Your Money Bleeds-
It took me four years after graduation from secondary school to finally get admission into the university to study law, the course I had always loved since I was the little Honey in Primary Three. It wasn’t because I was dull. I had 7 As in my WAEC, including Mathematics and English Language at the first sitting, and I always scored way above JAMB’s cut-off points. Yet, I couldn’t get admission to study my favourite course at my institution of choice, the prestigious Ahmadu Bello University.
I fell in love with Ahmadu Bello University because my father always talked about it with infectious pride and nostalgia.
The first time Auntie Nneka asked me which university I would like to attend after graduating from secondary school, I told her, ‘Ahmadu Bello University.’
She straightened, curled her lips, and tapped me on the shoulder, ‘Must you be like your father in every way?’
I can’t remember the way I responded then, but I remember the smile that danced across my father’s face. It was so beautiful I could feel the joy that ran through him in my heart.
‘Well, Honey just wants to go to my alma mater, but she wants to read law, not architecture as I did. So, that’s something different from her Daddy,’ Father told Auntie Nneka.
‘Nzube, you have to be careful. Honey said it’s because you went there that’s why she wants to go there too. Meanwhile, I heard that the school is not what it used to be back in those days.’
Daddy waved her off with the back of his hand, walked to the sofa and sat, with his plate of white rice and stew in his hand.
After the WAEC and JAMB exams, both of which I made Daddy and Mummy proud, I was ready to jump into that ABU campus, but then the unexpected happened – I wasn’t given admission.
One of the sad evenings that followed, I overheard Daddy telling Mummy something about catchment areas.
Whatever that meant was the reason ABU refused to give me admission, despite my excellent results.
As the only child, whom they had waited and earnestly prayed for in 10 years of marriage, you can understand my parents’ frustration. But Daddy put a bold face on it and encouraged me to keep hope alive.
It was hard remembering that most of my classmates had gotten admission, but I was at home waiting for the following year to write another UTME.
Mummy made it her duty to teach me how to sew clothes. Sewing was one of her hubbies, and something she did each day after returning from Zang Commercial Secondary School, where she taught biology and chemistry. She also taught me how to break egusi
to keep me busy that boring year. She bought me many storybooks to read. But I hated reading. She persuaded me to read the storybooks by rewarding me with some new clothes and shoes for each book I finished till eventually reading became like drinking water to me.
The following year, 2017, I scored 346 in my JAMB result. It was 16 points higher than my aggregate the previous year. I thought because of that ABU would be glad to offer me admission, but I lied to myself. They did not.
This time around, even my courageous and hopeful Daddy couldn’t hide his anger and frustration. I knew he was a courageous man because Mummy told me so. She had told me several times that if it wasn’t for my Daddy’s courage, patience and hope, there was no way their marriage could have survived those 10 dark years of failing repeatedly in their attempts to have a child.
Daddy took his anger and frustration a step further by trying to contact some people in ABU, but most of the people he knew were no longer there.
I had to spend another year at home with a beautiful but useless result.
Mummy and Auntie Nneka suggested I should consider another school, maybe University of Jos or Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, since I was so used to the north that I didn’t want to consider Nnamdi Azikiwe or Lagos State University, which they believed would be easier for me to get admission.
The second year wasn’t as boring as the first because all the beautiful novels Mummy bought for me became my lifeboat. And I was excited because I was getting better at cooking Daddy’s favourite soup, the white soup, which Mummy taught me how to cook with such passion and enthusiasm you would think she was preparing me for a man that would be exactly as my Dad in taste and character. I guess we cherished the smile on Dad’s face each time we served him his favourite dish.
Few days before my third sitting for JAMB—which they now call UTME. That useless JAMB! I was not really excited about writing it again. It felt like there was no need to waste on another attempt as I was never going to be admitted to ABU after all.
‘This time around, you’ll put University of Jos as your first choice, then your so-called ABU as second choice,’ Mummy said.
The finality in her tone and the fire in her eyes struck me like the lightening of thunder.
‘They have fixed March 9 to 17 for this year’s JAMB – sorry, UCT,’ Mummy hissed, walked across to the TV stand and looked around for something. Or maybe she was just trying to busy herself away from the JAMB headache.
‘UTME,’ Daddy corrected, not as patient as he used to be. ‘JAMB is the examination body…’
He looked away when I glanced at him.
I couldn’t tell whether Mummy’s frustration and anger were with JAMB or were with me for insisting on filling ABU as my first and second choice all those fruitless years.
That UTME thing caused a quarrel between Dad and Mum. For the first time in my life, I watched them argue; bitter argument because Mummy said the new regime in JAMB would grant candidates more options even to polytechnics and colleges of education. She added that her choice of the word regime was deliberate because it felt like JAMB was another government of its own in Nigeria collecting yearly taxes from poor Nigerian parents over an educational system that was so rotten that it was already stinking.
I didn’t hear what she added, that made Dad yell at her, ‘Are you the one paying for the JAMB UTME forms? Allow the girl, will you?’
Meanwhile, I was the only child in the house.
Mummy was startled. She glanced at me, her eyes in such shock that I could guess what was running through her head at the time. Honey, can you believe this is your Daddy?
I couldn’t remember Dad as the yelling type. The few times he had some misunderstanding with Mum, I could only hear them talk in urgent whispers or coos. They would shut up each time they saw me coming towards them. I would only know something was wrong from the way they threw furtive glares at each other. But few minutes after, I would hear Mum laughing so hard and she would call Dad, ‘My Naughty Boy’, and Dad would say some funny things again and they would both laugh, falling onto each other like, naughty children.
My Dad didn’t see my third JAMB, or was it UTME result? He went to the wedding of his boss’s son in Barkin Ladi, only for us to hear later that some gun men attacked them at the wedding reception and shot him dead amongst other people. The news flying around said about 14 people were killed and several others sustained various degrees of injuries.
Just like that, we were now speaking of my Dad in past tenses!
After hugging Mum and looking at her in that funny way of his and saying, ‘See you around’ – his favourite way of saying bye-bye – he had left that Saturday morning. He got there, joined other guests celebrating the newly married couple, eating, drinking and dancing, only for the killers to come and start shooting at everyone.
My Daddy was among the dead. Dead before my abysmal JAMB—sorry, the UTME result came out.
Sometimes, in the seething hot lumps in my throat and stinging tears, I couldn’t help thanking God that he wasn’t there to see my last result. My sweet, proud Dad would have been disappointed with that result—I scored 199. One mark was the big shortfall that did the damage. I couldn’t make it to 200. If that result had come out before that cruel day, Daddy would have died a sad and disappointed man.
But again, I still found myself wondering how his last moments were—what was the last thing he had thought about the first time the bullet or the hail of bullets caught him? Did he die trying to run away? Or trying to defend himself? Or did he just watch helplessly as the killers rain bullets into his chest?
Even though Mum didn’t allow me to see Dad’s body, I knew he had many bullet wounds in his chest and stomach. I knew that because of the way Auntie Nneka had cried before fainting. With trembling hands piled on her head, she wailed, ‘Is this my brother’s body with so many wounds everywhere as if he was engaged in a war with them?’
I saw Daddy’s face in that white, cold coffin that made him look black like a sculpture, like it was another person. Daddy’s light skin turned black as if he was coated with charcoal.
When Daddy’s boss came to our house to condole with us two days before the burial, I heard Mummy say between sobs, “Thank God neither the bride nor the groom were killed in the attack.”
One of the men who came with Daddy’s boss recalled a similar attack when Senator Gyang Dangtong of the ruling People’s Democratic Party was killed amongst others. They were attending a mass burial of 63 victims of a massacre the previous day.
‘It was in the same Barkin Ladi that happened. The town has suffered,’ the man said.
Before I knew it, Daddy’s boss fell on the floor and cried like a baby. He was inconsolable.
Mummy later told me that two of his siblings had also been killed in the attack in which the senator was killed.
After the funeral, Mummy became something like a lunatic and a recluse. She stopped taking care of herself and would remain indoors for hours.
Eventually, the school where she taught asked her to take a break until when she could pull herself together. Staying at home made things worse. Mummy floated around like a shadow.
Thank God, she had taught me many things when Dad had been alive, so I helped with most of the house chores.
Daddy’s boss became our major sponsor of food, clothing, and many other things. Daddy’s elder sister, Auntie Nneka, also supported us the best way she could. She did everything to make Mum and I not miss Dad too much, but she knew it was impossible. I caught her crying many times when she came to spend some weekends with us.
In an attempt to make Mum recover herself, I chose the University of Jos as my first and second institution of choice. If things worked out, I would be attending classes from Dogon Karfe where we lived.
Auntie Nneka bought the UTME form for me, before Daddy’s boss knew about it. It was my fourth in the series—in the series.
Later on, I learned that he had sent a hundred thousand naira into Auntie Nneka’s account as reimbursement for the money she had spent in buying me the UTME form.
I scored 251 and, finally, the University of Jos gave me admission to study law. It was still my dream course, but not my dream institution. Anyway, I didn’t care much anymore since Daddy – the only person I needed to make proud – was no more. It wasn’t even about making anybody proud any longer. It was about bringing back to life that which had died in my Mummy since the killing of her Naughty Boy.
By the time I stepped into UJ, I didn’t have the time nor the excitement of the typical fresh JAMBITES to socialise and make friends. I had only one friend, Chundung Pam. I didn’t pay attention to many of my course mates who thought that life on campus started and ended with attracting or dating the finest boy with a fat pocket, or dating one of the haughty boys who drove to school in their parents’ posh cars.
Many of my course mates thought I was a snob. Some of them said I was carrying on as if my father was the governor of Plateau State. Others said I was being snooty because I thought I was the most intelligent girl in our class.
Only if they knew that I wasn’t technically their mate, or that I would have been a five hundred level student at Ahmadu Bello, or that I had a dying mother at home, one for whom I needed to hurry home to be with and help with most of the house chores and to run errands.
Mummy hung in there like a reluctant larva that never wanted to become a bee.
Five years flitted past like flipping akara through hot groundnut oil. We only felt happy in moments of nostalgia.
I finally made Daddy proud wherever he was—I prayed daily that he was in heaven. I couldn’t remember any days passed by without my thinking about the people who cut his sojourn short, like they did to thousands of others.
Much as I tried to wriggle free from the sorrow past, sometimes it clung to me like a tick in a dog’s anthelix. But remembering that I needed to be strong for Mum, and for Auntie Nneka, I kept pushing myself, and outperforming myself every time.
I wasn’t the only one who lost Daddy—he was Auntie Nneka’s only brother, and my Mummy’s only Naughty Boy. For that, I felt that making something out of my life, or out of our lives, would shame the enemy, whoever he or it was.
I came top of my class as a First-class graduate with a CPGA 4.56 and graduated from Law School, Bwari the following year as the second-best candidate. This made Mummy happy and brought back some of her smiles. Before going to Bwari, I had heard her laugh a few times when Auntie Nneka told her that her daughter, referring to me, was a miracle child of destiny.
‘This girl, Honey, will wipe away your tears,’ Auntie Nneka said.
It wasn’t up to three months after I got admitted into law school that another tragedy struck when Auntie Nneka broke the news to me that she was moving to the UK. Although this time around, I was grateful to God it wasn’t death. She promised that once I was done with my law school, she would help me to relocate also and then we would later bring Mummy to join us.
‘This Nigeria ehhn…this country…mmhhh…’ she would always say without completing those brisk sentences. But I knew her worries. I had mine too. Many of them.
Life became more challenging three years after Auntie Nneka moved to the UK. We didn’t hear from her as frequently as we did after the first one year of her relocation. And Daddy’s boss, that sweet, caring man, also faded out of our lives. I guess he had finished the role God asked him to play in our lives. After all, I was now a practicing lawyer, undergoing tutelage in one of the most successful law firms in Abuja.
It was time to take the world in my stride and take care of my mother the way a first-class graduate like me should do. I rolled my sleeves once again. I was going to be one of the best that the law firm had ever seen.
We were 13 in that law firm. Our boss was famous not only here in Abuja. He was known and revered even internationally.
I was the youngest lawyer, or the freshest out of law school. From my observation, I should be older than about 6 of the lawyers I had met there who had already been practicing for some years.
When I saw the money that I was going to be receiving as my monthly remuneration, I was heartbroken for the third time. I needed to look for a house somewhere far in the outskirts of the city of Abuja, or around the edges of Mararaba or Masaka in Nasarawa State, bordering the FCT, or in Kuje, or Kwali, or Zuba. All these places were not such poor options, but was it from the 50,000-naira monthly income that I would be paying for transport, feeding myself, paying rent and also sending something to Mummy back at home in Jos?
One of the junior lawyers, Comfort Shedrack, was generous enough with her time. She sat me down and encouraged me to stay on.
‘When I started my practice here, I was receiving 25k, babe,’ she said, her eyes shining with pride and something else I couldn’t describe. ‘But look at me now. I’m cool. Look at all the other lawyers here. We’re not doing badly, if you ask me.’
‘But when you people started your practice, the value of the naira hadn’t gone down to the dogs the way it has these days,’ I said, my stomach churning like I was mourning my Daddy for the very first time yet again.
She looked like I had just poured sand on her face. I could tell she didn’t understand exactly what I meant by that idiomatic expression, but she guessed that whatever it meant wasn’t a pleasant remark. It was one of the moments I felt so grateful to my mother for buying me all those story books and teaching me to read them always.
‘You’ll be super fine, babe,’ she finally said in a tone so smooth and self-assured that it disarmed my fears.
Things really didn’t get easier as Comfort told me they would. I found myself wondering every single day how all my colleagues managed to survive on their 50k. Our boss paid every one of us a flat rate. The only difference was that since the other lawyers were more experienced than me, they might have found other ways of making money.
Weeks stretched into months, and I became more relaxed and hopeful. Each time I followed Oga to any of his court sittings, he would give me 5k or more for lunch. This guy isn’t that stingy after all, I mused from time to time.
Comfort’s encouragement was beginning to make sense.
One breezy evening in December, we were driving back to the office. Oga drove himself to the court that day, so it was only the two of us in his car. His hand fell in my lap and he said, ‘Hope you’re not too tired. I feel horny.’
I wondered who had told him about the special name Daddy used to call me until he explained that he meant horny—H.O.R.N.Y., that I was so beautiful, each time he saw me, he felt horny. I couldn’t believe it. That was a 64-year-old man talking to a 33-year-old.
Many days after, he asked to take me to a dinner, after which we ended up in one of the hotel rooms in Abuja.
Stroking my nipple with the tip of his fingers, he said that he was going to be giving me a million naira every month, so that I would be free, financially.
‘I will get you a beautiful apartment in the heart of Abuja too.’
But all this largesse had nothing to do with my value as a lawyer in his hallowed chamber. My monthly remuneration remained 50k, just like that of everyone working in his law firm.
He told me all the beautiful things he was going to give me, but didn’t tell me what he was going to take from me. I stared at him for a long time. Oga, your money bleeds.
The following day, I didn’t show up at the office. I was out on the streets, determined to make my own bones.
