Foul Mood

She was rarely in a foul mood. One would easily see a unicorn than see Shade in the mood she had been all day. Actually, “foul” was crudely understating her state of mind. And as it often was the case when this “unicorn” was sighted it affected everything and everyone. Without exception. It was unbound by any links of acquaintance or courtesy. It was bad today and getting worse.

Why? Why would…

For the 5th time, her ringing phone interrupted her sour brooding. She frowned that frown that burrowed her forehead, making ridges out of the smooth surface. The call was from her on-again, off-again boyfriend of 2 years, Jide.

“Can’t he just get the message that I’m not in the mood for his evening chitchats?” she hissed to herself, a hiss that could’ve made the most poisonous snake green with envy.

She cut the call with such vexatious aggression, the girl seated next to her in the bus had to turn towards her to look at her face quizzically.

It was a wrong move.

“What?” Shade fired at her, giving her eyeballs that could dissolve ice while shaking her head also to drive home the message that she wasn’t expecting an answer but daring the girl to attempt answering. Then, speaking more to herself than to anyone else but loud enough so the girl could make out the exact words she was saying, she said, “All these busy-body people that will not mind their business. One day, your eye will see what it is looking for.”
She punctuated it with another hiss, though with less venom this time. Then, she went back to asking herself, “Why? Why would…?”

The phone rang again.

It was with unrestrained irritation that Shade dove into her purse, snatched the phone and powered it off. Then, she threw it back into her purse with exasperation.

This time, the girl didn’t dare turn towards her. In fact, she alighted at the next stop.

If she did, however, Shade wouldn’t have noticed. She’d turned her attention to the window to her left, brooding and vexed, asking herself, over and over again, the same “Why” question.

It was the conductor that took the next portion of venom she was disbursing. He’d tapped her shoulder after repeated calls of her bus-stop hadn’t got her attention. “No bi Kingsway junction you say you dey drop?” He’d asked after getting her back from wherever it was her mind went.

The look she chose for him had barb wires and thorns.

“I tell you say I forget where I dey go?” Her voice was maleficent, her eyebrows arched high up. “As you sabi the bus stop pass me, you for just stop der, tell me say you don reach, make I drop. Which one bi di one wey you dey take style dey touch pesin, eh? Sontin dey do you?”

The conductor looked around for help. “Una see me see trouble oo!” he was exclaiming, “If to say I cari you pass now, you for fit shout?”

“Chi chi chi chi chi chi chi,” she fired back, derisively imitating the conductor’s tone of voice. “You for try am na. Na den you for know say fuel cost. Nonsense and ingredients.”

“Come,” the conductor was getting angry himself, “no just use becos say I dey do conductor work com insult me oo!” Then, wanting to pepper her with some tongue-lashing as she’d just done to him, added, “I get your type for house. You dey hear me?”

Laughing with derision, she countered, “I too sure say she no reach, because if she bi my type, she for don upgrade you by now.”

It drew a laugh from a young lady seated at the far back. The conductor felt the sting of that one and didn’t dare look back. Nor did Shade.

The bus slowed.

“We don reach Kingsway oo, make una two just kukuma com down so that we go dey go front jejely.” It was the driver trying to inject some humour into it. It got some of the remaining passengers to laugh.

“At least, your driver get sense pass you,” Shade said, alighting.

Laughing now, the driver began saying, “Thank you oo, sister. Na wetin I don dey tell…” but got “Abeg, abeg, abeg, just carry your load dey go,” from Shade.

She didn’t wait to get a reply, if any.
She burst into her compound. Her neighbour’s children were playing outside and the youngest ran towards Shade, “Aunty, aunty, welcome.”

If Shade heard or saw the small girl, she paid no heed. She turned left into the space between her house and the neighbour’s and walked around it to the other side from whence she got to the front of her own house. It allowed her to avoid seeing anyone or taking any of all those long greetings where you were asked of everyone of your ancestors all the way to Abraham.

Why did she even have to put up with all of those people, sef? She thought.

As she was about to lock her front door, ‘mallam’, the gateman, ran into her view. He had been running to get to her before she went in. He was almost out of breath. But 5 seconds after she launched her penchant “What” at him and he was yet to reply, still trying to catch his breath, she slammed her door.

“Stupid,” she muttered under her breath.

She got a cold drink from the fridge in the kitchen. It usually cooled her off any day she returned from work needing to cool down. Those days were often in the city of Lagos. Today, it didn’t help one bit. She emptied the rest of the contents into the sink and almost slammed the bottle into its slot in the crate next to the gas cylinder.

She walked into the sitting room and dumped herself into the largest upholstered chair. Her favourite. Next to the remote control on the side-stool beside the chair was the casing for the DVD of the TV Series she had watched in the morning while trying to buy time before going out to catch the staff bus headed to the office. It was what caused her foul mood all day.

Why? Why? Why?

It was a Mexican soap of the Telemundo variety – those TV series where the mouths of the actors and actresses continued moving long after the voice-over had finished talking. In her wildest forecasting, she hadn’t conceived that the writers of the drama in the series will commit the unforgiveable crime of killing off her most favourite actor, Girolamo.

“Why on earth?” She wailed. They could’ve killed 20 others who didn’t even deserve to lace Giro’s shoelaces. There was that snake Aleandro, that balding Norma, that pompous Baldi. Why not send those ones off? Or the unrepentant crime lord, Sanz. Even if they had conspired to kill Giro’s brother, Rossi, or the perpetually self-conscious Motta, or the drop-dead gorgeous, sinfully-attractive, wet-dream-inducing El Hijo – it’d have made no difference to her. Why did they pick on Giro? Why? Why?

Her phone rang, rudely breaking into her monotone. She frowned. Did she not turn it off? She then noticed that the ringtone was different. It was her Glo line. The other phone. She got up angrily, picked up the phone from where she left it in anger that morning, next to the TV set and without seeing who it was, cut the call and dropped the phone in anger. It cracked the glass TV stand a little. It was a Nokia phone.

Why? Why? Why Giro? My darling GIROLAMO?

She went back to the chair and sulked some more. She didn’t remember that the last time she ate was last night. She didn’t know that her boyfriend was involved in an accident and narrowly escaped with his life. He had been calling her from the hospital. She didn’t know that the landlord asked the mallam to inform her of rent increase. She didn’t know that that last call was from her colleague in the office, calling to tell her that she left her drawer open and the key was in the lock and that she didn’t shut down her computer. And since their MD saw it, she’d definitely get a query in the morning. This rare occurrence of a foul mood picked the wrong day.

All she cared about was, WHY? WHY GIROLAMO?

Appointment

If his patience wore any thinner, it will be bulimic. But what options did he have? He glanced at his wristwatch for the umpteenth time. He knew what the time was but the action gave him something to do just to get it off his mind that he’d been sitting on the same spot for at least 3 hours. The time confirmed what he already knew. 12:45pm. He was still waiting in the reception for his 10am appointment with the MD of the auditing firm. Ben shrugged his shoulders and sighed. Really, what options did he have?

“Oh, you’re Leye’s boy?” the MD’s excited voice had asked over the phone when he’d called the day before.

“Yes sir.”

“Good, good. He’s so very proud of you, kid,” Mr Ojo had continued, “Can’t stop telling everyone how good a student you are. And with such impressive grades, who can fault him?”

Ben could imagine Mr Ojo poring over his CV while speaking with him on the phone. As in most situations where Ben had been complimented for his academic excellence, he’d laughed to hide his difficulty in knowing how to respond to such praise.

Mr Ojo had laughed with him and added, “You know what? Come see me on Wednesday at 10 in the morning, ok?”

“Alright, sir. I will do that, sir.”

“Oh wait!” Mr Ojo had interjected, “I’ve been reminded that I have an appointment slated for 9am on Wednesday and I’m certain I will not be back by 10. Let’s make it tomorrow then. Come by 10 tomorrow morning. Let’s talk face to face, ok?”

“No problem, sir,” Ben had answered.

“Good, good! You know your way to the office, I s’pose?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Ben. Immediately, his mind’s eye navigated from his house to the auditing firm in the Ikeja metropolis. He could make it easily.

“Excellent,” Mr Ojo was concluding, “So, come around, my boy. Looking forward to picking your brains. Knowing your dad, I’m too sure you’d be a treasure trove of information. We could use that addition of intelligence here. So, we’d see tomorrow, ok?”

Ben laughed again as he answered, “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

He was about to say goodbye when it occurred to him to ask, “Sir, should I come with any docu…” but the call had already been cut from the other side.

A flurry of activities brought him back to the office and to his now cramp-arrested left thigh muscle. He shifted his left leg to adjust the pressure his extended sitting was having on his leg. The jarring effect of the cramp made him catch his breath. He tapped the leg on the floor several times gently not to draw attention to himself as he felt the blood begin to flow back into the arteries.

He looked around the reception. He wondered what could be turning the hitherto “quiet” office into a beehive. Two female members of staff who had been chatting away just outside the office quickly re-entered and without pausing, made their way into one of the doorways leading from the reception. Their mannerisms suggested that they did not want to be seen outside. A male staffer who also passed by and disappeared into one of the three doors in the reception could be seen adjusting his tie tighter. The tie had been hanging loose around his neck for each of the three times Ben had seen him pass by in his time waiting.

On observation alone, Ben could already tell, by virtue of his 3-hour watch, the category of the staff at the firm. One of the staff members he’d seen whom he could label as business-minded walked through the farthest door by the left of where Ben was seated. He gallantly marched to the water dispenser which was adjacent to the guest chair, at the point where the walls met on the far left. Noticing that there wasn’t any of the disposal cups left, he called the attention of the receptionist.

“You have any cups there, Angie?” Strong-voiced and as business-like as possible.
By contrast, Angie’s voice belied her big frame. Almost whispering, she said, “Clem, oga dey come oh!”

But Clem just shrugged. “So?” He boomed and with a hiss said, “Abeg, gimme cup jare. Na crime to dey drink water for office again? Why dem com put di dispenser for here na? Abeg na doz wey neva do deir own wok go dey fear joor!” He walked towards Angie’s desk as he spoke. Confidence exuded from his every step. Here’s someone who knew himself, Ben thought and immediately took a liking of Clem.

Clem was still trying to remove a disposal cup from the lot Angie gave him when the door of the reception opened and the MD stepped in. You could feel the change of aura in the reception. He appeared mercurial. This was only the third time Ben was seeing him and it appeared he looked a lot bigger each time. He seemed like an athlete from the ancient Grecian Games at Mount Olympus. A full height with the body figure to carry it. He carried himself like the award-winning MD of the award-winning auditing firm that he was. Ben was so engrossed in his admiration of the man that it took him a while to realise that he came with something of an entourage.

Mr Ojo had barely entered the reception when his driver followed with his briefcase. The driver entered through one of the doors and vanished. Close on the heels of the driver was the cleaner Ben had seen emptying the bins a little after he had arrived at the office. Behind the cleaner were four well-suited corporate types with their conceited air of self importance. Ben couldn’t explain why he just didn’t like the smell of them. These four immediately converged around the MD who proceeded to gesture around as he spoke.

“So, let the decorator be made to understand that all of these areas,” he spread his arms around the areas covering the reception that went from the three doors of the reception all the way to the main entrance – including the area in which Ben was seated, “… should be left the way they are, ok? The warm ambiance has proven to be welcoming for guests, ok?”
Ben almost coughed his disagreement but thought better to keep his opinions to himself. Welcoming indeed.

“As for the rest of the building,” Mr Ojo said, moving already towards one of the doors, “please come along, ok?”

Even as it struck him how freely Mr Ojo used the word “Ok” it also occurred to him that the MD didn’t as much as acknowledge his presence. Even a little, “I know you’re here, ok?” would’ve been nice. For goodness sake, he’d been here for…

His phone beeped. It must be the battery warning that it was exhausted, Ben guessed.
He shook his head. That was just a summary of his day, wasn’t it? He retrieved the phone from his pocket, dropped the folder he brought along on the empty seat next to him and stretched out his left arm to exercise the taunt muscles a little. A slight yawn escaped him.

Angie noticed the yawn. She was already feeling sorry for him. She’d watched him do everything imaginable to pass the time. Re-read the document he had with him, play endlessly with his phone until it began to bore him, change his sitting position and even dozed off a few times. Whatever it was keeping him must be mighty important. So, when she saw the MD breeze in without checking in on him, she didn’t know how to console him.

With the yawn, she said in a voice dipped in pity, “Pele.”

Caught unawares, Ben tried unsuccessfully to stifle the yawn so that he could respond. The response came out in an inaudible mumble. He had to laugh to cover the slight embarrassment he felt.

“Thank you,” he finally managed to say. Smiling. He noticed, for the first time, that Angie was an attractive big woman.

“He’d see you soon,” she was saying, “as soon as he’s done with the architects.”

“Thanks so much,” Ben replied, relief written all over his face.

A rapid set of four beeps returned his attention to his phone. How come it was still alive? Ben wondered. It should’ve been dead by now. He turned on the screen to see notifications from his twitter and gmail accounts. As he moved to touch on the twitter notification to see who retweeted him, a new notification arrived with another beep.

<2% battery remaining. Phone running on battery-saver mode.>

No wonder, Ben thought to himself, as he quickly turned off the screen to conserve whatever battery it could conserve before the next charge. He’d check the tweets and mails later.

A phone rang on Angie’s desk.

“Hello, reception?” she said as she answered it.

Angie listened for a while. Then, she nodded, earrings jingling, and said, “Ok, sir.” She dropped the receiver, stood up and left the reception via the door closest to the entrance.

For the first time since he arrived at the firm, he was alone in the reception. He allowed himself an unrestrained yawn, opening all of his mouth and emptying his body of air. He suddenly felt tired. And hungry. He slowly sucked in air and exhaled only to feel another yawn coming. He stood up briefly to stretch his legs and was about sitting down again when a beautiful specimen of womanhood in an all-red ensemble complete with red accessories opened the entrance door slightly and peered inside. She must’ve been checking for Angie. Or some other person.

She stepped in fully, filling the entire reception with such fragrance, Ben felt it could’ve been edible. Hard as he tried not to openly stare, he couldn’t stop himself. She was that ravishing. If the sight held him, her voice didn’t help him.
A mellifluous, “Please where is the receptionist?” took what was left of his breath away.

He had to blink and shake off her charming combo of beauty, sweet-smelling fragrance and soothing voice before his brain reconnected with his tongue.

“She stepped out briefly but…” was all he managed before Angie returned to the reception.

“Hi Sharon,” Angie said, greeting the Lady-In-Red.

A sweet name to ice the cake. Awesome, Ben concluded. How happy she was going to make some guy’s day – whoever it was she was here to see.

“Hello Angie,” Sharon replied in that honey-dripping soprano. “I called him on my way in. He said he was with some architects but that I should come right in.”

And at that exact moment, Ben’s ears stood like the three huge white figures that welcome people into Lagos State. Come right in? By Jove, he’d been waiting for a 10 am meeting since 9:46. The time now was 1:28pm and someone else who just waltzed in smelling like she doused herself with all the extracts from a garden of rose flowers was going to be given priority of attention? Why? Because she was… He stopped himself. It wasn’t going to help his situation adding frustration to the litany of his worries.

He watched Sharon catwalk into the doorway that led into the offices. Obviously, she knew her way around. He no longer admired her. He felt nothing nice towards her anymore. He couldn’t even bring himself to call her all the unprintable names that flashed across his mind as he watched the door close behind her. A part of him knew not to blame her but he refused to listen to that voice. He turned and saw Angie looking at him. He saw she pitied him. But he didn’t want to be pitied. He looked away.

A quarter of an hour after the suited-architects had left and none of his texts to the Mr Ojo to remind him that he was waiting in the reception were replied, he politely asked Angie to send word to the MD to at least know whether he should continue waiting.

At exactly 3:12 pm, he was told that Mr Ojo had vacated the building through an exit that leads to his office from the other end of the building.

Ben was so stunned he could barely comprehend. There’s an exit somewhere? And the MD had left through it? What about… He just concluded that he wasn’t worth the courtesy of Mr Ojo’s time. He wasn’t even worth an explanation. Shaking his head, he picked up his folder. He expressed his thanks to Angie, looked around to make sure he wasn't forgetting anything and made his way to the exit. A thought came that he should drop his CV at the reception to be handed over to the MD but he discarded it.

He'd seek his fortunes elsewhere. As he left, he reminisced. All those nights he stayed up burning the midnight oil for good grades, the struggles he endured to ensure he understood all those complex concepts they were taught in class, the rewards of his hardworking with good grades and the exhilaration of graduating with honours. All those were done to avoid situations like what denigration he just suffered today.

But what options did he have? He'd lost count of his applications sent and the number of "We'd get back to you's" received. The terrible turn of his father's illness hadn't helped matters as he no longer was as influential as he used to be. As much as he knew his late mother was praying for them, he didn't know what good that was doing in his present state.

He felt hot tears sting his eyes as he walked down the street of the auditing firm. The two cobs of roasted corn he'd bought to sate his hunger about two blocks away the office were beginning to burn left palm. The small black polythene bag used to hold them had torn so it wasn't much of a help. So, he emptied the folder he carried and wrapped the corn with the 2 sheets of A4 paper.

"At least be useful for once," he admonished the CV and waved down a "keke". As he jogged towards the keke, which had stopped some distance away, he allowed himself to smile. His CV wasn't all so useless after all.

Service not Handouts

News about town is that the Bruce Lee namesake CEO of the SilverBird Group and now Senator of the Federal Republic has donated his wardrobe decadence of an allowance to the suffering but smiling unpaid Osun State workers.

*insert preprogrammed applause here*

As self-servingly laudable as it may appear on the surface, Nigerians aren't asking that their representatives compete with NGOs and Religious charities for plaques or places of honour at charity functions with monies that could've been put to better use in this austerity-strewn, empty-treasury situation we are hearing the previous administration dumped us in.

No, but no thanks.

Cut these obscene payments to size. Plough back the excesses into the economy to till it for the provision of basic amenities (regular power supply to begin with), education and employment. Block other monetary haemorrhaging the economy is suffering and let Nigerians get a sense of belonging again. Let us feel that at least the government cares for us. Even if it's just a feeling, let's start with that. For once.

And that isn't by playing to the gallery with wisecracks and public displays of philanthropy.

Service not handouts.

Thanks again, Bruce Lee. The people of the State of Osun appreciate you. No doubt. But...

Vacuous Information

We have next to nothing when it comes to proper information on happenings in the country especially as it pertains to research-based findings. The chaff that's left of the havoc the internet wrecked on print media here is fighting a survival war. This has left them largely susceptible to commercialisation of news reports founded on sensationalism. And that is bad for us readers as it is for the practice of journalism.

Time was when you read about a story not in isolation but along with other related information, interviews, counter-views, balanced reportage and even a cut out that provides you with a background of related events and stories that afford you a better comprehension of the story being reported in itself. But it appears the influence of uncorroborated social media gutter journalism has taken hold.

What you observe today in the print (and replicated on the journos' websites) are news reports with titles meant to seduce readers into thinking along the line of what isn't reflected in the news articles. One is left wondering if perchance one picked the wrong news article having read through it without seeing the connection to its title.

If that isn't enough, there is the vexatious issue of an "apparent" lack of credible sources of information. You read a huge headline that's splashed across the front-page/screen with zero credible source. Then you come across them artfully dodging that credibility problem with the excuse that 'XYZ' couldn't be reached for comments, or calls to their phones weren't answered.

AND YOU PUBLISHED?

The offenders even go as far as quoting the tweets and or Facebook account posts of nobodies as their source of publishable information. This against the logic of looking out for confirmed account users on Facebook and Twitter who have had their statuses confirmed by the social networking platform and who are clearly identified by the stamp of true identification (a check mark [√] beside their profile names passes for this identification in most cases).

To add salt to the festering sore, they quote some authentic sources out of context for their own nefarious ends. On this score, the eminent professor, Wole Soyinka, had had cause to berate some pushers of the pen. I hear he no longer grants interviews to some persons of the media and their media institutions. It's that bad!

What comes out of this is a cesspool of miasmic information bankruptcy. And it is to that gory dish that readers are called to sate their hunger for information.

Bon appetite.

Passivism in Government

When Lagos was rendered cash-strapped by the antics of the bellicose OBJ and was beginning to run short of the financial capacity to meet her responsibilities, her handlers woke up. Passive governance long forgotten, the State today runs on revenue generated internally and on allocations from the leaking centre.

Had push not become shove, perchance the State could've been one of those on the periphery of liquidation.

Democracy is framed for action. As bad as passive followership that complacently allows the government act as it pleases is, there's no worse consequence like passive governance. A government that goes on vacation because it is breastfed by the mothering central government is worse than no-government at all. I know, I know, I'm hyperbolic like that.

The evilest scenario in this failure of leadership is the mortgaging of people's lives. What awful conditions will staff (and their dependents) of institutions and organs of these diseased governments be in, only God can fully know. A backlog of nonpayments stretching to 10 months (in some cases) is the devilry that cannot be comprehended when juxtaposed by the contrasting fortunes of the family and friends of the leadership of these States. THEY GET PAID. While they go to bed with full bellies, their staff cannot remember the last time they constipated.

There's no comparing such malignant monstrosity. If there's an example of a governor who allegedly uses his unaudited security votes to pay for the education of the State's students in tertiary institutions, who says governors in these States about to go belly-up couldn't have engineered some method to at least ease the financial desperation of their staff? Even if it meant paying them partly? (After all, at all at all naim bad pass, kwo?) Or we should all probably wait until the staff and their hungry, forlorn family members start dropping off dead. One after the other?

Now, without OBJ's involvement, these ratchet States have come to the climate that pervaded in Lagos when her handlers shook off their passivity. It's a call to action. A call to use that latent grey matter in all of its 50 shades. It's time to change. To get resourceful enough to utilise resources lying fallow in these here States. And what better time than now?

#AsAnAside
Pretty much the same way I think of what's happening in the oil sector. Let it go awry. When it's gone past bad, then passivity can be jettisoned for the action democracy demands. From the electorate. And from the elected.

Should they, picked to make things better, not so do, then, action must be taken for their CHANGE.

That be the mantra after all.

CHANGE.

Life and Limbs

He ran. His pair of aging slippers slipped off his feet but he ran harder. Panting. The bus was picking up speed. He looked ahead and his heart pounded harder. The traffic had suddenly eased and the road ahead was clear. If he didn’t get the money from the passenger for the two sausages of gala, he knew what that’ll mean for him. But his legs couldn’t be made to go any faster. As the space between him and the bus widened and his weak legs began to slow, he felt himself tiring. He was out of breath. Yet, he knew that there were consequences for not getting that money. It was not going to be a good night for him. Again. He could imagine what accusations would be piled on his head for another incomplete balance of the day’s sales.

He was next to tears when his eagle-eyes caught a hand emerge from the window on the side of the speeding bus and released a naira note.

The opportunity to get paid for his gala galvanised his tired limbs. The naira danced drunkenly as drafts of wind from fast pacing cars acted on the pull of gravity on the note. But he kept a keen and close eye on it while applying streetwise multitasking to avoid being knocked down by drivers in the vehicles moving along, most of whom were obviously oblivious of the young roadside vendor trying to get his pay.

“You wan die?” screamed a visibly angry driver who’d had to react quickly by braking suddenly. His sole passenger in the owner’s corner – a middle-aged corporate-looking bespectacled woman had jerked forward due to the abruptness of the brakes. She barely managed not knocking her head against the headrest of the passenger seat in front of her.

Nimbly re-adjusting her specs on the fine bridge of her nose, she could only shake her well-coiffured head as her driver drove past the small vendor still spilling expletives at the boy.

“Shush!” she reprimanded the driver wondering when he’d ever get it into his skull to control his tongue especially when driving her. As she turned around to catch another glimpse of the boy they almost hit, she couldn’t help noticing how young he appeared and noticing that absentminded look on his face.

Whatever the driver was spewing and whatever the executive lady was thinking of meant zilch to the boy. His eyes remained transfixed on the still swaying naira note. It had been blown to the other side of the road and it was in trying to follow it and claim possession of it before it falls into any other hand that he was almost upended by that rude driver.

Still keeping his eyes on the now descending naira, he squeezed himself in-between a keke Marwa and a Kia Sorento. Traffic had started building again. He was about to gain the pedestrian side of the road when he had to suddenly beat two steps backwards. A fraction of a second late and he would have been hit by an okadaman whose attention was focussed on swerving between the now stationary vehicles so that he could be far in front before the traffic eases again.

“E bi like say you don dey mad,” the okada rider who had braked suddenly said to the unattentive boy. “Dem sen you?” He queried trying to force the boy to look at him.

It was a waste of time. Seeing as the boy’s eyes were elsewhere and that the boy was looking for a way to go past okada, keke and Kia, the rider upturned his lips disapprovingly.

Navigating between the Sorento and a commercial bus, the rider rode away saying while shrugging, “Na pesin wey go kee you you dey fine! E no go bi me!”

If the boy heard, it didn’t reflect on him. But it was with relief that he realised, as soon as he could free himself from the intruding offensive okadaman, that he was only a few paces away from the naira note now and there was no another impediments between him and the now slowly descending note to where he calculated he’d need to be to claim it when it makes landfall.

Only a few steps now, he urged himself as he willed his legs to carry him further. He didn’t see the woman. She didn’t see him either. She was going to pour it in the normal place. His eyes were fixed on the floating note. With wide-eyes she looked on as she poured it and saw a young boy run headlong into the arching spray. Completely drenched. It was water used to wash pepper before grinding. It entered his eyes. It was sniffed into his nose because of his running exertions. He even managed to get some of it into his right ear, the side from which she threw the water. Unseeing, he stumbled, fell and rolled in the mud around the area where a buka regularly emptied all sorts of dirty water.

It was later when he’d been given water to refresh himself and pampered with care by sympathetic onlookers and the buka staff that one of the agberos in the area tapped him on the left shoulder. He turned around blinking. The stinging of the pepper hadn’t really pitied his eyes.

Without saying a word, the agbero handed him a N100 note (the new centenary variant) and the carton of his remaining gala. The boy recognised him as one of those who other agberos took their complaints to and who settled differences between some agberos and bus conductors or bus drivers. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, this particular agbero was feared by many a bus conductor and driver. He’d never thought of him as a kind person though he always made sure he greeted him courteously anytime he came around where he was.

“Thank you, sah,” the boy blurted, brimming with sincere gratitude.

In his pursuit of the elusive note, he’d all but forgotten where he dropped the gala carton containing the remainder of the rolls for the day. He’d have been in the hottest soup ever back home if the carton had grown wings. It wouldn’t have been a novel thing. He knew of some of his friends who had suffered that exact misfortune. That thought amplified his gratitude.

“God bless you, sah,” he added, kneeling down to show the extent of his appreciation.

“Ah,” the agbero said in a caustic grovel. “Dide, dide ma wori, so gbo,” he said in Yoruba (“Get up, get up, don’t worry").

The boy stood up in compliance still expressing thanks. But the agbero had turned and walked away. Since it was getting late, the boy decided to begin his walk home. He’d try as he did daily to sell whatever else was left as he made the trip home. He managed two more sales and did his calculations all the way to their house on the other side of town. Before he slept that night he prayed for the bus passenger, adding some extra special prayers for the agbero.

As he closed his eyes to sleep, he’d never know that the passenger didn’t really pay nor will he know that the agbero had watched the whole episode play out from start to finish and paid him for the sausage rolls from his own pocket. Nor will he realise that at 12 years of age, he shouldn’t be endangering his life on the streets of Lagos peddling gala. It was a day when the world commemorated the World Day Against Child Labour but that meant nothing to small Ade. Nor to the many boys (and to girls too who are most vulnerable to several ills that await them) across the country in his shoes.

In the morning, he’d be out there again, life and limbs on the line for the profits he brings home from gala runs.

© Moore Numental. 2015.

Photo Credit: sadiqbalogun.blogspot.com

NASS Elections and the Road To The Courts

It is no surprise that, for and against, there's been a mole hill or a mountain (depending on your perspective) of opinions, both informed and otherwise, about the election of principal officers at our bicameral legislative chambers. Some have made allegations, from the amusingly sublime to the utterly ridiculous, against parties on both sides of the divide in the most bilious terms possible. There's even been an attribution to karma in some cases and in other cases, to "cutting several over-bloated influential politicians to mouthful chunks." As many as there are armpits, there have been views.

What I've seen as the most overarching opinion is that the election was inherently flawed. Several reasons have been adduced to back this stance and some have alluded to the President's cautious remarks to back their stand that it wasn't fair enough and thus cannot and should not be.

No begrudging this stance. Good enough those so aggrieved have shown their desire to seek redress. And the proper mode of seeking redress in a disposition of democratic practice as ours is via the courts.

This is where the raison d'etre of this post lies. I always am excited by court cases (and it's not because of any truth-value, a virtue as alien to the courts as can be, nor is it because of any personal pecuniary rewards). No. Rather, it is because these cases not only enrich our legal system but the entire litigation process serves to inform the generality of the non-legal-educated public of the provisions of the law regarding said case(s) and how portions of the constitution that apply therewith are interpreted, explained and brought to bear on the case(s). This process brings the legalese to an easily comprehensible level for the mostly average Joe and allows us an opportunity of appreciating the law as it currently stands or immediately seeing loopholes that ought to be plugged by appropriate constitutional amendments.

By and large, the consequence will be a refining of our democratic practice in a way that ensures that as we mature as a democracy, some gaffes will either not recur or, should there be any recurrence, have appropriate legislation at hand to deal squarely with them.

So, anyone who feels that election at the NASS is a democratic aberration should quickly seek legal redress. Please. Hurry up, in fact.

I can't wait to read the proceedings from that one (or those ones). The wealth of knowledge I'd obtain? PRICELESS. I can't speak for anyone else, though.

Sorry.