Scourge of the Vandals

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Professor Nweze was his usual self. This day, he had chosen the Principle of Federal Character as his punch bag. Bouncing round the stage in his 1960 style coat, he proceeded to describe the idea as the most unprogressive and retrogressive policy under the sun, wondering which sane society would hold such disdain for merit as to gazette it officially. The policy was in his view what was responsible for such phony nomenclature as ‘state quota’, ‘catchment area’, ‘ Educationally disadvantaged states’, which was the reason why we were where we where as a nation.

He was saying so many other things but that was the much I got. More than half of his class, those of us who sat from the center of the class to the rear, who had to strain to pick out what he was saying, were engrossed in our own private discussions.  There was a hot new topic which held every body’s attention. The shot out last night had left about seven people dead. There bodies had been deposited at the Medical Center makeshift morgue and echoes of the war could be heard even by the deaf.

We had known of an impending war. The signs had been all over the place. Four tiny wooden coffins with blood marks had surfaced at strategic locations on campus. I had seen the one at the Freedom Square before it was taken away by men of the security unit. It was feast of Ascension and I had walked all the way up school from the Franco Hostels to attend morning Mass at St Peters.  I was walking down the road that led to the Library after Mass when I noticed the gathering of people most of them also from Mass as their hair Scarf and Hymn books showed around something in the center of Freedom Square. The coffin sent down cold shivers down my spine. We were still speculating on which group could have dropped this and against whom, when the security men arrived and made a big show of taking it away.

Three others had been similarly discovered at the Green House gate, the route into Odenigwe and behind Ziks Flat Halls. An uneasy calm had descended on the campus. The last time coffins surfaced on campus, a blood bath had followed, one which left over twenty students dead. I was then only a freshman and but for the troubles of taking another JAMB, I wouldn’t have returned to school at the end of the forced vacation the Vice Chancellor had announced to stem the killings. They said it was a retaliatory war, that a particular group was avenging the death at the hands of the other group of some of their members two semesters ago.

But it wasn’t just the concerned cultists that had died. Bullets didn’t posses the intelligence of discerning who it was intended to kill. It only struck down who ever it met in its path. So many innocent students had fallen victims, either hit by stray bullets, struck down on mistaken identity, or killed for being friends or roommates to persons who had already been marked for execution. I had known one such person, Garba the northerner who sold beef suya at the Students Union Building. We had bonded easily because I spoke hausa which I picked up as a student of Federal Government College Kaduna. That fact availed me to such privileges as having quite a generous addition-jara- each time I went to his shop to buy suya.

Garba was at work as usual when the vandals struck. One of the students lurking around the Suya spot had been a target. There was sporadic gunfire and in the ensuing mille, the target got away leaving several injured students and a dead Garba. When it became obvious the ill trained and ill equipped campus security unit couldn’t handle the situation, the Vice chancellor, the bearded one closed down the school, till further notice.

We returned after four months clutching court affidavits of non membership of secret cults. A campus anti-cult squad was set up and a renunciation ceremony was organized during which students came out, publicly declared they were cultists but ready to give it up. They were prayed for by the Chaplain of the Christ Church Chapel, presented with copies of the Bible and told to “go and sin no more”. Even to my inexperienced eyes, this couldn’t be real and it wasn’t long before words started spreading that the whole ceremony was stage managed by the University administration. It was all part of efforts to justify the embezzlement of the juicy amount the Federal Government had released to Universities to fight cultism.

While the Vice chancellor ceased every opportunity to boast about his monumental success in eradicating cultism, the boys were regrouping and re-arming. We all knew it wasn’t going to be long now before the vandals struck again. Of course they were all over campus, though not at war but causing unrest at parties and drinking pubs. They didn’t hide their identity, berets, handkerchiefs, shirts and all.  We knew them, the security unit knew them, but no one did any thing about them.

So when these fresh coffins surfaced on campus, I knew we were in for a show down. I was now in my third year and I knew much more about the workings of these boys. I now had a good number as friends, in fact my room mate; Snoop Dog was one of them. He was born Chinedu Aguwa, but had acquired the name Snoop Dog along the line. A rather intelligent young man from a good home, he had once confided in me that the biggest mistake he had ever made in life was joining a cult and had sternly warned me never to contemplate joining one. So why doesn’t he just leave? I had asked.

“Guy, it’s not as easy as it sounds” he had replied puffing out smoke from both his mouth and his nostrils.” You are in, you are in”

The explanation was simple. Any one who attempted dumping a cult became enemy to both his former cult comrades who now see him as a potent threat and members of rival cults who under the protection of his erstwhile cult might have hurt in some way. The wisest option seemed leaving school entirely but even that wasn’t fool proof. People had been traced to their father’s homes and killed there.

Snoop Dog never set out to be a cultist, a party he had attended as a fresher, still eager to catch all the thrills of campus life had turned out to be a compulsory initiation.  Many he told me joined in like manner, while some had done so from the weight of peer pressure or an ambition to live large and free on campus. That desired freedom often turned to bondage, one which Snoop Dog wished he could set himself free from.

The night before the latest shot out, Snoop Dog had not slept in the room. He had rushed in like some one being chased in the evening, reached out into the wardrobe, picked something I suspected was a pack of live ammunition and spirited out even before I could ask what was wrong. Seconds later as if to answer my unasked question he had returned to give me privileged information.

“Guy, Campus hot. I no fit crash here. So make I shift small. Tell Ben and Mike them make no body commot after seven oh. It is safer to be indoors” Ben and mike were our other two room mates.

“wetin dey happen?”I had asked in desperation, memories of two years ago flooding back.

“we go yarn later” he had replied rushing out.

That night, we had heard distant gunshots all through the night. No one had slept for a second. The Vice Chancellor had drafted some police men to protect the hostels, so nothing much had happened there. But the war had been grave at Odim gate and Odenigwe, two areas just off campus which were densely populated with students. Before morning, seven corpses were recovered and the war was just beginning.

I joined two other friends after Professor Nwaeze’s class to the School Medical center morgue to also have a look. As a member of the campus journalist union, I needed to have first hand information. Quite a crowd of students and staff had gathered there. You could feel the mourning in the air, with some students openly wailing. I elbowed my way to the front, fighting the fear that had established somewhere in my heart. It had first flashed as a thought which I immediately put off. But then it came again and again and as I walked towards the front of the crowd to have a view of the corpses, I felt my heart beating faster each beat sending streams of chilling fear down to my legs. “ It wasn’t possible”, I kept telling my self. God, it wasn’t possible.

My eyes caught sight of the black shirt the third corpse in the row was wearing, sending flashes of recognition to my brains. I froze. My heart was now racing, my whole body shaking like it would after bathing on a cold harmattan morning. No it couldn’t be, I reassured my self. The next two steps took great effort. Then I had a view of the face, a bit swollen now and stained with blood which had issued from a bullet hole just above the left eye. I took a deep breath to keep my legs from giving away. I could no more wish. It was now all over. Snoop Dog was free at last.

(In Memory of all Nigerian students who found their early deaths by their misguided participation in campus cult activities. May the current crop of students find lessons from your gaffe.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

My Abroad Husband

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I met my husband two days to our wedding. I had met his face in pictures which were delivered in beautifully coloured parcels by UPS, his voice on the telephone, in calls that were transported through the atlantics, his writing in countless banal yahoo mails, his money in piles of Western Union claim forms but I had not met him.

I knew his mother who in active connivance with my own mother, colleagues at work, midwifed this contraption. I knew his younger sister, Nkem, who did the dirty job of convincing-insisting- that her brother was the best guy on earth and who had since the whole issue started, been fronting like one big caring sister. I knew his other brother, Chuka my classmate in college, a nard of a boy who always brought up the rear in class and who held me in silent disdain. I knew his father, my father in-law to be, a retired Permanent Secretary who called me his Nne and seemed too eager to get a grand son. But I did not know him.

The news was all over the place, that I was getting married to an abroad man. Mother’s pride dwarfed that of a peacock as she doled out the invitations cards and went to great lengths to see to it that all arrangements for the day were near perfect. Every one seemed to be so convinced that I was such a lucky person. He was, like they said, a successful young man from a good home and was known for his exemplary conduct as a Mass Servant at St. Mary’s before he left the shores of Nigeria. He would make a good husband was the general verdict.

“Do you know how lucky you are?” Aunty Ebele, Mothers overbearing elder sister had asked when my parents first muted that I wasn’t in agreement. “Do you know the number of girls out there who can only wish to be in your shoes and you are here saying no?. It is true you’ve not always known him, but you will get to with time. So please eh, Adannaya, be positive about it, this is a golden opportunity”

That had been as much pleas as I had gotten. For Father and Mother, it was a concluded arrangement. Much of my twenty four years on earth then had simply been me walking according to their dictates. It was their call. Every thing had to be the way they wanted it. They gave me the name I bear, decided the schools I attended, decided the friends I kept, choose what course I studied in the university and felt it was perhaps equally their prerogative to decide which husband I married. So my opinion wasn’t at the least important to them. All they did was to tell me, and while I was still grumbling, skipping meals and locking my self up in the room upstairs, crying my eyes out, a date was fixed for the wedding.

That afternoon at the Enugu airport when I first saw him, I made up my mind that this wasn’t going to be. The wedding could be, but not the marriage. I had gone along with his mother and Nkem in the red jeep to receive him like he had requested the last time we spoke. It was an hour journey from the village to the airport and I had felt like Isaac must have felt when Abraham wanted to serve him up to God. He walked into the hall where we had waited for close to two hours a luggage in hand with a smile playing at his lips. He was tall, too tall and massive like an American football player. His hair was cut low, perhaps to hide the fact that he was bald. He wore a dazzling big neck chain which didn’t seem quite right for the ‘good boy’ he was meant to be and an air that said something like “take note, I am a big boy”. I stood in awe as I beheld my new husband, my feet threatening to give way.

That was five years ago. The wedding had gone on as planned. Every one of note was there, even the Executive Governor sent a representative. The occasion was covered by Ovation magazine, the cover paged paid for by his committee of friends who turned up all clad in Italian style suits complete with bowler hats. It had a special shot on the State Television news and every one seemed very excited about the whole thing- the excess food, well chilled drinks, sumptuous cake, lively music, and I had to wear a smile all through just to complete the picture.

But the smile soon faded as we retired for the night. Some one was eager to consummate the marriage the wedding-night style but not me. It wasn’t like I was a virgin, but I simply didn’t fancy parting my legs for a total stranger, wifely duties or not. He didn’t equally help matters, feeling like It was he’s for the asking. If I observed well, his reaction went from surprise then to anger that a girl, a common Nigerian girl;-his wife- was denying him of sex. My plea that we needed to talk, that we (or I at least) needed to know him a bit more, that there would be enough time for sex as time went on, that I needed time to get use to being his wife, sounded on deaf ears. He took me like a beast and as soon as I felt the sticky fluid in between my legs with announced the expiration of his desire, I pushed him off, and headed for the bathroom where I remained and cried till day break.

Two weeks later, he left back to the US. We had together visited the Immigration office in Lagos and the Embassy in Abuja. It was going to take a couple of weeks to get my papers right and I was to join him as soon as possible.Those two weeks which were supposed to be our honey moon had seen me develop a dizzying hatred for him. It wasn’t just about his insisting to have sex every night and in various gymnastic positions too, but about his rather irritating American-ness which he exuded from his accent, to his reaction to situations and his insistence of making it seem like he had done me a big favour by marrying me. He expected me to worship him after all; he was releasing me from the prison called Nigeria and taking me to America. Of course with close to twelve years in between us, the biblical refrain “wives be submissive…” assumed a whole new meaning.

Something else developed in me at the end of those two weeks, Steve, who was now almost four and to who I was now tired of reviewing my promise on when he was going to see Daddy. I never made it to the US to join his Daddy as had been the plan. Something about a security report had stalled the whole process. My husband, the American Authorities had found out was a member of a drug syndicate which had been responsible for the largest distribution of cocaine locally in two American states. He was arrested shortly on arrival in the US following a tip off. A member of the syndicate, the members of who were the Italian Suit wearing men at the wedding who had been spraying United States Dollars and trampling on it, had gone to sing to the police after he couldn’t stomach my Husbands ditching of his sister who he had earlier promised marriage there in the United states.

Annoyingly, he kept insisting to me on phone through the period of the trial and through Nkem his sister that he was innocent, that he was a IT expert and did legitimate business in the United states, that he was only wickedly framed up by people who were jealous of his accomplishments, that he had never trafficked drugs and never associated with people that did, that he was going to be vindicated. Alas, the jury thought otherwise. He got ten years which I understand was mild considering the heap of evidence against him.

Now I don’t hate him anymore. He is no where around for me to hate. But I hate my parents who forced me into this, his parents who fed my parents with all the lies that he was a Soft ware expert when he was really just a criminal, his sister, a young girl like me who played a huge role, my self for not doing enough to insist on my refusal and pitifully, Steve, the innocent four year old, who was never meant to be.

I feel like a widow. At twenty nine, my life has already ended.
Sylva Nze Ifedigbo
www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

The Funeral didn’t end

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

The funeral didn’t end with the dismantling of the last canopy or with Niko the record man packing up his old skool music equipments which in the last three days had played every thing from Rex Lawson to Sunny Bobo. It had continued, not for the different dance troops or for the village layabouts who had turned up early on each day for the free booze and food, but for me, my two sisters and Mother.

The funeral actually began on that afternoon in the sickly smelling Intensive Care Unit of the Teaching Hospital when Father silently faded out. In truth, he had been fading for longer than anyone wanted to admit. Actually death began knocking when two years ago the rampaging FCT Minister knocked down his just completed hotel building in Abuja despite a court order to the contrary. The bricks of that building, every drop of sand that made up its frame were lined with over fifty years of hard labour and it had been a bit too much for the old horse to handle. The resulting high blood pressure would have killed him but for the doctors intervention. Since then, he had been living on borrowed time.

And so when news came in that the goods that just arrived from Japan, ten 40 feet containers that represented a last desperate effort to save his business from final collapse had lost its value almost by half as a result of the Naira crashing under the weight of the global economic crises, the barometers in his arteries shot up and this time even our tears couldn’t hold him back. The young doctor with a gap tooth had looked from me to my wailing mum, shaken his head in the negative, whispered something that sounded like a condolence and spirited out.

A great man had died so a great funeral had to be staged. I was only twenty, but as the only son I had to stay through endless long meetings with uncles who converged like vultures at a feast, pretending to be so concerned when they rarely visited when he was alive, with members of his age grade who seemed determined to make this a record breaking funeral, with members of my towns union whose former chairman he was, with his colleagues in the importing trade most of who were also fading away, with the Catholic Men’s organization from our parish, a group of aging civil servants and traders, with the Peoples club, an elitist club of money bags he had joined years back when the going was good and with another group that consisted of people from all the other groups; the committee of friends.

There was so much to be done and with uncanny frankness, my Uncles had insisted on every thing being accomplished to the final detail. It didn’t matter to any one that there was hardly any money, for as far as they were concerned their brother was a wealthy man and left behind riches a chunk of which must be used in seeing him off to the other world.

At the center of the tapestry was Mother who had a silent task of proving she had no hand in her husband’s death by not being stingy with his supposed wealth on the one hand and ensuring that her beloved husband of over twenty Five years got a befitting funeral on the other. When the pressure got so much she did what she had to do or was forced to do.

First she sold her Rav4 jeep, then the Mercedes flat boot. Two properties at Victoria Island and festac went up similarly too. Finally, using her Boutique in Oshodi as collateral, she took a bank loan.

Posters were printed. Announcements were placed in both the television and radio. Full paged “A rare gem is gone” adverts were taken out in news papers. A gloss paged brochure had to be printed. All the in-laws had to be informed of the death with a goat and some tubers of yam. His age grade got a cow, it was their law. The Igwe’s cabinet got the same. Branded tee-shirts that didn’t last beyond the first washing were printed. Two other materials were also sewn as mourning cloths. The peoples club brought their own list, a retinue of criteria that must be met before they would turn up. The Ozo cult of titled men brought theirs, even the church too.

The church’s emissary was the village catechist. The Priest wasn’t going to set a foot into our compound for the wake keep nor would he welcome the corpse in his church for the requiem Mass if every penny owed by Father and Mother were not fully paid. This included all sorts of dues, levies and ‘taxes’, some of which dated back to the year of my birth.

The old house, a two storey building that was inhabited only when we came home for Christmas was renovated. Even in mourning the point had to be made that this man built a big house in his fathers land while alive. Interlocking tiles had to be laid in the compound to bring it up to 21st century standards. One or two trees had to give way and a grave site lined with imported tiles was built at the Far East corner.

For the three days the funeral lasted, ten cows died. Chicken and goats were not to be counted. Food and drinks had to be in excess as it was unheard of that sympathizers left a funeral hungry. Much of the food was wasted, swept away in the mornings. The men went home staggering from alcohol only after Niko had put off his musical instruments signifying the end of activities for that day.

Now the funeral ought to be over. The canopies are gone, the music is gone, and the people are gone. But not for us. There was Chineye’s school fee to be paid. It was her final year in college and there was so much to pay for and exams to register for. Ifeoma in addition to her own school fees needed surgery on her left eye which doctors say could only be done abroad. I had my text books and handouts to worry about. Besides all that, we needed to feed but there was no money.

The funeral didn’t end, no it had only began. With uncles angling around hoping there was anything left to be carted away. With the bank sure to take over Mothers shop. With Ifeoma gradually going blind. With Chineye not meeting the jamb deadline. With me staying back at home, to become the father at twenty. The funeral didn’t end.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

My Born-again Girl friend

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

There was something deceptive –almost sinister about the born-again phenomenon; I thought of this every Sunday when I drive down Church Road to the golf course to honour my weekly challenge with a couple of friends. The buildings-some mere batchers- of different designs which lined the entire length of that Road with their noisy loudspeakers directed at each other told many tales of what cynicism and hopelessness could do to a people. But perhaps more absorbing were the church goes themselves, clad in their Sunday bests with Bibles or hymn books in hand, waiting for buses, crossing the roads, emerging from or disappearing into those rat-holes of church buildings, bringing to reality one of Karl max’s most popular quotes.

But that wasn’t what the deception was all about. Since I caught or rather chanced on my roommate back in the University, a pastor of one of the hip and happening campus fellowships necking feverishly with one of the “sisters” who supposedly visited for a special Prayer session, I had ceased to take any one who flaunted a born-again status seriously.

I was then just a fresh man and before my second year, I had come to appreciate the easiest tactics for acquiring a new girl friend on campus. All you needed to do was to attend a fellowship session and make sure you walked out to the dais when the call for “those worshiping with us for the first time was made”. Sisters were always assigned to follow up the new male members and for so many, I inclusive, the follow up visits of these sisters ended up turning from spiritual to emotional sessions. I have never ceased to marvel at just how creative these “holy” girls could be behind closed doors.

So when I first sensed the born-again thing in her, I knew I was in for some thrilling experience. Stacy was her name. We met at a poetry reading. I wasn’t a big fan of poetry my appreciation of it not going quite beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but on that day I had gone all the way to Wuse II to listen to the shy Jumoke Verissimo read from her new collection; I am Memory.  A review of the collection I had seen in a local daily had one of the most respected names in Nigeria’s literary circle remarking that “Miss Verissimo remakes language beyond lyricism”. I wanted to be a witness.

Just as the usually drab Q&A session began with such banal questions as why do you write, what inspires you, who are your favourite writer’s etcetera? beginning to fly around, I felt a soft touch from behind accompanied by a soft voice demanding to have a peep at my copy of the collection. She had just arrived I guessed and still had this look of a pupil arriving late to a mathematics class- cursing herself silently for coming late and wondering just how much she had missed. I felt some pity but I didn’t however fail to notice the radiant beauty, one which had me speechless for a couple of seconds before my hands got to pass the book over to her.

I saw something more to the beauty; brains, later that evening as we shared a meal at the Wuse II Mr. Biggs outlet and all the way as I drove her to her house in Lugbe. Before that evening was over, I knew we were going to repeat this and indeed we did.  We met every day of the coming week talking -arguing really-on a wide range of issues; on why Kongi isn’t the greatest, or why Achebe deserved a Pulitzer, or just what could be done to restore the glory of creative writing in Nigeria. She was passionate and I had often intentionally taken the less popular side in the argument, making very illogical claims just to tease and get her adumbrating to the point of near infuriation.

We took the same stand on an issue for the first time when we made love on one hot Saturday afternoon at my place two weeks after the poetry reading. In a way, it was essentially also an argument, she on top riding, whining, moaning and digging her finger nails deep into my flesh, me, beneath bearing over 60kg, galloping in the alternate direction with my waist doing the salsa dance. Her sensual vituperations sounded as though she was speaking in tongues like I had heard her do the other day she invited-virtually dragged me- to the mid week fellowship of her church.   

I had entered the place feeling like an alien. I was an orthodox Christian by birth but I had not been to a church in a long while. I had found it almost impossible to justify why I should toil so much only to deposit a share of it weekly for a man who does nothing but tell me about what is already written. One day I decided I had had enough of contributing for the Reverends new car or his wives new adire business, so I stopped going to church. I knew what it entailed to hurt another person and I avoided such. That to me satisfied the primary requirements for living a good life. It wasn’t long before I started feeling that familiar irritation inside Stacy’s church. Without sounding insolent, the place looked more of a social gathering than a church with girls so lewdly dressed, gyrating excitedly, their firm mounds joining in the rhythm, inviting-tempting- any man who decided to take more than just a careless look.

The pastor, one of those returnee Nigerians dished out his American accent-coated sermon like water from a sprinkler. Better came out as ‘berra.’ His hair was curled and a glistering suit, the type with price tags that ran like telephone numbers clung to his shoulders. He was saying something about Psalm 23, a psalm I had memorized at age six, and for some reason his congregation kept jumping up excitedly at the end of his reading of every sentence like they were hearing it for the first time. The high point of the day was however when the prayer started and I heard and watched Stacy reel out phrases, which became sentences which soon turned into pages and pages of incomprehensible jargons. When I asked later in the car what it was all about, she had told me she had been overtaken by the spirit.

So as we lay backs to the bed and eyes to the ceiling, exhausted after our feverish bout of desire had expired, I imagined that she must have been overtaken by the spirit a while ago. It had all happened in a flash. She had arrived looking edible in a tight jeans and a sky blue blouse which gave more than a generous view of her twin pointer. I remember swallowing hard when I first caught sight of them while opening the door to let her in. Her demeanor betrayed her desires. I didn’t need to demand, she gave. I was afraid that perhaps the spirit might have now left her and she would soon begin to regret every thing. But not so, it soon became a routine, at her place, in my place and once even in the back seat of my car. The sex was good no doubt, but I couldn’t help the feeling of guilt that seemed to sip out along with the sweat as we lay gazing at the ceiling and the circling fan hanging from it after each bout.

I wasn’t a righteous person, I never laid claim to being one. Issues like fornication mattered very little to me but with Stacy, a supposed born-again it felt so wrong. Unrighteous people appreciated the existence of the righteous and wished they remained so, at least to maintain the balance between good and bad while nursing a silent desire that perhaps one day, they too would become righteous.  My born-again girl friend was born-again in every other issue but in my bed. Every speech was laced with lines like “My pastor said”, she paid her tithe as at when due, had every tape of all the Sunday sermons in a rack in her house, spoke in tongues and was a worker in the church. Often she rushed off to one church meeting or the other right from my bed still reeking of the Passion play we just acted. It didn’t feel right. It filled me with a dizzying urge to act out on God’s behalf, like it hurt me so much that He was being cheated.

My discomfort which came in the form of a needle-like pricks beneath my feet had every thing to do with my strongly held principles; you are either here or there, no in-betweens.  I felt those pricks each time Stacy’s actions had to conflict with her born-again status, like when we met one of her fellowship sisters in Ceddi plaza and she introduced me blankly as Mr. Bode, like I was some stranger she just met, or when I on her invitation attended a Talk their sisters fellowship organized for singles. Stacy had been one of the speakers and had with a lucid oratory spoken on a wide range of issues among which was a reminder that “our Body was the temple of the holy spirit”.

I had felt those needle-like pricks, so strong it felt like I was going to die of them on the day we broke up. It was a Sunday afternoon. We had just exhausted with a wave of desire and she was her hand mirror in hand making up to meet up with the Evening Service of her Church. She had spent the night at my place and had a ready excuse for any one who asked why she wasn’t at the morning service; “ I was on Night shift”, an excuse I had heard her give on the phone to her co-church workers right from under the covers of my bed on countless occasions.  The excuse found justification in the fact that she worked at The Sheraton and sometimes, she was genuinely on Night shift. As I watched her artistically line her eyes with a pencil that evening, the pricks of guilt overwhelming me, I decided to tell her I didn’t think it was right for her to still attend Church that evening.

Initially Stacy thought it was a lure for more. “Common baby, can’t you ever get enough of me?. I mean I was here all night.”

“You seem not to get me”

“I understand baby just that I have to attend church. Ok, I will head back here and go to work from here tomorrow. Is that alright?” She spoke with all her attention at the mirror.

Her reply only served to increase the pricks.

“Must you go?”

“Of course you know I have to”

“why?”

“Because…why all the questions?” she dropped the mirror and turned to face me. Her face had that look she always had when we argued. She thought I was in for an argument. She always won the arguments or rather, I always let her win just so as to make her happy. Like some days ago when while watching television together, an advert on the new Information ministers effort at Image laundering was aired and I had made a derogatory remark about it, describing it as another ill fated effort at deodorizing dog poop, Stacy had taken it personal saying every thing good, or she thought was good about it. Essentially she was celebrating the Minister whose efforts at freeing Nigeria of fake drugs is celebrated, not offering any logical justification for the millions to be spent on trying to ‘pancake” our image as a nation. I knew better, that over a billion was expended by a similar effort in the past that yielded no result and that common sense provided that you don’t succeed in riding a room of the foul smell of a decaying rat by spraying an air freshener. You had to take time to find and remove the offending carcass before your air freshener would be of any worthwhile effect, but I just let her talk and talk, at the end, I planted my lips against hers, conceding defeat.

She wasn’t going to win this particular argument however. It wasn’t really an argument; it was me telling her that she was doing a lot of disservice to her self by living a shameful life of deception. The loud bang of my door as she stormed out summed up how she felt at hearing me say all I said, and those I did not have to say. The pity I felt for her was genuine and I thought I needed to apologize but she wouldn’t pick my call and when I called at her place, she refused to let me in.

I saw her again at the next Reading. She was sitting three rows behind me. The Guest writer this time wrote short stories, and while he was busy explaining the complex use of present and past tense in his stories, I turned my neck in an effort to make eye contact with Stacy. I had done that repeatedly all evening without success, but this time, our eyes met and I could see that beyond the chairs and people that separated us in that little hall was a mutual feeling of regret; gallons full of regret flowing from the knowledge of what was and what could now never be. When I turned my neck again, she was gone.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

 

  

 

Between me and my laptop

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I share an unusual relationship with my laptop. It’s like an affair only this time we don’t go out on regular dates. In actual fact, we are always on a date since it’s always with me and only with it do I share my deepest thoughts….joy, excitement, anger and frustrations.

Within it also is stored my many musings and many unpublished and perhaps never to be published works. It lies next to me on my bed because it is the last thing I talk with before bed and of course I turn to it first thing in the morning… to finish up an unfinished piece, add a new idea to a completed piece or simply just to make sure it is still alive.

Of course this is not always the case. Principal to the functionality of my laptop is the sanity of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria. Since I have not quite gotten my self to obtain the toy generators from China-I big pass my neighbour-, and with the Power Holders expertise at holding Power getting better by the day, I am often not able to keep my laptop breathing, so some (most) times we have to go through the troubles of break in communication which other relationships often suffer.

But we generally cope and those times we can talk to each other, we make up for the time lost due to PHCN’s insanity. The communication is actually a one way traffic, I speaking and it listening. It just opens itself up and allows me to pour out the inner vituperations, adumbrations and ranting that have built up in my gut since the last time we spoke.

And like a good friend, it takes it all in and dutifully helps me get to push them out from itself to the media through which others could also share from it or stores them in its deepest recesses until such a time when it would be accepted for sharing by others.

Imagine then how it felt when my special friend fell ill and wasn’t there for me for close to a week. A second act of carelessness had led me to cracking the screen and the cost of the attendant plastic surgery to give it a new face had been beyond my finances at that time.

Those were indeed unhappy and lonely days. Then only did I get to appreciate the level of intimacy we shared as I couldn’t readily get my self to pour out those thoughts into my roommate’s laptop. It felt like adultery…a sin against the ten commandments of God and one which I felt not just God but my laptop would not forgive.

 So for those seven days and twelve hours when my lover was defaced, I experienced a massive build up of thoughts so much so that I felt I was going to explode anytime. I couldn’t sleep well at night neither did I concentrate at work. When I couldn’t take it any more, I asked a friend for a loan.

Surgery is done and my lover is back alive and breathing, best of all with a new face. Now I can tell it all I missed to tell it all those dark days.

About how unfair it is for the Government to be playing hide and seek with teachers as regards the meager 27% increase in their salaries while political office holders, some of them motor park touts in nice clothing, smile home with amounts that can make the devil grin in envy.

About how our lawmakers did some thing worse than defecating on the alter; declaring Maurice Iwu a saint, telling him to ride on-tazarce style- and telling the rest of the 150 million Nigerians to go to blazes.

About how the Federal Executive Council is reviewing the Report of the Electoral Reforms Committee after the twenty two man committee had worked tirelessly for weeks to develop a document which seemed a certain solution to the PDP’s rigging of our elections.

About how I foresee an even more entertaining drama in the National Assembly when the FEC after its weeks of cut and join will submit the draft paper on electoral reforms to the lawmakers.

About how I have just passed out of the National Youth Service and I don’t seem certain of what direction I am headed because my certificate can’t get me a job and of course the leaders are too busy grabbing to care.

About how certain I am that this country was sinking. I wish to say more ‘cos there are many more issues begging to be talked about.

But this much I say now so that I don’t over stress my laptop that is just recovering from ill health.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

One step forward, countless In reverse gear

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Right from the beginning, I never had any confidence in the Yar’adua led government and I had rightly said so on this forum and in many others. But I had never imagined that they (the leaders) shall be so impressive in their failure to such extents that it becomes foolish to even criticize them.
So for a while, I had began to feel less of resentment but more of pity for the President and his team of un performing ministers, who in active connivance with a greedy legislature are doing a very good job of their self imposed mission of running Nigeria down. Today however, that pity has tuned to anger and I can’t help but speak out.
All we are doing as a nation under this administration conforms to what W.B Yeats in his popular poem described as “turning and turning in a widening gyre”, indeed, every thing has fallen apart. Nothing, I mean not a single aspect of our national life is working. The bogus seven point agenda has remained in a pause mode, and while in some civilized climes, the operators of such a failed system hide their face in shame, here, we are daily harangued by their empty noise on television.
The most disappointing event which provoked this piece is the fall out of the last Wednesday federal executive council meeting in which we were made to understand that the FEC spent the day deliberating on the recommendations of the Michael Aondoakaa review of the Justice Uwais electoral reform committee.
What use was the Uwais panel if its report was to be reviewed again by the Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa? What credentials does Aondoakaa possess to qualify him to remove and insert new points to the work that took the panel several months to put together?
And as if to sum up the insincerity of the whole process, it is now obvious from the response of Dora Akunyili to news men after the FEC meeting that it is not now even certain that the reforms to the electoral process will be effective from the 2011 election.
In simple terms, what this development means is that this Government is not in the least of ways ready to give us better elections in 2011 and is set to supervise another fraudulent process that will see all of them re-steal their way to power.
These, coming just as both chambers of our national assembly are passing votes of confidence and proclaiming Prof Maurice Iwu as untouchable is indeed disturbing. I don’t know how else to put it really. This country is sinking under Yar’adua and the onus is on us to save her. Beyond rhetoric, how do we?