Welcome to Lagos. Chibundu Onuzo
was ready. It would run on the weekend. The paper would lose more subscribers. He would run the Journal into the ground before he let it become popular reading in government circles.
Abuja
CHIEF SANDAYỌ, THE HONORABLE Minister of Education for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, slid up his drooping agbada sleeves and glanced at his Rolex, gifted to him by his late wife, Funkẹ, a twenty-year-old watch, still telling accurate time. Two hours gone already. On the podium, the minister of health droned on, stuck on a slide about malaria prevention.
Each minister would give a special presentation to the president in this dome-ceilinged hall with low-hanging chandeliers that caught the sparkle from rings and chains and bangles. The room was cold, the air conditioner set to chill, transporting them to a region where scarves and thick socks were necessary. The president was flanked by his predecessors, four former heads of state, all human rights abusers, lined like sphinxes, inscrutable in their chairs. They had been defanged now, overthrown by one coup or the other, paraded in the capital once a year as “elder statesmen.” Chief Sandayọ turned his eyes to the rest of the room.
You could not speak when a minister was presenting, but nothing stopped them from looking, sizing one another up, going over the battle lines in their heads. It was like the polygamous household he had grown up in, except the stakes here ran to billions. His late wife would have mocked him for how fast he had learned to play Abuja politics. He bobbed a greeting to the Senate president, who had just walked in with a cloud of assistants.
As well as the ministers, the room was choked with their ambitious aides, men and women in sharp suits. The aides held files for the ministers, they straightened the folds of their clothing, and if necessary, they presented for them, careful to ascribe credit where it was due.
Chief Sandayọ had come with two assistants of his own, Harvard MBA and PhD from Warwick. The agriculture minister had brought seven to bolster her. She was a new appointee, rushed into a job she had scarce qualification for. During each presentation, her lower lip disappeared into her mouth, emerging more mangled as Petroleum, Defense, and Tourism gave their reports. Finally it was Agriculture’s turn. “Your Excellencies, Former Presidents of Nigeria, His Excellency the Senate President, Honorable Ministers, Honorable Chair of the House Committee on Agriculture, Special Adviser to the President on Performance Monitoring, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, all protocols observed.”
She was trembling, her knees touching and untouching like the wires in a faulty cable. Her makeup was bold, provocative even, her lips too red for this hour of the morning. Her fellow ministers were either plain, potbellied men or motherly women, past makeup and seduction. Who had she slept with to get her job? Rumors were flying around already. Sandayọ’s bet was on President Hassan himself. One of her aides stood and whispered to her.
“Forgive me, Mr. President. I omitted you in my opening address.”
She looked ready to display the contents of her breakfast to the room.
“Your Excellency, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Commander in Chief, GCFR—”
“Perhaps we will hear from the Honorable Minister of Agriculture another time,” the president said, cutting her off. “My honorable predecessors and your brother and sister ministers will agree that it is not fair to expect a presentation at such an early stage of your new job. Chief Sandayọ, if you will proceed for us.”
His ministry, the Ministry of Education, was of little interest to his present audience. A small budget considering the army of teachers, professors, and vice chancellors that fell under his command. Education was of importance only when university staff went on strike, demanding higher pay for their worsening services.
Sandayọ breezed through the introduction: observing all protocols, naming all names. The ministry had begun implementation of its five-point agenda on toilet provision in northeastern Nigeria to increase female pupil attendance. The ministry had made a detailed plan of a three-tiered approach to combating the increase in adolescent dropout rates.
The jargon came easily to Sandayọ now, each technical phrase linked to another, forming a chain of incomprehensibility that passed as knowledge in front of this crowd.
“And what of the Basic Education Fund?” the president asked.
“We are beginning a strategic positioning of how best to direct this new resource.”
“I have high hopes for you and your team. I hear you have done good things in basic education for the Yoruba people. Now I want you to do the same for the rest of Nigeria.”
The president was speaking of Sandayọ’s time in the Yoruba People’s Congress over a decade ago, a time that Chief Sandayọ seldom remembered in the whirlwind of meetings and gala dinners that was Abuja.
He had joined the group at the invitation of its founder, Francis Ifaleke, a charismatic, simply dressed man, compelling with no manic fundamentalist air around him, the opposite of all he had imagined the YPC to be.
He still remembered the first meeting he attended, brimming with skepticism, ready to walk out at the slightest provocation. YPC members were rumored thugs, gullible in their violence, obsessed with invincibility charms and amulets. He discovered that first night a mini utopia, it seemed, bricklayers and doctors, vulcanizers and bankers all gathered for the good of the Yoruba race. They were committed to education with the zeal of their guide, Ọbafẹmi Awolowo. He had been honored to accept Francis’s offer to become the group’s education officer.
That was over fifteen years ago, a time of slimmer waistlines and larger ideals. As he swung the sleeves of his agbada onto his shoulders, he wondered what most of his former comrades would think if they could see him now.
“MR. WỌLE ODUKỌYA IS here to see you, sir,” Chief Sandayọ’s receptionist said into the intercom.
The ministry waiting room overflowed with teachers, students, widows, pastors, marketwomen, journalists, Student Union presidents, principals sacked for indecency, parents with photos of sons expelled for hooliganism, daughters dismissed for pregnancy. Yet no matter who was in line, Wọle Odukọya must be shown through.
Sandayọ knew Odukọya from his YPC days, when the latter had been one of the younger members, flashy but earnest, eager to please.
“Great Yoruba people,” Odukọya said when he swaggered into Sandayọ’s office. It struck him anew each time he saw Odukọya how tasteless the man was. Rhinestones glittered down the seams of his agbada and his shoes shone a patent red. Sandayọ did not rise to greet him. Godfather or no, the man was still more than a decade younger than he was.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you. The work of a minister is not easy.”
People said Odukọya made his money from drugs. He also dealt in philanthropic causes: widows and young girls who couldn’t afford their university fees. People said he slept with them. Sandayọ had wondered what Odukọya would demand for passing on his name to the president. A year had gone by and still no requests, not even for one of the smaller ministry contracts. All the man wanted to do was play this “do you remember” game.
“Do you remember when we went for adult education in Kwara and they didn’t want us to enter because some of the women were wearing jeans?”
With the YPC, Sandayọ had set up classes in village clearings, evening schools for city workers, language courses for the culturally estranged children of the rich, children like his son in America who stumbled over the simplest of Yoruba phrases. He had not known himself to be an organizer or a public speaker, gifts hidden from him and all who knew him.
“I was speaking to Mallam the other day about giving my friend an oil block.” Mallam was their