by Sefi Atta
She sounded very much like a woman in need of sex, but I didn’t comment on that.
American women washed their hair almost every day, he said, and they did not beat their children. Americans favored foods mixed with milk and cheese. They ate too much, yet they wasted food. I was learning more from him than I had from Koilywoily and other teachers. I didn’t think we were a couple of juvenile delinquents who were letting our country down, nor did I spare a thought for the “majority of Nigerians who were enterprising and law-abiding.” Good luck to them. Their rewards were waiting for them in Heaven. I wanted mine now, now. There were no guarantees.
We finished eating and left Tantalizers. On our way out, we saw a billboard for a Nigerian comedian that read Comedy is not a laughing matter.
Augustine found that funny. He followed the comedians, Basket Mouth, Ali Baba, Julius Agwu and others. He had been to Fantasyland to see them perform and had the DVD of Nite of a Thousand Laughs. Comedians were commanding big bucks, he said.
“You should be one,” he said. “You’re funny and with a name like ID Salami, I know you can make it. I don’t know why you want to be a journalist. Journalists don’t make money in this country, and if they are any good they get shot in the ass.”
He began to limp. He ought to be the comedian, I thought, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would be amused by anything I had to say. I was a serious person, really. He promised to show me the Savages’ stash of videos with funny men I had never heard of like Peter Sellers, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor and Roberto Benigni. I could pass for a young Nigerian version of the Benigni bobo, he said.
“Life Is Beautiful. You have to see it. Classic stuff.”
He was very OK. Seriously. Not rotten to the core. I couldn’t explain, but he didn’t think too deeply about moral issues. He was sort of completely without a conscience. He also cared about educating himself. He wasn’t totally delinquent. He was going to the bookshop to borrow more books.
I raised my fist to him. “Augustine of Africa!”
He raised his. “ID of Lagos!”
My next step was to find out how to get myself a bank account. I couldn’t hide that much money under my mattress, even if I wanted to. Once I converted the dollars to naira, there would be bundles of it, stacks. Enough to fill a suitcase. I didn’t even own a suitcase, but I could afford to buy myself one, soon.
School was not yet over so I walked around. Victoria Island was the banking hub, after all. If the Atlantic were to submerge the island, the whole economy might collapse.
I got to a bank. The car park was crammed with cars, jam-packed with them. They were pulling over from the street and reversing out. One almost reversed over my foot. A security guard shouted, “Come on, move away from there! Can’t you see?”
He was shouting at me and the driver didn’t even say sorry.
“Omo komo,” he said and hissed.
I was already frustrated and I hadn’t even reached the entrance. There were two more security guards behind the main door, which was made of glass. I didn’t make eye contact with either of them and stood behind a woman in a black skirt suit, who was waiting to walk into a transparent kind of cylinder. There were two of these cylinders, side by side. A man walked out of one. The woman in front of me pressed a button and the cylinder opened. She walked in and the cylinder shut. A moment later, it opened on the other side. The new-generation banks were like James Bond. Seriously.
I did exactly as the woman had done. The banking hall was on the other side. The place was not that advanced compared to the olden-day banks, but there was a marble slab here, a rubber plant there and the workers had tags showing their first names. None of the usual “Mr.” or “Mrs.”
A teller behind the counter called a customer by his first name and the customer hurried over. I sat in a chair by the customer-service desk, which was manned by a clerk. He was attending to customers while, at the same time, checking his computer screen. All the time, his colleagues in cash and teller disturbed him with questions.
The cash and teller line almost reached the cylinders. The customers didn’t seem satisfied. They looked as if their mouths were dried up from waiting, and one teller was pregnant. She paused between customers, for at least a minute, as if to annoy them even more.
It was my turn at the customer-service desk. I got up and two men who had been hovering around the rubber plant walked over as if they were escorting me. One of them was wearing a traditional tunic and trousers; the other was an army officer, in khaki. He sat on the chair before I could. The man in the tunic stood by my side. He stank and, not to be disrespectful, but when Nigerians stank, we really did. The smell was beyond normal. It was spiritual. Of another realm. The customer-service clerk was confused, meanwhile.
“Are you all together?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
The army officer had a complaint. The bank had not given him the correct information. He was Hausa and mixed up his P’s and F’s.
“Fleas,” he kept saying, while raising his hand. “Fleas. Let me talk.”
I was furious with him for taking my place. Perhaps he thought this was a time of military dictatorship. Perhaps he’d forgotten this was a time of democracy. The other man, who stank, moved closer to me and mumbled about his accumulated interest.
“Accumulatedinterest.”
“Fleas.”
“Incorrectcalculation”
“Fleas.”
“One at a time, please,” the clerk pleaded.
I had to wait until he had attended to them. It took him about ten minutes and the stinking man left shaking his head, while the army officer stood up in disgust.
Nigerians, I thought. Why couldn’t we just wait for our turn? It was the same in school. “Fall in line,” and students fell out. “Queue for oranges,” and we scrambled for them, falling over the baskets, and the worst part was that we took offense and got into fights because we were not first.
“Yes?” the customer-service clerk said.
No “please” for me. He was taking advantage because of my youth. He looked about Augustine’s age and he was wearing a shirt and tie. His nametag read Bola.
I was not intimidated. Bola was a girl’s name. I asked how I could open a bank account.
“What type of account?” he asked, smiling. His expression said,Yet another idiot.
“Any,” I said.
“For you or... ?”
“Yes.”
“Are you eighteen plus?”
“No.”
He shrugged. “Then.”
“Sorry,” I said, slapping my head as if I’d forgotten. “It’s for my father. I’m finding out for my father.”
He looked at his computer, as if he couldn’t handle human beings anymore. I didn’t mind that. I could relate.
“Current account or savings account?” he asked.
“Savings.” Savings sounded more sensible. Something Popsi would approve of.
All the “please”s came out as he told me what he would need to open one: a passport photo with Popsi’s full face forward, please, indicating his full name and duly signed by him at the bank; an identification document, please, like a driver’s license; a customer mandate.
“A mandate?”
“It is a form, please, and we will need specimen signatures.”
“Specimen signatures?”
“Yes, please.”
“But why?”
“Why what, please?”
“Why all the... hoo-ha.”
“Hoo-ha?”
“Yes. Hoo-ha. Specimen signature, mandate, this and that.”
Wasn’t “hoo-ha” a proper word? Government officials used it a lot. They never seemed to know what the hoo-ha was about.
He sighed. “It is standard banking practice, please.”
“But I’m giving you money.”
He raised his hand. “Please. It is checks and balances. It is for your own protection. There is a lot of crime around.”
“Don’t you want the forms?” he asked.
“I will come back.”
Cross that bridge, as Popsi would say.
Bola told me to have a nice day. As he greeted the next customer, a Lebanese woman broke away from the cash and teller line. She was on a cell phone. She leaned over the desk and extended the phone to the customer-service clerk.
“My husband wants to talk to you,” she said.
Bola nodded. “I’m sorry, madam, but as you can see I’m busy...”
She raised her voice. “My husband wants to talk to you!”
“Just a moment, please,” he said. “I can’t do two things at a time.”
“My husband wants to talk to you, right now!” she shouted and then continued to talk to her husband on the phone, in her language: yallah this, yallah that.
Her white trousers were so low I could see her thong. Perhaps it wasn’t just Nigerians, and the bank deserved her tantrum. They had too many stipulations. I spoiled the air in that cubicle of theirs and watched to see how the man who went in after me would react. He stood still. He did not wrinkle his nose. It was like a science experiment. It proved Nigerians were immune to bad odors.
It was late in the afternoon. I was sweating and my bowels were beginning to act up. The nearest toilet I could use was at home. I could have hopped on a danfo but there was so much traffic, it was faster to walk. There were mostly banks and boutique hotels down the street. I passed a goat grazing in burned refuse, a house with a sign saying This house is not for sale. Beware of 419. I took the Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue route where hawkers were selling Ovation and True Love magazines. Across the street was a helicopter pad. Our president and his state governors used that. I didn’t know why. I would never get into any helicopter in Nigeria. On my side of the street was Lagos Law School and, on a high-rise of flats, I noticed an advert for Virgin Atlantic.
Augustine was saving up for Virgin Atlantic tickets. Virgin Atlantic was decent to Nigerians, he’d said. But why wouldn’t they be when Nigerians were always scrambling to get on their planes? I asked. At the rate we were going, that Richard Branson bobo would soon be able to buy up our whole country and he would have change. Augustine said we scrambled for British Airways as well and British Airways staff were rude to Nigerians, and at least Virgin Atlantic flights were safe. Safer than our local airlines. Loyola Jesuit in the capital had lost some of its students in a local crash the year before. It was one of the top schools, and what did those poor bobos get? Obituaries, condolences to their parents and a week of national mourning.
I got to Falomo Bridge and the sun had set. I passed those Rotary Club signs on the pedestrian walkway saying Do not urinate, Do not defecate, Do not dump refuse, Keep Lagos clean. There were missing protective bars on the bridge. Normally, I would be afraid of falling into the lagoon. It had strong undercurrents and was polluted with plastics. I imagined jumping in and committing suicide as Okonkwo had in Things Fall Apart. I focused on the mansions along the waterfront and ducked under an almond tree at the end of the bridge that had grown so tall I could reach out and touch its leaves.
A stray mongrel sometimes showed up in the barracks. I had christened him Aja. He chewed on the leftover bones he found in our rubbish piles and I had tried to train him many times before, but Aja was the dumbest and laziest dog ever. Sit, he couldn’t. Fetch, he wouldn’t. Half of his tail was missing and he had a slight bias when he walked. One of his legs was a little shorter than the others, so if he stood still for too long he just fell over on his side. He once fell over like that in the Mammy Market and he looked as if he was trying to hump a bundle of yams. “Abomination,” the stall owner said and stoned him.
Aja was a mess. You had to see him, yet he had these eyes, so composed, as if he knew all the answers. He was back in the compound. He patted a cow-foot bone with his muddy paw and stared at me as if I was the wretch. He never returned my affection and I was the only one in the compound who showed him any.
“Aja,” I said.
He turned his face away as if to say we were not on a first-name basis and walked diagonally towards the staircase. I hadn’t seen him in a while. I was getting worried that he had been captured by a Hausa suya hawker and was being skewered somewhere in Obalende.
Popsi was in the sitting room when I got to our flat. He was wearing mufti—an ankara tunic and trousers—and underneath, a white singlet.
“You’re back?” he asked, as if I had returned from years of traveling.
He was listening to juju music on a cassette player. His feet were propped up on the leather poof. I prostrated only halfway down. After school, I, too, was inclined to behave as if I had been on an expedition. My uniform was damp with sweat and my shoes were covered in sand.
In my bedroom, I threw my schoolbag on the mattress. I was late, but I had an excuse. Sometimes, I stayed at school to play football. Popsi might not even have noticed I was late. He had already heated up the beans in the kitchen. I scraped the burned layer at the bottom of the pot and served myself less than I would normally—not to be greedy—and sprinkled a handful of garri over the beans.
“So how was school today?” he asked, as I walked back to the sitting room.
“Fine, sir,” I said.
I sat under the poster of Jesus that Brother had sent us and mixed the garri and beans together with my spoon. He was watching the television, which was off. I couldn’t stand juju music. The singers were nasal and their lyrics were full of traditional proverbs. He called my hip-hop “yo yo” music.
“You’re facing your studies?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
The beans were saltier than I remembered, but the pepper had mellowed. That usually happened after the third heating.
“Good,” he said.
Popsi could sit with me for hours without talking. If I got up, he would immediately ask, “Where are you going?” I thought it showed his appreciation that I wasn’t rambling on, as Momsi would, about her day and prompting him with an “Are you hearing me?” every five seconds. Our conversations after school were a routine. His questions never changed, nor did my answers, but he was listening. I couldn’t, for instance, say, “I missed school,” and get away with it.
I wanted to talk about crime, but I didn’t know how, so I brought up the subject of the inspector general instead. Popsi had to be approached subtly. You couldn’t generally come out with whatever was on your mind or surprise him. He preferred routines at home. You had to ease in your out-of-the-ordinary requests, maneuver around the heart of the matter and gauge his reaction. I’d learned that by watching Momsi.
“What’s the latest about the IG?” I asked him.
His head went up. “Who?”
“The IG,” I said and spooned more beans into my mouth.
He slumped back. “Um... the EFCC is after him.”
The head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was like the Jet Li of Nigeria. There was no criminal he wouldn’t take on and he wasn’t afraid of being killed.
“Thank God,” I said with my mouth full and a false air of maturity. “I mean, if the IG could do that, then the whole country has gone haywire.”
He nodded as I heaped up the remainder of the beans.
“That’s right. Let us see how they will launder this. This one done pass Sunlight soap and bleach.”
“You must have heard of Yahoo Yahoos...”
“Ya?” He glanced at me.
“Yahoo Yahoo boys.”
He nodded again. “Them? Oh, yes. They are all over Festac Town. The EFCC are after them, too.”
My heartbeat quickened. What if I ended up being arrested by the EFCC? How would he ever recover from that? He would be wrecked. Only his career would survive the scandal.
Festac Town was a prime example of what could happen to a Lagos hub. It was now the capital of Yahoo Yahoos. It was built in the 1970s for a Festival of Arts and Culture, hence the na
me. The Yahoo Yahoos of Festac were prolific with their letters. Experts.
“But it will be difficult to catch them. How will the EFCC manage that?”
“Um...” He scratched his chin. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“What can they do if they catch them?”
“The system will take um... care of them.”
What system? The system he had said was trash? The motto of the Nigeria Police was “To serve and protect with integrity.” Popsi was one policeman who did, which was why Momsi called him Mr. Esprit de Corps.
“How?” I asked.
He lifted his hand. “The world is spinning. Whatever you create will come back to you. The internet only makes for immediate consequences.”
He pronounced the word “hinter net,” and I didn’t say more about that. You did wrong and you faced repercussions. Wasn’t that how the law worked? How the world ought to work, according to him?
At first, he claimed he didn’t talk about his cases because they were confidential. Then when Momsi said come on, Nigerian doctors and lawyers broadcast details about their own cases all over the place, he claimed he didn’t talk about his cases because he didn’t want to desensitize me to crime. Nigerians were desensitized to crime, he said, and that was our main problem. As soon as I found out what the word “desensitized” meant, I realized that was an excuse. Where did he think my eyes were when the newspaper headlines said that banks like United Bank of Africa and Société Générale were being investigated, or that state governors had been sacked? Where did he think my ears were when he complained about the government officials making millions by privatizing our electricity supply? They might end up privatizing the police, he said. That could happen in a country like Nigeria. The civilians were completely corrupt. He wished the military would take over again.