NNEMEKA'S DIARY, HE NOW HAS A NEW JOB.

Nnemeka wrote a gain in his diary,  "I will soon realized the meanness of a city like Abuja."   Besides chasing him from his king size  mattress,  the Cockroaches have agreed on one hot evening that  he will be starved.  Nnemeka had just returned from work that day and his mind was meditating constantly on the plait of Jollof rice  and chicken  which he had stocked on the table.  He turned on the lash of his door  and dusted his his feet on the  footmat of his door to stop the little pieces of fine Abuja dust who have sworn to follow Nnemeka to his apartment at Maitama.  At least he could afford to rent  one now.  After trekking round the city of Abuja,  entering office by office and mounting on elevators which at some mistaken times, took him to some other floors which he never intended to go.  Being a new babe in the use of elevators, he had struggled with going to unintended floors until he had started to get it right and met  with the God of fate and his misery changed.  Even the the hill of his shoes,  by  slanting position which it had compulsorily made  him to stand in an unbalanced manner,  bare great evidentiary fact that he has trekked round Abuja.  The usual song "we are not employing here" seemed to have lost its relevance as though they were tunes sang in the mouths of great musicians of the 60's. Oh, how  present comfort seems to wipe away the tears of sorrows as if they never occurred! Nnemeka thought with tranquility overshadowing his will.  The days came by rolling like folded bundles of seas pushed about by ocean waves.

Nnemeka remembered with accuracy like the day light sun how one day he  entered into the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation of Nigeria  at the Central Business District Abuja and after filling all the beureucactic logs of hard cover note book painted with green white, green,  he stood before the secretary  who looked at his eyes with contemptuous eyesball.  Nnemeka's wash and  wear shirt which has long been discarded into the standing wastebin arrayed on the streets of Maitama  could hardly bear  the chemical pressure of daily soup leather and omo.  The shirt had started to express its displeasure facially through its fading colour.  Still,  he had to manage the resources which the society even after bagging a degree in accountantcy could afford to be generous enough to give him.  This social injustice has revealed itself on Nnemeka's outfit itself. The bank of social stratification and justice had  ran dry.  And all cheques signed couldn't be cashed and  have been returned as being stalled.  The secretary still looking at him after Nnemeka had graced the steel chair,  ordered him into the office of the Auditor-General after  he had broken down every fabric of her resilience and insistence that  he state the purpose of his visit. When he stepped into his office,  cool air of air conditioners and air freshner impatiently flew into his nostrils.  Nnemeka sat down in the office of  his host praying silently within the realms of  his heart.   He began by telling the Auditor-General the   entire tale of his  story how Abuja had dried his finances.  Nnemeka did that inorder to  draw favour from the  man in his  position as the Auditor-General of the Federation.  But he listened intently,  causing the line of people waiting to see him nurture in patience for a little time.  When he  rounded up his story,  the Auditor-General  said there is absolutely nothing he could do.  The federal Government had not began fetching new work force into the federal   parastatals.  And his job will  flame on the burner  of dismissal if he takes any action without the permission of the powers that be.  When Nnemeka's gaze met his host again, they were parting. He made for the Elevator  and thanked the secretary who even after determining the purpose of his visit,  still felt satisfied to paste on him one more look of contempt.

The Elevator sprang up before going down in the customary manner which he had become accustomed to.  As Nnemeka stepped  on the first large sandy earth washed and sieved  by the early August rains,  the  secretary's voice rushed into his ears.  "Oga is calling you."  "Me?"  Nnemeka asked with the hunger of reassurance.   They climbed unto the elevator as the secretary piling the atmosphere with silence  faced her front not saying a word.  When the elevator stopped,  she told Nnemeka,  "You may go inside. Oga  is waiting for you."  Inside, he dropped his Curriculum Vitae on the desk of the Auditor-General and after feasting on the bunge of words typed in  Times New Romans,  he assured him,  "with this you will get a job soon." The following months came with inventiveness and proper shelf of stories on how the  Auditor-General will call him.  Nnemeka thought in his  heart how he will seat in one of the offices for a test or an interview. He created questions and answered them.  "May i know you? Where do you see yourselves five years from now? And to the final question how much do we pay you? Each time he set his thoughts  on these pre-interview  questions, a veil of comfort sat on his face.  Soon these desires and happiness washed away like a mist is dealt the heavy  blow of  early  morning sunrise.

Months grew and soon two years had passed yet the raging silence  from the Auditor-General's office continued  unrestrained.  However,  Nnemeka met a friend of  his,  a class mate at the young but prestigious Benue State University and there,  after following some links of people, he was employed at NNPC. His course mate  who served as a bridge for this employment ; during the days of their learning was a person who in his list of things,  studies was the last.  He played with his books and the days of test and exams were shared with football matches,  for he was a chelsea fan.  But today,  he is employed.  Nigeria died in the 70's and 80's when merit was valued over connection. Nnemeka was still happy that the system has for once looked upon him with a hand of kindness. With benefits alone,  Nnemeka rented the nice apartment that was within the powers of  the gilded in Abuja to touch.   The sufferings he  experienced though fresh like green algae clinging to a semi-wet wall,  had been beaten and defeated by the new life of luxury and comfort that had besieged him.  Nnemeka was still standing at the door when the thought loosed its grip on him.  The door gave way to pressuring zig-zag edges of the  key and there it opened.  He  dusted his feet and threw his shuttle bag unto the waiting bed.  The bag bounced twice and humbled itself on the bed.  He never gave a little kindness to the HP nozzled in the bag.  Again,  his  Jollof rice,  the food in which many Nigerians will throw a punch to have it stayed served on the table.  Nnemeka walked with a hungry agility and lifted up the lid of his China plate wherein he had secured the Jollof rice on  a waiting  line.  Nnemeka's colleague,  a female, Margaret often sparing was charitable enough to wash hin with praise for the  first time.  That a good man who improves in his cooking Jollof rice like he did  will soon secure a job as the  head of chefs in Transcorp Hilton Hotel.   Nnemeka adopted her praise with a mixture of two things — a bitter  and sweet admiration.  After that interlude of  thought had passed,  he opened the China and two giant cockroaches raced in two different directions like the parting of the Red Sea in the Holy Scriptures. Anger held Nnemeka's feet glued to the floor of his Maitama apartment.  One of the cockroaches took cover under the banner of  his wreathe of flower vase.  The other,  a little more wiser preferred the cravics of the kitchen door. Nnemeka looked in different  directions drawing inspiration to what he would do to these little beasts.  A thought enveloped him as he  remembered how mama Titi  his neighbour used to kill cockroaches, she would smack them with a strange force until the white or milky colour of the poor cockroaches scattered on her palm as the insect became more flattened like a  Ballon whose tenure of airfulness ends in a sad tale.  She would rob her two hands together and  straight to the sink.  She would wash them off.  "This is how you handle cockroaches she would often  declare."


But for Nnemeka  on that weak day,  he lacked the ounce of energy to carry out such a grumsome  attack.  Before Nnemeka went to the broom laying densely upwards, he  folded his suit into a twig.  He thought against it and went to the broom,  took it and  charged at the one  behind his vase.   Liquid scattered in  a wreathed flare around  the cockroach. A strange smell of  liquid,  irritating as it was at the moment rushed to his neck and  hurriedly made the long journey down through the walls of his osophagus.  He closed his eyes. As he took the broom  charging on  the other wiser cockroach clinging firmly to the  hairy cravics of the wood  of the kitchen door,  the insect flew and found a vent of escape through the punctured route  of the new mosquitoe  net which the Carpenter could not finish fixing because the heavens vomited heavy rains the previous day in Abuja.  He  looked plaintively at the face of the sad Jollof rice  and he saw that one of the cockroaches had cemented a little part of its wing to announce attendance that they were really on the food.  He thought again on the effort he had invested in cooking his Jollof rice  whose niceties earned him a medallion of praise.  Nnemka cast a heavy glare on his bread that he had hardly touched and saw that the cockroaches left bandages of their feathers and  nibbles for a record of their  appearance too there.  He thought  of what he should do as the hunger narrowing on the walls of his  intestines continued digging a  massive  hole.  Of all things living or non living,  Nnemka could thank God  for the beast of the field but for the cockroaches  he often withhold his appreciation. He thought of going across the adjacent street to catch a taxi to Shoprite.  Nnemeka  saw how badly he needed  a car  that would have made his movement easy.  That day after returning with a sealed food from Shoprite he  decided that he would purchase a car.  As the darkness gathers thickness,  he wrote in his diary  the words highlighted this time in green.  I hate you with a good phobia, but I must find a  away of killing you.   He underlined the angry words.  When the inpatient  morning arrived,  he beautified his toilet  window with a gigantic atomic weapon— Mobil insects and Cockroach killer.  

NNEMEKA'S DIARY, HE NOW HAS A NEW JOB.

Nnemeka wrote a gain in his diary,  "I will soon realized the meanness of a city like Abuja."   Besides chasing him from his king size  mattress,  the Cockroaches have agreed on one hot evening that  he will be starved.  Nnemeka had just returned from work that day and his mind was meditating constantly on the plate of Jollof rice  and chicken  which he had stocked on the table.  He turned on the lash of his door  and dusted his his feet on the  footmat of his door to stop the little pieces of fine Abuja dust who have sworn to follow Nnemeka to his apartment at Maitama.  At least he could afford to rent  one now.  After trekking round the city of Abuja,  entering office by office and mounting on elevators which at some mistaken times, took him to some other floors which he never intended to go.  Being a new babe in the use of elevators, he had struggled with going to unintended floors until he had started to get it right and met  with the God of fate and his misery changed.  Even the the hill of his shoes,  by  slanting position which it had compulsorily made  him to stand in an unbalanced manner,  bare great evidentiary fact that he has trekked round Abuja.  The usual song "we are not employing here" seemed to have lost its relevance as though they were tunes sang in the mouths of great musicians of the 60's. Oh, how  present comfort seems to wipe away the tears of sorrows as if they never occurred! Nnemeka thought with tranquility overshadowing his will.  The days came by rolling like folded bundles of seas pushed about by ocean waves.

Nnemeka remembered with accuracy like the day light sun how one day he  entered into the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation of Nigeria  at the Central Business District Abuja and after filling all the beureucactic logs of hard cover note book painted with green white, green,  he stood before the secretary  who looked at his eyes with contemptuous eyesball.  Nnemeka's wash and  wear shirt which has long been discarded into the standing wastebin arrayed on the streets of Maitama  could hardly bear  the chemical pressure of daily soup leather and omo.  The shirt had started to express its displeasure facially through its fading colour.  Still,  he had to manage the resources which the society even after bagging a degree in accountantcy could afford to be generous enough to give him.  This social injustice has revealed itself on Nnemeka's outfit itself. The bank of social stratification and justice had  ran dry.  And all cheques signed couldn't be cashed and  have been returned as being stalled.  The secretary still looking at him after Nnemeka had graced the steel chair,  ordered him into the office of the Auditor-General after  he had broken down every fabric of her resilience and insistence that  he state the purpose of his visit. When he stepped into his office,  cool air of air conditioners and air freshner impatiently flew into his nostrils.  Nnemeka sat down in the office of  his host praying silently within the realms of  his heart.   He began by telling the Auditor-General the   entire tale of his  story how Abuja had dried his finances.  Nnemeka did that inorder to  draw favour from the  man in his  position as the Auditor-General of the Federation.  But he listened intently,  causing the line of people waiting to see him nurture in patience for a little time.  When he  rounded up his story,  the Auditor-General  said there is absolutely nothing he could do.  The federal Government had not began fetching new work force into the federal   parastatals.  And his job will  flame on the burner  of dismissal if he takes any action without the permission of the powers that be.  When Nnemeka's gaze met his host again, they were parting. He made for the Elevator  and thanked the secretary who even after determining the purpose of his visit,  still felt satisfied to paste on him one more look of contempt.

The Elevator sprang up before going down in the customary manner which he had become accustomed to.  As Nnemeka stepped  on the first large sandy earth washed and sieved  by the early August rains,  the  secretary's voice rushed into his ears.  "Oga is calling you."  "Me?"  Nnemeka asked with the hunger of reassurance.   They climbed unto the elevator as the secretary piling the atmosphere with silence  faced her front not saying a word.  When the elevator stopped,  she told Nnemeka,  "You may go inside. Oga  is waiting for you."  Inside, he dropped his Curriculum Vitae on the desk of the Auditor-General and after feasting on the bunge of words typed in  Times New Romans,  he assured him,  "with this you will get a job soon." The following months came with inventiveness and proper shelf of stories on how the  Auditor-General will call him.  Nnemeka thought in his  heart how he will seat in one of the offices for a test or an interview. He created questions and answered them.  "May i know you? Where do you see yourselves five years from now? And to the final question how much do we pay you? Each time he set his thoughts  on these pre-interview  questions, a veil of comfort sat on his face.  Soon these desires and happiness washed away like a mist is dealt the heavy  blow of  early  morning sunrise.

Months grew and soon two years had passed yet the raging silence  from the Auditor-General's office continued  unrestrained.  However,  Nnemeka met a friend of  his,  a class mate at the young but prestigious Benue State University and there,  after following some links of people, he was employed at NNPC. His course mate  who served as a bridge for this employment ; during the days of their learning was a person who in his list of things,  studies was the last.  He played with his books and the days of test and exams were shared with football matches,  for he was a chelsea fan.  But today,  he is employed.  Nigeria died in the 70's and 80's when merit was valued over connection. Nnemeka was still happy that the system has for once looked upon him with a hand of kindness. With benefits alone,  Nnemeka rented the nice apartment that was within the powers of  the gilded in Abuja to touch.   The sufferings he  experienced though fresh like green algae clinging to a semi-wet wall,  had been beaten and defeated by the new life of luxury and comfort that had besieged him.  Nnemeka was still standing at the door when the thought loosed its grip on him.  The door gave way to pressuring zig-zag edges of the  key and there it opened.  He  dusted his feet and threw his shuttle bag unto the waiting bed.  The bag bounced twice and humbled itself on the bed.  He never gave a little kindness to the HP nozzled in the bag.  Again,  his  Jollof rice,  the food in which many Nigerians will throw a punch to have it stayed served on the table.  Nnemeka walked with a hungry agility and lifted up the lid of his China plate wherein he had secured the Jollof rice on  a waiting  line.  Nnemeka's colleague,  a female, Margaret often sparing was charitable enough to wash hin with praise for the  first time.  That a good man who improves in his cooking Jollof rice like he did  will soon secure a job as the  head of chefs in Transcorp Hilton Hotel.   Nnemeka adopted her praise with a mixture of two things — a bitter  and sweet admiration.  After that interlude of  thought had passed,  he opened the China and two giant cockroaches raced in two different directions like the parting of the Red Sea in the Holy Scriptures. Anger held Nnemeka's feet glued to the floor of his Maitama apartment.  One of the cockroaches took cover under the banner of  his wreathe of flower vase.  The other,  a little more wiser preferred the cravics of the kitchen door. Nnemeka looked in different  directions drawing inspiration to what he would do to these little beasts.  A thought enveloped him as he  remembered how mama Titi  his neighbour used to kill cockroaches, she would smack them with a strange force until the white or milky colour of the poor cockroaches scattered on her palm as the insect became more flattened like a  Ballon whose tenure of airfulness ends in a sad tale.  She would rob her two hands together and  straight to the sink.  She would wash them off.  "This is how you handle cockroaches she would often  declare."


But for Nnemeka  on that weak day,  he lacked the ounce of energy to carry out such a grumsome  attack.  Before Nnemeka went to the broom laying densely upwards, he  folded his suit into a twig.  He thought against it and went to the broom,  took it and  charged at the one  behind his vase.   Liquid scattered in  a wreathed flare around  the cockroach. A strange smell of  liquid,  irritating as it was at the moment rushed to his neck and  hurriedly made the long journey down through the walls of his osophagus.  He closed his eyes. As he took the broom  charging on  the other wiser cockroach clinging firmly to the  hairy cravics of the wood  of the kitchen door,  the insect flew and found a vent of escape through the punctured route  of the new mosquitoe  net which the Carpenter could not finish fixing because the heavens vomited heavy rains the previous day in Abuja.  He  looked plaintively at the face of the sad Jollof rice  and he saw that one of the cockroaches had cemented a little part of its wing to announce attendance that they were really on the food.  He thought again on the effort he had invested in cooking his Jollof rice  whose niceties earned him a medallion of praise.  Nnemka cast a heavy glare on his bread that he had hardly touched and saw that the cockroaches left bandages of their feathers and  nibbles for a record of their  appearance too there.  He thought  of what he should do as the hunger narrowing on the walls of his  intestines continued digging a  massive  hole.  Of all things living or non living,  Nnemka could thank God  for the beast of the field but for the cockroaches  he often withhold his appreciation. He thought of going across the adjacent street to catch a taxi to Shoprite.  Nnemeka  saw how badly he needed  a car  that would have made his movement easy.  That day after returning with a sealed food from Shoprite he  decided that he would purchase a car.  As the darkness gathers thickness,  he wrote in his diary  the words highlighted this time in green.  I hate you with a good phobia, but I must find a  away of killing you.   He underlined the angry words.  When the inpatient  morning arrived,  he beautified his toilet  window with a gigantic atomic weapon— Mobil insects and Cockroach killer.  

MORNING MESS

I

t was an early morning madness when an oversized truck and a Honda Civic car jammed into the face of one another on the Galadima High Way.  The Honda car had decreased into a small mass steel.  A man who was vomited when the window of the Honda Civic disintegrated into unidentified pieces of shattered glasses lay on the floor inert. The sirens of the Gwarimpa Emergency rescue harassed the air with a prolonged blare.  Outside, as the men robed in yellow over black trousers began tearing the congealed steel cage that the car had become to free those imprisoned in it, the crowd had gathered, watching what is too strong for the feeble eyes to see. Blood from the Honda car sieved from the back seat unto the waiting dry tar.  Some shook their heads, when the injured were being evacuated.  But others stood and fed the eyes of their phone cameras with clicks of few selfie food. 

A large traffic had started to grip the second lane of the road. A very overweight woman hooked by the stream of morning traffic unzipped her bag and brought out an Iphone 6. With many snaps, she ministered to the gallery of her camera when the sound of – ka-chaka, ka-chaka, ka-chaka amazed the air. The back tyre of her car driven by her chauffer detained in the raging traffic had overtly depressed looks, and the entire back of the car where the woman sat had sunk. May be the back tyre will protest in explosion before they get to Berger.

Two drivers, beaten by the anger of the traffic decided to vent their accumulated displeasure of the morning mess. All the men, looking gilded in porch cars whose status should have cautioned them to exercise little restrain over the muscles of their annoyance.  The man in white caftan banged the bonnet of the other man.

“Move this thing from the road.” He shouted.

The other stirred disdainfully at him and hissed.  He directed his gaze to the queue of cars charmed by the power of Abuja morning traffic. The man came again, knocking harshly on the glass window. 

“Open this door. This road is not your father’s parlour.”

He opened the door, went to the man in caftan and snap a lighting slap on his face. The other replied back two more times than the first. It was not long before the two men embraced themselves like tired boxers pleading for the referee to separate them. The scene unfolded in absurdity.  Motorists parked with their engines running silently in the traffic. Doors flung opened on the road as the crowd sought to break the bound of union between the two men when they fell into a fighting embrace.

“You will know who you have slapped today.”  Shouted the man dressed in suits as the crowd separated them.

“Gbam, do your worse!  Who do you think you are?” The man in caftan replied clenching his face.  He took his phone and excused himself overlooking a concrete drain.  He spoke distinctively over the phone often his cadence rising and falling down.

“Send me some boys quick.” He said as the call ended.

The man came back. He looked violently at the other man.  A helux of soldiers firing warning shots into the confused air arrived. They had drove against the flow of traffic, their headlight fully turned on like fire service men racing to rescue a building caught on fire. They hopped out of the helux and hurried to where their captain made the distress call.  Without allowing the man time to explain the fight,  one of the soldiers hungry to exercise his soldierly strength sank the bottom of his gun into the face of the man who had slapped his boss. 

“Haba, Oga you don kill me!” He cried in his throat.

“Sharrap!” The other soldier with northern marks drawn across his face like the whiskers on a kitten cut in.

“You cari your dirty hand slap our captain.  Na die be your own today. "

A procession of heavy boot kicking on the poor man quickly followed until he lay almost lifeless.   A man took his camera and snapped some selfie directly behind the scene of the soldiers.

“Come here you bloody civilian!” One of the soldiers ordered. When the man approached, he took his Samsung 6 phone and smashed it on the tar. The battery, gorilla glass and phone case all raced in different directions. A soldier plunged the root of his gun directly into the chest of the man. The man fell on the tarred road. Two bodies were on the road looking drained of life.  They dragged both men and threw them into back of their helux. The smell of blood, something like fresh liquid, sieved carelessly into the nostrils of the crowd. This is Abuja traffic, where rage is turned to war, and war into anger and anger into the foolishness of selfie. Ka-chaka, ka-chaka, ka-chaka not all the time.  Danger is not the time to overfeed the stomach of your camera with selfie.  

                                                A FEW DAYS IN ABUJA

Nnemeka wrote in his diary the following record. Abuja is a no mean city! The delicately woven streets of Asokoro and Maitama, the conspiracy of the sun to burn the heads of those who make trekking a bosom friend, the cruelty of the vendors in overcharging you for every product you buy, the taxi drivers greed in punching holes into the linen of your pocket, the giant gate and electric fences that robed the many occupiers with a shadow of security, the ladies skirts hanging weakly on their thighs and its street lights vomiting yellow light at night. He concluded that the city is one meant to evince if not extend the difference between the have and the have-not. It is one city that runs on one fuel – money. Then he struck the words mean, money and extend with his yellow highlighter in his diary. He got the first few words of describing the city of Abuja in his experience. As an Igbo in diaspora raised in Ibadan by his parents who had sworn to banish Yoruba from his tongue, he understood the value of money. His parents soon understood that they were fighting a useless war. Yoruba and Igbo must co-exist as a fountain in his mouth. He knew only one thing. The many charities of Ibadan where every naira, ten, fifteen and twenty could be the difference between trekking to your destination and boarding a taxi.

     He walked languidly to cross the road intersection opposite the Wuse Central Market. An impatient Hausa woman whose face has been overburdened by make up, her skin illumined by bleaching almost ran him down to the black tarred road. Nnemeka starred at her and they both locked eyes together. For a while, the woman watched him unapologetically. Then she wound down her glass window. Her only apology "You should be looking at where you are going to. " . He trekked upwards passing the Wuse Market main gate peopled by buyers. He was asking them "where can I get along to Gwarimpa from here." "Move upwards" they kept telling him. He walked to the park which he was able to locate through the questionnaires that he poured out on many people. At least, this was half the price that the other drivers had asked him to pay previously. They sat three passengers on the back seat. One of the passengers lectured him on using the Barnex Junction, Berger, or Maitama Junction to get to any of the places he wants to get to. The lecturer added, "if no bi so, your money go finish for taxi drop o!" Nnemeka was hungry for a lecture like this. After dropping his CV in Area 1, Maitama, Asokoro, Federal Secretariat and the Aso Villa all though the help of taxi drop, he never understood how much injury had been done to his wallet. When the car killed it's speed at the foot of the Gwarimpa model city gate, Nnemeka's eyes kept a constant appointment with the overhead bridge and the mass of people thronging laboriously like soldier ants on parade. Nnemeka opened the door of the car and hopped out. He mildly planted his two hands on his waist as he pondered how to climb the overhead bridge. When he finally strengthened his arms with the decision to climb up, his phone rang. He took the phone from his pocket and spoke to the person. There was a chuckle on the other side before the phone cut off. Nnemeka hissed. Checked his account balance to see whether MTN has mischievously drain it. He saw it and smiled. He began slowly to climb the Gwarimpa model city overhead bridge. As he reached the top of the bridge, first he saw a woman, whose clothes were threadbare. She lay her unclad son under the burning strength of the sun. The baby was sleeping on his mother's leg as if the sun that burns was some sort of AC for a cold weather. The woman had spread her bedraggled sack on the floor. Nnemeka reached a close distance and the woman lifted up her hands passionately asking for some money. He removed the twenty naira change that was given to him by the driver that had carried him for hundred naira from Wuse Market. It was along that he decided to enter after those drivers in the park wanted to rob him through their high charges. Another beggar was there who beheld Nnemeka when he gave the woman some money. The beggar too was full of expectation. He walked passed the beggar and another one rolled on his wooden wheel like a hockey player. The beggar was sweeping the floor of the overhead bridge. Nnemeka slogged feigning not to have seen him. When he has triumphantly eaten some distance and was about to descend down the bridge, a man stood there watching him diligently. The man gave him a piece of paper with printed words. He collected the paper and read the first words printed in bold lettering. "Please help me, my wife is in the hospital." He gave the paper back to the man and walked down the bridge.

     As Nnemeka looked onward, the driver unperturbed by his hesitancy to sit in the little overcrowded back seat of his car, he remembered Ibadan, a city where the drivers had purged themselves of greed. When fuel scarcity rose to its brim, the generosity of the drivers abound in their charges. Abuja drivers never followed the steps of their Ibadan brethren. The drivers in Abuja are never charmed by the magic wand of Mohammed with his dense hair nicely cut in a punk. His epaulettes worn across his shoulders like a young man whose twenties had gathered distance years. No, the picture of Mohammed on the twenty naira note does nothing to them. He begged with a rage of passion, "how is much Gwarimpa." The driver replied unashamedly into his face. "Two hundred Naira." Nnemeka knew that he still carried with him the remains of the dust of Ibadan with the generosity of its drivers. When he was about to leave the park with its array of cars all going to different parts of Abuja, he overfed his eyes with the black mud once dry but awakened to softness by the rains of the previous night, compressed by the tyre of a car and leaving a fresh streak of zigzag lines drawn across the face of the dark mud. Nnemeka saw the driver looking at him through the corner of his eyes. He wanted his two hundred naira, but Nnemeka was never charitable enough to give it to him. Nnemeka walked as murmuring occupied his mouth.

The number of cars passing by the road shrank as the night stately gathers darkness on its back. Under the cover of the yellow street light of Gwarimpa, Nnemeka marched slowly on the street as he scrutinized it for some fruits seller. He walked towards some police men flashing their lights on the Keke Napeps asking them to turn on their inner light. He reached the Gwarimpa gate and climbed its bridge. All the beggars that stood guard for money had emptied from the bridge because of the night. He passed into the smoky coverage of some Hausa men roasting soya to the adjacent road. He purchase apples, carrots and a cucumber. All at overtly overcharged prices. He returned back to the bridge and went straight to the 69 Road, Gwarimpa. The police men were still standing on the road, harassing Keke Napeps and parking some of them on the curb of the street. When he entered into the house, Nnemeka decided there to audit his wallet and when he did, he noticed that Abuja had in an unaccountable manner sucked ten thousand naira from it. When the darkness loosed its grip over the street, and the cars again resumed their activities on the 69 Road in Gwarimpa, Nnemeka assembled all his bags and went straight to Jabi Park. He entered a bus straight to Ibadan. In the park, seated in the bus going towards Ibadan, he drew up his diary from his bag and wrote again. Abuja is a no mean city! Where those who trek are seen as poverty-consumed, where western life of quiet neighbourhoods has sunk beyond measure and where no money, no life. He highlighted all the words with his highlighter. He closed his diary and thought inwardly, I will only come back here when I am a millionaire.

THE WILL

                                                               

My legs were heavy and it seemed to me that it had been chained behind the bars of restrictiveness for an unaccounted amount of time. But when I turned my mind back to the past fourteen hours, I knew with a surety the reason for the heaviness and the muscle cramp that held my legs in locks of detentions. Fourteen hours from Makurdi to Ibadan and another lazy drive which drew two hours of mid-night time in its bowels. Besides the numerous threats of accident, our vehicle protesting on two occasions one was at Kogi State where the wheel ceased! Another was en route Iseyin from Ibadan, when a back tyre tired of bearing the weight of those in the rickety bus, exploded with a bang of atomic recklessness! Soon the shout of blood of Jesus and people of different religion calling to their own God sieved the tranquillity of the bus. The bus swayed sideward and buried its mad rage at the curb of the road where overgrown savanna grasses cast us a pity salute. We debarked from the bus and Yoruba language which at that point was a novelty to my ears used to hearing English and Hausa forced my ears in a compulsory listening. Though I stretched my ears to catch the burning lines of the words they were speaking, I couldn’t make no meaning of it. Everything they spoke perished in an “O or Ah” while the mouth stood ajar. The driver who himself was a Yoruba man and I could tell by the mastery of the way the words wreathed within his lips, was a Yoruba man in entirety. He called the attention of some passengers who after helping in offloading the deflected tyre that had almost caused us to be causalities on that furlong night in Ibadan. They piled pressure on the jack, with their hands monotonously going up and down until the height of the car grew up. The driver expertly flung himself underneath the car, examining if there was any damage beyond the deflected tyre. When he was sure nothing beside the tyre had gone amiss, they gathered their cooperation together and began to knot a spare tire that had been cemented to the floor of the booth of the bus in a devastating and thorough bolt as if a thief will stretch his hands and pull it out. Time piled quickly and they had not finished. I wondered if they could ever finish that at all. Soon, the driver made a call which I later understood as my tongue grew fatter with Yoruba that it meant enter let us go. That night I believed I banked some few phrases of Yoruba in my memory. We entered again and sat, both Muslims and Christians calling to their own God for a safer journey this time. The driver pressed the pedal and the bus revved its nose forward. He kept driving at outlawed speed that even a grain of stone could push the bus into a union with the overgrown grasses by the side of the road. Soon murmured voices climbed above the roaring of the engine. Again a warning in Yoruba and English to be careful in the way that the driver was manning the steering wheel.

                When the morning had started to drag the curtains of brightness to the Iseyin camp of NYSC, it was the Man O’ War who first collected our sleep with their noises. Then the beagle blown sometimes by wiry soldiers followed next. We assembled at the parade ground singing worship songs in our white shirts, white trousers, white socks and white shoes like angels on a forbidden morning. We sang and prayed. Then the Commandant and the Camp Director lined our ears with daily activities and of all in the list, I personally detested the morning lectures which sometimes bored my ears. Some even motivational speakers come to charge the atmosphere with their very dull inspirations. I considered and reasoned that motivation without God means nothing to me. So whenever the lectures began, my first prayer point is “oh Lord may it soon come to an end.”

                Our time in the camp grew bigger and soon we were no longer the new corpers which the soldiers had once associated our personality with. A kind of formidable friendship had been formed between us and the soldiers, their noises of the morning wake up call became a longing for a joyous day albeit we looked at them with scornful eyes only if our sleep had been cut short. The food we ate at the camp which during the time when the population of corpers was thin increased our longing for the dinning bell and made us to look at our time intermittently for the next dinning meal. But when our population magnified, the food steadily experienced a washing away of deliciousness. Many who came to camp armed with their mints in their pockets looked at the dinning disdainfully as the food began to assemble a different sweetness. Mami Market with music of worldliness often sucking what remains of peace in the Iseyin Camp terrorized our righteous ears. Our only comfort was NCCF the regular song which “ NCCF will never die” and the encouragement to make service year fruitful stood tall in our hearts like the Tower of Babel. I observed too the many young Nigerian youths without Christ and in crisis, filling their bellies with liquor and engaging in acts which I believe was often too strong for righteous eyes to see.

                The routine of camp life soon ended and we congregated under the canopy of the Iseyin sun to receive our posting letters. When I collected mine, I saw a local government area in Ibadan. I bowed my knees and caressed it on the dry Iseyin earth in appreciation to the Lord. Then walked to the bus that would convey us to our location. It was in the bus that war waged in my mind. I could not comprehend what a lawyer like myself would go and do in a local government. I was supposed to be in a law firm. My face soon condensed in sadness. Throughout the time that the journey stayed, the Lord did not say anything to me.  Hours matured into days and days wore the crown of weeks and the Lord said nothing. As I lay down in the corpers lodge one very fast evening, the Lord spoke to me. “Take a walk I want us to discuss.” I walked climbing a meandered tarred road whose blackness had been sipped by erosion exposing a chunk of red earth up the road. The Lord then explained to me why he brought me to Ibadan. As I wound of my stay in Ibadan, I am reminded that I must not have worked in a law firm, I might not have worked in a big office. But one thing I am sure of that I did during my service year, I invested in men and touched men for Christ!

                 

RAPTURE DREAM OF A SISTER IN CHRIST, MAYA BRALRO 

Written by Bro Pius Joseph

In the dream, my eyes were fixated towards the heaven. As I feasted on the vision that lay overhead, the heavens opened. The cloud was encased in luxuriant light that covered it. The cloud was crowned with beautiful rainbow colours.  From the heaven, I could see Jesus. Myriads of angels all in unison were singing in the cloud that assumed such unexplainable beauty too much for the hands to described and compile in written words.  A shaft of light came down from heaven.  The shaft of light began to  absorb the saints as they flew within the shaft of the light to the heavens in rapturous glory.  I pumped the strength of my gaze and focused it on the shaft of light that took firm roots from heaven. As I penetrated my eyes deeper, I felt the amount of peace that all these saints had as they were flying to heaven.  Still, the warmness of the light from the cloud and the shaft awash my body so gloriously.

I Iooked and saw  a lot of children. A woman whose stomach had protruded in roundness, heavily pregnant for 8 months saw an astonishing sight that sucked her into a sea of surprise. The woman beheld the baby from her womb came out, and slowly flew upwards passing her head to the gathered angels in the cloud. “What is happening?” Shouted the woman in a depressed voice of confusion. The woman kept looking at the baby as the baby gathered distance away from her upwards to the cloud. All over the world, people were in white flying to the heavens.  A woman was in a groceries store shopping with her 7 years old child. The child was pushing the shopping cart as the mother picked groceries and mount them unto the cart.  As she picked a can of vegetable from the shopping shelf into the cart, her 7 years child was gone and could not be found.  I then saw supermarkets round the world with shoppers going inside the supermarkets.  Many of the shoppers saw either their wives or husband disappeared.  It was as the bible has immutably declared, “ that one will be taken and another will be left.”
A family as this chaos sunk in depth tried to pray.  When they tried to pray, they felt nothing because the Holy Spirit had been taken away from the earth. The Four Children in the family began to ask the parents what was happening. Just as the children were asking what was happening, they flew. The woman looked into the eyes of her husband still asking the repetitive question, “what is happening.”
  Jesus said cutting in, “daughter, after the rapture I will take away the Holy Spirit from the earth. So I can’t hear the prayers of people anymore.”
But one which took me completely aback was a guy who knew with certainty that the rapture would happen. Never did he at once think that he ought to have prepared for this glorious day. Alas, the day came and he was not ready for it.  The guy said, “this can’t be happening. No I am dreaming. I need to wake up.’ He was in panic. All over the world I saw people who were trying to commit suicide, however hard that they tried, they couldn’t die.  Death evaded them.

A woman had taken a break from work to have her lunch.  She held bread in her hand. When she enlarged her mouth to bite the bread, she saw the bright sunny and beautiful sky turned dark and angry. The woman was swallowed into an ocean of confusion.    A surreal sound from the sky soon compounded her confusion. The sound which the woman was hearing from the cloud puzzled her deeply. I saw that many of these people were unprepared for the rapture.

In his closing words, Jesus said in a voice full of urgency, “my daughter, what you see you need to tell people all of this because the rapture is real.    If you have mouth you have to speak. If you have eyes you have to see. If you have ears, you have to hear. And if you have heart, you have to see with the eyes of the Holy Spirit.”