By Alan Kay
Last week was very hectic for me in the office. Auditors were around from Abuja and so, everyone had to tidy up their accounts in order not to collide with barbed wire.”
“Alan Kay, what have you to do with an auditor; after all, you are a journalist, whose brief is to write stories; or do you also join them in hawking the Newspaper? Because I know that under excruciating economic pains that have held the masses by the jugular, a dog will be glad to graze.”
“Nah, nah. You know, I served as guarantor for some adverts placed on credit; so I had to go gaga in cajoling the debtors to pay up. Otherwise, my salary would be seized and other punitive measures could come in tow.”
“God forbid. If your salary is embargoed, that could be disastrous for the beer parlour industry in Nigeria, and in fact, the brewery producing your brand will come close to closing shop.”
“Well Charles, I am sure you won’t equate me with Bala, who’s operating a fore-paid drinking programme. Only last weekend, immediately his salary was paid by his chambers, he stormed Iya Shola’s beer parlour in company with two modern-size jezebels; and pronto, he dropped N90, 000 to cover his beer and pepper-soup consumption for one month.”
“Bad boy. That’s an average N30, 000 per day. But you know that Bala is a reckless drinker, who would within that month transmute from a creditor to a debtor, after having exceeded his limit.”
“Well, leave Bala alone. One, he is a successful lawyer with clientele in the ranks of corrupt politicians who are being chased around like a cat would a rat, by the EFCC. Again, Iya Shola, remember, is a single mother with ‘an open workshop’. But we all know that Bala alone has a certificate of occupancy, that is, CofO, to her ‘land’. The other men are only appearing occasionally, using their ‘survey plans’.”
“Whao! If I had bugged this statement of yours and played it before your pastor, he would certainly excommunicate you, or if he is lenient a bit, order your sentence to a seven-day prayer and fasting session on a bitingly cold mountain in one of these Ekiti or Ondo communities.”
“Well, before it gets to that, let Clara bring us a replacement to these leaking bottles, which must also be criminally cold and of mortuary standard….Lest I forget, last week, parents of the remaining 87 of the Chibok schoolgirls in Borno, abducted 12 years ago, suddenly came out to plead with President Tinubu and other stakeholders to help them ensure the return of their children.”
“So some people are still searching for them? You talk as if you are not a Nigerian. Assuredly, what is left to be done now is for the human rights groups to swing into action, by using the girls parents’ outcries to to raise money from charity groups across the world, ‘to agitate for the release of the Chibok 87’. The government too, on its part, will keep reiterating its commitment to finding the girls! End of the story.”
“Just remembering that bad trajectory that came the way of the 237 Chibok secondary school girls captured in 2014. That’s how many rights groups held crusades, rallies, seminars, singing solidarity songs to cranky insurgents, who were far into the woods of Sambisa Forest, where they were enjoying their human booty.”
“Well, let’s drink and forget the sorrows inflicted on all by Nigerians and their leaders.”
“And to think that the girls would have been violated by these characters, who in turn, put many of the Chibok girls in the family way. Then when some of them later returned home two years after their capture, they strapped their babies or were with protruded tummies and were marched to Aso Villa for celebrations; as plates of jollof rice and chicken sauce contested for space on the tables. Hmmmn”
“I have told you to take your mind of the issue. Don’t cry more than the bereaved. So let’s think of how we can make our little money and sustain relevance in this Clara’s dynamic beer parlour.”
“Okay o. Just let them give us a place of steaming hot goat-meat pepper soup apiece, and then support it with two sweating bottles of our brand. That is the best way to cool off the tension caused by a society running a 100 kilometres race on. spot.”
“I trust you. You and your radical posturing that reminds of the departed stormy petrel, Chief Gani Fawehinmi. But that will not fly at this Clara’s beer parlour, if not supported with unrestrained spending.”
“Or better still, if not helped