The phone rang.
“Hello!”
“Good morning, Mr O. J.”
“What time is it?”
“6 o’clock.”
“Naija man, why so early?”
“You always wake up at 6.”
“Yeah, but not today.”
“Today you wan sleep oyibo-man sleep? Foul.”
“My friend, to every rule there’s an exception.”
“Not this time. I mean, the air is alive with issues of moment . . .”
“Yeah, I know. There’s a National Conference going on . . .”
“And Na ija economy has just been re-based . . .”
“I didn’t ask for that.”
“Makes no difference. Nigeria has overtaken South Africa in the global marathon. The hostility has thickened. Nigerians in South Africa are running for cover.”
“You don’t mean it. Naija must go . . . ?”
“See why you must wake up. Stand up and be counted.”
I struggled out of bed. Silence.
“Are you still there?”
“I’m standing up. Start counting.”
“That’s more like it.”
More silence.
“Now, you didn’t phone me at 6 in the morning for chit-chat, did you?”
“Yeah, well . . . I just wanted to say . . . I just re-read ‘Peter Pan’ Enahoro’s hilarious classic How to Be a Nigerian . . . .”
“You woke me up at 6 o’clock to tell me how to be a Nigerian? What sort of joke is that?”
“Nigeria is no joke. . . A tragic joke, maybe. Is there such a thing as a tragic joke, Mr O. J.?”
“I don’t know. Let me consult my Dictionary of Unnatural Causes. . . . Here . . . tra . . . gic joke: ‘a basketful of lost opportunities. Something so bizarre it makes you laugh till tears run down your pants’.”
“Na wah for you, Mr O. J.! What did you call that dictionary?”
“Actually, to tell the truth, Mr Naija-Man, I like Peter Enahoro’s book. It is healthier than the sour-faced dissections of the nation by the professional psycho-pathologists. I mean . . . Nigeria is so extreme if you don’t know how to laugh you will murder yourself or somebody else over it.”
“Now you’re talking, Mr O. J. I have observed that your own public pronouncements—your articles—are sometimes dead serious and sometimes playful, even frivolous.”
“Got to obey the wind . . . . But look, I’m in no mood for chit-chat today.”
“This is one of your serious days, abi?”
“All I want to hear is two things: What is the matter? And what is to be done about it?”
“OK. The matter is this: Rich Nigerians are idle. Decadent . . .”
“That’s no news.”
“They have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.”
“Well, their patron saint said money is no longer a problem, just how to spend it.”
“I mean, money should always be spent wisely . . . .”
“Spending money wisely assumes that you worked hard to get it. It assumes that money is hard to get.”
“You mean as in Money Hard, a song and dance of the old days?”
“That’s right. Except for royals and aristocrats who inherited their wealth, everyone with any serious money worked hard to make it.”
Naija-Man laughed a dry laugh.
“Most wealthy Nigerians today did not work hard for their money.”
“They may disagree. Anyway, in the private sector they must have worked hard . . .”
“A minority of them did,” said Naija-Man, “but the majority got wealthy through political connections, special concessions, government subsidies, and 419.”
“But the public sector . . .”
“Those who got wealthy in the public sector did so by outright fraud.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean by pen robbery?”
“Pen robbery!?”
“Wealth that issued like ink from the tip of a pen.”
“Wealth from the tip of a pen? That would be a miracle, wouldn’t it?”
“It is. I mean by swearing falsely, saying that something is so when it isn’t so. Declaring false figures. Making wrongful claims. Accepting huge bribes in exchange for signing documents claiming that work was done which was never even engaged in, or that work was completed when it was never completed, or that work was done well when in fact it was done shoddily. Pen robbery means accepting huge bribes to defraud government by signing documents claiming that supplies (vehicles, machinery, computers, office equipment, etc.) were delivered as ordered and paid for when in fact only a fraction or none at all was delivered.”
Naija-Man had become quite worked up.
“I am confused,” I said, trying to calm him down. “What category of public sector persons could you possibly be referring to?”
“Senior public officers. Permsecs. Directors. Ministers. Commissioners. Board chairmen. Politicians.”
“Are governors included?”
“Governors are the worst. In fact, any person who served in the public sector, from office clerk to president, state assemblyman to National Assembly reps and senators—anyone who came out of public service wealthy, incontrovertibly is guilty of pen robbery: embezzlement, stealing, looting of the public treasury.”
“What of persons who came out of public service not wealthy?”
“Such persons are rare. And you know them by the fact that everyone whispers about them and laughs. They are a laughingstock in their village. Even newspaper columnists sometimes make cruel jokes about them.”
Onwuchekwa Jemie
• To be continued
