With Alan Kay
Tell whoever cares to listen, that today, I am determined to drink to stupor by taking as many as six bottles of beer. Today is a special day in my life, a day set aside to remember how the Lord recently blessed me through my beautiful wife.”
“Ok o. What is the good news that would make you constitute nuisance by drinking six bottles here when we still have two other places to touch?”
“Don’t get me wrong, friend. In each joint, I will demolish two bottles of beer, translating to six bottles for the day. And assuredly, each sitting must be edified with a plate of steaming hot broth, which in local parlance, we call pepper soup.”
“You still have not answered my question. You said the Lord blessed you through your wife. Please, let’s share in the blessing, peradventure, that could translate to a goat-meat pepper soup for me at this Sisi Eko’s joint. You know her goat is not a local breed. It’s from the family of gangling Sahara goats and a plate of the meat is cool N3,000.”
“Well, Alan Kay, the good news is that, some Customs guys sold 50 bags of seized imported rice to my wife at N40, 000 per bag and she re-sold each bag for N80,000. So, on each bag, she made N40,000 profit and since I gave her the capital, we shared the profit equally.”
“Funny you! I think you have in the process, played the happy fool. In the first place, you gave (or is it loaned?) your wife N2 million to trade in contraband goods, only to get half of the profit, which is N1 million. Thus, effectively, you have incurred a loss of N1 million on your principal, having no profit at all.
“Remember she is my wife. The services she renders in the living room, the kitchen, and the ‘other room’ cannot be quantified. So what you perceive as the net loss will translate to gain when I enter the house dead drunk in the night and she still gives me a hot kiss. It is my money that is speaking.”
“Good. How about if days after your under-hand rice purchase, the Customs officials who must have stolen the bags of rice from the official warehouse, are apprehended with the help of a whistle-blower and they confess to selling the goods to your wife?”
“Don’t worry about that. They will never be caught. Whistle-blowing is alien to the Customs; it’s the EFCC that brought the funny style of encouraging people to do ‘amebo’ job, gossiping and exposing others in return for a cash reward.”
“Please enjoy your loot for as long as it lasts. And to kick-start your promise of inundating my table with bottles of beer, let Sisi Eko deflower my dry throat with the first bottle, criminally cold, mortuary standard…and back to the issue; why is the Federal Government placing ban on rice importation when we don’t have enough rice plantations to feed the about 200 million population?”
“Who told you there are not enough rice plantations? Remember, Lagos has a wide expanse of land in far-away Kebbi State for rice plantation. In Anambra, Ebonyi, and some other states, rice plantations are now springing up. So, we should be seizing more bags of imported rice.”
“Yeye guy, so that you can continue to make more profits for your home through connivance with the bad eggs in the Customs…anyway, I am vicariously liable. After all, I am going to take standard eight bottles on you throughout our beer-parlour sojourn today, and then, glorify the sittings by downloading plates of pepper soup.”
“Long throat…so how about the babe who said she was a seer and had a vision that you met a woman with good luck at a pub and the aura of the woman turned you to a millionaire through some miraculous ways?”
“Recall that the lady, who called herself Sister Jessica, also reminded me that she had a very good aura, thus indicating that the envisioned woman for my extra-marital escapade in expectation of good luck was herself. And observing my glowing eyeballs, she quickly demanded for a big bottle of the stout beer, calling without delay, for a plate of goat-meat pepper soup also.”
“And I wouldn’t forget too that you gave her N5,000 transport fare in addition. That’s a good Lagos girl who knows how to maximise a recession-era to great advantage. Despite that I winked at you several times not to fall into her trap, you were already transmogrified, more by your libido than the expectation of good luck.”
“I am wiser now. Remember I told you that she called me on the phone, that she had a dream that God had instructed President Tinubu to give me a political appointment since three months ago but that the ‘Prince of Persia’ has been blocking it from being announced. She said she needed N50, 000 to mobilise prayer warriors and ‘warriorresses’ to a mountain, to pray and make the Prince of Persia let go my Aso Rock job.”
“Interesting! I was feeling sleepy when you phoned to tell me this the other day. Just tell her to use her good aura or good luck to make the Persian Prince release the Aso Rock job, that you will pay for the effort once you hear your name on Radio Nigeria.”
“Unserious guy! Please where is the next joint?”