CURIOUS CASE OF A YAHOO BOY (1)

CURIOUS CASE OF A YAHOO BOY (1)

(Confession of a fraudster)

I know God is not a man, if he is a woman I wouldn’t know. I know God made a mistake for sending me to this part of the world, even my family and friends agreed to this.

They always call me ‘Oyinbo Brain ‘, meaning a ‘white man’s brain’, otherwise meaning I am very smart. My name is John and I am indeed very smart and my smartness saw me through secondary school, saw me through university and helping me as I run my ‘PHD on the Street’. The street is very strict that I know and I always have in mind that life is too short like ‘MI the rapper’ so I learnt not to waste my time unnecessarily.

Papa had wasted so much of his lifetime believing and singing ‘E go better’ and I learnt early in life that ‘E go better nah poor man prayer’. At the tender age of 12 I learnt never to trust anyone or depend on anybody, but myself. Not even God, because sometimes God play games I don’t have the luxury of understanding. I never believed in doing bad or doing good, I believed in doing the right thing at the right time. Whether good, whether bad, just let it be right. I knew so many things were wrong with my family and my life. I was not there during creation norassisted God in project ‘human’, but I wished I was His secretary I would have reminded Him of so many things I think He forgot to add in my life and the country He should have send me to, definitely not Nigeria. Papa for instance goes to work around 5am and comes back 10pm and every day we listen to his monologue of how ‘e no easy to be a man and his e go better’ speech. Mama on the other hand, the obedient and patient wife, always inconvenient herself so we could have enough to eat. This worries me always, and I wondered why we never had enough. I wanted to blame Papa, but I realized he was just like every village boy that believed Lagos was a bed of roses and after finding himself on the harsh street of Lagos, he realized ‘e no easy for anywhere’. Mama on the other hand could not be blame for our situation. That would be like blaming her for marrying Papa, though sometimes I wished she had not. A young village girl whom had gotten married to Papa at the age of 13 and started giving birth at the age of 15, could not have known enough so could not do much. I was the first child of my parent, followed by four other children, Samuel, Martins, Joy and Junior; all of us are all ‘street graduate’, despite my effort for them not to enroll in this school called ‘The Street’.

My parent like every Nigerian parent believed if they could send me to school, I would graduate and earn money and then send my younger ones to school. I believed if I studied hard and graduate with first classI’ll be employed by a big cooperation, but ‘O Y O’ (own your own) was my case. After I graduated for more than three years I searched for job, its either am ‘over-qualified’ or ‘no more vacancy’. I became the ‘charity cases’ of newspaper vendors around my locality, since they knew I could no longer afford to buy the papers and in their mercy call to tell me of any vacancy on paper.

Thousands of students graduate from the Higher Institution every year and the numbers of jobs available are laughable compare to the number of people in the unemployment market. In Nigeria Accurate unemployment rates are difficult to obtain and generally mean little in a society where many who work are marginally employed and where begging is a socially accepted occupation. Many has turned ‘Professional Beggars’ on the streets of Nigeria and the youths on the school of ‘street’ studying how to ‘survive,’ has now turned to ‘crime’ to be their ‘professor’ so they can graduate with first class. Those that resisted this ‘professor’ cannot survive long, it’s either you join his class or you are contented with hardship.

Nigeria long had an agricultural economy but now depends almost entirely on the production of petroleum, which lies in large reserves below the Niger Delta and yet Nigeria remains among the world’s poorest countries in terms of per capita income. Oil revenues led the government to ignore agriculture, and Nigeria now import farm products to feed its people, so much of a nation that is the giant of Africa.

Two years ago, April 17th a day I will never forget in my entire life. I was walking with my CV tucked under my armpit, when suddenly a car splashed dirt water on my ‘starched white’. I did not realize I was the one that the water had splashed on; maybe I knew but did not want to believe it. Not until the car revised back and splashed the water on me again, this time intentionally. This time the dirty water splashed on my face and some escaped into my mouth, as if trying to tell me to taste the bitter taste of being ‘a loser’. I charged towards the car like a wounded animal and I was stopped half way, dead on the spot as the window wined down.

Obodo was smiling at me from the driver’s seat. Obodo? Small Obodo?Wonders shall never cease to ‘tie wrapper’ I thought as I stare at him. Obodo is the first child of Mr. and Mrs. Nweke and always run errand for people in the compound so his family could have some food on the table. His father a pensioner was used to spending half of his salary on his sickle cell wife. The pension was even a stipend and it barely survived a week, thus the family depends on Obodo for support. But now Obodo was smiling at me from a Range Rover. How long has it been now, I tried to remember, 11 years I guess. He came down and to my surprise he bowed down in greetings. That same old humility that made everyone loved him. Maybe he was just a mere driver I thought, as he bowed before me, but as he rose again I was convinced otherwise. He had three pieces of shinning gold necklace on his neck. My eyes scrolled unconsciously to his hand and what I saw in those hands could change my life from ‘e go better ‘to ‘e don dey better’.

 He carried me in his car and we spent time talking and catching up on old times. He looked older than I remembered and was more matured and experienced on the ‘street’. He knew exactly how I felt without me trying to explain, one could tell that he had been where I was before. It felt good knowing that he understood my situation and was willing to help me. He used to be the boy and me the man, but now I was the boy and he the man. After one hour, thirty minutes I made the decision that changed my life and whatever was written of me in Heaven. I decided to be a ‘Yahoo Boy’, a ‘Fraudster’. (Watch for part 2)

Des