OlaOlowo Media

Part 10: Useful somebody In a room in a house in VGC, Kike, Janet, Mama, and I were sitting on dining table chairs on one side of a wide wooden desk that had three landlines and four mobile phones connected to chargers on top of it. On the other side of the desk, a short, stout, bald man who had four deep tribal marks running one atop the other along his cheeks and one across his nose on the left side was holding Janet’s phone in both his hands, staring at the tiny screen. He was in a mostly brown Ankara outfit. He had large coral beads on one wrist and an equally large gold bracelet on the other. Around his neck he wore a slim gold chain, a woman’s chain, pulled down by a white and yellow gold star pendant. The AC was on and the room was cool but he had sweat beads across his huge shiny forehead. Behind us, even though I didn’t dare to turn and look but I could hear his heavy breathing, stood a tall muscle builder – for want of a better description, who had...

Part 9: Midnight Shawarma My phone wasn’t coming on. I paid the Okada man with all the money I had left. If I hadn’t taken a cab to Eko Hotel, or bought that expensive bottle of Coke, I’d still have enough money to get back home if by some extreme bad luck Johnny had been trying to call me, had come to Marocaine and not found me, and had gone back to the hotel. I could walk the short distance back to the hotel but that would be asking for trouble. Enough girls have been arrested for prostitution just by walking alone at night. I didn’t want to add police bail to my financial problems. As usual there was a queue at the Shawarma kiosk. This was good because it meant I could delay ordering till hopefully Johnny arrived. I took my phone apart again to see if I hadn’t dried it enough. A new phone was going to set me back more than I cared to even imagine. Standing in queue, drying my phone, and looking around for Johnny’s face, I started to think of my...

Part 8: The girl who ran His back was to me, sitting there, talking to those two girls, feeling smug with himself, feeling like a G. God help me, I could kill him! I was still thinking of walking up to him when I felt myself already walking. My heart was pounding up into my ears but it was no longer fear, it was pure hatred. I remembered the way he made me run for my life. I remembered how he slept with me. I remembered how my head swelled up with fear and how I was sure I was going to die. I hated him. I’d never hated someone so much. What would I do to him? What would I say? I was trying to think but my mind was no longer mine. I was walking towards him but it wasn’t me – something else was controlling me. Oh God help me! I was going to kill a man. I was going to pick up a bottle on his table and smash it on his head. I was going to do serious damage to him. I was going to get into trouble but I couldn’t stop myself. I kept walking towards him and towards...

I had just settled into a chair in a dark corner when my phone rang and I hoped it would be Johnny calling to tell me he was close to the hotel. As I reached into my hand bag that was also doubling as an overnight bag, I caught sight of someone walking down the steps to the poolside. I forgot about the ringing phone and concentrated on the tall man in white shirt and blue jeans. It couldn’t be. But, could it? I watched him walk to the bar where he stopped to chat with the bartenders. They appeared pleased to see him. He brought out some money from his pocket and shared it amongst them, buying himself salutes from the male staff behind the bar. He didn’t buy anything. He left the bar and walked his casual walk to a table with two girls already sitting and sipping Maltina. He sat down and started talking to one of the girls. They appeared to all know each other. I still couldn’t be sure. I wanted to get a closer look but just then as I was planning to get up and walk ...

Part 7: Barawo! Living two separate lives is not always by choice or design, sometimes it just happens. A few years ago I was a secondary school graduate looking for admission into University. I was different then. I was young and naïve. Today I’m an undergraduate paying her way through school. I have changed. But the person I was still exists in the minds of those who knew me then, kept alive by an endless string of lies and pretence. She lives still, and every so often, I have to be her again. Meeting up with Johnny is one of such times. When he called, he told me he just landed in Lagos in a friend’s private jet. He swore that after his experience in the private jet he was determined to be rich, even it takes stealing. From where I stand, Johnny is rich. He owns his own successful business, he owns his own houses in Abuja and in Lagos, and he owns his own cars. For me, he was the richest friend I had. Come to think of it, the only rich friend I have. The dozens ...

Johnny is… Well, first, Johnny is not Nigerian. He’s Lebanese. He’s a shorty, stout, 40-something year old Lebanese man so in denial of his balding head that he wears what remains of his hair in a long shinny mass pulled back into a juvenile ponytail. I met Johnny at a party he had supplied drinks for. That’s what he does; he sells booze. He’s actually like the biggest importer of French wine into Nigeria but you wouldn’t know it from the way he dresses like a small boy, in his baggy jeans and football club jersey tops, and from the way he behaves like a tout. In fact, he’s a tout. Johnny is as much a Naija boy as any Lagosian born into anIsale-Ekofamily. His parents, he claims, were born in Nigeria, as were his grandparents. But it’s Johnny, you can never tell when he’s joking and when he’s been serious. He once told me he was dating Babangida’s daughter, only for him to have forgotten completely about it after I...

Part 6: Johnny I was stuck indoors, held captive by extreme lack of money, and as such I couldn’t escape the girls’ drama. I dared not even take a walk outside to get away from them. I was avoiding the girl who sold me the things I wore to First Lady’s party and I was also avoiding our landlady’s son – but that one is another story. They were not the only people I was avoiding. I was not taking my mum’s calls as well, as much as that filled me with guilt, and I was also not so keen to bump into First Lady and her crew or anyone who could recognize me from that party. I still hadn’t come up with a perfect lie to explain away my behaviour that night. After the girl had been to the BQ like ten times to collect her money, I finally told her to come and collect her clothes. She told me I had worn them and I told her I would have them dry-cleaned. The poor girl looked at me like she was going to cry. I boned and told her I would find someone to buy...

My fearful heart reached out to hers. “Let us go,” I said. We agreed to go but we both stood there, a few meters from our other white and black girls, the other people to our other side, a huge wall behind us, and the silent pool in front of us. First lady was on the other side of the pool, still discussing with the boys she was discussing with. At that moment, I prayed to God that should he let me leave this place alive, I would never go to where they are doing bad things again. The generator spluttered. I don’t know who took the first step, but we were soon walking towards the other people at the party – the ones not dressed in white and black. We had almost gotten to them when I felt something nudge my spirit to look back. I looked over my shoulder, and behind us, walking in a long silent line, were the other black and white girls. Who told them to follow us! “Babes!” That was First lady’s voice. Everybody stopped; even I and my fellow...

Part 5: White and Black It was an incredibly dark night. The kind of night that makes you want to go back inside and search for your Bible. We had all arrived at the venue of the party – a large mansion in Ikeja GRA – in rides First Lady had arranged for the purpose. NEPA had plunged the compound into absolute darkness, and from the intermittent spluttering and spitting sound coming from a shed we passed at the entrance to the property, it was obvious that the generator was refusing to cooperate. As I waited for First Lady to finish chatting with some boys dressed in colourful polo shirts and low-hanging jeans, I figured out that the other girls loitering by the gazebo on one side of the swimming pool were other girls she had ‘arranged.’ I consciously walked a little way away from them. I had noticed people looking at the gathering of girls dressed in white and black and I didn’t want them to think of me as one of them – I am not an Ashewo like t...

Part 4: Thanks for coming I was marching to the song playing on my iPod and as such I was oblivious of the world around me, and of the car that had slowed down to a crawl beside me. Not until an arm reached out of the front window and pulled my arm bag did I sense danger and feel the need to cry out and flee. But the arm belonged to a babe, a fellow student, and the car was being driven by First Lady, the so-called biggest babe on campus. As my heartbeat returned to normal, the car pulled up ahead of me and parked on the sidewalk, blocking my path. I waited for someone to come out. But it was First Lady and four of her deputies; of course they expected me to walk over to them. First Lady and I are not friends, this I must stress. She’s one of those girls on campus who manage to travel to Dubai frequently, own a neat Tokunbo, and arrange girls for their ‘big boy’ friends. She’s a pimp, for want of a better embellishment. But her real claim to fame is the fact...

Part 3: Full frontal The thing with getting used to suffer-head is that the slightest luxury feels strange – suspicious even. When I went to sleep, there were at least five of us in the room: Kike, Mama, one Tolu girl from next door, Clara, and myself. But now, I was stretching all over the mattress without touching someone’s breasts or having my leg pushed away by someone’s arms. It felt wrong. I woke up to bright light. But even as I anticipated the pain from opening my eyes in the lit room, I knew it wasn’t morning yet. I rolled over on the mattress, away from the glare of the 100 watt light bulb, and I slowly cracked my eyes open. Mama was by the door, in pants and bra, and a hairnet and nothing more. She was holding a phone in front of her face with both hands. I looked where she was focusing on the other side of the bed and I saw Kike, naked as she was born, spread on the worn bed sheet in what she must have thought was a sexy pose. I closed my eyes an...

The policemen listened to our story as told by Mama and asked us if we wanted to come to the station to make a statement. “He is on the bridge!” Mama shouted at them. “You can still catch him!” I was thinking the same. One of the officers explained their position: “See ehn, just go and do thanksgiving that he did not succeed. By now he would have run away. How do we know where to catch him?” Mama pointed out that we could take them to his hotel room but the same officer explained that “hotel people don’t like that kind of trouble. They won’t even let us see the man. Just go home and you too, stop doing ashara.” We stayed with the policemen, partly out of having been placed under arrest and partly out of not wanting to be alone, and we listened to them tell stories of girls who had barely escaped ritual killers, just like we had. When they were ready to leave we realised we were also free to go. We begged them to drop us hom...

Part 2: A girl’s best enemies For the past week Kike had been careful not to leave her phone lying around, and it wasn’t because it was a brand new white Blackberry torch. She had recently netted a new catch and she wasn’t taken any chances with any of the other girls who might want to steal her new guy’s number. Of the many assets girls amass – shoes, bags, gold, lecturers – phone numbers are the most valuable. If you’re broke it can take some time to find someone to buy jewellery from you, and even then the price they’ll offer will usually be dagger short of a mugging. But there’s always a market for phone numbers of guaranteed pay masters – and the prices are standard: Five K for a junior aristo who normally pays about that much for a girl; ten K for one who pays more; and when themugunin question is of the senator type, phone numbers can often sell for as high as 50 k. Even when a girl doesn’t have enough money to ...

Part 1: Running girl I have learnt many things in life and one of them is that you cannot run for your life in high heel shoes. As I was running down the slope of Falomo Bridge, at some time past 4 am, I was actually praying for the heels of my Dorothy Perkins shoes to break because I did not dare to stop to take them off. I was no longer aware of Mama running behind me. I couldn’t hear her footsteps but I wasn’t stopping to check on her; it was well and truly an every-chick-for-herself kind of situation. And besides, we have always told her to lose weight. Maybe now, if we make it out of this alive, she would finally learn the folly of embracing her orobo title. At the bottom of the bridge, on the Ikoyi side, I ran into the remnants of a police check point. The officers were drinking what I can only assume to be paraga, and counting the days take. If I was shocked to happen on them at four in the morning, they were equally startled to see a yellow girl in a cream low-cut...

PIRED BY THE HOLY ONE PART 15 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi O. Akintunde Life in Houston was great, the first month was welcoming. My sister and her husband who were living in a two bedroom apartment told their kids to vacate their room to accommodate my children and I Which was the usual anytime we went visiting for weeks. I hid my relocation plans from them, even my daughters didn’t know we were relocating, all I told them was we were going to Houston for a short break. I didn’t hint them on what was going on with their father. I just told them I needed a break and since that was not the first trip to Houston, they didn’t suspect any foul play. However, when it was about the sixth week, I started hearing my brother in law and Sister arguing behind closed doors. I didn’t know what it was about until when my brother in law confronted me about it around the 8th week. (2 months). “Aunt Betty, my wife an...

PART 17 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi Ojerinde Akintunde “Mum, what is happening? I heard my daughters saying as we were looking at a strange house that used to be ours and the new security man... “I don’t know either” I said as I watched the new security man approaching us in the Taxi... “Good Afternoon ma, please who are you here to see?” The security man said I swallowed hard as I tried to say something... “We are not here to see anyone, this is our house, who are you?” ....My first daughter, Gold had jumped down from the car to challenge the security man... “Gold, stop it, we need to talk nicely to the man, he is only doing his job” I said with the little strength in me... “Sir, please tell your boss, it is his wife and daughters that are at the door “I said very calmly “His wife?” The security man asked very confused. “I am sorry, maybe...

PART 16 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi O. Akintunde Henry and I stopped by a canteen to eat, I refused eating. He ate a whole lot. When it was time to leave, Henry was being sluggish, I stood up and left him, telling him he should catch up with me. After I left him behind and was already close to the main road, I decided to look back but he was nowhere in sight. I didn’t see him anymore, I tried going back to look for him but I couldn’t find my way back. The routes I saw didn’t match where I had just passed, it all looked confusing.... I woke up from that dream and I was sure I heard God when He said.... “You left him behind a long time ago, Daughter, You are far ahead of him spiritually. Are you going to leave him lost in the world? Or will you go back and find him?” I broke down in tears, I knew what this meant. God wanted me to go back to Nigeria to get back my husband, but God! This was not going to...

PART 14 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi Ojerinde Akintunde “Ding Dong, Dong Ding” was the sound I was hearing in my brain...I couldn’t even press the end button on my phone. All I did was to gently place it on the Table beside me. It was official I had lost my husband. The girl sounded so well cultured, articulate in her points, even though if the circumstances were right, I could have given her the right answers to her biblical citing... I could have told her it was never in God’s plan for man to have two wives, or else he would have made Adam to have two wives or better still when Eve messed up, he could have created a new Eve for Adam. I could have told her about David, that he been the man after God’s own heart had more to do with his relationship with God not his acquiring of wives. I ought to have told her that David suffered a great deal for having so many wives. God’s intention was for him...

PIRED BY THE HOLY ONE PART 13 “ISOKENE “ (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi Ojerinde Akintunde “Hello Ma”...the husband snatcher/She-devil said with the most beautifully alluringly textured voice I had heard in my life....If the circumstances were right, I could have fallen in love with her voice...., “And why the unnecessary “Ma”? Was she trying to give me a fake impression about herself that she was respectful? Or trying to act like a good girl before Henry....Please she should give that to fools like my husband that she had tied down with her charm” I thought as I blurted out in anger the next few words.... “Hello Margaret or whatever you are called, I don’t have much to say to you, because I believe you and I are not in the same league.. I just want you to think of how callous you are and do the needful, before I ask God to punish you...” “Ma, I know God Can not punish me because I ...

PART 12 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi O. Akintunde “His mistress? What do you mean ma?” Isokene asked in a very soft confused voice, a voice that broke me into uncountable pieces. I must have wept for over 10 minutes as I recounted everything to her. She was as shocked as the word shocked. “Jesus!” was all she kept saying... After about 30 minutes, she asked me the million Naira question... “So what you planning to do, Aunty?” “I ...I am planning to relocate to the US, start a new life with my children and watch what God will do. If Henry returns back to his senses, all well and good but if not, still good. The end of a marriage is not the end of the world” “ Just like that....You plan on giving up just like that on your 15 year marriage, Aunty all those messages you used to preach, did it ever register with you or you were just giving people like us Spiritual food and starvin...

PART 11 “ISOKENE” (STOP MY WIFE FROM SMILING) ©️Opeyemi O. Akintunde “I didn’t close the door behind me as I rushed into the kitchen to drop all the foodstuffs I had bought. I literally forgot about the door, So Aunty you can imagine how my heart must have felt, it almost jumped out of my body when I felt Ibidolo’s arm around me from behind. I jumped and turned and there he was looking at me. His eyes were bloodshot red, he hugged me so tight and was weeping like a baby and kept saying... “This is not what I want for you, I am not that wicked, I know I am selfish, but not wicked, I am sorry” I kept telling him it was ok and I was fine doing it, to make him happy.... “How can I be happy when I am putting you in bondage?” Still weeping, he unwrapped me by himself “Please, don’t you ever do this again, you can smile to the whole world if you want. Your smile is not just for me, it is for you as wel...