins once in a while, none of us would complain.
The chain of good luck seemed to have been unleashed. An Iranian mugu replied to another one of Azuka’s emails some days later, and soon Azuka received $10,000 for initialisation fees.
‘Kings, maybe it’s your good luck that rubbed off on me,’ he said.
We were still laughing when my phone rang. It was Charity. Sobbing with all her might.
‘Charity, what’s the matter?’ I asked without much panic.
In between thick sobs, she told me that she had just seen her JAMB score.
‘I scored 198.’
Fortunately, she did not hear me gasp. No university in this world was going to give her a place with such a malnourished score. For once, I agreed that my sister had a valid reason for shedding tears.
‘Charity, stop crying,’ I said. ‘You know they have a funny way of marking this JAMB. Even the most intelligent people sometimes make low scores.’
She continued crying until the customers waiting in the business centre grumbled loud enough for me to hear. She hung up, rejoined the queue, and rang back an hour later. Her sobs had not subsided.
‘Charity, stop crying. Failing JAMB is not the end of the world.’
‘Mummy said I’m not allowed to hang out with my friends again,’ she wept. ‘I can’t imagine staying at home for a whole year, waiting to take another JAMB.’
Could my sister’s poor score have had anything to do with the weeks she had spent in my house prior to her exams? Charity had watched quite a lot of Nollywood movies on my VCD player. There was a corner shop at the end of my street which stocked these movies that were released in hundreds every week. Each featured the same yellow-skinned, abundantly chested actresses and the same dreadlocked men, and each had a Part 1, a Part 2, and Part 3 – at least. Too bad that the JAMB exam did not test knowledge of Nollywood.
‘Charity, don’t let it worry you, OK? Just go home and relax and forget about it. I’ll talk to Mummy later.’
But it was hard to forget my sister’s sobbing. My mother must be in great distress and my father must be revolving in his grave. The following day, I spoke to Buchi about it. I had once overheard her telling Wizard where he could purchase expo GCE question papers a week before the exam date.
‘Is there no one you know?’ Buchi asked me.
I had never needed to know someone for things like this.
She gave me the name of one of the faculty deans in her former university.
‘He helped one of my friends get into Accounting,’ she said. ‘He might be able to help.’
But my visit to the professor would have to wait. Mr Winterbottom was coming to town.
Abuja was different from other Nigerian cities. There were no hawkers in the streets, no okadas buzzing about like flies, no overflowing bins with unclothed schizophrenics scavenging in them for their daily sustenance. None of the roads had potholes and all the traffic lights were working. And unlike in our parts, where a flashy car was the ninth wonder of the world, most of the cars here were sleek, many with tinted windows.
I and the hired driver waited at the entrance to the arrival lounge. Mr Winterbottom soon appeared, sweating like a hog. I strode across and welcomed him with a handshake. The driver rushed out and grabbed the handle of his suitcase.
‘It’s so terribly hot,’ the mugu groaned.
The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport was even fully air-conditioned. Fighting for space high up on a prominent side of the arrival lounge wall were massive portraits of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, of the minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, of the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and of the chairman of the Nigerian Federal Airports Authority. I placed my hand on Mr Winterbottom’s shoulder and steered him away from the incriminating view. Just before leaving the hotel, I had remembered to take off my Rolex.
‘Thanks a lot for coming to get me,’ he said.
The pleasure was all mine.
A few weeks after the London meeting, Ozu High Seas and Changeling Development Cooperation were awarded a $187 million contract for the upgrading of the Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu, to an international airport. The government officials had insisted on a $10 million bribe before the contract documents could be released.
Mr Winterbottom sent the money in four instalments. The arrival of the first batch threw me into a massive shock that left me in a species of trance for days. Two and a half million dollars! In one transaction. Just like that. Did such amounts actually exist in real human beings’ accounts?
And from what I had seen, Mr Winterbottom was a normal human being like me. He did not have two heads.
I tried to imagine a life with access to that kind of money. Glorious. All my problems solved forever. But how? By what means? Not even the oil companies paid enough to give anyone that much. Many Nigerian superbillionaires I knew of had attained their wealth after stints in high public office but such an opportunity was not likely to come my way anytime soon, even if I had the heart. Siphoning from foreigners in parts of the world where the economy was sound was one thing, but stealing from your own brothers and sisters who had entrusted you to serve was the abyss of wickedness, especially when you had the firsthand opportunity to witness their daily sufferings and struggles. I was not hurting anyone by taking a little of what the Winterbottoms of this world had. There was much, much more where those millions had come from.
When the subsequent three instalments arrived, I received them without flinching a single muscle.
Now that everyone had received their due bribes, Mr Winterbottom had come to finalise things at the Ministry of Aviation and to sign the memorandum of understanding. Since it was his first time visiting the Lion of Africa, as an act of goodwill I reserved his ticket, booked his hotel room, and picked him up from the airport.
‘Your country is beautiful,’ he said on the way back to the hotel. ‘Everywhere looks so well organised. This isn’t what I expected.’
No need telling him that this was all film tricks; our beautiful Abuja was a Potemkin village. Mr Winterbottom would probably never have to cross the River Niger to Igbo land, where poverty and disarray would stare him eyeball to eyeball. Not only was Abuja the Federal Capital Territory and the new seat of government, it was probably the most expensive city in Nigeria. Whenever the masses complained about the astronomical costs of living, the government reminded them that Abuja was not for everyone. The journalists and opinion-eds were still debating who the ‘everyone’ was. Meanwhile, it was probably time for me to speak to an estate agent about buying some nice property here.
The meeting took place in the Ministry of Aviation complex. The real complex. World Bank’s wife number two’s cousin had risen to the level of having a somewhat fancy office in the building, and for a fee, he had agreed to lend it to us.
Cash Daddy was sitting in the executive chair when we entered. He was in a hurry to attend a meeting with the president, he said, but granted us a brief chat before handing over the necessary documents.
‘We’re still expecting the National Assembly to OK the budget,’ the minister said. ‘So, we can’t give any mobilisation fees to any contractors right now.’
Mr Winterbottom assured him that we were loaded enough to go ahead, and he was happy to wait and collect all the outstanding payments later.
‘That might even mean waiting till the completion of the project,’ the minister warned. ‘We might just end up paying the $187 million in full at the same time.’
The sound of $187 million arriving in full does a certain something to the human brain. Mr Winterbottom giggled and hopped about in his seat.
Back at the hotel, I brought out Ozu High Seas letterheaded documents and handed Mr Winterbottom his copies. I guess the Englishman from Uganda and Argentina was not such a mugu after all. He perused each piece of paper intensely, asking me questions from time to time before he was satisfied and finally willing to sign. Then he brought out a sleek pen from his jacket pocket and inserted a signature that looked as if it was in the habit of endorsing billions.
Afterwards, Mr Winterbottom said he wanted to go sightseeing. He had travelled along with his camera. The hired driver said he knew the best places we could see. I agreed to accompany Mr Winterbottom on the tour.
The driver showed us the modern mansions of Asokoro and the scenic streets of Maitama. He pointed out former Head of State General Ibrahim Babangida’s mansion, former head of state General Yakubu Gowon’s mansion, former head of state General Abdulsallam Abubakar’s mansion. He even showed us a house that was built in the shape of an aeroplane. But Mr Winterbottom was not impressed.
‘Where can I get some real good shots?’ he asked. ‘I want some real photos of real Africans.’
I apologised that Abuja was not the right place. There were no bare-bottomed children running around with flies in their nostrils. The driver of the hired car overheard our conversation and chipped in.
‘Oga, e get plenty villages wey dey for around Abuja, If you want, make I take you. Them no dey far at all.’
He took us just fifteen minutes away, to Kikaokuchi village. What I saw was beyond belief. The slum was teeming with real Africans living in real African houses. How could such sordidness be juxtaposed with so much affluence? The villagers gathered and stared at the white visitor in their midst. Mr Winterbottom went around patting shoulders.
‘Bature, bature,’ they whispered excitedly amongst themselves.
After about three hours of babbling with awestruck natives, listening to a bare-bottomed lad playing a bamboo flute, and taking photographs of men drinking fura da nono on raffia mats in front of their shacks, Mr Winterbottom was thirsty for new wine. The driver suggested yet another village that was just twenty minutes away.
‘No, I think we should go back to the hotel,’ I said. I had seen more than enough of Africa for one day.
‘I don’t mind visiting a few more places,’ Mr Winterbottom said. ‘This is really very exciting.’
‘I think we should go back to the hotel,’ I insisted. ‘You know Nigeria is a dangerous place.’ I paused. ‘Especially for a white man.’
That did the trick. He entered the car without another word of protest.
Back at the hotel, the driver nearly zonked out when Mr Winterbottom recompensed him with $100 – a likely approximate of his monthly income in just one day. The man genuflected at least a gazillion times, chanting ‘thank you, Master, thank you, Master’ each time his head arched towards the floor.
I shook Mr Winterbottom’s hand, wished him a good evening, and left him by his room door. Someday, he would look back and understand why I had been so shy throughout the African tour, why I had declined every one of his fervent invitations to feature in his photo shots.
On the day that Cash Daddy publicly declared himself as one of the Abia State gubernatorial aspirants, there was not a single tout left roaming the streets of Aba. All of them had been paid in advance and transported in fifty-eight-sitter buses to the National Advancement Party (NAP) headquarters in Umuahia, where they were gathered and waiting when our convoy of brand new jeeps arrived. As soon as they sighted us, the crowd chanted and cheered with naira-fuelled gusto.
‘Cash Daddy na our man! Cash Daddy na our man!’
Their man descended slowly from his carriage and waved with a straight face. Protocol Officer, his bodyguards, some of his new political friends, and yours truly accompanied him into the building, where Protocol Officer presented a seven-figure naira cheque in exchange for the nomination form. The crowd hollered another loud cheer when they saw us emerge from the building. They grew more deafening when Cash Daddy waved the form in the air. Major newspapers and television stations in Abia State had been paid good money to cover the event, so the cameras flashed and the microphones popped out. When Cash Daddy raised his right hand, the crowd fell silent.
‘People of Abia State,’ he began. His voice was deep and calm, like a defence counsel in a murder trial closing his case. ‘I appreciate that you’ve turned out to show your support as I declare my intention to contest for governor of this great state. I thank you very much. I promise you will never regret it.’
The crowd cheered. He dimmed his eyes and scanned the multitude as if taking personal note of each person’s face.
‘I’ve been very, very blessed in Abia State, and all I want is an opportunity to be a blessing in return.’
He told them of his plans to provide free education at primary school level, about his plans for agriculture and for development of roads and other infrastructure. He promised to attract foreign investors to ensure that Abia was given its rightful place on the map of the world. Once again, I could not restrain my admiration for this Boniface Mbamalu of a man. I had composed this speech two days ago and spent most of the previous night rehearsing it with him. But I was the mere architect; Cash Daddy had infused the words with real life. The touts gathered might not be equipped to appreciate all these wonderful promises, but the television and radio audiences would understand.
Cash Daddy concluded.
‘My brothers and sisters, God bless Abia State, God bless all of us.’
The crowd burst into a flood of cheering and chanting.
Cash Daddy smiled, waved, kept on waving, and continued waving for about ten more minutes, before we finally returned to the jeeps and drove off.
Back at the office, I waited for Cash Daddy to finish conferring with his political cronies. He wanted to meet with me afterwards. Meanwhile, I was delighted to see that my good friend Edgar was still very much in the flow.
Dear Shehu,
ALUTA CONTINUA!
I received another phone call from Jude at the security company and he ACCUSED me of causing unnecessary delays. I assured him that it WASN’T MY FAULT that things were taking SO LONG. I had NO IDEA about all the FULL REQUIREMENTS before I sent him the other documents, if not I would have waited. I would APPRECIATE if you or your sister could give him a call and assure him that all the delays haven’t been any fault of mine.
I know you and your sister already have A LOT you’re dealing with, but DON’T WORRY, I’m right here to HELP
you get this thing sorted out. You REST ASSURED that I’m COMMITTED to helping you TILL THE VERY END.
Best,
Your friend, Edgar
Oh, I had no doubts at all about his commitment. For an $11.6 million cut, Goering would have been willing to save Anne Frank.
So far, Mr Hooverson had sent money to Nigeria for the change-of-beneficiary certificate and lawyer’s fees. In exchange, I had given him all the receipts and other documentation necessary to claim the money at the security firm. He was now in the hands of our associates in Amsterdam who would carry on milking him until he became unbearably desperate.
There was also an email from my Lufthansa airline pilot mugu, threatening me with the FBI. Haha. Unfortunately, the FBI could not do much to stop us. We had fictitious companies registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and the Chamber of Commerce. We had account details that had been given to us by several different mugus over time, and we had carried out transactions from thousands of ghost accounts in banks around the globe. Anybody hoping to follow our trail would simply be throwing away their precious time.
My phone rang. It was Charity, calling from a business centre in her school.
‘Kings, they’ve fixed the date for our matriculation. It’s on the twenty-ninth of November. Are you going to be in the country on that day?’
I smiled. My sister probably added that last part to let the keen eavesdroppers know that she had a brother who could afford to travel abroad.
At first, the professor Buchi had recommended scoffed at Charity’s score when I went to visit him at the Abia State University. Then I told him how much I was willing to pay and he agreed to ‘see what I can do’. Three weeks later, Charity’s admission letter to the Department of Philosophy was ready, complete with deputy vice chancellor’s signature.
‘That’s the best I could do,’ he explained. The Law list was already jam-packed and overflowing.
My father would never have allowed his daughter to enrol on such a worthless course, but studying Philosophy was far better than staying home for a whole year, doing nothing. Plus, even though she did not comment on the process, my mother had been pleased. For an additional amount, the professor had assured me that he would switch my sister over to the Law Department by next session.
There was no way I was going to miss her matriculation ceremony. I told my sister so.
‘Thank God,’ she sighed. ‘I was afraid you might be in London again.’
‘Just make a list of everything you require for that day, then call me later and we can discuss it.’
Simple. Education without tears.
I went back to making a living.
‘I’m relocating my campaign headquarters to my building on Mbano Road,’ Cash Daddy announced. ‘It’s not good to mix business with pleasure. So, Kings, I want you to keep an eye on things here.’
It was becoming clearer to me by the day that God must have been speaking to him about this governorship thing for a long time, probably as far back as the day he summoned me into his private office and made me the offer to come and work with him. Somehow, I was touched that he had chosen me. And proud.
‘I’m too big to chase dollars up and down the world,’ he continued. ‘Money should be chasing me instead.’
He went on to explain that life is in stages, that each person must learn to make changes to accommodate each new stage. He said that he had paid his dues in life and it was now time for life to treat him well.
Protocol Officer’s entrance truncated his speech.
‘Cash Daddy, I’ve just been speaking with Grandma,’ he said. ‘She said someone at her bank was warning her about our account.’
As Protocol Officer gave further details, Cash Daddy grew wilder.
‘What do they mean by that?! What type of rubbish is that?!’
Protocol Officer’s ‘Grandma’ lived in Yorkshire. He must have dabbed a very potent mugu potion on his lips the first time he spoke to her, because Grandma was totally consumed with faith in whatever Protocol Officer told her. For centuries, the elderly lady had been trying to help him get his mother out of Nigeria for cancer treatment in the UK. But over time, Grandma’s more perceptive children had cautioned her. Each time, she had disregarded their advice – and now a staff member of the bank had tried. She had once again brought the matter to Protocol Officer’s attention for advice. This Grandma woman was every 419er’s dream.
‘Can you imagine this rubbish?’ Cash Daddy barked. ‘Call the bank for me right now!’
Protocol Officer unlocked a cabinet and whipped out a file. He flipped through and found the number he was looking for, dialled, and asked to speak with the manager before passing the cellular on.
‘Do you know who I am?!’ Cash Daddy bellowed.
Maybe the bank manager did, maybe he did not.
‘Is that the way you treat your big customers? Look, I’m taking this matter to the press! You hear me? You have no right to give out information about what goes on in my account to anybody!’
The bellowing went on and on and on. I could only imagine what was happening at the other end.
‘Is it because I’m black? That’s what it is, is that not so? If I was a white man, you wouldn’t treat me with such disregard. Look, let me tell you. I might be black, but I’m not a monkey and I deserve to be treated with respect!’
Haha. Cash Daddy need never worry about being mistaken for a monkey. With the right diet and the right tutoring from superior brains, a monkey could probably learn how to program computers, pen great works of literature, make scientific discoveries. But no monkey born of creation or evolution could swipe cool millions of dollars with such ease. I could not vouch for the entire black race, but the niggers of Nigeria were certainly not monkeys.
‘You’d better be very sorry!’ Cash Daddy ranted on.
Then, he handed the phone back to Protocol Officer, who spoke to the manager before hanging up.
‘They said they’ll send a formal apology,’ Protocol Officer said. ‘They said they’re very sorry, that they’ll investigate which staff member spoke to Grandma and take disciplinary measures. They promised it won’t happen again.’
No bank wanted to be publicly accused of having issues regarding clients’ confidentiality.
‘Imagine the rubbish,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘Confidentiality. It’s a simple word. What’s so difficult about that? English is not my father’s language. Yet I understand what it means.’
‘He promised it won’t happen again,’ Protocol Officer said consolingly.
‘How can they be telling people stories about my account?’ Cash Daddy hissed. ‘Just because I’m black.’
He continued frowning.
‘Where’s that form? Who has it?’
‘Cash Daddy, I have it with me,’ Protocol Officer replied.
He brought the sheet of paper we had just purchased from the NAP headquarters, extended it across the table, and sat beside me. Cash Daddy did not even touch the form with his eyes.
‘Kings, you have a good handwriting,’ he said. ‘Fill it.’
Protocol Officer repositioned the form in front of me. I removed a pen from my shirt pocket and started filling while Protocol Officer stuck out his neck and clung his eyes to my hand. Quickly and efficiently, I filled out the section for name, address, and marital status. In the section for date of birth, I wrote July 4 and paused. I looked up at Protocol Officer and tapped my pen in the space for year of birth. He considered the matter briefly before looking up at Cash Daddy.
‘Cash Daddy, what year of birth do you want us to put?’ he asked.
‘What are they doing with my year of birth?’ Cash Daddy asked gruffly, ‘Do they want to throw a birthday party for me?’
‘Cash Daddy, it’s because of the age,’ Protocol Officer replied. ‘You know they have a minimum age for people who want to contest.’
Cash Daddy dimmed his eyes and made a humming sound in his throat, as if he had been asked to recollect the year when, for ease of administration, Lord Lugard amalgamated the Northern and Southern protectorates of the British Colony, and bundled them up into one country which Lady Lugard had named ‘area around the Niger’ – Nigeria.
‘What’s the minimum age?’ he asked eventually.
None of us was sure. Protocol Officer placed a phone call to someone he was sure would know and confirmed that the minimum age was definitely thirty years.
‘Then let’s make it thirty,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘You know, in this life, it’s always better for one to start out early. It has many advantages.’
I did a quick calculation and arrived at a year of birth which placed Cash Daddy and me within the same age bracket. I ignored this water-to-wine category of miracle and continued with my task. When I arrived at educational qualifications, again I tapped my pen and looked to Protocol Officer for assistance. I already knew that the minimum requirement for governorship candidates was a GCE certificate. Protocol Officer considered the matter and arrived at another roadblock.
‘Cash Daddy,’ he asked, ‘what do we put for your GCE?’
‘I don’t know,’ he snapped. ‘Put whatever you like. When Dibia’s preparing my birth certificate, tell him to get me a GCE certificate as well.’
In moments of great stress, it is usually the most implausible fib that comes to mind. I filled in my own straight-A result for Cash Daddy. But that was not the end. I still needed help to know what secondary school he wanted me to state. Protocol Officer drew another blank and turned to his master for help. His master banged one hand on the desk and flailed the other in the air.
‘What’s wrong with you people? Can’t you fill a simple form without asking me stupid questions? If you have to ask me about every single thing before you fill a simple form, then I don’t know why I’m paying you so much money. You might as well go and work in a bank!’
‘Cash Daddy, we’re sorry,’ we both apologised.
‘Get out of my office and go and fill that thing somewhere else. You people are starting to annoy me.’
On my way back to the Central Intelligence Agency, I was about to turn the door handle when the air suddenly filled with a sensuous, luxurious scent. I looked back and saw that a majestic frown had walked in through the connecting door to the reception area. In its train was Cash Daddy’s wife.
Mrs Boniface Mbamalu was the most beautiful wife that money could buy. Each of her facial features was perfectly sculptured. Every item on her lithe, six-foot frame could be considered a fortune. From the flaxen hair extensions, to the chunks of metal around her throat and wrists, to the lace fabric of her buba and iro. And her skin shone with a glorious luminosity that had nothing at all to do with nature; it could only have come from inside an expensive cosmetic jar.
‘Good afternoon, madam,’ I said.
She ignored me and swished past. Red-hot fumes were smoking out of her ears and nostrils.
Instinctively, I retraced my steps. Protocol Officer was frozen to the spot, as if he had just spied a three-headed python while taking a stroll in the garden behind his house. Mrs Mbamalu had swept into Cash Daddy’s office, and from where we stood, we could hear the sparking of her wrath and the thundering of her rage. Glass was smashing, wood was crashing, and her voice was at topmost volume. Everybody else in the building must have heard. Yet not even the tough-looking otimkpu dared to intervene.
‘Useless idiot!’
Crash! Smash! Bang!
‘What sort of rubbish is that?!’
Bang! Smash! Crash!
‘Whatever you do with your private life is none of my business, but I will never have you flaunt it in my face. Are you hearing me?!’
Smash! Crash! Bang!
‘If you know what’s good for you… better relocate that stupid girl… my next trip!’
Slap! Slap! Slap!
Within minutes, she had finished delivering her message and vamoosed. From what I could gather, she apparently had discovered that Cash Daddy was renting a flat for one of his girlfriends on the same street in London, Belgrave Square, where she, his wife, had her own private apartments. From all indications, this woman had flown all the way from Lagos to Port Harcourt, taken a taxi to Aba, stopped at her husband’s office, and afterwards headed directly back to Lagos. The straightforward purpose of the trip had been to communicate some slaps.
After she left, I went into Cash Daddy’s office with Protocol Officer. The place looked as if a tornado had dropped by to say hello. The exotic vases were smashed to smithereens on the floor, the wall cabinet was lying facedown like an Islamic worshipper, every single item on his executive desk had been transferred to the ground. Interestingly, the only thing in the room that seemed untouched was the photograph of him in a traditional chieftaincy outfit. The image looked down on the dishevelled room from its position high up on the wall.
Cash Daddy was sitting on his swivel chair, with head bent and hands folded on the executive desk. That desk, I noticed, was now in a slanting position. Protocol Officer started picking things up off the floor with the morbid efficiency of one who had seen it all before. I stood, marvelling at the effects of this ironic sort of rage that immoral single women suddenly develop against immorality as soon as they get married. Was this not the same woman who they said had been a professional mistress in her time?
Abruptly, Cash Daddy looked up. A drop of blood escaped a cut on his lower lip. He licked it, like a reptile capturing its dinner.
‘Kings, do you believe in love?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I answered slowly. I knew for sure that I had once loved a certain woman.
He laughed.
‘Let me tell you something. Women are like babies. Just give them whatever they want and they’ll keep quiet. Don’t mind all their shakara. The only time a woman becomes dangerous is when there’s nothing else she wants from you.’
I said nothing.
‘Did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I lied.
He laughed and shook his head.
‘Kissing may be the language of love, but it’s money that does the talking.’ He paused. ‘By the way, when are you planning to get married?’
I had not thought about marriage since Ola.
‘I’m waiting for the right woman to come along,’ I replied.
‘Stay there and continue waiting. If that’s the case, you’ll never get married. All you need to do is fix a date for the wedding, book the venue, pay for the catering… just plan everything. As soon as you’ve done that, you’ll see that the woman will just appear on time and fill in the slot.’
I knew that he meant every word of what he was saying.
‘What about your current girlfriends? Is there none of them that you can marry?’
‘I’m not in any relationship right now.’
‘Do you mean you don’t have any relationship with any girls you want to marry or that you don’t have any girlfriends at all?’
He often referred to the female gender in plural form, as if they did not exist except in batches.
‘No, I don’t have any girlfriend.’
‘Kings, stop trying to make me laugh. I have a cut on my lip.’
‘Cash Daddy, I’m not joking. I don’t have a girlfriend.’
It took a while for the disbelief to cover the whole region of his vast face. Then he uttered a scream that rattled the pieces of glass on the floor.
‘Are you serious?! Are you really serious?!’
I smiled. What was all the fuss was about?
‘Come to think of it,’ he said meditatively, ‘I’ve never seen you with any women. I thought there might be some you left behind in Umuahia who were taking care of you from time to time. So what’s the problem? What’s wrong with you?’
Now it was my turn to laugh.
‘I’m serious. Tell me the problem. What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing is wrong with me.’
He turned his voice into a whisper.
‘Are you having some problems with your machete?’
‘Cash Daddy, I’m fine. Nothing is wrong with me.’
‘Or are you a homo?’
Accusing another man of such a thing could easily lead to a mouthful of broken teeth. I let the insult pass.
‘Cash Daddy, I’m not.’
‘Kings, I beg you in the name of God. I know that relatives are the cause of hip disease, but right now, I have enough problems on my hands. I don’t want to add the one of having a homo brother.’
‘Cash Daddy, I’m certainly not gay.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ He had turned the volume of his voice up again. ‘If a man is denying that he has a swollen scrotum, the place for him to prove it’s a lie is by the riverside. Why don’t you have any women?’
‘I was in a relationship that ended a long time ago. Since then, I’ve not really-’
‘A relationship!’ He screamed louder than ever. ‘Your head is not correct! Are you trying to tell me that you don’t have regular servicing from women? Are you normal at all?’
‘Cash Daddy, it doesn’t really matter to me. I believe that true love is more important than sex in a relationship. After all, sex isn’t one of the basic physiological-’
‘Come on will you shut up your mouth! I don’t believe it. How can I have somebody on my staff who is not being taken care of? Please leave off that your big grammar and just shut up. Your head is not correct.’
He paused thoughtfully. Then looked up with face aglow, as if he had just discovered fire.
‘Kings, when is your birthday?’
What had that got to do with the price of fish?
‘Am I not talking to you? I said, when is your birthday?’
‘It’s on the sixth of November.’
‘Good. I know what to do. I’m going to give you an early birthday present.’
He brought out his phone and ordered someone at the other end to meet us in the VIP section of his hotel bar later that night. I marvelled at this man who had just been smashed by his wife, and who was now trying to vivify my sex life.
The Bon Bonny Hotel was a popular hangout for people in our line of business. The car park was jammed with all manner of exotic cars and the lobby was equally jammed. Men in dark glasses and dark suits waited as their masters dined or womanised. There were also yellow-skinned, scantily clad ladies who had probably come to see if they could get their hands on some of the International Cake.
On my way to the bar, I spied Azuka disappearing into the elevator with a luscious lady entwined around his arms. Her bright yellow back was bare. Clearly, his newfound good luck was still a-flowing.
The writer of an opinion editorial I read recently in This Day had blamed the proliferation of bleached skin amongst young ladies on the average 419er’s preference for yellow women who went hand-in-hand with his flashy lifestyle. Another editorial, written by a Roman Catholic priest, blamed the 419ers and their ‘promiscuous lifestyles’ on the recent ‘rise in materialism’ amongst young girls and their tendency to dress in ‘Babylonian apparel’. Yet another writer blamed the 419ers for importing the AIDS virus to Nigeria.
Blaming problems on 419ers had turned into a national pastime, but then, it all depended on which part of the elephant you could feel.
I knew, for example, that Cash Daddy was personally responsible for the upkeep of the 221 orphans in the Daughters of St Jacinta Orphanage, Aba. He tarred all the roads in my mother’s local community. He dug boreholes, installed streetlights, built a primary health care centre. Just two days ago, I received a letter from the Old Boys’ Association of my secondary school requesting my contribution towards a new classroom block. I replied immediately to say I would fund the whole project. I knew what it felt like to endure classrooms that had no windows, no doors, and no tiles on the floors, just because the complete funds pledged towards the project had not yet been collected.
So, no matter what the media proclaimed, we were not villains, and the good people of Eastern Nigeria knew it.
In the bar, I sat at an inconspicuous table and waited. Cash Daddy was the Patron Saint of ‘African Time’; he would be at least an hour late as usual.
A waitress strutted over with a priceless smile.
‘Good evening, Oga,’ she beamed, and jiggled her waist to one side.
‘Good eve-’
‘What of Oga Cash Daddy?’ she beamed, and jiggled her waist to the other side.
‘He’s coming later,’ I replied.
I asked for a bottle of Coke and tipped her enough to compensate for the beaming and jiggling. As I sipped, I peered around the room.
There was Kanu Sterling. Both he and Cash Daddy had worked under Money Magnet. I had heard that Kanu lit his cigarettes with one-dollar bills.
There was Smooth. A chromosomal criminal, unlike some of us. Well educated, extremely cultured, he had been familiar with the good things of life since birth. But while he was schooling in Stanford, USA, the sweet lure of illegal money had been like a siren to him.
There was Amarachamiheuwa. He was personally responsible for the death-by-cardiac-arrest of one of the most prominent businessmen in Brazil, after duping the man out of 115 polo horses.
Cash Daddy arrived exactly two and a half hours after the time he had given me – without Protocol Officer, which meant that he probably had a high-maintenance adulteress waiting in one of the rooms and would spend the night at the hotel. He went from table to table, slapping hands and exchanging wild laughter. These men were not necessarily his friends, but they were all united in the brotherhood of cool cash.
‘Pound Sterling!’ Cash Daddy said to Kanu. ‘The only currency with a surname! I haven’t seen you in a long time. I was wondering if the white people had carried you away.’
‘Me?’ the man replied and beat his chest repeatedly. ‘Cash Daddy, me? How? They no afraid to carried me away? O bu na ujo adighi atu fa? Does they knows who I am?’
Amarachamiheuwa’s subsequent phone conversation eclipsed every other sound in the building.
‘Go to my house right now!’ he screamed. ‘No, not the one on Azikiwe Road! Go to the one on Michael Opara Crescent! Ask my gateman to show you where I parked my Mazda! It’s inside my garage, the one that’s very close to my swimming pool! Between my Volvo and my Navigator! Inside the boot, you’ll find three briefcases! One contains pounds! One contains dollars! One contains naira! Bring the briefcase with naira for me! Hurry up and come back now!’
Finally, Cash Daddy finished his rounds, sat at a table of his choice and beckoned me to join.
‘The usual,’ he said to the waitress who sauntered across. She was different from the one who had attended to me earlier.
I ordered oxtail pepper soup to go with another bottle of Coke. Our orders arrived in a jiffy.
‘Kings,’ Cash Daddy said after jawing the first chunk from a piece of fried meat in his saucer, ‘have you noticed that I never fall sick? Even if I go to a place where mosquitoes drink blood with straws, I can never catch malaria.’
He leaned closer and whispered.
‘Have you also noticed that my women are always coming back for more? No matter how many times they’re with me, they still want more. It’s because there’s nobody who satisfies them the way I do.’
He laughed.
‘This is my secret.’ He pointed at the meat he was chomping on. ‘404 works wonders in the body. You see all those funny diseases that women carry around in their bodies? With 404 you won’t catch anything.’
I was aghast. 404 was dog meat. I had heard of certain parts of Nigeria where dog meat was a delicacy, but this was my first time watching someone eating it.
‘And another thing…’ he continued, ‘404 protects you from your enemies. No one of them can touch me if I keep eating it regularly.’
He took a sip from the wine in his glass.
‘Should I tell them to bring some for you?’ He grinned. ‘You’ll need it against tonight. You know you have to sharpen your machete very well before you set off for the farm.’
‘No, thank you,’ I replied quickly.
Recently, I had done several things of which I had never thought myself capable, but eating the body parts of a dog was way beyond my league.
‘OK, don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Camille is a very dangerous girl.’
While we were eating, an enchantress stiletto-ed over to our table in a short red dress that clung dangerously to her derriere. Her knees and knuckles were black where the bleaching cream had refused to work. Her hair extensions went all the way down to her waist and curled at the tips. Cash Daddy patted her behind and introduced us.
‘This is Camille,’ he said. ‘My jewel of inestimable value. She’s a law student at Abia State University.’ He grabbed my shoulder and shook. ‘This is Kings. The latest millionaire in town. After all, our elders say that a dirty hand will eventually lead to an oily mouth.’
I realised too late that the misapplication of this popular Igbo proverb was supposed to be a joke. My laughter joined in when theirs was already at an anticlimax.
Camille bubbled with goodwill to all mankind. She gazed attentively at Cash Daddy, and winked at me from time to time. She wiped some grease from his upper lip, and straightened my shirt collar. Eventually, she reached over and kissed me briefly on the lips. I worried that some of her rouge might have stayed behind, but resisted the urge to wipe my lips with my hands. Then she transferred herself to my lap and smiled like someone used to turning scrawny sonnies into world heavyweight boxing champions. I was not sure where to keep my hands; I left them dangling awkwardly by my side.
Camille’s instructions from Cash Daddy were simple.
‘Collect the key to room 671,’ he said. ‘Take him inside and deal with him. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. By the time you’re through, I don’t even want him to remember his father’s name.’
•
It was not until about noon the following day that I was finally able to lift myself out of bed and answer my phone. It was my mother.
‘Kingsley!’ she said with fire in her voice.
‘Mummy.’
‘You’re still sleeping?’
‘I’m a bit tired,’ I mumbled.
‘Kings, are you well?’ she asked with concern.
‘I’m fine.’
‘What’s the matter? Are you sure-’
‘Mummy, I’m fine.’
She paused. She remembered why she had called. Her voice resumed its initial fire.
‘Kingsley, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Why didn’t I tell you what?’
‘I saw on the news last night that Boniface is contesting for governor. Is it true?’
Agreed, the Nigerian media were experts at conjuring headline news out of incidents that never happened, but surely my mother must have seen Cash Daddy declaring his good intentions to the world with his very own mouth.
‘Yes, he’s contesting.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me in advance?’
‘I didn’t? I thought I did.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘Oh.’
There was a pause.
‘Kings, have you started looking for another job?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘That’s what you told me the last time.’
‘Mummy, I’m working on it.’
‘Where and where have you applied to?’
‘Different places.’
‘Does it mean not one of them has called you in for an interview yet?’
‘Mummy, you know how Nigeria is.’
‘Kings, please, please, please. Find a proper job. I don’t understand this so-called work you say you’re doing for Boniface. You know Nigerian politics is very dangerous.’
‘Mummy, I’m not in any way involved in his campaign. Stop worrying yourself unnecessarily.’
‘There’s no way you can be working with him and not-’
‘Mummy, I need to go now. I’ll talk to you some other time.’
‘Remember you promised your fa-’
It was only a matter of time before she would come round. I returned to Camille. In a short while, I forgot everything about my dead father and my worried mother. I was transported to another galaxy.
Mr Edgar Hooverson’s was a typical case of gambler’s fallacy. Every additional payment had simply increased his commitment, the need to win money had kept him going.
But at last, all the mind-bending was taking its toll. After paying $16,000 for lawyer’s fees, $19,000 for a Change of Beneficiary Certificate, $14,500 for Security Company Tariff, $21,000 for Transfer of Ownership, $11,900 for courier charges, $23,000 for Customs Clearance, $17,000 for Hague Authorisation, $9,000 for ECOWAS Duty, and $18,700 for insurance fees, his enthusiasm had started waning. The time was ripe to release the $58 million into his care.
My friend, Edgar, then sent me an email.
Dear Shehu,
ALUTA CONTINUA!
I’ve spoken with Jude and arranged to be in Amsterdam on TUESDAY THE 27th. Is that date CONVENIENT for you? Please let me know so I can go ahead and book my ticket and accommodation. I intend to be at THE AMSTERDAM AMERICAN HOTEL which Jude told me is not too far from the security company.
I’ll send the $4,000 for your travel ticket and hotel accommodation BEFORE the day runs out.
I’m quite EXCITED and LOOKING FORWARD to meeting you after all this correspondence. My regards to your dear sister.
Best,
Your friend, Edgar
PS: Something just occurred to me! I’ll also email you a RECENT PHOTOGRAPH of myself. The one on my driving license and international passport is a bit OUTDATED and I want to avoid the risk of you coming to the hotel and MISTAKING me with someone else. I know it’s not very likely that would happen, but as an EXPERIENCED business man, I’ve learnt to always take ADDITIONAL PRECAUTIONS.
I had no reason to doubt Mr Hooverson’s experienced-ness as a businessman. He might even have been one of the most brilliant. After all, there were people renowned for their ability to remove tumours from tricky crevices in the human body, who were useless at changing their car tyres. Others could interpret every formula that Newton and Einstein had come up with, but could not tell the beginning or the end of the stock market. Any intelligent, experienced expert could become a mugu. It was all about the packaging.
The date that Mr Hooverson had chosen – just a few days before Charity’s matriculation – was actually not convenient for me. But our associates in Amsterdam advised that it was risky to postpone the meeting; Mr Hooverson’s desperation was dead ripe. Pity, I would have to rush back so soon. It would have been nice to check out all the outlandish stories Cash Daddy had narrated about the Red Light District in Amsterdam.
In Amsterdam, after checking into my hotel, I met my associates in a nearby cafe. Either of them could have been the Jude who had been in touch with Mr Hooverson.
They laughed when I would not take off my coat.
‘You should have worn a lighter coat,’ Amuche said. ‘This one you’re wearing is meant for the peak of winter.’
‘Anybody seeing you would know immediately that you’re a Johnny-just-come straight off the boat,’ Obideozor added.
‘I don’t think you people understand what I’m going through here,’ I said and shivered.
Both men laughed without control.
After a life of sweating it out in the blazing heat of tropical West Africa, nothing could have prepared me for the plummeting temperatures of this, my very first winter on earth. Suddenly, bits of puzzling information started making sense. At last, I understood the necktie – an item of clothing that had never previously made the slightest sense. I now knew that boots were more than a fashion statement. They were a lifesaver. And as the cold November air charged through the broad entrances to my nostrils, I remembered something my father had once said.
‘The white people’s narrow nostrils and pointed noses are not just to help them speak with a nasal accent,’ he had said. ‘It’s to help protect them against the cold.’
I rubbed my palms vigorously and wished that my nose was more pointed. My two associates continued being amused. I and Obideozor finished our cups of tea and headed out.
‘I’ll be waiting for your call,’ Amuche said.
We had planned everything right down to the smallest detail. I was the one to knock. The face that peeped out of the narrow space beside the open door when I did was exactly the same as the one in the Jpeg that Edgar Hooverson had sent.
‘Mr Hooverson?’
‘Yes?’ he replied sternly, like a female post office clerk.
‘Aluta Continua!’
His smile opened up like an umbrella. He pulled the door all the way. In his neat, old-fashioned suit, Mr Hooverson could easily have passed for a Baptist minister. He was a tall, handsome man who looked as if he had recently started feeding too often and too well. I was not quite sure about his age. He looked slightly older than a secondary school principal, but much younger than a grandfather. I noticed that his fingernails were bitten halfway down to the cuticles.
‘I’m Shehu Musa Abacha. This is Dr Wazobia. He was my late brother’s trusted chemist.’
Mr Hooverson’s smile flickered. He looked unsure of this new character. His mouth opened to ask a question; I grabbed him into a tight embrace.
‘Thank you,’ I said with tears in my voice. ‘Thank you very, very much for all your help towards my sister and my family.’
It is amazing the things we never know about ourselves, the skills that situations and circumstances drag out of us. In all my six years of secondary school, nobody had ever considered me for a single part in the yearly Inter-House Drama Competition. They said I was too set in my personality, they said I could not act. Now, here I was giving a performance that was on a par with any of Denzel Washington’s.
‘It’s my pleasure,’ he replied and hugged me back.
We remained in each other’s arms for several seconds. The whole thing had a certain United Nations touch.
‘My sister Mariam asked me to apologise for not being able to meet you herself,’ I said, as we went into the room.
‘Oh, I perfectly understand. I understand about the horrible situation in your country. It’s really very sad.’
I moved on to stage two.
‘When my sister rang the security company yesterday just to make sure that everything was in order, they told her that the only thing remaining is an anti-terrorist certificate.’
‘What! They never told me anything about that!’
‘I think it’s something new they just started implementing,’ Dr Wazobia said.
We told Mr Hooverson that we had raised $5,000 of our own money for the anti-terrorist certificate, and would pay the remaining $10,000 when the consignment arrived.
‘Oh, great,’ he sighed.
‘But they said we can only have part of the delivery until I pay them the remaining.’
‘How much would that be… Part of the delivery?’
‘It’s one of two trunk boxes,’ I replied. ‘That comes to exactly half of the $58 million.’
I could see the mathematics going through his head. Half of $58 million dollars was still over $25 million.
‘That seems like a perfect idea to me,’ he said and nodded. ‘Once we have the first trunk, we can then pay from that for the second trunk… Everyone is happy!’
I dug into my pocket and brought out an envelope of cash. I counted out fifty $100 bills in full view of everybody and handed them to Dr Wazobia, who then left to pay the anti-terrorists. He was supposed to return with the certificate, which we would then take to the security company. Then we would receive our trunk of millions.
Mr Hooverson and I were now alone.
‘How’s your sister doing?’ he asked in a tone of utmost concern.
My reply painted as pathetic a picture as I could conjure. Grunts of different shapes and sizes escaped from Mr Hooverson’s lips. By the time I finished, he was clutching his chest with grief. Did I say Denzel Washington? Make that an Eddie Murphy or an Al Pacino.
‘How sad,’ he said. ‘How very, very sad, I would have loved to pop over to Nigeria quickly and see her, but I need to be back in the US as soon as possible. I left him at home.’
While speaking, he reached into his wallet, extracted a photograph, and passed it on to me. I stared at the muscular, jet-black creature.
‘Is this your dog?’ I asked.
Mr Hooverson glared at me as if I had just called his mother a hermaphrodite. The skin on his face changed from the colour of boiled chicken to the colour of a baboon’s buttocks.
‘Don’t call him a dog!’ he howled with uncharacteristic, un-good-Samaritan-ish vexation. ‘His name is Kunta Kinte!’
My heart went pit-a-pat. Rapidly, I calculated how many leaps and bounds would get me to the door.
‘Kunta Kinte’s been through a lot,’ he said in a much softer voice. ‘He gets very agitated when I’m not at home. My new wife is really mean to him. She never lets him sleep in our bed.’
I was still clutching my heart between my teeth. My mind was already halfway down the valley of the shadow of death. I recalled all those stories about Americans who suddenly whipped out guns from grocery bags and started shooting everyone in sight. And from what I had seen on television, every American had at least one firearm. What if Mr Hooverson had come along with his gun? Would he shoot me if he happened to find out right here that all this was a scam? Would he shoot himself afterwards or live to tell the story? Would the shooting event make it to CNN or BBC? Would it be on the NTA 9 o’clock news?
What would my mother say when she saw it? I started losing weight right there in my seat.
Mr Hooverson went on to narrate several stories about the dog, describing Kunta Kinte’s good qualities, remembering with tears in his eyes the day he lost him and later found him in the garden shed. I listened on with sweet patience, but in my mind I had started throwing huge boulders at him. At long last, I could take it no more. I had never been one to shine at small talk, but I decided to try.
‘Do you have any children?’ I asked, hoping that this would lead to a more tolerable topic.
‘Kunta Kinte is my only child,’ he replied tenderly. ‘One of the reasons why I’m looking forward to this money coming in is so I can leave him something to live comfortably on even if something was to happen to me. I’m thinking of a trust fund in his name.’
God being so kind, right then, Dr Wazobia rang my cellular phone.
He informed me that the person at the anti-terrorist office was insisting on the complete $15,000 before he could issue the certificate. I threw a tantrum over the phone.
‘What sort of rubbish is this? Mr Hooverson has come all the way from America to help us and now this! Can’t you explain to them that we’ll give it from the one in the trunk?’
I continued the heated talk while Mr Hooverson looked increasingly worried.
‘Let me see what I can do,’ he finally said.
He rang someone in the USA and asked them to wire money, quick. The person appeared reluctant. Mr Hooverson insisted that it was an emergency. After a brief argument, the savage in him burst through the Caucasian coating.
‘Just do it!’ Mr Hooverson howled, punching the arm of his chair until it groaned.
That was one thing I loved about these Yankee Doodles. They had a way of getting things done.
The next few hours were a rush of dramatics. I accompanied the mugu to a nearby cash machine and stood respectfully aside while he punched in his pin. When would this sort of technology reach my dearly beloved Nigeria? These cash machines were like gods standing right there in the streets, answering the cries of the needy at the press of a button.
Dr Wazobia met us up at the hotel lobby. He collected the cash, dashed out again, and returned shortly after with the anti-terrorist certificate. Now we could officially pick up our trunk of millions. We hailed a taxi to the security company. Mr Hooverson knew the address by heart.
The security company office was complete with signboard, reception, and inner office. There was even a Caucasian man and woman in charge of things. Cash Daddy had exhumed this setup from where-I-do-not-know, but it looked perfectly authentic.
Shortly after we arrived, the receptionist ushered us into the inner office.
‘Which one of you is the beneficiary?’ the white man asked.
‘I am,’ the mugu replied.
Mr Hooverson whipped out his navy blue American passport. The white man examined the photo and stared up into Mr Hooverson’s face. He did this at least three more times before he was finally satisfied. Then he unfolded some documents that had been tightly clamped inside his armpit.
‘Could you please sign here,’ he said.
The mugu signed – after perusing carefully – and handed back the documents. The white woman collected the documents, took them away, and returned.
‘Everything seems alright,’ she said. ‘I’ve just spoken to the courier. He’ll be here very soon.’
Indeed, soon, Amuche arrived dragging a trunk box that looked exactly like the one where my mother kept her precious belongings in Umuahia.
‘The second one will arrive in about an hour,’ he explained. ‘For security purposes, we deliver one at a time.’
He unlocked the box with a great deal of panache, making a show of removing the bundle of keys from his pocket, choosing the right one, and sticking it into the lock. He turned the key and paused some extra seconds before opening the lid. The trunk box appeared jammed with dollar notes. All of them stained black.
Thus, we moved to Stage three.
In a corner of the box, was a dark brown 150cl bottle. Mr Hooverson was speechless. Elation and confusion were fighting for space on his face.
‘What’s this?’ he asked at last.
‘That’s where Dr Wazobia comes in,’ I replied. ‘He’s a professional chemist who’ll help us wash the money.’
‘Wash the money?’
‘For security purposes,’ Dr Wazobia explained, ‘we had the dollar notes invalidated with a fluid known as phosphorus sulphuric benzomate. It turns them black. All we have to do is wash them in the lactima base 69% contained in that bottle.’
Dr Wazobia raised the bottle from the box.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed.
‘What?’ Mr Hooverson and I replied simultaneously. Our voices had equal degrees of curiosity.
‘The chemical has congealed,’ Dr Wazobia said. ‘It was left in here for too long. But there’s a little left in it.’ He swished the leftover liquid in the bottle about. ‘Let’s see how much we can wash with this. I’ll need to dilute it with some water.’
We followed him to the bathroom. Dr Wazobia put the bottle to the mouth of the running tap, placed some black notes in the sink, and poured from the bottle onto the notes.
‘Wow!’ Mr Hooverson gasped.
The black paint had washed off, leaving gleaming dollar notes behind. Only the first row of notes in the trunk box were real. The rest were old newspapers, painted black and cut to dollar size. Pray tell, who was that 419er who first thought up these serpentine scams? Men and women had received the acknowledgment of History for displaying less ingenuity in other fields.
After Dr Wazobia had washed about $1,000, the liquid in the brown bottle finished.
‘Sorry, this is all I can do for now,’ Dr Wazobia said. ‘You’ll have to order a fresh batch from the chemical plant. A full bottle of this size is about seventy thousand dollars. That should be more than enough to wash all the money in that trunk.’
From the corner of my eyes, I watched Mr Hooverson, in case he actually had a gun. I expected that he might wake up at the mention of yet another payment.
But no, the money he had seen was scattering his thoughts. In front of my eyes, Mr Hooverson became a mental case. He started shivering and pacing like someone sleepwalking. All his ten fingers went into his mouth.
‘We have to get that chemical. We have to get that chemical,’ he muttered. His head shot up. ‘How long does it take?’ He blew a crumb of fingernail into the air. ‘The chemical. The chemical for washing the money. How long does it take to arrive?’
‘Oh, the lactima base 69%. Almost immediately. They usually have it permanently in stock. It’s mostly reserved for use by the FBI and Interpol, but I have my contacts at the plant.’
‘We need to get that chemical. We need to get that chemical,’ Mr Hooverson repeated over and over again.
Out of the blue, Dr Wazobia came up with a smart plan.
‘Why don’t we leave this with the security company until we’re ready with the money for the chemical?’
Mr Hooverson’s face did not seem to like the idea. For a moment, he left off chewing his nails.
‘So, next time, after we get the chemical, all we have to do is come here, collect the keys, and take the two trunks?’ Mr Hooverson asked.
‘Then you can take your share and keep the rest for them,’ he nodded at me, ‘in your account. But you have to get that chemical first.’
Mr Hooverson was pacing again. Then he stopped abruptly.
‘I’m not sure how long it will take,’ he said. ‘But I’m pretty sure I can raise the funds.’
I gasped. I considered clutching my chest, but restrained myself. No need to take the acting too far.
‘Mr Hooverson, I can’t let you do this,’ I said. ‘You’ve done so much for my sister and her family already.’
‘The sooner we get this money out, the better it is for all of us,’ he replied matter-of-factly. Clearly, the time of pretence was over.
We parted outside the security company, but not before I drew Mr Hooverson towards me and gave him another United Nations hug.
Cash Daddy was right. These white people were harmless.
Too drenched in sleep, it was not until the passengers broke into a loud cheer that I jolted back to reality and realised that the plane had landed in Port Harcourt. Nigerians always clap when an international flight touches on home soil. Who could blame us? With the number of tribulations that were lurking out there, to have gone and returned in one piece was worth celebrating.
I had spent my last few hours in Amsterdam looking over my shoulders for Interpol and the FBI. It was not until the plane lifted off the tarmac that I finally relaxed.
The air hostess smiled and thanked me for flying with them. Having flown first class, I was entitled to their free limousine service to convey me from the airport to wherever I was going, but I had declined. I preferred for my driver to pick me up. That way, I could make personal phone calls on the journey home without worrying about being overheard.
On my way to immigration, I switched on my phone. It rang almost immediately. It was my father’s sister.
‘Kings, I’m in serious trouble here. I’ve been trying to reach you for the past two days.’
She sounded very anxious. She gave me a number and asked me to ring her back on it immediately.
‘Kings, I don’t know what to do. NEPA has been giving us low current and my fridge has broken down. I don’t know for how long I’ll have to keep cooking fresh food every day. It’s not easy for me at all.’
‘Aunty Ada, relax… relax. Have you asked them how much it will cost to repair the fridge?’
‘Hmm. Kings, it’s a very old fridge. I don’t know if anybody can repair it. Most people don’t use this type of model anymore.’
I got the message.
‘Aunty Ada, how much will a new one cost?’
She told me. I promised to send the money before the week ran out.
‘Only God knows how I’ll be able to do without a fridge till the weekend but thank you, anyway. I’ll try and manage somehow.’
‘OK, Aunty. Don’t worry. I’ll try and send the money by tomorrow.’
‘You really are your father’s son. God bless you my dear child. You’re such a blessing to this family.’
The officer at immigration beamed a broad smile and lifted his right hand in amateur salute.
‘Welcome, sir!’ he shouted.
Poverty had a way of sharpening the sense of smell. These sorts of people could sniff out a prospective heavy tipper. I smiled and gave him my passport.
‘Is there anything you’d like us to do for you, sir?’ he asked.
‘No, thank you,’ I replied.
The last time I travelled with Cash Daddy, he had required the immigration officer’s assistance to adjust their stamp so that his passport could read as if he had entered Nigeria on a previous date. These minor peccadilloes were necessary to keep the people at the embassies happy.
The immigration officer finished and held my passport towards me. I took the dark green booklet and sneaked him some Euro notes. Hopefully, the tip was heavy enough to ensure that my face was stamped in his memory for eternity, just in case I needed his help someday.
On my way to baggage collection, I dialled Camille.
‘Kings, Kings! You’re back! I really missed you!’
Camille and I had spent several more nights together since our first meeting. I would ring when I needed her, we would meet at the hotel, and she would leave the following morning. The girl had special ways of helping me forget my sorrows. Come to think of it, I did not even know her surname. But what was the point getting to know everything about a girl, only for her to dump you in the end? With Camille, I was free – free to extract as much pleasure as I wanted from our relationship whenever I wanted. That was the most important thing.
‘Can you meet me later tonight?’ I asked.
‘Sure. What time?’
‘I’m still at the airport. I’ll ring you when I get to Aba and let you know.’
‘I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Kings. I hope you brought back something from Amsterdam for me.’
Even her voice had something mesmerising about it. Was there a certain school where these types of girls went to master their art or was it an inborn talent? No wonder she charged so much. I rammed into someone who had been walking too slowly. He turned. I was about to apologise.
‘Kingsley Ibe!’ he exclaimed.
‘Andrew Onyeije!’
We shook hands.
Andrew and I had competed in a science quiz back in form five. After a tough battle, I had won. Fresh complexion, robust cheeks… he looked very well.
‘So what are you up to these days?’ he asked.
‘I’m based in Aba.’
‘Oh, really? Where do you work?’
‘I’m sort of doing my own thing. I’m into business. Importing and exporting.’
He laughed.
‘What happened? Didn’t you always say you wanted to read Engineering?’
‘Actually, I read Chemical Engineering.’
He laughed again.
‘And now you’re importing and exporting. What was the point of going into sciences if you weren’t intending to use it in the end?’
I tried to smile, but I was not doing it very well.
‘And you?’ I asked. ‘What do you do?’ Perhaps he had developed a contraceptive pill for men.
‘I’m into IT,’ he replied contentedly. ‘I’m based in the States.’
That explained his fresh complexion. The wicked Nigerian sun had not smiled on him for a long time.
‘You know IBM, don’t you?’ he continued. ‘I’m with the head office in New York. I just flew in for my sister’s wedding. I’ll be in Nigeria for just about a week. Then I’ve gotta be back in the States for an important meeting.’
No wonder he could afford to open his mouth and make all sorts of stupid comments. He was so busy munching frankfurters in America, he had probably not yet seen any of the engineers and lawyers and medical doctors who were wearing hunger from head to sole.
‘I’m soooo glad to be back home,’ he went on. ‘The last time I was in Nigeria was ages ago. There’s nothing like being back in your own country, amongst your own brothers and sisters. It’s such a wonderful feeling.’
Together, we stood by the sluggish conveyor belt and waited. Some lackeys promptly arrived beside us with trolleys.
‘I’ve missed Nigeria so much,’ Andrew said.
I pointed out my first suitcase. The lackey rushed to grab it.
‘What and what did you do your Masters in?’ he asked.
‘I haven’t yet done a Masters.’
He gasped.
‘Kingsley Ibe! You don’t have a Masters? I don’t believe it! These days, you can’t move forward in this world without one. I have a Masters in Cyber Informatics from Rutgers, a Masters in Tetrachoric Correlations from Cornell, a Masters in Data Transmogrification from Yale, and next fall, I’ll be starting my PhD with Harvard.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, still struggling to smile.
‘Wonderful?’ He laughed. ‘You’re really cracking me up. My brother at Princeton has seven postgraduate degrees. My cousin at Brown is starting her third PhD soon. Honestly, there are so many great minds in this country. Yet once you mention you’re from Nigeria, all they think about in the States is 419. It’s sad.’
His voice had turned burgundy with nationalistic fervour. I felt like tipping him over a cliff. Were the minds of the 419ers any less great than the minds of the Masters degree and PhD holders? It would have been interesting to see what would have become of his great IBM mind if he had remained here in Nigeria.
Andrew reached for his suitcase. The lackey leapt forward and did the rest.
‘I love Nigeria soooooo much,’ he belched on. ‘Whatever happens, I’m gonna come back here and settle someday. With my family.’
I pointed out my second suitcase. Held hostage by his effusion of nationalism, I could not immediately take my leave. His second suitcase arrived. The hot air merchant was still talking. He talked and talked and talked and talked. With each new word, my dislike for him increased. My guardian angel flapped a wing and caused my cellular to ring. It was Camille.
‘Kings, I’m sorry but something urgent just came up. I won’t be able to see you tonight.’
No way. I really needed her tonight.
‘OK, how about tomorrow? How early can you come over?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not available tomorrow. I’m not going to be available for the rest of the week.’
I was about to ask where she was going.
‘But I can send you someone else,’ she said.
What? I felt as if I was being rudely awakened from a long and pleasant dream.
‘Kings, would you like me to send someone else?’
Gradually, I came out of my swoon. I hung up. The smoke screen cleared from my mind. Unlike my cellular phone, which belonged to me and me alone, Camille was like a public telephone – available for use as far as it was free. Andrew’s third suitcase arrived along with his fourth. He gestured to let me know that those were the last. Together, we headed out of the airport with the lackeys pushing along behind us.
Andrew screamed.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He was feverishly shoving his hands in and out of his trouser pockets like someone having a convulsion.
‘My passport! My US passport! I’m certain it was in this pocket!’
‘When last did you see it?’
‘I had it stamped right there at immigration, then I put it back in my pocket. I remember vividly. It was right here with my boarding pass.’
He convulsed through his pockets again. Still, no passport.
‘It’s gone!’ he announced three times. ‘I had it in this pocket,’ he cried two times. ‘I’m quite certain of that.’
‘You’d better go and report it immediately,’ I advised. If not, a desperate immigrant could be out of the country with that passport on the next flight to the US.
Suddenly, his patriotism changed colour.
‘This country is unbelievable! I haven’t even come in yet and they’ve already stolen my passport!’
His American accent had also vamoosed.
‘Someone probably saw you putting it back in your pocket,’ I said.
‘I just don’t believe this! I’ve been looking forward to coming back home after all these years. I haven’t even been here up to an hour already, and now this!’
How could I abscond when he was in such dire straits? Besides, the petty enmities that exist between one man and another suddenly disintegrate when they are linked with the bond of affliction. Now that Andrew had been initiated into the brotherhood of motherland mishaps, I found myself hating him less. I accompanied him to the security office to make a preliminary report.
‘Ha!’ a potbellied security officer laughed. ‘How could you have done such a thing?’
‘Done what?’
‘Are you stupid? How can you put your passport inside your pocket? American passport for that matter. Why didn’t you put it inside your trousers? Don’t you wear underwear?’
‘Fuck you!’ Andrew exploded.
‘Hey!’ A more gaunt security man threatened him with a raised baton. ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’
‘Andrew, cool down, cool down,’ I said, hiding my Schadenfreude away.
‘I know my rights! He can’t do anything to me.’
I almost laughed.
Quickly, I stepped in and apologised on his behalf. He was from America; he did not understand. Twenty minutes later, the security officer kindly agreed to forgive.
‘Talk to them politely so that you can get it sorted out soon,’ I said to Andrew. ‘You’ll need a report from them to take to the police.’
Despite all his Masters degrees and PhDs, Andrew took my advice and explained his predicament in meeker tones. The potbellied man assigned a female officer to attend to him. She brought out a form, which Andrew was supposed to fill in.
‘Oga, what did you bring for us from America?’ the female officer tweeted, her fingers still super-glued to the form.
Andrew turned to me with bulging eyeballs and soaring eyebrows. My father never gave bribes, no matter for how long the police detained us at their checkpoints, but what did my father know about survival?
‘Just give her a small tip so that they can treat your matter as urgent,’ I whispered.
‘I can’t believe this… I just can’t. Man, this country is seriously fucked up.’
No, this country was not fucked up. It was also not a place for idealising and Auld Lang Syne. Once you faced the harsh facts and learnt to adapt, Nigeria became the most beautiful place in the world.
If there was a world record for brevity of time spent on grooming, I had just broken it. I sped a comb through my hair while racing downstairs. I was panting when I reached my BMW. Before jumping into the car, I paused and inspected my appearance in the window. I straightened my jacket and adjusted my shirt collar, but all that did not matter. Any outfit that cost an arm and two legs could speak for itself, whether neatened or not.
My cellular phone rang while I was reversing out of the gate. It was Charity.
‘Charity, I’m on my way. I’m on my way. I’m just leaving the house.’
She was relieved.
My sister had rung several times the previous day. She wanted to make sure I would be there early. She wanted to remind me to bring my camcorder along. She wanted me to know where we should all meet up afterwards, just in case we did not get to see her before she went into the school auditorium for the matriculation ceremony. This morning, her phone call had woken me from sleep.
‘Kings, you’re still sleeping!’
‘No… I’m awake.’
‘Kings, please wake up and start getting ready. By the time you get here, the ceremony would have already gone halfway.’
She obviously did not know the abilities of my latest BMW 5 Series. Anyhow, my sister had a right to be anxious on this special day of her life. I had felt the same way on my graduation day.
I remembered everything about that great event as if it had happened just yesterday.
My mother spent the evening before supervising the slaughtering and plucking of three grown chickens, putting the finishing touches to four adult male shirts and plaiting her thirteen-year-old daughter’s hair. Yet by the time the rest of us woke up on my graduation day morning, she was already in the kitchen and the whole house was consumed with the smell of good things. While washing the odour of kerosene fumes off her body, my mother sang the first two stanzas of ‘There Shall Be Showers of Blessing’ at top volume.
Ordinarily, I would have expected that my mother would be the one to cry. But from what she said, as soon as I rose to collect my certificate, her only response was to stand and clap. My father, on the other hand, sat in his seat and wiped his eyes. I was the very first of the second generation of university graduates from the whole Ibe extended family.
After the ceremony, I left the auditorium and went to meet them at a prearranged location, under the mango tree by the university health centre. Aunty Dimma was waiting with them. She had insisted on coming to the school as well, instead of just turning up at the house later in the day like our other invited guests. As soon as they saw me approaching, all of them rushed towards me.
‘Congratulations,’ my father said, shaking my hand.
‘Congratulations,’ my mother said, giving me a hug.
‘Congratulations,’ Ola said, placing her hands on my shoulders and giving me a holy kiss on the cheek.
Ola had worn a smart blue skirt suit which my mother later told me was too short.
‘Congratulations,’ Charity said, hugging me around the waist and refusing to let go.
‘Congratulations,’ Godfrey and Eugene said, with their eyes on the coolers of food that would soon be opened.
‘Mr Chemical Engineer,’ Aunty Dimma said, locking me inside her arms and pecking my cheek.
We ate. Some people I knew and many people I did not came round, and my mother dished out some food from the coolers for them. The total expenditure for the day’s celebration had seriously head-butted my parents’ budget and broken its two legs, but they did not mind. My graduation from university was supposed to be the dawn of a new day in their lives.
Fortunately, things were different this time around. I had made sure of that. Finances were the last thing my family had had to worry about while preparing for Charity’s matriculation.
We would never have found Charity in that crowd. There were human heads everywhere. After the ceremony, I and my mother and Aunty Dimma proceeded to the designated meeting place by the car park and waited. It was not long before Charity joined us. She and my mother and Aunty Dimma did their hugging routine.
‘Hmm… Charity, you’re now a big chick!’ Aunty Dimma said. ‘You look so beauuuuutiful.’
‘Thank you,’ Charity said and blushed.
In her dark green River Island skirt suit and black Gucci heels, Charity definitely looked sharp. I had purchased the top-to-toe outfit specially for this day. No stupid man would ever jump out of the hedges and turn my sister’s head upside down because of Gucci.
‘Did you people see me?’ Charity asked.
We had seen her sitting amongst the matriculating students, but at the end of the ceremony, she had disappeared amid the sea of tasseled caps.
Eugene could not make it. He had exams coming up soon and the nine-hour journey from Ibadan would have been too much of a distraction.
Godfrey eventually arrived. Accompanied by three of his friends. Dressed like a drug baron. Pierre Cardin shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, white Givenchy, silver-capped shoes, and texturised hair. Two gold chains dangled from his neck, a gold bracelet danced around his wrist. No wonder he was constantly running out of pocket money and ringing me to send some more. Often, I succumbed. I wanted to be as much of a father to him – to them all – as possible. I wanted to be there for them in ways that my father had never been there for me. The few clothes I had in school – the ones that were not gifts from Ola – had come from the ‘bend-down’ boutiques, where different grades of secondhand clothing that the people in Europe and America no longer wanted to wear were displayed on waterproof sheets on the ground and sold. I made sure that my siblings wore the latest styles and the best quality.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Godfrey apologised. ‘Our car had to keep stopping because one of the passengers had a running stomach. If I had known, we would have just paid for all the seats and had a taxi to ourselves. Kings, where are the things you bought for me?’
‘I wasn’t able to do much shopping on this trip,’ I said.
‘You didn’t buy the CD?’
‘I really didn’t have the time.’
He frowned.
‘Kings, that CD is the hottest thing right now. They haven’t yet started selling it in Nigeria so just a few people have it.’
‘I’m sorry. But don’t worry, I’m travelling again soon.’
We posed for several photographs. Godfrey put the camcorder to work and attracted quite a few stares in the process. For the first time in a very long time, I missed having my father around. I could perfectly imagine him on a day like this. Proud, emotional, optimistic. Matriculation was not such a grand event as graduation from university so my mother had not done any cooking for today. But Charity had made me promise that I would take her and her friends out to a fancy restaurant. It was Godfrey who had given her the suggestion.
Charity went off to find her friends. My cellular rang. It was Protocol Officer.
‘Kings, Cash Daddy said I should tell you to look out for him on TV on Monday night. He’s appearing on Tough Talk.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘He said you should also make sure everyone in the office watches it. It’s at 10 p.m.’
‘OK, I will.’
I noticed Aunty Dimma staring at me in a funny way, as if she had been trying to read my lips. As soon as Protocol Officer hung up, my aunty miraculously found herself by my side.
‘Kings,’ she said quietly, ‘what are you doing the Friday after next?’
‘I’m not sure. Why?’
‘I want to invite you to a special programme we’re having in my church. It’s a one-day deliverance session.’
‘Deliverance from what?’
‘All types. Deliverance from enemies, from your past…’ She paused. ‘Deliverance from demonic influences and evil spirits.’
‘Ah. Aunty, I just remembered. I don’t think I’ll be free on that day. I have some things I planned to do.’
‘You can still try and make it. Honestly, it’ll be worth it.’
I promised her that I would try. I knew that I would not. Charity returned with her friends. About seventeen of them.
‘Aren’t they too many?’ Aunty Dimma rebuked Charity in a red-hot whisper.
‘Aunty,’ I cut in, ‘there’s no problem.’
My pocket was more than equal to the task.
The American Embassy officer scrutinised my documents. She scanned the pages of my passport and saw evidence of my frequent trips to and from the UK and the Schengen region. She saw written evidence that I had my own importing and exporting business. She observed my bulging bank accounts and knew that I could not be planning to remain illegally in her country, flipping burgers in McDonald’s or bathing corpses in a morgue.
Still, the scowling brunette on the other side of the glass partition grilled me belligerently, as if it was my fault that she had found herself in such a lousy job.
‘What are you going to the United States to do?’
‘Let me see your tax clearance certificate.’
‘Fold it!’
‘How long do you plan to stay?’
‘Why aren’t you going with your wife and children?’
‘Don’t interrupt me when I’m talking!’
‘Have you ever been involved in any terrorist activity?’
‘How do I know you’re planning to return to Nigeria?’
After about forty-five minutes, the inquisition was over. The Gestapo officer instructed me to return to the embassy by 2 p.m. the following day for collection of my stamped passport. Hurrah. My journey from Aba to Lagos had not been in vain.
‘Thank you very much,’ I replied. It was always best to repay evil with good. Besides, it could not have been any easier for Columbus; what right did the rest of us have to complain?
‘Congratulations, my brother,’ several panic-stricken visa seekers mumbled as I walked past.
I left the building elated. An American neuroscientist was very willing to invest in a Ministry of Education contract, and this new mugu sounded like another long-term dollar dispenser. The packaging was getting to a stage where I would need to schedule a meeting with him in Amherst, Massachusetts.
I walked past some other embassies on my way to the car park at the end of the crescent. Even the embassy of Bulgaria gates were besieged with long queues. The US and the UK – and perhaps Ireland – were understandable, but why on earth would anyone want to run away from Nigeria to Bulgaria? As I reached the car, I heard someone shouting my name.
‘Kings! Kings!’
I turned. In that instant, I forgot all the sinister plots I had devised in murderous daydreams. All the diabolical strategies I had composed in midnight moments of pain and anger vanished from my mind. I beamed like a little boy lost who had just been found by his mother.
I ran screaming towards the sweet sound of my name.
‘Ola! Ola!’
We rushed into each other’s arms. We hugged like old friends. I looked her over from head to toe.
‘Wow! Ola, you look…’
I stopped. She was as fat as a dairy cow. There were light green stretch marks tattooed into her swollen cleavage.
‘You look lovely,’ I said, and that was the truth.
‘I had two babies, that’s what happened,’ she replied with a satisfied smile. ‘You, how are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ I could feel myself still grinning stupidly. ‘Honestly, you’re the very last person I imagined I would bump into today. I just came for my American visa interview.’
She nodded.
‘I came to renew our British visas – me and my children.’
‘Wow. Ola, it’s so good to see you. Why don’t we sit somewhere and have a proper chat. I hope you’re not in a hurry.’
She agreed. We walked around in search of somewhere to hang out. The complex housed a number of shops, business centres, and eating places, but most of the restaurants were dingy – obviously designed with only the waiting drivers in mind. Suddenly I remembered that times had changed. Ola and I did not have to put ourselves through this.
‘Why don’t we go somewhere nice in town?’ I asked. ‘We could go to Double Four or Chocolat Royal. Or wherever else you want.’
I was bold to throw the offer open. Unlike those days, now I could afford it.
‘No, I’m OK with anywhere here,’ she said and smiled. ‘I’m not that hungry, anyway.’
We chose the least dingy restaurant of them all. The air smelt of a mixture of fresh fish and locust beans. Large and small flies buzzed and perched about with alarming sovereignty and audacity. A sweaty, matronly waitress who looked like she knew all the flies by name galumphed to our table. Eating anything in that place would have been like signing a treaty for the invasion of my digestive system.
‘I’ll have a Coke,’ I said.
‘Diet Coke for me,’ Ola said.
I handed the matron the highest denomination naira note I had in my wallet. She grumbled and dug into her belly region in search of some change.
‘You can keep the change,’ I said, loud enough for Ola to hear just in case she had been distracted.
‘Thank you, Oga!’ the matron beamed. ‘Oga, thank you very much!’
‘Kings, Kings,’ Ola joked. ‘You’re now a big boy.’
I smiled. The drinks arrived immediately, served directly from the bottles, with a suspicious-looking straw sticking out from the neck.
‘But Kings, if anybody had told me that somebody like you would ever do 419,’ Ola continued, ‘honestly I would have said it’s a lie.’
Strangely, this was the first time someone who knew me, someone whom I did not work with, had told me to my face that I was a scammer. Nobody ever mentioned it. Even my mother, despite all her misgivings, was still in the realm of hunting for euphemisms. There was something emancipating about the way Ola had put the elephant right on top of the table. I would not have to spend our time together being furtive.
‘I wonder who’s been telling you these things,’ I said with mock shock.
Ola laughed.
‘How won’t I hear? You know Umuahia is a small place. When a maggot sneezes, everybody hears, including people outside the town. Anyway, I hear you’re still humble and level-headed. Unlike many of these other loud 419 guys.’
I sniggered.
‘Ola, the things that change us are quite different. I always find it funny when people say that money makes people proud. If you check it, poor people are some of the proudest people in this world.’
My father, for example.
Ola kept quiet. Then she nodded.
‘I agree with you, you know. Poor people can be soooo proud. There was a time back in school… that time I joined the Feed the Nation people… I don’t know if you remember?’
Like almost everything else about her, I remembered it clearly.
‘When we used to go out every Sunday to feed poor people in the streets. One time, there was this man who came and asked us for his own pack of rice and sachet of water. We gave him. Then he asked us to give him another one for his wife.’
They asked the man to go and bring his wife; they were only supposed to feed those physically present. He explained that his wife was ill. They asked him to imagine what would happen if everybody collected an extra portion for a spouse who was ill. There would be nothing for those who actually came.
As Ola spoke, a huge fly came and took up residence on her left ear. I wanted to stretch out my hand and frighten it away, but for some reason, I did not.
‘Do you know that the man got so angry with us?’ The fly ran away but returned almost immediately. ‘He told us that we were insulting him, that we were calling him a liar. That did we think it was a big deal that we were giving him food?’
Then he flung the rice and water on the floor in front of them and stormed off.
‘Can you imagine?’ she concluded.
She had narrated the story to me the very same day it happened. Still, I shook my head and tut-tut-ed in all the right places as if I were hearing it for the first time.
‘Like I said before, I’m quite surprised that somebody like you is doing 419. You used to be so soft and innocent. How do you cope with swindling all those white people of their money? Don’t you feel guilty?’
I shrugged. The fly left her ear at last.
‘Well, I guess I just don’t think about it too much,’ I replied.
‘But how can you not feel guilty?’
She appeared truly bemused. What was there to be guilty about? Was anybody feeling guilty about the artefacts and natural resources pilfered from Africa over the centuries? My mugus were merely fulfilling their role in the food chain.
‘So how’s married life?’ I asked, changing the topic.
‘Oh, everything is fine,’ she replied quickly. The smile that should have accompanied her voice came some nanoseconds after she had spoken. ‘My husband opened a new headquarters in Enugu, so we moved from Umuahia almost immediately after we got married.’
She paused.
‘The kids and I will be leaving for London by next weekend.’ Her face lit up with excitement; emotion had now returned. ‘We’ll be there for about two weeks and then we’ll go on to America.’
She rhapsodised some more about the forthcoming holiday trip. I asked her what she was doing at present. All the excitement left her voice in a deep sigh.
‘My husband doesn’t want me to work. He wants me to just stay at home and take care of the kids and it’s really frustrating. Everybody has tried talking to him but he’s been adamant.’
Apparently, the man’s decision had taken her by surprise. I could have warned her for free. His actions perfectly fitted the profile of the average, uneducated Igbo entrepreneur.
‘What type of job would you have wanted to do?’ I asked.
‘I’d like to work in a large organisation… Something related to my degree. Or maybe just get one of these bank jobs that everybody seems to be getting these days. Anyway, I’ve already made up my mind. As soon as my youngest child starts school, I’m going to look for a job.’
‘What if your husband says no?’
She frowned.
‘Kings, leaving my brain to lie fallow is too high a penalty to pay for maternity. God knows I won’t allow that to happen.’
Good luck to her. The best the man would probably ever allow her was a boutique where his friends’ wives could go and purchase expensive shoes and bags.
‘How old are your children?’
She smiled.
‘Ah, I have some pictures here.’
She dipped into her Louis Vuitton handbag and whipped out a batch of photographs.
‘These are from the birthday party of my first child.’
I inspected each photograph. There was a shot with the two children sitting in front of a huge Spiderman birthday cake with their mother and a man who, by the proud smile on his face and the way his hand was clasped around Ola’s ribs too close to her breasts, appeared to be their father. Hopefully, my face did not betray my shock. Poor Ola – her husband was unpardonably ugly, as if he had done it on purpose. As if he had gone to a native doctor and asked for some juju that would make his face hideous. Where was I to start? Was it the square eyes or the spacious nostrils, or the puckered face or the quadruple chin? The man was a veritable troglodyte.
Fortunately for the children, their mother’s genes had won the battle. The outcome could win a Nobel Prize for Nature. Ola’s children were all quite handsome – saved, delivered, from their father’s DNA. At that moment, I decided that if losing Ola to this man meant that the human gene pool had discontinued some frightful traits and produced a better-looking hybrid, then I was glad to have made my noble contribution to the advancement of humankind. I handed back the photographs.
‘You have very lovely kids,’ I said.
Like all proud mothers, she smiled as if she had been waiting all the while to hear me say just that.
‘And they are American citizens,’ she added. ‘They were born in the US.’
I smiled louder, to prove that I was happy for her.
I asked about Ezinne, about her other sisters, and about her mother. She asked about my mother and my siblings:
‘How’s your uncle… Cash Daddy? I still find it difficult to believe that he’s actually contesting for governor.’
I smiled. She laughed. Then, we were silent for a while. Sitting in front of her like that reminded me of old times, of how much I used to love being with her.
‘So are you seeing anyone?’ she asked suddenly.
I could not look her in the face.
‘Not really.’
‘Not really, how?’
‘I’m not in any serious relationship.’
‘How come?’
‘How come not?’ I forced a smile.
How was I supposed to tell her that while she was busy popping babies and growing fat, I was paying dollars for sex?
‘I don’t really have the time,’ I lied.
‘Time? Why? Are you burying your head in your books again? What? Are you doing a postgraduate course?’
Haha.
I sighed.
‘Ola, right now, I’m not thinking about any of that. I look at my siblings and I’m satisfied that they’re doing well and it makes me content with being the sacrificial lamb. I don’t mind setting aside-’
‘Kings, it’s not worth it.’
The force of her words, though quietly rendered, could have smashed a hole right through the Great Wall of China.
‘Kings, you can’t set aside your goals and convictions just for the sake of your family or any other people. Take it from me, I know what I’m talking about.’
We went back to silence again, both of us deep in thought. I had spent my childhood daydreaming about my future as a scientist. Ola knew this. My name was going to appear in my children’s science textbooks. I was going to be known all over the world because of my inventions. Top on my list, I once told her, was an electric fan that also ran on batteries so that the mosquitoes would not bite even if NEPA took the light in the middle of the night.
A wave of depression came over me. Ola was right. This was never the life I had planned.
Suddenly, it struck me. Inside all those layers of fat, the Ola I loved was still there. She had a way of getting to me, of making me think differently. She had seen me at my lowest and at my highest, at my best and at my worst. And I had not been able to talk to any other person with such easy freedom in a long time – with honesty, with confidence, without apprehension. Ola was my soul mate. Unlike my mother, she understood without being judgemental.
‘Ola…’ I paused. ‘Maybe if I had you by my side, things would be different. Maybe you’re what I need.’
She remained quiet. Abruptly, she stood and said that it was time for her to leave. She had not touched her Diet Coke. I had not touched my Classic Coke.
‘Ola,’ I said.
I reached out and held her hand. The warmth of her soft palm was as delicious as a forbidden fruit. I felt a slight tingling run down my spine. Still holding her hand, I asked if we could arrange to meet some other time. She did not respond.
‘Even if it’s just to talk,’ I added. ‘Even if it’s just for a meal. You know I always dreamed of taking you out to somewhere nice and expensive but I never had the chance.’
Ola continued being quiet. After a while, she pulled her hand away and shook her head. In desperation, I cast off all restraint and said it.
‘Ola, I still love you.’
She did not appear startled or repelled.
‘I’ve never stopped-’
‘Kings, let’s not start something that neither of us can finish,’ she said quietly.
‘Ola, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Things are a lot different now. I can make you happy. I have a lot of money and I can buy anything you want for you. Whatever your mother wants, I’ll give it to her.’
Udenna was the least of my worries. His only merit was his money. I was educated, certainly did not look like a troglodyte, and my bank account could now do fair battle with his. I reached out for Ola’s hand again. She drew it away and averted her eyes.
‘Ola, please. We can both start our lives afresh. Please, just give me another chance. Please.’
She looked into my eyes.
‘Kingsley,’ she said softly, ‘I’ve made enough mistakes in my life already. I think it would be extremely foolish of me to start making any fresh ones at this stage.’
She patted me twice on the cheek with her fingers. I continued staring long after she walked away into the car park. When my mugu’s phone call rammed into my misery, inquiring about his payment for the completed Akanu Ibiam International Airport project, I almost asked him to take his millions and shove them up his Winterbottom.
There were many possible explanations for the atrocious traffic in Lagos – population explosion, insufficient mass transit, tokunbo vehicles going kaput, potholes in the roads, undisciplined drivers, random police checkpoints, and fuel queues. But in Cash Daddy’s opinion, the go-slow started whenever the devil and his wives were on their way to the market. I think he was right. Certainly, today’s traffic looked as if the devil was behind it. Car bumpers were locked in French kisses. The masses, crammed into molues like slaves for sale, hopped out of the geriatric yellow buses and continued the rest of their journeys on foot. At this rate, I would be lucky not to miss my flight back home.
I had been granted leave to travel in and out of the United States of America for as many times as I pleased over the next two years. Hallelujah. Yet my mind was still troubled. Dear Ola. She seemed to hold some magical power over me. She could take over the steering wheel of my life anytime she pleased, drive me in whatever direction she chose, and then abandon me to navigate from there. Since yesterday, I had not stopped replaying my conversation with her.
Was the sacrifice I was making in 419 worth it?
Did it make sense to set my dreams aside in keen pursuit of cash?
I could do without the eight-bedroom house and the driver and the gardener and the cook, but how about the welfare of my family? My sister could do without McVities biscuits and Gucci shoes, but how about a good education? I sensed some motion by my window and turned. It was a muscular boy dangling a string of seven rats.
‘Rat poison! Rat poison!’ he shouted.
He rattled a row of red sachets in his other hand. Two of the rats twitched. I ignored the hawker until he got tired and left. I also ignored the ones that came with toilet seats, standing fans, cold drinks, gala sausage snacks, plantain chips, handkerchiefs, curtain rails, Irish potatoes, and apples. Then along came the boy selling books. When was the last time I read a book? The boy noticed my interest and clung to the body of the jeep when the traffic appeared to be moving a little bit faster. I wound the window halfway down.
‘Oga, which one you want?’ he asked.
I browsed the titles on display: Rich Dad, Poor Dad; The Richest Man in Babylon; God’s Plan for Your Financial Increase; Why God Wants You Rich; Wealth Building 101; Cracking the Millionaire Code; Talent is Never Enough; Nine Steps to Financial Freedom; Think and Grow Rich; Money Making for Dummies… Then I noticed a colourful series of booklets.
‘Let me see that,’ I said.
The boy tossed four of the miniature books onto my lap: Prosperity Scriptures; Healing Scriptures; Marriage Scriptures; Wisdom Scriptures. I flipped through the prosperity booklet and chuckled at the first scripture that caught my eyes: ‘A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes life merry, but money is the answer for everything.’
‘How much is it?’ I asked.
I paid the hawker for one copy. Then on second thoughts, I asked for another one. And one of the marriage ones, as well. Cash Daddy would probably find these books very helpful – an easy way to memorise yet more scriptures without wading through the entire books of the Bible.
Mr Winterbottom’s patience was wearing thin. After disbursing several million-dollar instalments through different foreign bank accounts to cover the Akanu Ibiam International Airport project, he had every right to be upset. He had been ringing almost daily. It was time to pacify him. Straight from the airport, I went to the office. I switched on my computer and went to work.
The Contracts Review Panel
Central Bank of Nigeria
Abuja
Nigeria
Dear Mr Winterbottom,
PAYMENT OF OUTSTANDING DEBTS TO FOREIGN CONTRACTORS
Following a recent review, it has come to our notice that you have duly executed contract number (FMA/132/019/ 82) awarded by the Federal Ministry of Aviation. The contract sum for the first, second, and final phase of the contract is $187,381,000 (USD). This excludes an interest of $13,470,070 (USD) which has accrued owing to delays in payment by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Therefore, the amount due to you currently stands at $200,851,070 (USD).
Our office will immediately process this outstanding $200,851,070 (USD) funds as soon as we receive fluctuational charges of $6,730,000 (USD).
We apologise for any inconvenience caused by previous delays. As soon as we receive the above sum, we shall forward your outstanding $200,851,070 (USD).
Yours faithfully,
Mr Joseph Sanusi
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
I printed the letter on CBN letterhead and put it through the fax machine.
There was no dial tone.
I pressed on and off; still no dial tone. I sat at my desk, stood, pressed again and again. Still nothing. With my cellular, I dialled Camille.
‘Is there anybody you can send to me this evening?’ I asked.
‘What time?’ she replied.
‘As soon as possible. I’m leaving work soon.’
‘The notice is quite short but I’ll see.’
Over time, Camille had done quite well for herself. She was now the recognised mistress of one of the state governors. Last time I spoke with her, she was on her way to Paris to shop for her birthday party. But she still made some extra income on the side by being helpful with organising girls for busy men like us as and when needed. Even when it was impromptu, like now.
‘Is it the same place as the last time?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Same place, same room number.’
As a personal policy, because my siblings popped in and out of my house from school whenever they pleased, I never brought any strange girl back home. I had a permanent reservation at Cash Daddy’s hotel. On his advice, for security reasons, I switched rooms after every few weeks.
‘OK. I’ll get back to you,’ she said. ‘I’ll let you know if there’s any problem.’
I knew there would be no problem. There never was with Camille.
Ninety-five minutes and some hgs of blood pressure later, the fax eventually went.
Afterwards, the girl had started watching The Jerry Springer Show. So far, I had stomached the transvestite dwarf and the ragamuffin playboy. But now, the 400kg black American woman was yanking the brassiere off the anorexic peroxide blonde.
‘Could you please change the channel?’ I said to her.
‘Oh, sure, sure,’ she chanted, and reached for the remote control. ‘What channel do you want?’
‘Anything else,’ I replied.
She started flicking through. She hovered too long on MTV.
‘Put it on CNN,’ I suggested. The Daily Show should be on about this time.
It turned out that I was wrong. Instead of The Daily Show, Christiane Amanpour was telling the story of yet another man-made calamity that had erupted somewhere in East Africa. My cellular phone rang.
‘Kings, hurry down to the house,’ Protocol Officer whispered urgently. ‘Come quickly.’
‘Is everyth-?’
He hung up.
As I turned the doorknob, the girl switched back to Jerry Springer.
My driver was making the turn into Cash Daddy’s street when I noticed the police cars parked in front of the gate. It was not the usual nonchalant policemen that hung around checkpoints extorting money. This posse patrolled decisively, like they actually had some work to do.
‘Reverse!’ I yelled. ‘Turn! Quick! Quick!’
My driver obeyed and fled so fast that anyone would have thought the car was running on rocket engines.
‘Just keep driving,’ I said. I did not care if we went as far as Ouagadougou.
When I was certain that we were far away enough from danger, I collected myself and resumed the normal thinking processes that set man apart from the beasts of the field.
‘Find somewhere to park the car,’ I said.
We had found ourselves on the kind of street that was largely populated by dried maize husks, torn pure water wrappers, and straggling youngsters. My driver parked in front of an uncompleted building with a bold warning painted in red on the front wall: ‘BUYER BEWARE OF 419! THIS BUILDING IS NOT FOR SALE!’
My driver looked at me in the rearview mirror.
‘Oga, the policemen there were plenty,’ he said.
He looked in the rearview mirror again.
‘There must have been about twenty of them,’ he added.
I was not in the mood for chin-wagging. This could be the very end of me. I could just imagine my mother’s face when she heard that I had been arrested. What would happen to Godfrey and Eugene and Charity if I went to jail? I rang Protocol Officer and insisted.
‘Tell me. What exactly is going on?’
‘They’re taking Cash Daddy to the station for questioning,’ Protocol Officer whispered. ‘But I just spoke with Police Commissioner and he said it’s just routine. Hurry up because we’ll be leaving soon.’
Back at Cash Daddy’s house, some policemen who wore pot-bellies beneath their black uniforms were sitting with an almost empty bottle of Irish Cream and some wine glasses. I greeted them and strode past to join Protocol Officer, who was standing by the staircase in the dining area. He was flanked by the otimkpu and about seven of Cash Daddy’s campaign team bigwigs, all muttering indignantly.
‘Where’s Cash Daddy?’ I whispered to Protocol Officer.
‘He’s having a bath.’
I jerked my head furtively in the direction of the police officers.
‘Do they know he’s upstairs?’
‘He told them to wait,’ Protocol Officer replied impatiently, and returned his full attention to the group.
I turned to go upstairs and saw Cash Daddy on his way down. The policemen all stood and greeted him.
‘I hope they took care of you people?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the officer who looked like he was in charge.
‘Very good, very good.’
‘Are you ready to go, sir?’ the same man inquired.
‘Let’s go,’ Cash Daddy replied.
The policemen allowed him to walk ahead and followed at a respectful distance. One of them rushed to open the back door of one of their vans. We watched Cash Daddy settle uncomfortably into the backseat before we jumped into our different cars and followed behind. On the way, my cellular rang. It was my house phone.
‘Kings, are you back to Aba, yet?’ It was Charity.
‘Yes. I’m still at the office. I’m working a bit late today. I didn’t know you were at home.’
‘I just came in today. I’ll be going back first thing tomorrow but there’s something important I want to discuss with you.’
‘What’s the matter? Is everything OK?’
‘Everything is fine. It’s just something we need to discuss face-to-face. ’
Face-to-face? I died with fear. Was she having problems in school? Were her girlfriends gossiping about me seeing strange girls? Had my mother been complaining about my lifestyle? It would be very unfair if she transferred her misgivings to my siblings. Whatever my mother felt about me was her business alone.
‘Charity, I’ll see you soon, OK? I’m just finishing up something urgent at the office.’
Cash Daddy’s campaign manager was waiting at the police station, muttering into a cellular phone. Cash Daddy’s lawyer was with him. The notable human rights activist accompanied his client inside for questioning. On the way, Cash Daddy stopped suddenly.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I almost forgot.’
He removed the watch from his wrist, the phone from his pocket, the belt from his trousers, and handed them to Protocol Officer.
‘Kings, let me give you some advice,’ he said. ‘Never take anything with you into the police station if you’re not ready to part with it forever.’
God forbid. I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, was being given advice for a trip to jail.
Soon, the lawyer emerged from the bowels of the station. Without Cash Daddy.
We panicked.
‘Where’s Cash Daddy?’
‘They decided to keep him,’ the lawyer replied. ‘But they can’t hold him for too long because they don’t really have any evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’ one of the campaign team asked.
‘Money laundering. The allegation was made at the Zonal Command in Calabar, so the police here have to pretend as if they’re really doing something serious about it.’
‘Who made the allegation?’ I asked.
‘It’s politics,’ the campaign manager answered. ‘They just want to get Cash Daddy out of the way. They know he’s definitely going to win the elections.’
‘These are the dangers I warned him to expect right from the beginning,’ the human-rights-activist lawyer added. ‘Nigerian politics is a dirty game.’
‘They’re wasting their time,’ Protocol Officer said with flames in his voice.
‘They’ve been writing all sorts of rubbish about Cash Daddy in the newspapers,’ another one added indignantly, ‘but thank God the people of Abia State are not foolish enough to believe everything they read.’
‘No matter what they do,’ yet another one added, ‘Cash Daddy is still going to win.’
‘Of course,’ they all responded.
‘Cash Daddy is our man.’
Back at home, I saw that in my absence Charity had once again arranged my shoes according to their colours. Wondering for how long I would be able to maintain the order this time, I unbuckled the Prada shoes I was wearing and placed them carefully in the caramel row. Then I sat beside her on the bed, where she had been waiting for me. Seeing the gravity of her facial expression, I became more deeply immersed in dread.
‘Kings,’ she began. ‘There’s this very close friend of mine I met through one of my friends in school.’
I swallowed a hard lump of fear.
‘Kings,’ she looked up at me with shy eyes, ‘he asked me to marry him and I told him yes.’
Because of how serious she looked, I immediately resisted the temptation to burst out laughing. Truly, the idea of marriage makes girls suddenly behave strangely. I had never seen my sister like this before.
‘What’s his name?’ I asked, strictly for want of speech.
‘His name is Johnny,’ she replied. ‘But he’s Igbo,’ she added quickly. ‘His Igbo name is Nwokeoma. Nwokeoma Nwabekee.’
Naturally, I would not want my sister to marry someone who was not Igbo, but right now, that was the least of my concerns. Throughout that night, I tossed and turned in bed, tormented by various fears. What would become of my family – what would become of my sister – if anything were to happen to me? Losing a father was bad enough. But losing their source of life and sustenance would bring unimaginable disaster.
And what would happen to me, their source of life and sustenance, if anything were to happen to Cash Daddy?
It was not until five in the morning that I remembered the girl waiting for me at the hotel.
Cash Daddy was released by 9 a.m. He came out of the police cell looking dishevelled and disoriented, like a hermit who had just been discovered in a cave. On his way out of the station, he took some cash from Protocol Officer and distributed the hundred-dollar notes amongst the officers on duty. They thanked him profusely and saw him off to the waiting car. Protocol Officer had arrived in a Jaguar that bore ‘Cash Daddy 47’. He came alone, with just a driver and without the usual convoy. Cash Daddy chatted briefly with his political cronies, dismissed them, and turned to me.
‘Enter my car,’ he said.
From the backseat of my Audi, I took the carrier bag with the books I had purchased in Lagos and instructed my driver to ride behind us. Protocol Officer took his usual position in the front passenger seat, I sat next to my uncle in the back.
We drove past a police checkpoint without stopping. This checkpoint had not been here yesterday. As usual, when the men-in-black saw the number plate on the car, they shifted from the roadblock, genuflected, and waved. Sometimes Cash Daddy threw cash out of the window at them. Today, he did not even look in their direction.
Before long, his verbalomania kicked into action and Cash Daddy, once again, became as talkative as a magpie.
‘These people don’t know who they’re dealing with,’ he began. ‘Of course I know it’s Uwajimogwu that arranged this police trouble for me. The eagle said that it wasn’t a child when it started travelling long distances. I’ve been getting in and out of trouble since I was this small.’ He indicated a distance from the floor to the air that was not higher than a toilet seat. ‘Honestly, he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.’
Uwajimogwu was his co-contender for the gubernatorial ticket of the National Advancement Party. It was general knowledge that even though there were at least thirty others who had collected forms and indicated their intention to contest, the fight was really just between both men. Whichever of them won the primaries was fairly certain to become the next governor of Abia State. The NAP was currently the strongest party, the one with the most billionaires and the highest concentration of reincarnated politicians whose histories went as far back as Nigeria ’s first democratic elections in the 1960s.
‘He knows I have the police here under my control, that’s why he went and lodged his complaints with the Zonal Command in Calabar. But they still don’t have any proof. Money laundering of all charges. He wants to get me into jail and the only thing he could come up with is money laundering.’
Cash Daddy laughed. This tactic of digging into a co-contender’s past to unearth crimes was proving quite effective in many states around the country. Just last week, a House of Representatives candidate in Delta State had been disqualified for spending four years in an Italian jail for drug trafficking. The man had kept denying the allegation until his opponents published the twenty-year-old records, which they had obtained from the Italian police, in five national dailies.
‘At first, I tried to be considerate,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘I had planned to allow a few delegates to vote for him in the primaries, but now he has made me very angry. I’m going to make sure that not a single vote goes to him on that day. He’ll see that they don’t call me Cash Daddy for nothing. If a person bites you on the head without being concerned about your hair, then you can bite him on the buttocks without being concerned about his shit. Is that not so?’
Fortunately, I was not required to answer.
Cash Daddy tucked his hands beneath his T-shirt and started slapping a rhythm on his belly.
‘I’m very hungry,’ he announced. ‘I don’t think I slept more than five minutes last night. Mosquitoes were singing the national anthem in my ears. I have to make a complaint to Police Commissioner. At least they should have put a fan in my room.’
From what I had heard of our police cells, the facilities in a horse stable were supposed to be better.
Cash Daddy stretched his upper jaw to the North Pole, his lower jaw to the South Pole, and yawned. A billion mosquitoes must have lost their lives in the malodorous fumes from his mouth. Cleaning his teeth must have been the very last thing on his mind this morning.
‘I’m sure the whole of Nigeria has been trying to reach me,’ he said, switching on the cellular phone Protocol Officer had returned to him.
His face split in another yawn. He peered through his tinted window. A blue Bentley was coming from the opposite direction.
‘Is that not World Bank?’ he asked excitedly.
Protocol Officer had already seen the oncoming car and confirmed that it was.
‘I haven’t seen him in a long time,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Stop!’
The driver stopped. Exactly where the Jaguar was in the middle of the road. He wound down Cash Daddy’s window from the control panel in front, and Cash Daddy stuck his head out. World Bank noticed his pal and must have commanded his own driver who stopped directly beside us. Also in the middle of the road.
‘Your Excellency!’ World Bank hailed. ‘Long time no see!’
‘My brother,’ Cash Daddy replied, ‘you know it’s not my fault. I’ve been very busy with the campaigns. Every day it’s one meeting after another.’
‘It’s a good thing I saw you now. Very soon, we’ll have to fill forms and go through all sorts of protocol before we can see you.’
‘That’s the way life is,’ Cash Daddy replied apologetically. ‘From one level to another. Anyway, we shall survive. How are things with you?’
‘Cash Daddy, let me give you notice. I’m throwing a party for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary in August. And I’m celebrating it big! Even my sister in Japan is coming back with her family. It’ll be a good opportunity for a family reunion. The last time we were all together was during my father’s burial. It’s such a pity that he’s not alive to witness the anniversary.’
By this time, there was a pile up of cars in both directions of the busy road, a road made even narrower by erosion and debris. The accommodating drivers waited for what they assumed would be a brief chat. When it went on for longer than was acceptable by highway etiquette, many of them started honking. Some stuck out their heads and yelled earnest invectives. Cash Daddy and World Bank were unperturbed. They continued their chitchat to its natural conclusion before saying goodbye.
While the driver was pressing the control to slide Cash Daddy’s window back up, a man who was about four cars behind World Bank’s Bentley, leaned out of a Datsun Sunny that looked as if it had been stuck together with chewing gum and tied up with thread.
‘Thieves!’ he shouted. ‘419ers! Please get out of the way! Was it your dirty money that built this road?’
As we drove on and past the Datsun Sunny, the irate driver stretched out a fist and punched the body of the Jaguar viciously. Protocol Officer took this action personally. He cursed loudly and started winding down his window.
‘Don’t mind him, don’t mind him,’ Cash Daddy said calmly, like the elephant who had just been told that the spider was coming to wage war against her. ‘Just ignore him. You don’t blame him, his problem is just poverty. Can’t you see the type of car he’s driving? If you were the one driving that type of car, wouldn’t you be angry? That’s why I don’t like poor people around me. They’re always looking for someone to blame for their problems.’
Reluctantly, Protocol Officer wound his window back up. Cash Daddy wagged his finger at me.
‘But that doesn’t mean you should cut off all the poor people you know,’ he warned. ‘They don’t have to be very close to you, but it’s good to keep them within reach, because they can come in handy once in a while. Me, I know enough pepper and tomato sellers who can start a riot for me any day I want.’
As we drove on, there was silence for a while. But not for too long.
‘How did it go at the American Embassy?’
‘I collected my visa yesterday.’
I gave brief details of the stressful interview.
‘Don’t worry about all that,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘By the time you reach America, you’ll see that it was worth it. That’s the same way they’ll stress you at the point of entry, but it still doesn’t matter. They’ll even bring big, big dogs to sniff your whole body, but that’s how they treat every other Nigerian, so there’s no need for you to start thinking you’ve done something wrong. The only way you can avoid all that stress is to get an American passport.’
He yawned again.
‘You’re lucky that you’re not yet married,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘If I’d thought about it early enough, I would’ve married a woman who’s a British or American citizen. By now I would have had my own full citizenship.’
He tossed his head back onto the headrest.
‘By the way, Kings, have you decided when you’re getting married?’
I snorted.
‘You think it’s funny, eh? Listen, let me tell you something. When a warrior is involved in a wrestling bout and has his eyes both on the fight and on his surroundings, even a woman can defeat him. That’s why it’s good to marry early. Better hurry up. Even Protocol Officer is getting married.’
‘Ah! Protocol Officer? Congratulations.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied without looking behind. Years of sitting in the front of Cash Daddy’s vehicles had taught him the art of turning his ears around without turning his head. I tried to imagine all that his ears must have soaked in while sitting there all these years.
When we drove through the gates of the mammoth mansion, nine men ran out of the house to welcome Cash Daddy. As soon as he stepped out of the car, almost all of them struggled to be the ones to clean his shoes. That was when it occurred to me just how much all of us loved him, how much he meant to us. What would become of all of us if he went to jail? Then I remembered the gifts I bought for him. I grabbed the carrier bag from the floor of the car before climbing out after him.
‘Cash Daddy, here’s something I got for you in Lagos,’ I said, stretching the bag out to him respectfully, with my two hands and with a slight stoop.
‘What?’
‘Here’s something I got for you.’
For once, Cash Daddy was as speechless as a stone. He kept looking at my hands without touching the bag. Finally, the shock covered the whole acreage of his face and passed. He shook his head slowly and took the bag from me.
‘This boy, your head is not correct,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s something wrong with you. Why didn’t you use the money to buy garri for one old woman in your village? How can you be spending your money buying me things?’
He started walking towards the house. After a few paces, he stopped and turned.
‘I was just thinking about it,’ he said. ‘Do you know that this is the first time in almost fifteen years that anybody has bought anything for me? Just like that… for no reason?’
He smiled like a delighted child and continued towards the house.
Charity had taken the weekend off school for the special occasion. Her suitor was paying me a courtesy call this Saturday afternoon. From my bedroom window, I saw that Johnny a.k.a Nwokeoma was not infected with the ‘African Time’ epidemic. He had arrived a whole seven minutes before his 2 p.m. appointment. To make sure that nobody mistook his brand new Honda for a tokunbo, Johnny had left the protective cellophane wrappings on the seat covers and on the headrests. Like many people, he would probably never tear the covers off but leave them to wear out with time.
My sister rushed outside to welcome him. With fury, I watched them embrace. I was daring the man to take their body contact any further when they held hands and sauntered happily into my house. Charity had him seated comfortably in the living room, then came upstairs to announce his arrival. I had been pacing up and down in my bedroom for the past thirty minutes, wondering what to say to him when he turned up. Still, I allowed an extra forty minutes to pass before coming downstairs. I did not offer any apologies for keeping him waiting.
Johnny presented some ‘wine’ to formally initiate me into his intentions. I received the two bottles of Rémy Martin cognac and placed them on the stool beside me. Since I was not particularly desperate for my sister to leave the house, I was not going to ask for a wineglass and sip from the drink immediately.
‘I’m delighted to finally meet you,’ he said. ‘Charity holds you in such high regard. Very soon, you’ll meet my family as well. They’ve all met Charity and they’re also looking forward to meeting you.’
The man greatly amused me. He was tall, thin, slow, hairy, with heavy linear eyebrows that looked as if they had been cut out of a thick rug and pasted onto his face with cheap glue. Each time he shifted his head, I half-expected the eyebrows to drop onto the floor. His look was stiff and sluggish, like all his mannerisms. When he began a five-word sentence, I could have walked up the flight of stairs, gone to the bathroom in my bedroom, turned on the tap, washed my hands, turned off the tap, descended the stairs, sat down, and he would still not have finished speaking.
But there is some good in everybody: beneath his burdensome eyebrows, Johnny was quite handsome.
‘I hear you’re a banker,’ I said.
‘Yes, I am,’ he replied as if each word had a phobia of the next one coming after it. ‘I’m head of operations at the Standard Trust Bank in Okigwe.’
For a second, I relished the many advantages of having an in-law who worked in a bank. In our line of business, it always helped to have a banker on your side.
He went on to say that he had a degree in Business Administration from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He was Roman Catholic, his parents were civil servants, and he was desperately in love with my sister of course. Plus, he was thirty-four years old!
At that moment, Charity walked in with a tray of refreshments. The corners of the man’s mouth expanded to his ears in a smile. He stopped speaking while she adjusted the centre table and deposited her offering in front of him. He fixed gleaming and delighted eyes on my sister from the moment she entered the room, while she was opening the bottle of soft drink, till she twisted her tiny behind and left. There was a strong possibility that his eyeballs would have popped out of their sockets if she had not left when she did.
I felt like bruising his handsome jaw with my fist.
‘If everything goes according to plan,’ he continued, ‘we would be married by August.’
He was a British citizen, you see, and had enrolled at the London School of Economics. The postgraduate course would be starting in September. He wanted Charity to come along with him as his wife.
I listened to him broadcasting his well-calculated plans and thought to myself, what a fool.
He kept talking. His voice started sounding as annoying as a toddler crying on the plane during an all-night flight. I stopped listening and started wondering. Finally, I reached a conclusion. There could only be one reason why my young, intelligent, beautiful, naive, unassuming, impressionable sister would want to marry this cradle-snatching slug. He had a British passport. This Anglo-Nigerian was her ticket to a better world – a marriage proposal attached to a magic carpet.
The whirring noise in my ears suddenly ceased. The man had finished his ditty. Out of curiosity – strictly out of curiosity – I asked him one last question.
‘What about her education? What will happen if she gets married now and has to leave the country?’
Of course he had that all planned out, too.
‘That’s not a problem. She can transfer to some schools in London. Or she can just start right from the beginning. It all depends how long we’ll remain in the UK.’
I nodded. The man was not such a fool, after all.
‘I plan to go and see your mother in Umuahia by next week,’ he said.
Because I was opara – and in my father’s absence, the head of the family – he had come to see me first.
When he was ready to leave, Charity accompanied me in seeing him off. As his brand new Honda slid out of my gates, she took my hand in hers and looked up shyly. She was anxious to know what I thought of her beau.
‘He’s OK,’ I replied as we walked back into the house. ‘He’s quite OK.’
‘Do you know that he’s a British citizen?’ she asked, her eyeballs swollen with visions of a magnificent future in El Dorado.
‘Yes. He told me.’
We sat in the living room, pretended that we had both forgotten about Johnny, and watched a Nollywood movie about a girl who was engaged to a boy that she did not know was the child her mother had abandoned by the riverside twenty-three years ago. Just as Charity was slotting in Part 4, I invited her into my bedroom. We sat side by side on the bed.
‘Charity,’ I began, ‘how did you say you met Johnny?’
‘I met him through a friend at school,’ she began excitedly, almost out of breath. ‘In fact you even know her. Thelma.’
Who on earth was Thelma?
‘She was one of those who came with us on my matriculation day. The one that sat next to you at the restaurant.’
Ah! The girl whose breasts were as big as if she were nine months pregnant with twins, who had kept digging her foot into my calf. And winking each time I looked up, oblivious to Godfrey slobbering across the table. The only reason why I did not follow up was because she was not my type and I did not want to just fool around with my little sister’s friend.
‘Oh, yes. I remember her,’ I said.
‘She’s known Johnny’s people for a very long time and she says they’re from a good family.’
In other words, his family were neither osu nor ohu. None of their ancestors had been dedicated as slaves to the pagan gods of any shrine, none of their ancestors had been slaves to other families. And so we nwadiala, freeborn, were not forbidden from marrying amongst them. The first thing my father’s sisters had wanted to know when I told them about Ola was whether or not she was osu. But with Johnny, I had other concerns.
‘How long have you known him?’ I asked.
‘We’ve known each other for four months,’ Charity replied. ‘He’s reeeeally nice.’
She placed an emphasis on the ‘really’, as if to distinguish between his own and the other types of niceness that exist. I nodded to show that I understood.
‘Do you like him?’
‘I love him,’ she answered swiftly and confidently.
I nodded again. Something caught my eyes. Her matriculation photograph in a silver picture frame on the dresser beside my bed. She was wearing the mauve gown and cap that she had hired from the university. She was smiling in a juvenile way that showed her dazzling white teeth like a crescent moon in the sky. Charity had eventually misplaced the cap and I had had to pay a ridiculous amount to the school for its replacement. She told me that my unrestrained expense at the fancy restaurant had been the talk of her friends at school for days.
‘Why do you want to get married now?’ I continued.
She frowned.
‘Because… because I’ve met someone I love,’ she answered stupidly.
‘You’re not even up to twenty.’ I did not wait for her to answer. ‘Charity, there’s no need to make any rash decisions that you may later regret. Look at you. You’re bright, beautiful, and you have your whole future ahead of you. Even if you say you love him, it doesn’t matter. You’ll definitely find another person that you can also fall in love with. Life goes on and you won’t die.’
The attentiveness on her face did not alter. Neither did she look like she was going to cry. I decided it was safe for me to push ahead.
‘Charity, remember that you don’t have to be as desperate as so many other girls are. There’s nothing for you to escape from.’ I paused. ‘Charity, look at me.’
She lifted her gaze and stared into my eyes.
‘Charity, you know I have money. OK? Plenty of it. Just focus on your studies and forget about a husband for now. OK?’
She nodded.
‘I have nothing against Johnny,’ I lied. ‘But no matter how far you want to go… if it’s Harvard or Cambridge… there’s no problem. My money can take you there… and you’ll be able to make better choices. Do you hear me?’
Charity sat frozen, so I took her in my arms and squeezed her tight. She placed her head against my chest and folded her arms into my embrace.
Right there and then, I realised that Ola was wrong. My sacrifice was worth it.
‘OK?’
Her head moved up and down against my chest. We were silent for a while.
‘Charity, do you want to go to London next summer?’
She looked up at me with awestruck eyes.
‘I’ll arrange a visa for you. We can travel together.’
She stretched her arms around my torso and hugged me.
Suddenly, I noticed that the matriculation photograph in the silver frame on the dresser was starting to swim in front of me. Then a drop of water tapped my cheek. I had not realised I was crying.
By two o’clock in the morning, I was still awake. I got out of bed, went quickly to my dressing table, and flipped open my wallet. I wavered. After a long glance, I removed the photograph. That Kingsley whose arms were once wrapped around Ola at the Mr Bigg’s eatery on Valentine’s Day had been standing guard in my heart for too long and preventing a successor from taking his place. It was now time for him to give way. Henceforth, he did not exist.
Before climbing back into bed, I tore the photograph into shreds.
I had tried to keep track of their names. After Camille, there was Jackie. Then Imabong, then Chichi, Precious, Amaka… These days, I no longer bothered to ask. Today’s girl was getting up to go to the bathroom when I noticed that her right foot had a big toe that was much, much smaller than all her other toes.
The one thing these strange girls had in common was that they were all undergraduates of the neighbouring universities and poly-technics. They were forced to exchange their bodies for cash in order to bear the burdens of survival in school. Interestingly, of the girls that Camille sent, the ones drenched from head to toe in Fendi and Gucci and Chanel, were usually the ones who carted off all the soap and shampoo and body lotion from my bathroom, and the Cokes and bottled water from my fridge, on their way home. One particular girl had even stolen the pack of toothpicks, and the roll of tissue paper from the holder on the wall.
My cellular rang. It was Aunty Dimma.
‘Kingsley Ibe! What kind of child are you?’
Her voice singed my ears.
‘Aunty, what do you mean?’
‘What do you mean by what do I mean? I find it difficult to believe that you, of all people, have turned out like this. Men! You people are all the same.’
‘Turned out like how?’
‘So you think your lifestyle is normal? You actually think your lifestyle is normal? That’s the problem with money. It’s an evil spirit. Kingsley Ibe, I don’t like the person you’ve become!’
What made her think I liked the person she had become? She used to be less opinionated and less aggressive. If Aunty Dimma so badly wanted to be a man, she could at least try being a gentleman.
‘Aunty, why are you shouting at me?’
‘Kingsley, when last did you visit your mother?’
Her question threw me off balance.
‘Errrr… I’ve… She…’
‘Kingsley, I’m asking you. When last did you visit your mother?’
‘Aunty, I’ve been very bu-’
She detonated.
‘Busy doing what?! What is so busy about your life that you can’t travel down to Umuahia and see your mother regularly? Is that too much to ask of a first son?’
I was defeated.
‘OK, Aunty, I’ll go and see her this weekend.’
‘You can’t wait until weekend. Go today! Your mother hasn’t been feeling well.’
I swung my feet to the floor. The girl came out of the bathroom wearing nothing. My heart slammed against my chest. It had nothing to do with the temptation in front of me.
‘Not feeling well? What’s wrong with her?’
‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Aunty, please.’
‘You should have been the first person to know. You should have been the one calling to tell me. But you’re too busy. Busy making money for that criminal.’ She paused to suck in a breath. ‘She’s been having eye trouble. I’m just coming from Umuahia. I spent the past two days with her.’
She ranted some more. I apologised. She terminated the call halfway through my apology. I sprang up from the bed.
‘Is everything OK?’ the naked girl asked.
I had actually forgotten that she was there.
‘Get dressed,’ I replied. ‘I need to go out now.’
‘Would you like me to wait for you?’
Never. Apart from the Cokes and toilet paper, it had taken a pair of Prada slippers, 100mls of Issey Miyake perfume, a pack of Calvin Klein boxer shorts and $3,500 cash for me to learn. These strange girls were never to be left alone.
‘Get dressed,’ I said.
I jangled my car keys and waited for her to gather her clothes. When she was through, I removed five $100 bills from my wallet and pushed them into her palm. She stuffed the money into her Ferragamo handbag and walked out ahead of me.
My mother was lying flat on her back. I held her hand and stroked her face. Her eyes were red and swollen.
‘Kings, how was your trip?’
My trip to America had gone very well. It was my neuroscientist mugu’s turn to visit Nigeria next. America was all that Cash Daddy had said it would be and more, but I was glad when my stay eventually came to an end. With the mighty portions of food they served in American restaurants, it would only have been a matter of time before my bathroom scale started reading to-be-continued when I stepped on it. No wonder many shrivelled Nigerians who visited yonder returned massive overnight.
‘Mummy, how are you? How are you feeling?’
She sighed.
‘They gave me some eyedrops at the hospital, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much. The eyes have started swelling again and they’re aching me right inside. I’ve booked to see the specialist next Thursday.’
I hissed.
‘Mummy, don’t worry. I’ll come tomorrow and take you to the Specialist Eye Hospital in Port Harcourt. I hear they have the best ophthalmologists there. I’m sure someone will be able to see you immediately.’ It was just a matter of cash.
My mother closed her eyes.
‘Mummy, did you hear me? I’ll come and take you tomorrow morning. First thing in the morning. OK?’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll wait for my turn at the General Hospital.’
‘But they ca-?’
Realisation struck me dumb. I continued staring at her in disbelief.
‘Mummy, please,’ I said quietly. ‘We’re not talking about a car or a house. This is a matter of your health. Please don’t make a fuss over anything.’
Her sore eyes caught mine and held onto them with as much strength as they could muster.
‘Kings, I’m not going with you to Port Harcourt,’ she said calmly.
I stood up from the bed and paced up and down the room. I stopped abruptly in front of her with arms akimbo.
‘Mummy, are you trying to kill yourself just to make a point? This is your health.’
‘Kings, I’ve told you that I’m not going. Just forget it.’
Her voice was soft and steady, betraying neither stubbornness, nor resentment, nor contempt. I sat back on the bed and kept quiet. Then I pretended as if I had taken her seriously and started chatting about different trivial things. After a while, I left.
Before she had even woken from sleep the next morning, I turned up again at the house. Her eyes were so swollen that she could hardly open them. When I touched her, she sucked in air and grunted with pain.
‘Mummy, get up.’
She raised her hand and shook it from side to side. No.
‘Mummy, please get up,’ I insisted.
This time, she did not even bother raising her hand. I cajoled some more, she remained silent. Finally I lost my temper.
‘Well, if that’s what you want,’ I scolded, ‘if what you’re trying to do is punish me, you can have it your way. God knows I’m doing-’
‘Kings,’ she interrupted, speaking in the same soft and steady of yesterday, that betrayed neither stubbornness, nor resentment, nor contempt, ‘the only way you can make me happy is to leave this thing you’re doing and get a job and settle down. It’s not your money, it’s not your cars, that can make me happy. You know it really worries me no end.’ Her voice became less soft. ‘The way it is now, there’s no time I think about you and I’m happy. No time at all. It’s always worry and fear. And with Boniface and his politics, I’m terrified each time I think that you’re-’
‘Mummy, I’ve told you. I’m not involved in the campaign. I work strictly in the office while Cash… Uncle Boniface has other people working on the elections.’
She forced her eyes as far open as they would go. Her look seemed to ask if I genuinely thought she believed anything I told her any longer.
‘Kings, please… Your father would be miserable seeing you like this.’
I slammed the door on my way out.
My car was parked beside Mr Nwude’s blue Volkswagen. One of the back tyres of the faithful car was missing and had been replaced by a cement block. Some children were gathered around my jeep. They caressed the body and peered into the rear lights. One stood beside the driver’s door, mimicking the whirr of the engine and pretending that the deflated football in his hands was the steering wheel.
Quietly, I retreated into the vestibule and watched. The likelihood that any one of them would ever grow up to own a car like that was low. Very low. I was one of the lucky few. And my own children would be bred from birth with cash. The good things of life would be natural to them.
Alas, with the kind of girls I had been hanging out with, the prospect of marriage and children was still very far away.
The place looked like a carnival. There were elegant and haggard, wrinkled-faced and fresh, respectable and uncouth. Many of these guests at Protocol Officer’s wedding had probably strayed in from the highways and the byways. Most likely, many of them had never set eyes on the bride and groom before.
But the assessment of this wedding would depend on how well the hosts incorporated these unexpected guests into their planning. If the food ran out, the wedding was a failure. If there was still food for the inevitable latecomers who would arrive after the bride and groom had gone off to live happily ever after, the wedding was a success.
I experienced a moment of disorientation on seeing the colourful orange banner that ran from one end of the hall to the other: ‘NWAEZE WEDS NKECHI’. Of course, the name on his birth certificate could not possibly have read ‘Protocol Officer’, but it had never occurred to me that he actually had a name and a life of his own, a life that was not attached in some way to Cash Daddy’s welfare.
Three hours after the wedding reception began, right after the bride knelt in front of her husband and fed him with the ceremonial first meal – a piece of the wedding cake – the emcee put the ceremony on hold.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘right now, I would like us to acknowledge the presence of a very special guest in our midst. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together to welcome the sponsor of this wedding. Chief Boniface Mbamalu alias Cash Daddy.’
The ladies and gentlemen put their hands together. Cash Daddy entered slowly, accompanied by his otimkpu.
‘Cash Daddy, we would like to request the honour of your presence at the high table,’ the emcee added.
Two female ushers escorted Cash Daddy to join the bride and groom at the table where they sat with both sets of parents. The otimkpu followed and stood behind.
The rest of us who went by the euphemism ‘special guests of the groom’, had our own special tables right beside the platoon of bridesmaids. Excluding those of us from the CIA, these special tables were occupied by people who had worked under Cash Daddy and had left to set up their own offices. They still saw Cash Daddy as their godfather, and still paid obeisance to him as and when due, like now. In my cream suit and brandy-coloured leather shoes, I was easily the most conservatively dressed of them all. Azuka, for example, was wearing a satin tuxedo and red bow tie. He spent a good deal of time throughout the ceremony chatting on his cellular phone. Clearly, his Iranian mugu had been taking good care of him.
When it was time for the couple’s dance, all of us stood to join them and to paste currency notes on the couple’s foreheads. In recent public awareness campaigns, the government had included this tradition of ‘spraying’ as one of the ways by which the naira became so badly mutilated. Rather than placing money on celebrants’ foreheads and trampling on the money while dancing, the public was being encouraged to present their monetary gifts in envelopes instead. Although no Nigerian citizen was happy about the wretched and smelly naira notes, who could forestall all those young men who looked forward to opportunities like this to show off the fruits of their hard labour? I brought out the bundles of crisp notes I had prepared for the occasion. Some others on the special table unwrapped their bundles of dollar notes.
When the spraying was over and the couple seemed ready to return to their seats, Cash Daddy rose.
The live band noticed his advancement and quickly switched to a more titillating tune that allowed them to slot his name into the lyrics. Knowing that something good was about to happen, the couple intensified their gyrations once again.
Cash Daddy was not in a hurry. He took slow steps towards the couple while one of his otimkpu followed, carrying a small Ghana-must-go bag in one hand. Apparently, the Ghanaian economic immigrants had needed lots of the waterproof check bags when the Nigerian government sent them packing sometime in the eighties. Rather than pasting the naira, dollar, and pound notes individually on their foreheads, the dark-suited otimkpu handed Cash Daddy bundle after bundle. Cash Daddy ripped the paper bands off each bundle and split it into three, then flung each portion into the air nonchalantly, allowing the notes to shower down upon the couple in an avalanche.
The hall fell silent with fascination.
‘Disgusting,’ a disenchanted voice close to my ears hissed softly.
I turned sideways. One of the bridesmaids, the one sitting closest to me, had turned her seat towards the dance floor and was frowning violently at the show. I was turning away when something struck me. I swung my head back for a second look. The girl was quite pretty. Her skin glowed flawless ebony. She looked innocent, too. I must have turned to look at her at least five more times during that dance.
The last time I turned, she was already looking at me.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hi,’ I replied and faced front, feeling like an idiot.
‘Are you here on behalf of the bride or the groom?’ she asked the side of my head.
I turned.
‘The groom.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘My name is Merit. What’s yours?’
‘I’m Kingsley. Pleased to meet you.’
We shook briefly. Her palms tasted nice.
‘Kingsley? That’s quite an interesting name. Is it Igbo or English?’
I thought that to be a very dumb question. Nevertheless, I indulged her. After all, who was I to complain when I stank so badly at small talk?
‘It’s English.’
‘So how come I hardly ever see anybody who’s not Igbo bearing the name?’
‘Errr…’
‘One of my cousins who grew up in America said all the people she met in America called Kingsley were Igbo. She said she kept asking people what the name meant in Igbo without knowing it was actually English. You, have you ever met or heard of any non-Nigerian called Kingsley?’
I laughed. The girl was right. I also had never encountered any non-Nigerian, any non-Igbo, whose name was Kingsley. We seemed to have hijacked the name.
‘There’re quite a few names like that,’ she continued. ‘Like Innocent… like Goodluck… like Merit.’
Both of us laughed at the same time. I wanted to add ‘Boniface’ to the list but restrained myself.
‘Maybe they’re Engli-Igbo,’ I said.
She laughed at my dry joke!
This girl was really sweet. She was of medium height, slightly chubby, and had a fringe of hair which gave her a juvenile look that contrasted sharply with her voluptuous figure. She wore a peach flower in her hair. It matched her orange ball gown. While she spoke, she leaned slightly towards me and stared confidently into my face. Her voice was confident, too, and she gesticulated graciously when emphasising a point.
Merit proceeded with a running commentary on everything that was going on in the hall. She commented on the way people were going for third and fourth helpings and the way some people should have known that they were too fat to be eating so much; on the way the guests were laughing too loudly and the way nobody was listening to the bride’s father’s speech; on the way the elderly people were frowning disapprovingly at the young people’s fashion sense each time any of the young people walked past them.
Wit came easily to Merit, like money from America. I found myself laughing a number of times. Camille and her crew were excellent in unprintable ways, but none of them had ever captured me with such humour.
‘How do you know Nwaeze?’ Merit asked suddenly.
The question was so out of the blue that I was taken aback. It took me a long moment to remember that she was referring to Protocol Officer.
‘We both… He… He works for my uncle,’ I stammered. For some reason, I was ashamed of the truth.
‘Cash Daddy is your uncle?’
‘My mother’s younger brother.’
‘No wonder.’ She sighed, apparently with relief. ‘All the while, I’ve been wondering how someone like you knew Nwaeze. So what do you do?’
‘What do I do?’
‘Where do you work?’
‘Oh, I do my own thing. I’m into contracts and investments.’
‘Where-?’
‘How do you know Nkechi?’ I asked, shifting the spotlight from me.
‘Nkechi and I were best friends when we were ten. Even though we attended different universities, somehow we managed to keep in touch over the years.’
‘Merit.’ One of the other bridesmaids tapped her. ‘Let’s go.’
Merit stood.
‘Are you leaving?’ I asked, alarmed.
‘Not yet. We’re going to distribute souvenirs. I’ll be back.’
She strutted off with the other bridesmaids. I noticed that Cash Daddy had left. Soon, the bridesmaids were going from table to table with huge sacks, distributing plastic bowls and buckets. There were also jugs and trays and mugs, and towels and notebooks and calendars. The souvenirs had smiling faces of Protocol Officer and Wife plastered on them, with names of the family members or friends who had donated these gifts. All of us at the CIA had contributed towards the notebooks and calendars.
Merit skipped several tables and hurried round to mine. She gave me two of each item in her sack and hurried off again.
Long after my colleagues at the special tables had left, Merit reappeared. The peach flower was missing from her hair. Her fringe was standing on end.
‘Have you people finished?’ I asked.
‘Can you imagine?’ she sulked. ‘These people wanted to tear off my dress just because of souvenirs. Some people had up to ten trays in their hands, yet they were scrambling for more.’
‘At least, when they get back home, they’ll have something to boast with to those who didn’t bother coming for the wedding.’
She laughed.
‘You’re so funny,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I just came to tell you that I’m leaving. All of us bridesmaids have to accompany Nkechi to her husband’s house. They’re expecting more guests there.’
I stared. I knew what I wanted to say but did not know how to. Truly, shy men suffer a serious disadvantage in this world.
‘Take care,’ she said and turned to leave.
‘Merit.’
She turned back.
I was starting to feel like an idiot again. I forced the words out of my mouth.
‘Is it OK for me to give you my number so you can call me sometime?’
She shrugged.
‘OK.’
Delighted, I fished in my wallet for a complimentary card. My fingers had just caught one when I came to my senses. This girl might see beyond the Investment Coordinator of Bon Bonny Capital Investments appellation on my complimentary card to the real situation of things. She was smart.
‘Sorry, I don’t have any of my cards here,’ I said. ‘I’ll just write down the number.’
I tore a sheet from one of the souvenir notebooks and scribbled. She took it from me and looked at it.
‘Talk to you soon,’ she said and smiled, then sashayed away.
Once again, Mr Winterbottom was getting out of control. I was tempted to end the show, pull back the curtains and allow the mugu to see the brick wall at the back of the stage, but that would be premature and cowardly. And I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, had nothing to fear from any mugu in any part of the world.
I decided to press another button. Hopefully, more dollars would come forth.
The Contracts Review Panel
Central Bank of Nigeria
Abuja
Nigeria
Dear Mr Winterbottom,
PAYMENT OF OUTSTANDING DEBTS TO FOREIGN CONTRACTORS
We apologise for the delays in payment of $200,851,070 (USD) owed to you by the Nigerian government for the execution of Ministry of Aviation contract number (FMA/132/019/82). The delay was due to an ongoing restructuring within our organisation.
Please be informed that, owing to interest accrued over the extra delay period, the amount owed to you currently stands at $374,682,000.15 (USD). This outstanding amount will be paid into your designated bank account as soon as the additional fluctuational charges of $4.5 million (USD) are received by our office. Once again, we apologise for any inconveniences caused by the delays on our part.
Yours faithfully,
Mr Joseph Sanusi
Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
Now that the debt had ballooned to $375 million – almost double the initial contract amount – it would be very stupid of Mr Winterbottom not to keep playing along, especially when he had already invested so much.
My phone rang. It was Protocol Officer.
‘Cash Daddy said I should tell you that he’s going to be on TV on Saturday night,’ he said. ‘It’s a phone-in so make sure you call. Tell the others in the office as well. Write out some questions for them. I’ll ring again later so that you can tell me what the questions will be.’
I went into action on the assignment immediately. When it came to running errands for Cash Daddy, Protocol Officer was as brisk as a bailiff. His ‘later’ could expire within the next thirty minutes, and then he would be at my throat again for the list. I had gone as far as the seventh question when, suddenly, Azuka screamed.
‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah!’
Everybody else rushed over to his desk. I looked up from my screen.
They all joined in the screaming.
It turned out that Azuka’s good luck had reached its very peak. So far, his Iranian mugu had dropped about $70,000. He was eager to invest another $150, 000 and had just sent an email inviting Azuka to a business meeting in Tehran. The Iranian businessman wanted Azuka to meet some of his businessmen friends who were also willing to invest more tons of dough.
‘Congratulations!’ I shouted across.
‘Thank God!’ Azuka replied.
Knowing Azuka, he would probably want to move out and establish his own office as soon as he received his booty. Not that I minded anyway. I preferred working with Wizard and the two new recruits. There was a youthful passion they brought to the work that was almost beautiful to watch, a pure zeal that was not tinged by desperation. Unlike for most of us, who were nudged into this business by circumstances, 419 was a choice they had made simply by aspiring to be like their role models.
Azuka declared free lunch for everyone in the office, then came over to discuss the documents for his Iranian visa.
‘How easy is it to get a visa to Iran?’ I asked. I had never known anyone who went to Iran.
‘It shouldn’t be a problem,’ he replied. ‘It’s almost the same as any other embassy.’
I started putting together the list of documents that Dibia would need to produce.
‘Let me see the letter he sent to you so that I don’t make any mistakes.’
Azuka went to his desk and forwarded the document. The passport would bear the name Sheik Idris Shamshudeen, all other documents would show that he was a contractor for the Zamfara State government. Zamfara was the first state in Nigeria to fully implement Sharia law; the Iranians would definitely fall in love with Azuka.
I read the letter twice to make sure that there was no vital information I had missed. Suddenly, I felt strange. I had this nagging feeling that something was wrong. It was a simple letter of invitation to meet with the mugu’s Iranian partners, but something was amiss.
‘Let me see the other letters he’s been sending you,’ I said to Azuka.
He forwarded many of the previous ones. I had just started reading through, when my cellular rang.
It was Merit!
‘Kings, call me back on this number,’ she said. ‘It’s my office phone.’
I scrambled to obey. Since Ola, I had not woken up in the morning and gone to bed at night with the same girl on my mind, but Merit had stayed with me. There was something about a girl who was not afraid to make the first move. I was never impressed by hard-to-get games. Saying hello when she noticed me staring at her at the wedding was obviously a come-hither gesture, and she had not feigned disinterest when taking my phone number either. Plus, I had not laughed so freely with any woman in a long time. Merit seemed to appreciate my sense of humour as well. Every human being deserved at least one person to laugh at his jokes, no matter how dry.
After a brief chitchat, we agreed that I would pick her up from home later in the evening. My heart started playing a new song.
Merit’s house was not difficult to find. It was on a quiet street with humble buildings that were numbered in an orderly way. The residents might not have had too much money, but they were respectable and tidy. I found a space across the road from Merit’s gate and parked. A young boy materialised by my car and tapped frantically on the window. I jumped. He said something which I did not hear.
‘What?’
I still did not hear. He was super skinny, with a plantation of pimples on his forehead, but he did not look like a mugger or a psychotic, so I took a chance and wound down my window.
‘Good evening,’ he said. His pubescent voice was just beginning to crack. ‘Please, is it Merit you’re looking for?’
How was it his business? Nevertheless, I answered.
‘Yes.’
‘Merit said I should ask you to wait for her. She’s coming. Let me go and tell her you’re around.’
He took off at the rate of seven miles per hour, and dashed back out to tell me that Merit would soon be on her way. Soon, she appeared and trotted to the car. She looked and smelt like a rose.
‘Please drive off quickly,’ she panted.
Instinctively, I hit the accelerator.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked when we had left her street.
‘Oh, it’s my parents. They’re usually quite meddlesome about my visitors. That’s why I had to ask my brother to look out and tell me when you arrived.’
The skinny lad was her brother? Perhaps it was true that the most attractive girls seem to have the least attractive brothers. Anyway, he was young, so there was still hope for him.
‘Aren’t you old enough to hang out with whom you please?’ I asked.
‘My parents are deacons in Jehovah the King Assembly. They’re quite strict about certain things.’
It was too early in our relationship for me to express opinions about a full-grown adult sneaking in and out of her house. I let the matter be.
‘Where would you like us to go to?’ I asked. ‘Is there anywhere in particular you have in mind?’
It had been so long since I was on a proper date. I had no clue about where best to spend the evening. She suggested somewhere that I was supposed to know.
‘You don’t know it?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I don’t believe it. There’s nobody in Aba who doesn’t know where it is. That’s the place everybody goes these days.’
She gave directions. I drove. As soon as we arrived, I understood why Merit had been so eager to come here, why this was the place where everybody went these days. There was a white couple and child sitting at one table and two white men sitting at another. These ones were not real white people like Britons and Americans, though. They looked more like Lebanese or Syrians or one of that type of people, but it did not matter. I had observed the same phenomenon in every Nigerian city I had visited. Any joint that was frequented by any category of white people automatically shot up in ratings amongst indigenes. The place was jammed. As Merit and I searched for a free table, someone called out to me.
‘Graveyard!’
I turned.
‘Graveyard! Longest time!’
It was my roommate from university.
‘Ah! Enyi. How are you?’
We shook hands. I had not seen him since my father’s burial.
‘Graveyard, you look good. You look really good. I hear you’re now a big-’
I cut him off.
‘Merit, this is Enyi. We were roommates on campus.’
I asked her to go ahead and find somewhere to sit.
‘I’ll join you soon,’ I said.
‘Graveyard, you look really good,’ Enyi continued after Merit left. ‘I hear you’re now a bigger boy in Aba. I hear you’re doing very, very well. And you’ve put on weight!’
Who would ever have imagined? When they came to spend time with me during their last holidays, I had handed down a mountain of tight shirts to my brothers. I would probably have to pass on yet another batch when next any one of them was around.
‘Honestly, Graveyard, I’m so glad I saw you today. The other day, I was telling some people that both of us were very good friends in school and they thought I was lying.’
I smiled some more. He dipped into the messenger bag strapped across his chest and extracted a book.
‘Graveyard, I just wrote my first novel. Honestly, I’ll be very honoured if you can attend my book launching.’
He handed me the book. From Morocco to Spain in 80 Days.
I was impressed.
‘I didn’t know you were a writer. That’s great. Who’re your publishers?’
‘My uncle owns a printing press in Ngwa. They published it for me.’
I flipped through the uneven, poorly printed pages and paused to read. At least nine muscular typographical errors rose from the page and gave me a slap across the face.
‘This book is just too much,’ Enyi continued. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be a bestseller. It’s about my experiences while travelling across the Sahara to Europe.’
I had heard of several Nigerians ready to risk wind and limb by making this treacherous journey across the desert in search of greener pastures. Some died or were arrested along the way, some were captured and kept in detention camps the moment they arrived. I considered myself lucky for the opportunity to sit at my desk and reach across to greener pastures with my keyboard.
I handed back the book.
‘No, keep it. This one is your own copy. You can give me the money for it even if you’re not attending the launching.’
I asked him how much it was; he told me.
‘But that’s the official price,’ he added, then smiled and winked. ‘A bigger boy like you, you can’t just pay the official price. You have to put something good on top.’
‘I haven’t got much with me here,’ I smiled back. ‘I just came out with enough for our meal.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I can stop over at your office and collect it some other time. Is it not that building behind Bon Bonny Hotel?’
I handed him a complimentary card, anyway – as an act of noblesse oblige. He assured me that he would see me soon.
I joined Merit at the obscure table she had chosen in a far corner of the room. A waiter came round and took our orders. With Ola, we always requested that the waiters go and come back later to allow us calculate what aspects of the menu our pockets could handle. Merit made her choice of appetizer, main meal, and dessert without restraint. I felt like a real man.
We laughed and talked while we ate. She was an Accountancy graduate and worked with her father’s friend’s private firm in Aba. She was a year younger than I. She had an elder brother, an elder sister, and three younger ones. Her father had a private law practice, her mother was a civil servant. Her elder brother was doing a Masters in International Law, her elder sister had finished university two years ago and was now doing a course at Bible School.
‘You know, you’re very different from the first impression I had of you when I saw you at the wedding,’ Merit said.
‘What first impression?’
‘Hmmmmm…?’
‘Was it the way I looked?’
‘No, not the way you looked. I’m not really sure what it was. Maybe it’s the people I saw you sitting with. I was a bit confused because you looked different from them, but at the same time I was wondering why you were sitting with them. It was after you told me Cash Daddy was your uncle that I understood.’
I shifted about in my chair. Perhaps I should hint at the truth.
‘But I work for my uncle, though.’
She stiffened.
‘Work for him doing what?’
‘I help him with some investments… sort of like consultancy. He didn’t like the way other people were handling some of his business deals, so he decided that he wanted a relative to do it for him.’
‘Oh.’ She relaxed. ‘I hear he has a lot of businesses on the side.’
On the side of what? Like my mother, Merit was using euphemisms. Probably to spare me the embarrassment of having an uncle who was a 419 kingpin. The nice girl.
‘Anyway, be careful about first impressions,’ I said. ‘The mind’s construction is not written on the face.’
‘Or in the clothes,’ she added.
I laughed. She laughed. My cellular rang. It was Mr Winterbottom. I stood hastily.
‘Excuse me, let me take this call,’ I said to Merit and moved some distance away.
‘It was really tough trying to convince some of the senior bankers, ’ Mr Winterbottom said. ‘We’ve been arguing about it all day. They agreed to release this last $4.5 million dollars under the condition that the CBN will pay the full amount before the end of next month.’
I smiled.
‘But I’m definitely not paying any more fees,’ he continued. ‘The bank has decided that this is the last.’
No need for Mr Winterbottom to take his bank’s words too seriously. If given another good enough reason, they would cough out more.
I hurried back to Merit. We talked some more about false appearances, about life and current affairs.
‘Do you have my house land phone number?’ she asked at the end of the evening.
‘No. You only gave me your office number.’
‘OK, I’ll give it to you. But whenever you call, please, if it’s my dad or mum who picks up, pretend that you want to speak to my older brother. His name is Mezie.’
There was something suspicious about Edgar Hooverson’s email. I read it several times even though it was very brief. My suspicion grew with each reread.
Suddenly, it hit me. I realised what had nagged at my mind when Azuka showed me the email from his Iranian mugu. I rang his cellular phone immediately.
‘Azuka, where are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m at the airport. We’re just about to board.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that email from your Iranian mugu. Something doesn’t sound right.’
‘How?’
The Iranian mugu’s email was similar to Mr Hooverson’s.
After the meeting in Amsterdam, Mr Hooverson had started trying to raise the $70,000 for the lactima base 69%. When it was taking too long, Dr Wazobia asked him to send an initial instalment of $15,000 to see if the people at the chemical plant would be persuaded to give us at least quarter of a bottle. Mr Hooverson made the payment in three instalments. Afterwards, the chemical plant said it was impossible to sell quarter bottles. Fortunately, Dr Wazobia also had a friend who had a contact at the chemical plant who could arrange half a bottle. If Mr Hooverson could come up with at least half of the outstanding amount.
No reply from Mr Hooverson.
This was the first I had heard from him since then. After ignoring all my emails and voice messages, he had now written to say that he had the rest of the money for the lactima base 69%. He was eager for another trip to the security company and would prefer bringing the raw cash all the way to Amsterdam rather than wiring it. In his email, he spent too much time emphasising all the cash he was bringing along. Plus some extra in case we needed unexpected funds.
‘Azuka, your mugu spent half of the email talking about the money he was going to give you and the plans for your trip to Iran. He didn’t even talk much about the business proposal and his own cut from the deal. Are you sure he’s not trying to bait you?’
Azuka laughed.
‘Seriously. That’s what it looks like to me.’
‘Kings, don’t worry. I’ve cooked the man very well in my pot. This is a clear deal.’
‘Azuka, why not tell him you couldn’t make it? Schedule another date.’
‘Nooooo! Hei! Don’t you know that he’s already told all his partners I’m coming tomorrow? If I cancel, it might look as if I’m unserious. Especially after all the trouble he went through to help me with my visa. Don’t forget we’re talking about 150,000 dollars here – US dollars, not Taiwan dollars. Kings, after all my years of suffering, God has remembered me. This is my time.’
‘You don’t get it. It’s not about the money. What’s the point goi-’
‘Kings, don’t forget that I’m older than you,’ he said testily. ‘I’m old enough to know when something is not good for me and when it is. Relax. I have this thing under control.’
I sighed.
‘Look. Kings, relax.’
‘OK. But please ring me as soon as you get into Iran, so that at least I’ll know that you arrived safely.’
‘No probs. See you next week.’
I sat looking at my phone for a long time. Then, I went back to work. It was not always sensible to jump to conclusions, so I created a fresh email account.
Dear Edgar Hooverson (Mr),
Re: INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION AGAINST ADVANCE FEE FRAUD
I am writing to inform you that the FBI has forwarded us your complaint and we are treating it as a very serious matter from our end. Please rest assured that our government is committed to doing all it can to curb this menace of fraudsters that are tainting our image around the globe, and to tighten the loopholes that make it easy for them to operate.
We would appreciate any assistance you can render us to catch these men and put them behind bars. Once they are captured, we would ensure that any monies seized would be returned to their rightful owners.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Nuhu Ribadu
Director, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
Abuja, Nigeria.
I hoped the email was vague enough to keep Mr Hooverson singing my tune even if my suspicion turned out to be wrong. But his reply, which was almost instantaneous, settled the whole matter.
Dear Dr Ribadu,
Thank you SO MUCH for your email. I am HAPPY to say that I CAN HELP! We can work TOGETHER to get these WICKED men into police custody where they belong!
I was pleasantly SURPRISED to hear from you. I reported my case to the FBI but they did not APPEAR to take it SERIOUSLY-
I went on to read about how he got to know that he was being scammed through a co-worker whom he had asked for a loan and how he had been in and out of hospital ever since; how his therapist had suggested that he contact the Oprah and Montel shows for an opportunity to tell the world what he had been through.
As usual, Cash Daddy had been right. Mr Hooverson, described me as ‘a YOUNG MAN in his twenties who looked and sounded WELL-EDUCATED and who had a very HONEST FACE’. He had even attached copies of all our email correspondence. Honestly, these white people were so funny. Did they really think that everybody else had the energy to expend on all sorts of fanciful troubles like they did? Dr Ribadu was too busy running after the billions of dollars that were going missing from the national and state coffers every day. When would the poor man have time to read all this?
But letter writing was my source of income, so I had all the time in the world to reply.
Dear Edgar Hooverson (Mr),
Re: INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION AGAINST ADVANCE FEE FRAUD (VICTIMS REIMBURSEMENT)
Thank you for your prompt response. I am happy to inform you that, right now, we have in our custody a number of gangs of scammers who have been operating from Amsterdam for the past few years. We have seized all their assets and frozen all their accounts. We are currently working with the FBI to ensure that all the monies recovered are returned to their rightful owners.
From your story, it appears that you might have been one of their victims. I am glad to see that we have your full cooperation. The millions of dollars contained in their accounts will be used to refund as many victims as we can contact. We promise to do our best to ensure that all your stolen funds are returned to you.
Please send us any documented proof of whatever payments you made to the scammers. This should help us calculate exactly how much to refund you.
To facilitate the process of retrieving your funds, we would require a payment of $5,000 US dollars for the International Collaboration fees. This payment should be received within the next two weeks. Your stolen funds will be ready for clearance four days after payment.
I hope this unfortunate encounter will not prevent you from doing business with Nigerians in future. There are many great Nigerians helping to move the economies of the world forward.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Nuhu Ribadu
Director, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
Abuja, Nigeria.
We never saw Azuka again. Four days after he was due back in Nigeria, I rang the Tehran hotel and confirmed that he had not come back to his room since his first night. I rang the airline and was informed that his return ticket had not yet been used. I rang his mugu’s contact numbers and was greeted by a polite female voice who responded in Arabic from beginning to end. Or maybe the language was Iranian. After a week of searching and trying, the whole Central Intelligence Agency was bleak with despair.
‘Kings, do you think he’s been arrested?’ Buchi asked.
‘I have no idea.’
‘But had he seen the mugu by the time he called you?’ Wizard asked.
‘No. They had spoken, but he was just leaving the hotel for the meeting. The hotel said he hasn’t come back since. All his stuff is still in the room.’
‘Can’t we go to the Iranian Embassy and make a report?’ Buchi asked.
‘How can?’ Wizard and Ogbonna replied at the same time.
‘Even if we pretend to be his relatives,’ I explained, ‘that means we’ll have to give them our contact details to get back to us when they find him. That could just be a neat trap for them to catch all of us.’
The two new recruits flashed wide open eyes, their faces flooded with dread.
‘How about the Nigerian Embassy in Tehran?’ one of them asked.
‘Who will we tell them we’re looking for?’ Ogbonna asked back. ‘Sheik Shamshudeen or what?’
‘What do you think they could have done to him?’ the second one asked.
‘Ah,’ Wizard replied. ‘You know in Iran they use Sharia law. They can either cut off his two hands or just behead him. Simple.’
There was a deathly silence.
‘Kings, maybe you should let Cash Daddy know,’ Buchi suggested quietly.
‘Let’s wait a little and see what happens,’ I replied. ‘I’ll try to think of something.’
After all, it was all my fault. Why had I changed Azuka’s mind about his bad luck? His pessimism might have been his salvation. Perhaps, I did not present my misgivings strongly enough. He might have been dissuaded from going.
‘We’re here worrying ourselves,’ Wizard said with an attempt at cheer in his voice. ‘For all we know, they might have given him seventy virgins to keep him busy. That might be why he’s forgotten to call.’
Nobody laughed.
I went through the rest of the day’s tasks like a zombie. All my colleagues looked as if they had been sautéed in a deep fog. I thought, kept thinking, and continued thinking, but no solution came to mind. This 419 thing had always been like a game to me – hooking mugus, making hits, returning to the scene of the crime and making more hits. For the first time, I was seeing a chill wind in our game. My sang-froid was in ribbons.
Eventually, I rang Merit. Thankfully, her evening was free.
‘I’ll be at your house around six,’ I said.
‘OK, I’ll ask my brother to watch out for you.’
At least there was something cheerful to look forward to after all this gloom. Merit’s company was a true delight. She could discuss any topic intelligently, her opinions always made sense, but unlike Ola, she was quick to say whatever she thought. At first, I was concerned that she might be an Aunty Dimma in training, but Merit knew the limits of womanhood. On one of the evenings we were out together, I got tired of wincing each time she leaned towards me and finally told her what I thought of her new hairdo.
‘You look much better with your natural hair,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you need to use hair extensions.’
Plus, the hair reminded me too much of the Camille crew. There was never any of them who did not have someone else’s hair stitched into her scalp.
For almost thirty minutes after my comment, Merit made her strong arguments for hair extensions. At a point, I just kept quiet and let her talk.
‘And who says it’s someone else’s hair?’ she concluded. ‘After all, I paid for it with my own money.’
Nevertheless, she had taken off the extensions the very next day.
After all was said and done, I preferred a girl who was forthright from the beginning to one who was coy and submissive when things were good and who ended up shutting you out coldly when things went bad.
And best of all, since meeting Merit, I had never once rung Camille.
Days later, I was still worrying about Azuka. I acknowledged defeat at last. Cash Daddy’s phone rang out the first time. The second time, he answered after seven rings. His environment sounded rowdy.
‘Cash Daddy, please, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s about the office.’
‘What type of rubbish is that?’ he yelled. ‘Why didn’t he sign the document?’
I heard a cowering response from someone in the background and was relieved to realise that my uncle had not been talking to me.
‘And so what if it’s not their policy?’ he yelled on.
The beneficiary of his tirade said something.
‘What car does he drive?’ Cash Daddy asked.
I did not hear the response.
‘Burn down that old car and resurrect another one for him within three days,’ Cash Daddy replied. ‘Then take that document back for him to sign.’
Cash Daddy then returned to me.
‘Kings, what’s the problem? How can you be disturbing me with office matters now? I’m beginning to get very suspicious of you. Do you want me to be the next democratically elected executive governor of Abia State or not? You’d better tell me now.’
‘Cash Daddy, we haven’t heard from Azuka since he went to Iran. He was due back more than a week ago.’
He was silent for a very long while.
‘I have meetings lined up the whole of today,’ he said at last, in a mellowed voice. He was silent again. ‘Anyway, no problem. Come and see me tonight. I’ll be at my hotel.’
If anybody had any doubts before, Cash Daddy was clearly now a very important man in Abia State of Nigeria. Four policemen were standing outside the seventh-floor elevator. There were several more policemen and men in dark suits lining the corridor. And they were not the usual noise-making otimkpu; these ones were fully armed to the toenail. My uncle’s head of security identified and passed me, but I was still stopped and searched three different times before finally reaching his suite. Obviously, Cash Daddy had heeded the warnings of his lawyer about the dangers of Nigerian politics. He was not taking any chances on his enemies sneaking up on him while he slept.
Protocol Officer was sitting with Cash Daddy’s campaign manager in the outer room. He asked me to go inside.
The ticket holder of the NAP gubernatorial ticket was sitting on the bed with a towel wrapped around his waist, shouting into his cellular phone. There were three Indian girls in exotic Indian wear, massaging different parts of his body. Apparently, the local market was no longer sufficient; my uncle was now hiring expatriate genitalia.
‘Kings, what did you say happened to Azuka?’ he asked as soon as he finished his call.
I leaned forward in my chair.
‘Cash Daddy, honestly, I don’t even know where to start.’
‘Make up your mind quickly,’ he replied, and lay flat on his belly in bed. ‘My eyes are almost closing.’
I told him everything, not forgetting to mention my warning to Azuka and all my efforts to trace him so far. All the while I was speaking, Cash Daddy’s eyes were closed and the girls continued moving their hands up and down his body. He remained like that for a long time after I finished. Just when I had concluded that he had fallen asleep, he spoke, still without opening his eyes.
‘Kings, tell me what you think. If a man is standing on the rail track and a train comes and knocks him down. What would you say killed him?’
I did not say anything.
‘Kings.’
‘Yes, Cash Daddy.’
‘What will you say killed him?’
‘Azuka?’
‘Noooo. The man standing on the rail track.’
‘The train?’
He laughed.
‘It’s not the train. It’s his stupidity that killed him. Or his deafness. One of the two. Did he not hear the train coming? I’m disappointed. I’m very, very disappointed. I knew Azuka had bad luck, but I didn’t know he was this stupid. I can’t believe I had such a stupid person working for me. How can he carry his two legs and go to Iran?’
Listening to him was somehow a relief. Cash Daddy was right. Azuka had been stupid, and there I was thinking it was my fault. There I was worrying that this business of ours was more dangerous than I had previously thought, that I might someday fall into unforeseen troubles. It was all about sense and craft. And I was certainly not as stupid as Azuka. Like the spider spinning her web and knowing which threads were safe for her to tread on and which were the sticky ones meant to trap her meals, I was quite a master at the work of my hands. One of the Indian girls started cracking the knuckles of Cash Daddy’s toes.
‘The thing about our business is that one has to be smart,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘There are mugus in America, Britain, Germany, Russia, Argentina, France, Brazil, Switzerland, Spain, Australia, Canada, Japan, Belgium, New Zealand, Italy, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway… Kings, remind me. What other countries?’
‘ Spain.’
‘No. I’ve already mentioned that one.’
‘ Japan.’
‘I’ve also mentioned that one.’
‘Errr… Israel.’
‘Good! Even Israel. There are mugus all over the world. Yet it’s the one in Iran that Azuka went to look for. Doesn’t he know that those ones are not real oyibo people? Their level of mugu is not as high. In fact, they are almost as smart as we are. Me, I’m not afraid of anybody, but I know where to put my leg and where not to put my leg. That’s one of the secrets of my success. Azuka was just stupid.’
He hissed and kept quiet.
‘But, Cash Daddy, isn’t there anything we can do?’
‘Of course, there is. Why not? First thing tomorrow morning, you can go to the Iranian Embassy and tell them you’re looking for one of your brothers who went to Tehran to collect from a mugu. Tell them that both of you do jobs together, that your brother hasn’t yet come back and you’re missing him at the office.’ He paused. ‘Or, you can go all the way to Iran and try and find the mugu. You have the man’s address, don’t you?’
I sat there, gripping the arms of my chair. My head was woozy, my palms were sweaty, my heart was thumping fast. Azuka was gone. Vanished. Just like that. And there was nothing any of us could do about it. Not even Cash Daddy who usually had a solution to every problem.
To think that Azuka had been so gay and confident on his way to doom, like the moth as it dances into the flame. What if disaster suddenly overtook me while I was feeling safe and smug? What if the FBI or Interpol were waiting when next I turned up at an airport? What if a disgruntled mugu somehow traced me back to Nigeria and did my family harm? I could almost feel my hair whitening with fright.
‘Don’t you?’ Cash Daddy repeated.
I jumped.
‘Yes, I do,’ I replied slowly.
‘Good. You can go tomorrow. If you leave for Lagos tomorrow morning, you should be able to catch the first flight to Iran. But before you go, make sure you tell me what story you want me to tell your mother when you don’t come back. Which reminds me. Why have you been having problems with your mother?’
‘What problems?’ I asked, surprised. I had never discussed anything about my mother with him.
‘This woman phoned the other day. What’s her name? That mad woman who left her husband’s house.’
‘Aunty Dimma?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. I couldn’t talk to her, but she left a message with Protocol Officer on my phone. She said your mother is very worried about you, that I should leave you alone to go and find a job. What’s the problem? What’s happening?’
Aunty Dimma and her uninvited opinions yet again. But there was something about the atmosphere, something about the realisation that Azuka might be gone forever and Cash Daddy’s swift change of subject beyond that problem, that made me gush. Like a geyser, I vented everything, complete with my mother refusing my gifts and better medical treatment when she was ill.
‘Sometimes when I go to visit her,’ I concluded, ‘I wonder if all the money I’m making is worth it. I think she was even happier when she had nothing except the hope that I would one day get a job and start taking care of her. Honestly, I don’t know what to do. Sometime ago, I was considering maybe going back to school to do a postgraduate or something. I really don’t know.’
‘There’s a pimple on my cheek,’ Cash Daddy said. ‘Press it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘There’s a pimple on my cheek,’ Cash Daddy said again. ‘Press it.’
I realised that he was talking to his Indian girls. Apparently, none of them expected that talking or listening would be part of the job description. They ignored his instruction.
‘Kings, I don’t think these girls understand English. Explain to them what I’m saying.’
I reached out and tapped one of the girls. With fingers on my face, I puffed out my cheek, and showed her what Cash Daddy wanted.
‘Ahhnnnnnnnnnnnn,’ she said and smiled, then went to work.
‘So how is your mother’s health now?’ Cash Daddy asked. ‘Is she feeling better?’
‘Yes, she’s a lot better. She eventually saw the eye specialist and they did some tests. The medicine he gave her seems to be working.’
He nodded.
‘Kings, I don’t believe that at this stage in your life you’re still talking about going back to school. Look, don’t burn down your whole house because of the presence of a rat. You know what we shall do? Just hold on for a while. Just hold on. Once I become governor, I’ll find you one small political appointment that will keep her happy.’
He flapped his right hand in the air like someone flicking through a bulky file.
‘Maybe something in the Ministry of Education or Ministry of Finance,’ he said, arriving at the page he wanted at last.
‘How about the Ministry of Works and Transport?’ I asked. Since my father had worked there, my mother would definitely be thrilled.
‘If that’s what you prefer,’ Cash Daddy replied. ‘But it has to be something small that won’t take too much of your attention. Because as soon as I become governor, I’ll have even less time for business than I have now.’
It was understandable for Cash Daddy to be concerned about the future of his business. He had spent years building things up to this level – the local and foreign contacts, the staff, the expertise. He had also taken great pains to recruit and groom me. His suggestion made sense.
‘The problem with you is that you don’t know how to think,’ Cash Daddy continued. ‘Too much book has blocked your brain. You see all these problems you’re having with your mother? They will all disappear as soon as you get married. Can you imagine how happy she’ll be if you brought a wife for her? Once your mother starts seeing grandchildren all over the place, she’ll forget about your job.’
Hmm. This sounded quite attractive. And Merit had the sort of appearance that my mother was likely to fall for. She looked like a utensil, not an ornament.
‘Even me,’ Cash Daddy continued, ‘I’m thinking of picking an extra wife. Because of my new status. You understand?’
He asked the question solemnly, like a humble man struggling to cope with the greatness that had suddenly been thrust upon him. I nodded.
‘After my first term in office, when I’m campaigning for second term, I want to have a beautiful young woman who’ll be following me around. I hear that’s the way they do it in America. I hear they even carry their children around with them sometimes. Maybe, I’ll bring my boy to join me, too. You know he speaks very, very good English. His English is even better than yours.’
How would his current Mrs react to the concept of her husband bringing in a second wife who would be the face of her husband’s campaigns? I could only imagine.
‘But Kings, sometimes you make me wonder.’
He shook his head out of the pimple-presser’s grasp and turned to me.
‘Look, there are many different ways to kill a rat. You just need to forget all the books you read in school and learn how to think smarter. A person who doesn’t know how to dance should look at those who know and imitate their steps. Look at me for example. You know I have my car showrooms and my filling stations?’
I nodded.
‘You know I have my hotels and my rented properties?’
I nodded.
‘That’s being smart. That way, when people ask, I can always point and say, this is what I do that brings in my money, that’s what I do that brings in my money. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
I nodded.
‘You need to look for ways to invest the money you have loaded in your account. There are so many business opportunities for you to choose from. Take telecommunications for example. With this new GSM technology, soon, everybody is going to be able to afford cellular phones. What stops you from getting involved in that? Then there’s the Internet. From what I hear, very soon, even poor people won’t be able to do anything without using the internet. What stops you from importing equipment and starting your own business centre?’
He waited for me to answer.
‘Nothing.’
‘You see? Kings, use your brain. If the cow makes its tail beautiful, it will be useful for swatting flies; if it makes its horn beautiful, it will be useful for drinking wine. Learn how to make your money work for you.’
As usual, Cash Daddy was making a great deal of sense. The best thing was just to put Azuka out of my mind and move on with my life.
The documentary was called Chief Boniface Mbamalu – The Politician, The Man. All his years of living on stage, of playing the parts of ambassadors and business moguls and top government officials, were definitely paying off. Cash Daddy sat composed in a knee-length isi-agu outfit and red cap. With legs spread slightly apart and hands folded on his knees, my uncle stared the viewers straight in the eyes and repeated his original promises. He had mapped out strategies to attract foreign investors for the development of infrastructure. He was determined to eliminate corruption from Abia State, starting from the grass roots. He knew he had enemies who did not want him to be governor because they were afraid of his planned reforms, but he was undeterred. It was all about the people of Abia. He was willing to lay down his life for us.
The producers had also interviewed his mother, people from his local community, and people who had benefitted from his various works of charity. I was shocked to learn that, for the past five years, my uncle had been giving scholarships to every single law student from Isiukwuato Local Government Area who was studying in a Nigerian university. He had boasted to me about almost every work of charity he was engaged in. Why had he never mentioned this?
‘Why did he choose only the law students?’ Eugene asked.
‘We’re the learned profession,’ Charity replied.
‘Please, shut up,’ Eugene said. ‘You make so much noise about this your law. What do you then expect us doctors to do?’
This was one of those rare times when all my siblings were back home on school holidays at the same time. Godfrey had made my house his permanent base for the past year or more; Eugene and Charity had come from Umuahia a few days ago. All universities had thought it wise to take a break and reopen after the elections. No school wanted to bear the burden of quelling any tempests that might arise from polling day turbulence.
My mother’s niece’s daughter came out of the kitchen.
‘Brother Kingsley, your food is ready.’
I left my siblings to their teasing and went over to the dining room. They had already eaten. I realised how hungry I was when I got a whiff of the thick paste of egusi soup that had huge chunks of chicken, okporoko fish, and cow leg protruding from the exotic china bowl.
The front door opened and there was a noise as if a riot had just started in the market.
‘Hey, Kings!’ Godfrey shouted on his way upstairs.
‘Hello,’ I responded.
Godfrey was hardly ever without his party of friends. Each day, he appeared with a new set. The two chaps he had come in with also greeted me and followed him upstairs. They were having a rowdy conversation about a European Champions League football match and making almost as much noise as the supporters who had gathered in the stadium for the match must have made. Recently, my brother had bestowed his life on the Arsenal football club. He never missed watching any of their matches, knew the names and birthdays of all the players, and had their face caps, mufflers, T-shirts… If only my brother could be more responsible with his time and money.
My cellular rang. It was Merit.
‘Did you remember to watch the documentary on Cash Daddy?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Oh, you really should have. It was quite interesting. His villagers even have a special song they composed to extol his good works.’
I sang a bit of it and laughed. She may have laughed, she may not.
‘O dighi onye di ka nna anyi Cash Daddy, onye Chineke nyere anyi gozie anyi,’ I sang some more.
I laughed; she certainly did not.
‘Merit, is everything OK?’
‘Kingsley, why did you lie to me?’ Her tone of voice could have slain Goliath.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I’m so upset with you. I don’t believe you had me fooled. Did you really think I wasn’t going to find out? Kingsley, what do you do for a living?’
Her question struck me like thunder.
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m into contracts and investments,’ I replied calmly, though sirens were blaring in my head. ‘I already told you that before.’
‘Kingsley, stop! How long were you going to keep lying to me?’
‘Merit, honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
She was silent.
‘Merit, I’ve-,’
‘I’m not that type of girl, OK? I’m not into guys like you. Just stay out of my life. Please.’
She hung up.
I was numb. I kept staring at my phone screen and replaying Merit’s words and wondering when this latest nightmare would end. How could a relationship that seemed to be going so well suddenly turn awry?
I sank back in the chair. It was all my fault. I should have known that, sooner or later, she would hear something. Merit might not have been so mad if I had told her myself. After all, 419er or no, was I not still Kingsley? Was I not the man who had come to my family’s rescue after my father had failed? Was I not the man setting aside my own dreams for the sake of my mother and my siblings? Was I not the man still making efforts to reach out to my mother, even when she had been so judgmental and unreasonable?
I flung the phone on the table and hissed. I felt like screaming, grabbing the crockery from the table, and flinging each item against the wall. Instead, I placed my head in my hands and leaned my elbows on the dining table.
What a rotten world. Other poor people found women to marry them, other 419ers were besieged with desperate Misses. Many mothers would give an arm and a leg to have an opara like me. Yet my own mother was still bound by the mental shackles of a husband who had lived from beginning to end in a cloud. Maybe I was the one who suffered from bad luck – surrounded by ingrates and utopians. But no matter what, my siblings would have the best education I could afford. And I would never go back to a life of poverty and lack. Not for anyone dead or alive.
Perhaps Merit would understand. By morning, her anger would have subsided and I would explain everything to her. I was not a criminal. I had gone into 419 so that my mother could live in comfort and my siblings have a good education. Yes, I should have told her but I was not sure how to broach the topic, and I was very sorry for deceiving her. Besides, things were on the verge of changing. I would soon start work at the Ministry of Works and Transport. I would soon have a respectable job. I would soon have business investments.
Godfrey and his friends brought their noise back downstairs.
‘Charity, is Kingsley still in the dining room?’ I heard Godfrey ask from the staircase.
I raised my head quickly and turned back to my meal. My appetite had definitely fled, but I dipped my hands into the soup and pretended to be deep in chow.
His friends sat in the living room with my other siblings while Godfrey strutted over to me, pulled a dining chair noisily, and sat. The fragrance of his freshly sprayed Eternity wiped out every trace of the egusi aroma from the air.
‘Kings, there’s something I’ve been wanting to discuss with you,’ he began without any ceremony.
I looked at his two friends sitting within earshot of us and looked back at him. He did not seem to mind their presence, so why should I?
‘Kingsley, I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I’ve decided that I want to quit school. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I’ve decided that there’s no point. I really don’t want to go on. I’m thinking of going into business.’
‘You want to go into business?’
‘Yes. I’m tired of school. There’s no reason for me to keep wasting my time in school when there’s so much money to be made out there. The sooner I start making my own money, the better.’
Without a doubt, this boy was crazy. From the depths of my vexation, I borrowed from Cash Daddy’s patented lingo.
‘Godfrey, is your head correct? Have you been drinking? Are you on drugs?’
He appeared surprised at my reaction. Then he toughened up his face and seemed to be bracing himself for a stronger argument.
‘Kings, let me ex-’
‘Shut up!’ I barked. Like Azuka, he sounded so idiotically confident. ‘Just forget about it. End of discussion. Forget it. There’s nothing to talk about. It’s not my business what else you do with your life, but you must remain in school and you must graduate. Don’t ever raise the matter again.’
Godfrey watched me while I washed my hands, put my phone into my pocket, grabbed my glass of water, and stood. When I started walking away, he also stood.
‘Kings, you’re the last person I’d expect to be making such a fuss. Look at you. After all your education, you’re not even doing anything with your degree. What was the point? Do you think I don’t want to make my own money for myself? You’re just being hypocritical.’
The glass cup dropped from my hand and colonised a large portion of the marble floor. I stopped in my tracks and mutated into another being. My brother had the guts to spew this breed of rubbish after everything I had been through for them? Was I being hypocritical when I put their welfare and comfort ahead of mine? I turned round and gave him a wholehearted slap on the face.
‘Do you think this is the sort of life I wanted to live?! Do you think I had much choice?!’
I slapped him again, grabbed his shirtfront, and pushed him against the wall.
‘Don’t you realise that I made the sacrifice for you people?!’
I tightened my grip on his shirt, pulled him towards me, and screamed into his face.
‘I am the opara! I did it for you people! Do you understand me?!’
Right from childhood, Godfrey had had the formation of a gangster. He did not squeal, he did not try to escape, he did not beg for me to stop. And because of the age difference that granted me automatic authority to discipline him, he dared not fight back. He just stood there looking at me through squinted eyes and using his arms to shield himself from my blows.
By this time, Eugene, Charity, Godfrey’s two friends, my cook, my washer man, my gardener, my mother’s niece’s daughter had gathered. They all pleaded and begged and blocked. They were wasting their time.
‘Kings, pleeeeease! Please leave him! Please leave him!’ Charity wept and screamed.
I dragged my brother by his shirt collar and yanked him towards the staircase. I turned round to the sympathetic crowd.
‘Nobody should follow me upstairs!’ I warned.
My cook, whose communication with me never exceeded ‘Yes, sir!’ ‘No, sir!’, shouted, ‘Oga, abeg no kill am, abeg no kill am!’ and ventured up the first stair. I pulled off the right foot of my natural viper snakeskin slippers and flung it at his head. The slipper missed, but he learnt his lesson.
I hauled Godfrey into his bedroom and deposited him in a heap on the floor. I shut the bedroom door and looked round. The first thing that caught my eyes was the sound system that stood by his dresser. I punched it. It fell with a huge crash.
In one sweep of my hand, everything on his dressing table tumbled to the floor. The air filled with the aroma of a mixture of designer fragrances. I yanked open the wardrobe and grabbed an empty bag. I dragged his clothes from the hangers and stuffed as many of them as I could fit into the bag. There was no time for me to pause and tear them into shreds like I really wanted to do. I heaved the bag across my shoulder and caught Godfrey by his shirt collar again. On my way out, I reached out my free hand and knocked the compact disc rack. The stack of disks rattled to the floor in a pile. I brought down my left foot on them. They crackled with each fresh stomp.
Outside, the sympathetic crowd had regrouped by the bedroom door. With more pressing tasks to tackle, I ignored their disobedience and descended the stairs with my two pieces of load. I went straight to my Lexus and tossed Godfrey and the travelling bag inside.
‘Open the gate!’ I shouted.
The terrified gateman rushed to obey.
My foot did not leave the accelerator until we arrived in Umuahia. Godfrey sat in stunned silence as I sped straight to the flat on Ojike Street and deposited him and his luggage outside the door.
‘I never ever want to see you in my house again,’ I warned.
My mother was on her way out of the house when I jumped back into my car and vroomed off.
Of all the emotions that kept me wide awake that night, the one that stayed with me until the following morning was anger. I was angry with my mother, angry with my father, angry with myself for allowing my family to exercise so much control over my existence. Cash Daddy was right. Relatives were the cause of hip disease. And schizophrenia and dementia and hypertension and spontaneous combustion. Someday, even Charity might look me in the face and call me a hypocrite, and tell me that I had no right to tell her whom not to marry.
I was tired of trying to please everyone, of making sacrifices that no one seemed to appreciate. Many mothers would give an arm and a leg to have an opara like me. Yet my own mother was still bound by the mental shackles of a husband who had lived from beginning to end in a cloud. Perhaps, I should just be like Cash Daddy and do and say as I pleased. With time, people would learn to accept me for who I was. And so what if Merit did not want me? There were many Thelmas and Sandras out there who would gladly jump at the opportunity to wear my ring on their finger. After all, if Cash Daddy had paid attention to people like my father and my mother, he might never have made it this far.
Someone knocked on my door. I ignored it. The person knocked again. I still ignored it.
‘Kings,’ Charity said in a grasshopper voice, ‘Mummy and Aunty Dimma are here.’
Last night, my sister had almost slid into the wall when I passed her on the staircase, as if she were afraid that I would sting if her body made contact with mine.
‘I’m coming,’ I replied.
I rolled out of bed and pulled a T-shirt over my boxer shorts.
Aunty and Mummy were seated in the living room when I entered. My mother had actually persuaded Aunty Dimma to forgo her Sunday morning service to accompany her here today? The gravity of their mission was evident on their faces.
Charity was nowhere in sight. I greeted them and sat. For a while, we sat looking at each other. Finally, Aunty Dimma glanced at my mother and whispered.
‘Ozoemena.’
My mother then took in a deep breath, exhaled noisily, and opened up her case.
‘Kings, what happened between you and Godfrey yesterday?’
I kept quiet.
‘Why did you almost kill your brother?’ she added.
I continued keeping quiet.
‘Kings, am I not talking to you?’
‘Mummy, why didn’t you ask him what he did? Why did you have to come all the way to Aba to ask me that question?’
The women exchanged glances. Aunty Dimma’s glance seemed to be saying, I told you so.
‘Kings, what is coming over you?’ my mother asked. ‘You don’t even seem to realise that what you’ve done is very evil. Whatever your brother did, is that the way for you to behave? Couldn’t you find another way to resolve the issue without… without trying to kill him?’
‘There’s nothing to resolve,’ I replied coolly. ‘I can sponsor Godfrey and give him whatever he needs. But if you want your son to remain alive, he’d better stay in Umuahia with you. Maybe that will help tighten some of the screws that have gone loose in his head.’
‘Jesus is Lord!’ Aunty Dimma exclaimed.
Ha.
‘Jesus is Lord. Education is gold. God will provide. You people should continue living in your dream world.’
Aunty Dimma glanced at my mother again. My mother stood up and leaned forward with one hand on her waist and the other pointing at me.
‘Look at how you’re talking. See who’s talking about loose screws in the head. What about you?’
I still had some left over of yesterday’s oomph. I jumped up from my chair, slammed my fists in the air and stared her in the face.
‘I’m tired of all this rubbish! I’m tired! Whether you people appreciate it or not, I’ve been making all these sacrifices for the family. It’s because of you. And all I get is insults and derogatory remarks.’
Charity had reappeared. She was watching from the bottom of the stairs.
‘It’s not for us you’re doing it,’ my mother spat through clenched teeth. ‘I told you long time ago that I don’t want any of your dirty money. If your father were alive, none of this would have happened. Your father is there turning in his grave and wondering how his son, his own flesh and blood, can be living this sort of despicable life. This is not the way we brought you up. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a disgrace to your father’s memory.’
‘Let him keep turning in his grave,’ I said. ‘That’s why he died a poor man. If he had done what other people were doing instead of sitting there and idealising, he would still be alive today.’
Aunty Dimma covered her mouth with her hand and allowed her eyes to do the exclaiming instead. My mother became a column of ice and focused her frozen eyeballs on my face. Gradually, she thawed. Then, rushed over and landed two slaps on my right cheek.
‘Kingsley,’ she said, with tears rising in her eyes, ‘your father and I did not raise you to be a conman. You hear me? Enough is enough. You have to stop this 419. If not, I will never mention your name again as my son. As far as I’m concerned, you no longer exist.’
She sniffed. The tears had now overflowed the banks and were creeping far out to shore.
‘Since this your fast money has given you the guts to talk about your father in this manner, then you might as well just forget about me. Until you stop this 419, I will never, ever set foot in your house again. And I don’t want you to come and visit me. If you ever see me here in your house again, that is the day I will drop dead. You had better not think for one second that I’m joking. I mean every single word I’m saying.’
She grabbed her handbag and stormed out. Even the sound of Charity’s sobbing was drowned out by her footsteps.
‘Kingsley,’ Aunty Dimma said. ‘Don’t allow the devil to use you to wreak havoc in this family! Don’t allow-’
‘You people should learn to be realistic,’ I cut in gruffly, recalling Cash Daddy’s long-time-ago imitation of how rich people behaved and spoke. ‘This has nothing to do with the devil.’
‘That’s what you think! Even the devil was not always the devil. God made Lucifer then Lucifer turned himself into the devil. You might not know it, but money is turning you into a devil. You’d better stop yourself before-’
‘I don’t want to hear any more of this rubbish. Aunty Dimma, I’ve tolerated your tongue enough. All this talk… Does it put food on the table? Does it pay school fees? Me, I don’t believe in film tricks, I believe in real, live action.’
Whatever else she wanted to say got stuck inside her throat. She looked on in disbelief while I stormed past her and headed for the stairs.
For the first time in the history of womankind, Aunty Dimma’s tongue appeared tied.
I sat on my bed and swept the room with my eyes. My Rolexes and Movados on the dresser, my five bunches of car keys on the bedside stool, my Persian rug, my six pillows, my rows of shoes by the split-unit air conditioner – a mere fraction of what I had in my closet. None of this was worth losing my mother for. And, truth be told, I would have loved to have Merit in my life.
Nevertheless, I could not face poverty again. Never again. My best bet was Cash Daddy’s suggestion. Once I took up his job offer at the Ministry of Works and Transport, my mother – and Merit – would definitely be appeased. So what if it was just a façade?
I noticed that my cellular screen was flashing. I grabbed it from the edge of my pillow and saw the five missed calls. All were from Cash Daddy’s number. I rang back immediately.
‘Kings, they got him, they got him,’ Protocol Officer said over and over again.
‘Got whom?’
‘Kings, Cash Daddy is dead.’
Then he started sobbing, making the sort of noises you should hope never to hear from a grown man.
At first, nobody was sure how it happened. Early on Sunday morning, the Indian girls had suddenly started screaming and scampered out of the room. Nobody had understood what they were saying. The security personnel had rushed in. Cash Daddy was lying stark naked on his belly with white foam gathering at the corners of his mouth and blood dripping from his rectum.
Protocol Officer was summoned. Cash Daddy was rushed to a private hospital. Shortly after, the next democratically elected executive governor of Abia State was pronounced dead. Death by poisonous substance.
For starters, the Indian girls were arrested and carted off to the police station. But after hours of questioning, the officers of the Criminal Investigative Division were unable to get any sensible information out of them. One of the smarter policemen then came up with an idea. Mr Patel, the CEO of Aba Calcutta Plastics Industry, was invited to interpret.
The girls said that everything had gone very well till Saturday evening. But after his nightly snack of fried meat and wine, curiously, Cash Daddy had declined all their offers of amusement, stumbled into bed, and fallen asleep. In the morning, they prepared themselves for his body rub – one of his favourite daybreak pleasures. They tickled him. Cash Daddy did not stir. They shook him. He still did no stir. Then, one of them climbed onto his back. She noticed the foam at the corner of his lips and screamed. The other two also saw it and joined in.
The police thanked Mr Patel for his services but still held onto the girls.
Next, all the staff of the hotel restaurant – both waiters and chefs – were rounded up and also taken to the police station. Each of them proclaimed undying love for their dead master; they all swore that their hands were clean. The police tried different methods to get a confession, all without success.
Eventually, Protocol Officer suggested investigating all the staff’s bank accounts. An unexplainable two hundred thousand naira was sitting snugly in the Diamond Bank account of one chef. The Indian prostitutes were released, the other staff were released, the chef kept swearing that he had received the money from a 419 deal. But when a quarter of his back had turned raw and red, the man finally confessed that someone had paid him to poison Cash Daddy’s 404 meat. He insisted it was two men whom he had met only once. He could not give any further information about them, not even when the rest of his back was raw and red.
If Cash Daddy had lived to see the drama in the days following his death, he would have been very proud of himself.
The Association of Pepper and Tomato Sellers, Aba Branch, took to the streets in angry protest. Not wanting to be left out, the street touts joined in. Their placard carrying, ‘Death to the murderers!’ chanting, and wanton looting lasted for three whole days, grinding all commercial activity in Aba to a halt. The mayhem made it into the nine o’clock news headlines. The entire nation of Nigeria was forced to take note.
Newspaper and soft-sell headlines screamed in anger. Politicians of timbre and calibre – Uwajimogwu included – granted press briefings to publicly condemn the senseless killing of yet another one of Nigeria ’s great politicians. The president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was not left out of the tirade.
‘Enough is enough!’ he declared. ‘It is time for God to punish whoever these assassins are! They shall never cease to entertain sorrow in their homes, they shall never know peace, their grief shall be passed on from generation to generation of their families.’
The inspector general of police went on national television and made a golden pledge to the nation.
‘Whoever is behind this dastardly act will soon be unmasked!’ he promised.
As proof that he meant it – this time – he had invited the British Metropolitan Police into the investigation.
‘Not because our police officers are not capable of handling it,’ he explained, ‘but right now, we lack the required forensic facilities for the successful investigation of these assassination cases.’
Journalists and opinion-editorials immediately went berserk.
‘Why not invite the whole British government to come run the rest of Nigeria?’ some asked. ‘Then maybe we would have electricity, running water, good hospitals, and our highways would cease to be death traps.’
‘The rampant assassinations are the fault of the electorate,’ some others said. ‘They are the ones who reward the assassins by victory in the polls.’
Yet others cautioned the public about automatically assuming that all assassinations were political; some could actually have been in-house engineered.
Protocol Officer did not buy that talk. When he turned up suddenly at my house a few days after the murder, he told me exactly what was on his mind.
‘I’m sure it’s Uwajimogwu,’ he insisted. ‘Everybody else loved Cash Daddy. There’s no one else it can be.’
That opinion was shared by the majority of people in Abia State. The rioters had even razed Uwajimogu’s campaign office headquarters in Aba. With Cash Daddy’s relocation to the other world, he was the new flag bearer of the NAP gubernatorial ticket, certain to become the next democratically elected governor of Abia State.
Mrs Boniface Mbamalu had come all the way from Lagos to take her position as widow in Cash Daddy’s living room. Each morning, she appeared wearing a different black designer dress and a different pair of designer shades. With his fresh complexion, his gentlemanly clothes and English manners, her opara sat by her side. So far, eleven condolence registers had been filled. Still, the dignitaries continued pouring in.
‘I can’t believe Cash Daddy has gone like that,’ Protocol Officer continued. ‘Just like that. Every morning I wake up and expect him to ring my phone. I spend the whole day waiting for him to ring.’
I also was still finding it hard to believe. Cash Daddy was one of those people who seemed as if they were born never to die. Even after Protocol Officer’s phone call, I had to see for myself. I jumped into my car and accelerated all the way to the mortuary and saw him lying with his name – complete with nickname – tagged to his big toe. His face was contorted and pallid. I clutched my head, stumbled out of the cold room, and collapsed in the hall.
To think that I had heard the last Igbo proverb and that I would never again have to shield my ears from his thunderous ‘Speak to me!’ How could Cash Daddy be dead? The man who had taken me under his wing. The man who had given me a new life. The man who had given me an opportunity to prove myself when everybody else kept turning me down. I had not just lost an uncle and a boss, I had lost a father.
And Cash Daddy would have been good for Abia State. After all was said and done, my uncle loved his people. He might have pocketed a billion or two in the process, but in the long run, our lot would have been better. We would have had better roads. We would have had running water. We would have had a public officer who could not bear to watch his brothers and sisters in distress. Abia had just lost the best governor we could ever have had. I wailed even louder.
Eventually, an elderly man who could have been a morgue attendant or a fellow-mourner or a ghost, tapped my shoulders firmly.
‘Be a man,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s enough. Be a man and dry your tears.’
He waited beside me until I wiped my eyes and got up. I realised that I was barefooted, in boxer shorts and T-shirt.
I did not feel like going home. I drove to the office and was startled. There were two giant black padlocks on the main gates and on the front door.
Could it be the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission who had barricaded our office? Could it be the FBI? Had our friends in the police abandoned us so quickly after Cash Daddy’s death? With panic, I rang Protocol Officer.
‘I’m the one that locked it,’ he said, in a teary but firm tone. ‘I don’t want anybody to tamper with any of Cash Daddy’s things. Nobody should go inside. ’
Amazing that he could function so effectively even at a time like this. He must have dashed out to lock the office immediately after learning of his master’s death. But then, no one could blame me for having been paranoid. First Azuka, then Cash Daddy. Who knew where the lightning was planning to strike next?
Perhaps, we were being punished for all the mugus. I pushed away the thought. The only offences I had committed were against the people I loved. I replayed my misbehaviour towards Godfrey and my mother. I was consumed with shame. Truly, I was becoming a devil.
Nay, I was a devil.
Back at home, I rang Merit.
‘Merit is busy,’ her brother said calmly.
She was still busy the fifth time I rang.
I got dressed, drove to her house and waited outside, hoping to see someone whom I could send inside to call her. To my relief, after about two hours, the gates opened and her skinny brother appeared. He was dressed casually in singlet, jeans and bathroom slippers, as if he was just taking a stroll.
‘Hello,’ I called out to him.
He froze when he saw me, then scurried back inside like a mouse caught in full view on the kitchen floor when the lights were turned on suddenly in the middle of the night. I waited for another hour without anybody going in or coming out. Finally, I left.
I changed my mind about driving to Umuahia to see my mother. What would I even say to her? I locked myself in my bedroom and stared at the ceiling till dark. With the assistance of two tiny tablets, I had been managing about three hours of sleep per night ever since Cash Daddy’s death.
But my deep sorrow could certainly be nothing compared to whatever Protocol Officer was feeling. I had always thought of him as the real McCoy Graveyard, but today, he talked and talked and talked. In between, he sobbed. At some point, I reached out and placed my hand on his shoulder. My own eyes had no more tears left to shed.
He talked about how some wicked people were spreading the rumour that Cash Daddy had expired in the throes of orgasm. He talked about how the people that really mattered were being left out of the planning for Cash Daddy’s funeral. The National Advancement Party, in collaboration with the Abia State government, had announced plans to honour ‘our great man of peace, who has left a great example of politics without bitterness’ with a befitting state burial. He talked about how poorly the crime scene had been managed. Cash Daddy’s hotel room had not been cordoned off for several hours after his body was discovered, and the British police had gathered more than 5,000 fingerprints. He talked about how Cash Daddy had been a peace-loving man; if not, he would have got his opponents before they got him.
Finally he stopped. I removed my hand from his shoulder. We were quiet, then I chortled. Protocol Officer looked at me askance.
‘Knowing Cash Daddy,’ I smiled, ‘I won’t be surprised if he rises up from the coffin while all of us are gathered round during the funeral.’
He thought about it briefly. To my relief, he giggled.
‘Cash Daddy, Cash Daddy,’ he said. ‘There are no two like him in this world.’
We went back to quiet again. Suddenly, he dipped his hand inside the inner pocket of his jacket, brought out a sheaf of papers and placed them on my lap.
‘What is this?’ I asked.
At the same time, I looked at them and gasped. Sheet after sheet of foreign bank account details. Cash Daddy’s holiest of holies.
‘What is this?’ I asked again. This time, my question meant something different.
‘Kings, Cash Daddy thought very highly of you. You’re the only one who can take over the work.’
He also brought out two large, shiny keys from his socks and stretched them towards me.
‘The keys to the Unity Road office,’ he said. ‘You can reopen it whenever you want.’
I stared at the keys and at the documents.
‘Why did you bring them to me?’
‘Kings, if Cash Daddy knew that anything was going to happen to him, he would have handed them over to you.’ He paused. ‘I’m sure.’
I continued staring at the keys. A wave of emotions flooded my heart. Unlike my natural father, who had left me nothing but grand ideals and textbooks, Cash Daddy had left me a flourishing business. I was touched. And proud.
I reached out for the keys in Protocol Officer’s outstretched hand.
I remembered my mother. I remembered Merit.
My mind changed gear.
Perhaps this was my opportunity to gather my takings and leave the CIA. Going cold turkey would certainly not be easy, but with the millions I had stashed away in the bank, I could gradually start my life afresh. My father had steered me to engineeing, my uncle had persuaded me to 419. For a change, I would decide what I wanted to do with my own life. I retrieved my hand without touching the keys.
‘No,’ I said to Protocol Officer. I gathered up the sheets and transferred them to his lap. ‘No, I don’t want them.’
‘Kings?’ Protocol Officer gaped.
I continued shaking my head. He continued staring with mouth agape. For the very first time in my life, I felt in control. I was the master of my destiny.