Despised: Soon-To-Be-A-Billionaire's Dark Revenge

Chapter 7 TOLU THE COWARD

We got to Eric’s house on Alpha Beach on the Lagos Island about an hour later. It was a one room apartment attached to a huge uncompleted building that looked like a warehouse. A settee lined the wall of the little room while a gigantic, old TV sat facing it. A mattress lay on the carpet to the left-hand side of the room. Two bags lined the bottom of the unmade mattress and a couple of trousers and shirts hung by the window pane; no wardrobe was in sight. I looked up and saw two huge spiders hanging on the ceiling, their well-established webs giving away the secret that they had not been disturbed for the last one year. The smell of dirty socks and unaired shoes hovered over the room.

‘Welcome to my bunk,’ Eric said, pulling his shoes off before stepping on the carpet. ‘Make yourself comfortable. The toilet and the kitchen are the doors you saw outside before we got in.’ He pointed to the bottom of the mattress. ‘Keep your bag at the bag station over there.’ He sat on the settee and pushed the shoes under it. ‘Have a bath and then we can discuss the business of the day. Is that okay by you?’

I nodded.

Tolu fell on the mattress and on the clothes. ‘This room smell like a dog died in here a week ago.’

Eric laughed. ‘How is it different from your room?’ He got up and walked out of the room. Tolu scrolled through his phone and I remembered that my phone had gone off just before we got to the house. I dropped my back and looked for a charger. I found one close to the TV and I plugged it to the phone.

I removed my shoes and took them outside. I dropped them by the door and took a deep breath. The air was moist and fresh—coming from the sea. I heard Eric in the toilet easing his bladder and I went back into the room.

The TV was on.

I knelt beside my bag and unzipped it. I pulled out my towel and the slippers and then I brought out the sponge bag, toothbrush and Close Up.

Eric came back into the room. ‘Would you like warm water to have your bath? I can boil water for you in a moment.’

I shook my head. I was sweating like a miner buried underground. ‘No warm water.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Lagos must feel like the inside of an oven to you.’

‘It’s hot,’ I replied. ‘Hotter than I thought it would be.’

Tolu sat up on the mattress and looked at me: ‘Is Jos really cold? I have heard so much about it as if it’s a state in Europe.’

‘It’s not too cold at this time of the year,’ I said. ‘It’s colder around November to the early parts of February.’

‘Does it snow?’ Tolu asked. ‘Has it ever snowed?’

‘No, it doesn’t snow,’ Eric said. ‘But the cold can kill you if you don’t wear the appropriate clothes. It’s nothing close to what you have in Europe, but it cold enough.’

‘Sounds like heaven,’ Tolu said. ‘If it’s not as cold as Europe and not as hot as Lagos, it must be a heaven on earth.’

‘It is,’ Eric said, ‘The weather is great but the job opportunities are here. I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it, can you?’

Tolu and I laughed in unison.

‘It’s “you can’t eat your cake and have it,” dummy,’ Tolu said. ‘I wonder which school you went to.’

Eric laughed. ‘Forget English. Let’s speak Orogbo if you think you know languages.’

I removed my shirt and placed it on the bag and lined Close Up paste on my toothbrush. ‘Tolu, which university did you go to?’

‘I schooled in Ghana,’ he replied.

‘How was it there?’

‘Same, same, I guess,’ he said. ‘We are in the labor market together, aren’t we? Only difference is I paid higher to get a degree than you guys. I probably finished earlier than you guys since we didn’t have academic staff going on strike. Aside from that I don’t think it’s any better than what we have here.’

Eric chuckled. ‘Politicians and corrupt civil servants are the ones sending their kids to school abroad and paying their fees with our money. If I were the President, not one person who studied outside this country will hold any high-ranking position in the government and especially those who take their wives abroad with our money to give birth so they can have dual citizenship. Having dual citizenship is an indication that they don’t have faith in this country.’

I chuckled, removing the brush from my mouth. ‘Are you saying Tolu should not be a minister in this country because he studied in Ghana?’

‘Those who read in African universities should be exempted,’ Eric said. ‘African countries need the boost to grow their economies. But what’s the use of making the developed countries richer by paying higher tuition? No one who studied in the UK or America or given birth to there should be allowed to be a leader in this country. They have an alternative to this country but we don’t. That’s what Australia does; you can’t have dual citizenship and hold a high position in the country.’

‘Australia?’ Tolu said. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s true,’ Eric said. ‘If you have dual citizenship, you can’t be the prime minister or a senior official in the government. It’s in their constitution. Only people with single citizenship are allowed to take the highest positions in the country. That should be the case here. If they schooled with our money and are also citizens of another country, why should they also have the advantage of governing us? If anything goes wrong with Nigeria, they will jet out and leave us behind. Unlike them, we have nowhere else to go.’

I sighed. ‘I wish the youth of this country will come to their senses and act. Why should the advantageous and privileged children of the politicians and senior civil servants come back to rule us? It’s unfair.’

‘Which youths are you talking about?’ Tolu said and hissed. ‘Apart from fighting for religion and being tribal, do the youth of this country know their right from their left? With our population in this country, we have the power to determine who rules this country and the power to create the kind of future we want. But our petty differences keep us from coming together and tackling these politicians who keep taking us for a ride while they share our money.’

Eric shook his head. ‘Once religion is mentioned, the Nigerian youths gets confused, forgets their pitiful situation and go out to fight and kill fellow Nigerian youths. They think the other religion is the cause of their problems and forgets the politicians who have not kept their promises of developing the country.’ He shook his head. ‘Like the great Fela said, it’s to suffer on earth and enjoy in Heaven, for the Nigerian youth.’ He chuckled. ‘For me, I will rather enjoy here, here that is a reality, than dream about enjoying in a place I haven’t seen before.’

‘We are dumber than pandas,’ Tolu said. ‘Our leaders buy Mercedes Benzes and expensive SUVs as official cars while over sixty million of us walk the streets searching for what to do. Official cars in Nigeria should be Peugeot 406s or a 2008 Toyota Corollas and their plants should be in this country. That alone will give us several thousand jobs. When South Korea started making the Hyundai and Kia models, the youths in that country will puncture the tires of foreign cars on the street because they knew that buying the foreign cars takes away their jobs. But in Nigeria, the youths are so stupid that even pandas can call us dummies.’

‘If the politicians and the civil servants are serving us,’ Eric said. ‘Why should they drive BMWs as official cars while the majority of us languish in poverty? Even America’s civil servants don’t drive BMWs as official cars. The simple fact that the youths are too dumb to see this and demand that things be done right is our problem. All we know how to do is blame the other religion or the other tribe instead of holding politicians accountable.’

‘Excuse me,’ I said and walked to the bathroom with a mind black with despair. I could not see a sign in the horizon that our plight of joblessness will come to an end soon. Eric’s plan had better be worth it, I thought as I poured the first bowl of cold water over my head.

It had better be worth it.