Paradise's Paradox (Part A)

“Dare to Fly” I read the italicised inscription which was written in red against the white-painted body of the tired-looking and dilapidated bus. It had been bashed in places and sputtered past me like an old man afflicted with tuberculosis. The conductor banged on the roof of the bus, repeatedly and hard enough to make me jolt. I thought that one of the parts of the bus would fall off against such onslaught.  Ten paces ahead of me, the bus stopped and the conductor ran towards me, sipping on a low-price sachet rum which he held between his teeth. In his left hand, he carried all kinds of Nigerian currencies and by my reckoning, may even have some dollars or euros in there. His right hand was occupied too, he was holding up his ragged-looking, “once-sky-blue-now-dirty-brown” jeans. He may have forgotten to wear belt or maybe he was making a fashion statement; he may be sagging. His black singlet grasped desperately at some dignity but missed completely. It was riddled with tiny holes and was torn at the seams, it's thread flew meekly against the cold morning wind.
It was an odd morning, it was dark, cold and slow, almost mirroring my life. Lagos never sleeps but on this morning with the cloudy and cold weather,  it seemed that it was having a hangover. In front of the Capitol road junction at Agege, only the sputtering white bus could be found.
“Oshodi 150 with your change” He towered above me and from his height of over six feet threw down the words and his breath of rum down like ballistic missiles at my 5 feet 8 frame. I shifted my face away from his stale breath of alcohol. He was already drinking at 6:45 am on a cold cloudy Monday morning; he is a walking wahala waiting to happen.
“Bros, you no dey go?” He said, effortlessly spinning me around to face him. I dared to look at his face.  His lips were thick and black and the upper lip had a scar positioned directly under the bridge of his massive nostrils which possibly took more oxygen per time than my average-sized nostrils. Another scar, this time a tribal mark ran from his right cheek down to his jaw and fulfilled its purpose on me; it scared me. His eyes were bloodshot and were probably caused by the same substance which had blackened his lips. His dark skin was terrifying and that it not to say that he would have looked any less unsightly if he had been as fair as I am. I had profiled him and somehow decided that he was the material that criminals were made of. I concluded that his bus may be the infamous “one chance” bus which an unfortunate soul was destined to enter in Lagos from time to time.
They said that the perpetrators of that con-scheme or robbery often use “juju” and that if anyone was unguarded in the spirit, by that they mean praying, or exchanged conversation with any of them, he or she would fall under the spell and would see himself rushing off to his house, his business area or the nearest Automated Teller Machines to withdraw oodles of cash, as much as he can access within that short time and drop it with the con-men while thanking them effusively and possibly asking them to drop by anytime.
There are opinions that they merely feed off gullible people’s greed and their drive for enterprise. The con-men were known for weaving some fantastical tale that would make the greedy mark believe that it was a veritable business opportunity to exploit.
Others believe that they used some chemicals which would induce sleep in all of their passengers before they proceeded to rob, rape or kidnap them for rituals. There are a lot of rituals going on in Nigeria. I often wondered if it was that way in other western countries. I suspect that it may be, people do go missing atimes and their body turn up later somewhere else with some body parts missing. The Western police have and their psychological profilers tend to believe that the cases of missing body parts were instances of a deranged psychopath taking a memento off their victims, in Nigeria, we believe that a politician or another societal bigwig had used the victim for money rituals and Nigerians are never wrong to expect the worst from their wealthy and often they were not disappointed. Anyone who could see a nation reeling in debt and still muster the temerity to demand wardrobe allowances could possibly kill someone. If he could hold a knife to a nation’s throat, killing a human being may pale in comparison
I was already prejudiced against the conductor who had long left me and was crying “Oshodi Oshodi” at other passengers who like me took one look each at the bus and another and its conductor and decided that they are better off trekking to Oshodi Bus stop.
I cannot really trek to Oshodi Bus Stop, or maybe I can. More than a dozen Nigerians took to trekking in the aftermath of the Presidential Election which the General Muhammad Buhari had won. Some claimed to have trekked as far as 220 kilometres to congratulate the president for winning the election, others claimed to have travelled similar kilometers to congratulate President Goodluck Jonathan for conceding defeat. Nobody thus far had congratulated me for being a Nigerian and none still have congratulated me for accepting defeat in the failed national project. If I trekked from Ikeja to Oshodi, nobody will be there to congratulate me on my successful arrival. I would only be late for work and get the opposite of congratulations from my cantankerous boss who hates Nigeria, his wife, his job and his life.  I was his Administrative Assistant and my job description was “to always come to the office before him, sit down, do the Boss’ work and give him all the credit ad well as take all of the blame in the event of failure”.
I do not like my Boss, but I like money.
I have often fantasized on how I could earn money without doing any actual work. It must be easy because some of the celebrities do that all the time. One of them once gave lectures on the objectification of women in the society. I would have believed her if she had not released a sex tape, posed nude on several magazines and generally made a career out of being objectified. The admittance into the lecture was slated at the flat rate of $40US and thousands of people are bound to show up.
I spent my leisure time wondering if anyone would show up if I hosted a lecture on “How to Survive a Day at The Office” and spent some more time “googling” on lazy ways to make money. Thus far, I have found none. The links I found talked about investing money, working on a computer, reading emails and a whole lot of work-stuff. I have recently come to accept that “productive laziness” is a lot of hard work.
A gush of cold wind tickled my neck. A rumble of thunder, subdued, like a lion growling before it pounced, broke out in the sky. The gathering cloud made the morning seem earlier than it should, giving a 5am visibility to a 6:50am morning. I watched people rushing towards the jalopy bus and made a run for it too. Even if it could not move, it could at least serve as an umbrella for a while.
“Oshodi #200 with your change” He said as people scramble to get into the bus.
“Madam, if you no dey enter, come down make another person enter” The conductor told a woman who was asking about the sudden change in price. The woman stood at the door of the bus for about a second or two, turned to the conductor with a glower, apparently deciding that anyone who could take “Igbo” and rum that time in the morning was not worth her words, she sighed loudly and entered the bus. I stood beside the conductor certain that if looks could kill, the conductor would have been on the sidewalk in a heap. The woman looked every inch like a madam and she knew it, she was not about to start arguments with the conductor like most of her mates who wore blonde or brunette wigs, bleached, did every other thing but diet to keep in shape and wield a rude disposition as a defensive mechanism against anyone who would dare point out that she was old enough to be a grandmother.
She looked around the seats of the bus running her fore-finger on the seats and inspecting it closely for specks of dust. Satisfied, she sat down and placed her black leather bag on top of her laps, from outside the bus, I could see the unmistakable gold medusa’s head. She held her chin up and her eyes scanned the bus looking for parts that may likely dirty her cream-coloured knee-high gown which she covered with a black jacket. The conductor did not look at her red face which could have been yellow in her younger years and the eyes that condescendingly inspected even the man on faded black shirt and horn-rimmed eyeglasses, that was sat next to her. Her misophobia felt forced, I could see in her even as I entered and sat directly behind her, the haughtiness of a woman who felt that she deserved to go to work in her own car but was too prepossessed with her appearance to do something about it. She must have spent as much money buying designer clothes, shoes and bags than she would have needed to buy a “tokunbo” Mercedes V-boot. I agreed with her, she was way too overdressed to ride to work in a bus which was more likely to debark us in the middle of the highway and at the mercy of the insane Lagos commuters who took to the roads as if it was a race track, talked with their horns and would often embark on suicide maneuvers to see who will blink first. They do not stop for anyone but a “kaboom” or even the more insane LASTMA.
There was this song I watched a video on YouTube; a place where people could go and watch the video of other people trying to get famous by either doing amazing things or doing stupid things, where a man sang that LASTMA chased him into his bedroom for breaking the traffic “one way” rule. I was not certain whether LASTMA actually chased that man into his bedroom; I was not even certain whether LASTMA chased that man at all but I was certain that “that” was something LASTMA could do. I have watched them embark on high-speed chase in a bid to arrest a jaywalker and in that process caused more accidents than they have been able to prevent.
Thus Lagos drivers for all their hardheadedness have come to accept that one should not attempt to escape from LASTMA except if one wanted a Death Race.

To be continued...

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MOBILE MONEY IN NIGERIA: WHY IT IS YET TO REACH IT’S POTENTIALS

Okwuanya Pius-Vincent
The advent of technology in the aptly named computer age has created a demand for ease in all aspects of human endeavors. In the society, people continue to seek and advance new means of performing their daily tasks with a lot more comfort. The mobile phone came to typify this inclination and has come to become the go-to gadget in all walks of societal life. It has helped to bridge the communication gap and consequently lubricated interpersonal interactions; it has also facilitated globalization and ultimately could be considered the major driver behind globalization. However, there exists a chasm between the potentials of communications technology and its visible impacts in some parts of the world. Succinctly put, Nigeria is yet to harness the full possibilities of the computer to make life as easy as it could be. A vast majority of Nigerians are stuck in the use of the social media while ignoring other technological means to smoothen relationships. For instance, one often does encounter a Nigerian youth who should be savvy, technology-wise, queuing in front of a bank or the ATMs so as to withdraw money and buy airtimes. Others arrive to their workplaces late and leave early so as to meet up with the payment of so many bills. All these they do while cradling the latest mobile phones and having a 24hour internet connection. These challenges are what the introduction of Mobile Money is expected to tackle in Nigeria.
Mobile money has a history of success. Its introduction in Kenya was a resounding success and prompted other countries to review avenues to tap into the vast potentials of the mobile money. Thus in the month of August in 2011, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced the mobile money platform as a veritable tool to provide basic financial services and create payment access to the millions of unbanked or underbanked  in the rural areas and consequently drive financial inclusion in the country. In that same year, The CBN licensed sixteen banks and other financial services institution to deploy the services across Nigeria. According to Financial Access Report of 2009, half of the world’s population is unbanked and thus, the mobile money industry is expected to reach $600bn globally which would be double of its figure in 2011. This figure exposes the wealth of opportunities that lies in the mobile money industry. The success stories of The Mobile Money industry in Kenya, Afghanistan and The Philippines have proven that the projections of vast exploitable opportunity in the sector are exact. However, Mobile Money in Nigeria is yet to realize its full promises despite the projections of a lot of financial experts have projected that Nigeria, with over 150 million operational mobile lines packs the potential to lead the world in the mobile money industry. This is because of some problems which I will briefly explain below.
One of such problems is the default distrust with which Nigeria approaches services they cannot see or touch. The fear is that of accountability. Simply put, Nigerians are basically worried about who to blame when something goes wrong. There are often cases of terminated and incomplete transactions which the individual may not have the time to sort. An apt instance could be found in the use of debit and credit cards in Nigeria. It was expected that in 2013, the number of debit card usage will pass the 70 million mark. This number is simply a far cry from the over 150 million Nigerian who still nurse some fears about the security of electronic transactions. According to CBN statistics, banks lost more than #40 billion to electronic fraud in 2013 alone.
A study conducted in the recent past Visa and Fundamo revealed that the success of the Mobile Money Service will be dependent on how deeply the mobile money provider knows his clients. This “Know Your Customer” initiative will be an interesting facilitator of the mobile money industry and have proved helpful to countries with well-managed identification database. Nigeria, on the other hand, despite the recent strides has failed to capture a vast majority of the unbanked population, leaving the mobile money operators with little working information.
The information gap is another impediment and is self-explanatory. The unbanked are usually semi-literate or illiterate and work in the informal sector of the economy. Thus, understanding this information may prove difficult to them even when it is passed across. The “Kunu” and “Akara” sellers, the “Keke” and Taxi drivers need this information chewed down, taken to and explained to them. This would require aggressive marketing because they certainly won’t walk into an office or meet a mobile money agent and ask “Hey, How does this Mobile Money Services work?”
There is also the challenge of interoperability across different mobile money platforms which need to be smoothened. For instance one needs to be able to send money from Fortis, a leading mobile money operator in Nigeria to Paga without worrying about the transaction. According to Rao Chalapathi Immidi opined that interoperability will make the providers of mobile money work in tandem that will encourage many positive factors and many organizations and people to participate towards ensuring that there are wider ranges of products to offer to customers. It was his view that once there is communication, connectivity and common source, there would be a pool of customer expansion, agents will find it easier to run operation while reducing cost and increasing access expansion.
By and large, the most important part of the Mobile Money Service is the Agent.  Mobile money agents are small bank outlets where different services like utilities, remittances, Person-2-Person payment and banking services can be conducted. Their major rule can be summarized as “cash in and cash out”. The shortage of mobile money agents is directly proportional to the slow roll out of the process. Thus, for mobile money to realize its vaunted potentials in Nigeria, an agent-centered approach needs to be adopted. This can be achieved by making it worth their while to subscribe in the emerging industry. The government can help in this by providing the enabling environment which would include introducing and enforcing the cashless policy and providing incentives for businesses to use the mobile money platform in payments and other related services.

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Radio Biafra and The Rest of The Igbos: Between Consensus and Alienation

Radio Biafra and The Rest of Us: Between Consensus and Alienation.
“Enyemaka anyi sina owuwa anyanwu…Nzoputa anyi sina owuwa anyanwu”

“Mmiri zobe zobe…anwu chaba chaba…Agaghi m aba n’ ulo onye kporo m asi”

 The song would blare on my father’s transistor radio every morning. The same song but more complete than this snippet of a rendition. This morning was no different. The song was part of the war songs employed by the valiant soldiers of Biafra who fought the valiant soldiers of Nigeria in a three year battle that accentuated the different strengths of the various ethnicities of Nigeria if not their gaping faultlines. The song was over forty years old but has been getting consistent airplay recently on the Radio Biafra broadcast on 88.2fm. My father is an avid listener of the Radio Biafra and identifies strongly with the marginalized sentiments of the Igbo people. He has more reasons than most to feel caustic about the war. When he was just a teenager, he lost two of his siblings in the war, his twin, a boy and an older sister. It could be then understood that he may have reasons to feel aggrieved about the Hausa soldier who he said stumbled into our community, a town close to Abagana in Anambra state and murdered a whole family in the dead of night. It was during that ruckus that families fled and two of his siblings disappeared. Until this day, none of them was seen or heard from again.

My father had told me during one of our sessions before his transistor radio listening to his favorite radio station on 88.2fm that he sometimes feels that his twin was alive somewhere, maybe doing well as a doctor or a politician and frantically seeking ways to reconnect with the loved ones he lost during the most unfortunate war. When he talks about his twin, I can see the wistful smile on his face and the fondness in his glazed eyes that knew better than to cry in front of his son. Thus I can understand that my father identifies with the sentiments of the Director on Radio Biafra. He was enthralled by his garrulousness and an anger which seemed at least to him fuelled by a genuine rage and a desire to right the wrongs done to the Igbo people during the war roundly referred all over the world as a genocide.

“Nwoke a guru akwukwo o” He would tell me, nodding his head in agreement while holding the road closely into his ears and bending into it probably to milk every ounce of information from the lips of the anchor called “The Director”. The radio signal is not always clear in our part of Nigeria and definitely does not have the wide coverage the voluble Director claims.

I on the other hand was not impressed by The Director. I disagreed with him on most issues. I wanted to tell my Father that I can speak better and at least be more articulate than the wind-up merchant who palpably lacks the dynamism and the requisite ideological foundation to lead such an enormous struggle for ethnic identity and self-determination or even in his own idea, secession. I wanted to remind my Father that it takes more than words to raise an army and that my own definition of bravery does not include hiding in some unidentified location and employing hate-fuelled propaganda to achieve cheap popularity and attract nostalgic and aggrieved listeners. I wanted to tell my father that like Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in Crime and Punishment “to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough.”

I began to open my mouth but The Director as usual beat me to it.

“We follow the directives of Chukwu Abiama. Not Jesus Christ the Israelite who claims to be The Son of God” he delved into some parts of the scriptures to extract and quote verses which supports his notion. That is the funny thing about the Bible, to prove anything, one can easily get a quote from the bible. For instance, according to the bible, it is a sin to drink alcohol but one may drink it as a panacea to stomach upset. The protestant Christians are also convinced that on the wedding of Cannan, Jesus turned water into a soft alcoholic wine and drank same at last supper. The Catholics would cite biblical exegesis and claim that the sort of wine The Priests use for the communion on the altar was precisely tailored and traced to the exact recipe used by Jesus Christ himself at The Last Supper. That was partly why I never took The Director of The Radio Biafra seriously, anyone that resorts to the Bible to prove why anyone should do anything should never be taken seriously. Simply put, some of us are not Christians and are quite comfortable with what we believe in. It may not be immediately clear to the myopic Director but some of his Biafra people are Christians and some are Muslims and most of them do not hear the same voice or voices he hears in the temple. He has to actually come down from his sesquipedalian pedestal to explain to our unwashed selves why he thinks we should rally around him or why anyone should listen to him. I looked away from the radio and towards my Father

 I watched his face frown. He is a Christian, a Catholic and A Charismatic. Those three Cs do not mix well with anyone who does not respect Jesus Christ or at least do not respect his audience’s faith enough to avoid speaking ill of him. My father after a long “nod-less” silence dropped the Radio on our dining table with a clatter but the transistor survived the impact.

“Can’t he concentrate on the Political issues? Does he even know that some of the people that died in the war were Christians? Will he be a priest and a politician” He turned and left the sitting room, leaving his beloved radio abandoned on the table, alone for the first time since I had known him.

“Emechaa igbanyuoru m radio ahu” I heard him call from the corridor that led to the bathroom “Obere nwa di ka ya, kedu ihe oma maka Jesus Christ…Gini ka omakwanu maka Biafra?”

Right before me, Radio Biafra had lost another fan. Although my father was never among the radical and or angry people calling ceaselessly and volunteering to take up arms against an enemy they could not quite identify, his moral support to the Biafra cause swayed me enough, as learned as I feel I am to tune in on the radio and listen to someone who could use a lot of help with articulation of ideas and tact or diplomacy, lecture me and sometimes insult me about issues which he could read a lot about or at least question his elders more about. I have read Alexander Madiebo’s “Revolution and the Biafran war”, Ojukwu’s “Because I am Involved” and Achebe’s valedictory’s “There was a Country”. I have spoken to some of the soldiers that fought in the war. One of my Facebook friends had a father who was part of the ultimately futile but daring mission to capture Lagos for Biafra during the war. Yet the collage I arrived at was not enough to convince me that I now know enough to educate or insult people on air.

In fact, I freely admit that I do not know much about the war apart from the accounts I read which may be prejudiced and stories I was told which the teller may have told through the tints of circumstance and results. Thus The Directors style of dismissing and abruptly ending calls on anyone who dares to challenge his knowledge of pre-war, war and post-war issues or even attempt to offer other possible means to negotiating secession without resorting to the barbaric and counter-productive 1967 template, is most unhealthy and he may not know this, is a very bad PR move.

His autocracy on the radio also gives an unsettling hint to his own vision or version of Biafra. He may want a Biafra of despotism, of exclusion and of ceaseless confrontation. This is a precursor towards anarchy and is certainly not the kind of Biafra many Igbos want. The Igbos want a settled and predictable polity that will support their enterprise and drive economic growth. I am not sure The Director of Radio Biafra knows this. Little wonder then that the radio station is still bedeviled with crippling poverty and could easily go off air for two days straight. At least The Director knows enough to be forthright about these financial impediments.

Another of his problem is that his own version of Biafra lacks a map. The first step towards meaningful secession brokering is the identification of the parts that wants to secede. It is difficult to determine the parts of the country which falls under the ‘Biafran Territory” and which one does not. Ojukwu’s own version of Biafra faced this similar problem with some parts of Niger-Delta refusing to identify as Biafra. The problem is a recurring one. Most parts of the purported “Biafra land” do not fully identify themselves with the Biafran struggle and no one should blame them. The idea of Biafra received better marketing from The Late Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu than from this calamitous marketing it is getting from The Director.

In secession, there is the need to build consensus. The whole parts must be pulling together in one direction. However, we are not guaranteed this in The Radio Biafra’s version. Abakiliki and its people are often derided on the Radio, Rochas Okorocha, The governor of Imo State is a running caricature and Ralph Uwazuruike was given so many names ranging from “Ekperima” (Thief) to “Akalioghelli” (Fool). It may be true that some of these men may have done enough to deserve these names and that the names may be funny at times, it is above all imperative to lobby every influential Igbo man to buy into the idea of Biafra and clearly specify what they may stand to gain. Alienating them is a sepukku. Whether The Director appreciate it or not, wars are not won with guns and the army volunteers lack the resources to engage any part of Nigeria in an armed conflict even if it was guerilla conflict. Boko Haram, as macabre as their effects have being knew this from the get-go and sought the requisite support from the local and international parties who stood to gain from a burning Nigeria.

He has also failed to or at least neglected to recognize the fact that the enemy of Biafra begs a redefinition. Does it include Igbo muslims? Since he hates muslims and believes in only Chukwu Abiama. The proposition to build mosques in some parts of Abakiliki and Imo received his hate-filled tirade and was a topic for a whole day. Does the enemy include our Igbo daughters who got married to Hausa families. I ask this because my Uncle married a Hausa girl who after meeting her, I had to admit that she was indeed a blessing to not just my Uncle but to the whole family. Do the enemies include the Yorubas? The Tiv? The Gwagi and other ethnic minorities who are bedeviled with similar fears of the domination by the majority? Do the enemies include the teeming number of skeptical and well-informed Igbo men who remain unconvinced by his propaganda? Like I have implied throughout this piece, articulation is the key; the prelude to a consensus.

However, I must submit that some of his tirades were not entirely unprovoked. There may be a method to his madness. The genocide of 1967-1970 did take place. The “Igbophobia” seems to be a real thing. The mistrust and the consistent attack of the Igbo identity from some parts of the country is nothing short of pitiable. I am not going to point fingers or name names but during the recent election, a certain Traditional ruler probably residing in or around Lagos did threaten to drown Igbo people in the Lagoon. This singular statement which may or may not have fallen off this royal mouth after an affair with a bottle is ill-timed, unguided and more incendiary than a group of people making empty threats on the radio. Yet, somehow, this ruinous statement quickly disappeared from public discussion and on twitter, #RadioBiafra may well be trending. Some politicians have been known to goad the Igbos at the aftermath of the recent election stating that they have been schemed out of the political equation in Nigeria.

Some have even called on the Department of State Security to move quickly and nip the “Radio Biafra” problem in the bud. This is reactionary and stems from an unhealthy fear of the Igbo people. This is because Nigeria’s ongoing battle with Boko Haram is far from over with the terrorist group embarking on an unchecked killing spree in the North east since the start of the new administration. Nigeria and The DSS has far more issues on their plate than rewarding the Radio Biafra with any sort of attention. This attention is precisely what The Director wants. If he is arrested, his supporters and I daresay many other Igbo men will galvanize around his martyr image and this would build not just his reputation but also his reach.

In summary, I daresay that I am a firm believer in The One Nigeria Project. However, the fears of the Ndigbo need to be addressed by the central government not just by words but through actions and policies. Any well-meaning Nigerian will ultimately see in this Radio Biafra the exact thing I saw and that is, The cry of a people in need of recognition and in search of a place in a nation that they helped to build and a nation that stifle and sometimes threaten them.
However, the Igbos do not cave under the weight of “igbophobia”. They adapt to it. I just wish that there could be a more constructive forum for Ndigbo to air their misgivings and fears. This Radio Biafra is simply not convincing and frankly boggles the mind of most productive Igbo people. If I were the Nigerian Security Services, I will not reward this Radio Biafra with any sort of attention. I will simply face Boko Haram squarely and put on my alarm clock to such time when they will be serious enough to form strong ideological base and a financial spine.
And judging from his tottering steps, The Director may not be imbued with the presence of mind to admit the needful and accommodate other opinions that may not just be about blood and war.

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The Left Side of The Sun    
Okwuanya Tochukwu-Vince
okwuanyavin@gmail.com
@Tovincentokwy

She was surprised that she just allowed her pass her in their ground level living room without stopping her for noisome interrogations as she came into the house that morning. She merely glanced at her black leather watch and followed her, not judging or indulging in her warped scrupulousity.

Not a word.

Her shoulders were bent and she seemed to be shuffling herself forward by the sheer force of will. Her black head tie was askew and was kept rather than tied on her hair. Her all-night worries had replaced her all-night vigil as she waited for her through the night.

She had called her through the night too, over fifty times and most probably during intermittent prayers offered for her safe return but she had not picked. She often told her gory tales about ransome kidnappings and ritualistic abductions often calling out to her when one of the channels on their big plasma television starts airing the missing persons. It worked well for her if the missing person was a girl. But today, she did not talk, she just trailed her silently, with her flip-flops and pink oversized pyjamas.

Before now she would have started proselytizing.

"Lying is a sin my daughter. It is the fastest way to hell fire" Her mother would tell her even when she was just saying the truth.

"Sex is a sin. It is the fastest way to hell fire" She would tell her before she goes back to her boarding school.

"Alcoholism is a sin it is the fastest way to hell fire" She would say despite the bars in their two parlours and some of the refrigerators in some of the many rooms in their duplex having their own stock of assorted alcohols ranging from wines, spirits and beers.

There were so many "fastest way" to hell fire that Barbara had lost count. It may be because the road to hell was biblically very broad and tarred and  was free-flowing that it was consequently called "The Fast Lane". This was in contrast to the road to heaven which was so narrow that a horse could only pass through it with a great deal of discomfort.

Whenever she dared to ask a question about the "fastest ways" to hell or indeed question any of her mother's beliefs, she would reprimand her by raising another in her long list of sins.

"Talking back at your mother is a sin. The Bible did ask you to honor your mother so that your days will be long." The word "father" was conspicuous by its absence and hangs like the Sword of Damocles over them. Barbara was never going to correct her mother's intentional error and her mother was not inclined to acknowledge it.

She had always been that way since she had known her. She had always despised her for not having the strength and will-power to fight, if not for herself then for the future of her two children. She was undoubtedly waiting for eternity to damn his husband to the perpetual lake of fire that burns with sulphur and brimstone while she condemns her daughter to an earthly hell.

For the many times her mother had resorted to her abusive tirades to keep a desperate hold of her evanescing sanity, Barbara, a daughter she had named Chinwoke, had one question hanging on the tip of her tongue like droplets of water hanging at the apex of the fresh green leaves on a dewy morning, scared of dropping to the filthy earth. Like the droplets of water too, Barbara was scared of accumulating yet another sin in the grimy world of her mother where her every turn is a sin. Yet, she found it impossible to please her mother who as soon as she was fourteen and had gone to live inside the boarding school, had started holding confessions almost akin to the Catholic sacramental confession for her inside their duplex. The only thing lacking was a hassock, a flowing white soutane and a stole for her mother.

"How many sins did you commit while in school? How many parties did you attend? How many boys fondled your breast?" She would ask suspiciously as soon as she came back for the holidays. Often looking her over frantically as she supervised.

Her breast developed faster than that of the rest of her peers. She had started fitting it into regular adult bras as early as her fourteenth year and her mother was somehow convinced like most boys allbeit erroneously that breasts grow when they are regularly fondled and that hips expand with steady sex.

Her commandments as well as her interrogations came in the same manner, in soft dulcet tones but which remains at a perpetual variance with her facial features and the intrinsic message. She would scowl, her cheeks puffed out, her hazel brown eyes narrowing like that of a wild cat before it pounces. And she had often pounced on her. Often.

Not necessarily physically, but definitely mentally.

She was often forced by her mother to read some biblical passages aloud. They are usually penitential verses like Psalm 51 and she would often compel her to read it repetitiously for a specified length of time which was never less than an hour, depending on her disposition.

Some days before her 17th birthday, Her mother once demanded a confession before she would call her her daughter again. Her mother continued to pray unceasingly everyday during that "trial" period while Barbara clung desperately to the last vestiges of her sanity She overtly made her the "prayer point" with her black scarf sometimes fastidiously tied over her thinning hair and other times nonchalantly replaced with a handkerchief perched over her head unconvincingly like a bird was wont to perch on an overhead electric wire. She cried sometimes, throwing herself down at the cold hard floor in the upstairs' living room which she had converted to her monastery. She did not speak to her for three days.

On the fourth day, tired and missing her mother, she had confessed to having sex with a boy he had made up despite the fact she was a virgin then.

Her mother had cried again that night, not in pain but in victory. She had finally received a confession from a repentant sinner. Laying her hands over her, she had thanked the Almighty God for giving her the opportunity to win souls for him. She rebaptized her with her tears and hugged her through the night.

However in Barbara's mind it had registered, the only way she could have a loving relationship with her mother was if she became her conversion "project". What her mother loved more than her daughter was a sinful daughter, was one of the lessons she learned that night, locked in her embrace. Another lesson was that lying may lead one to hell in the afterlife, but in this life, it can also save one from a life of alienation, frustration and poverty. The second lesson was reinforced in the next morning when her mother gave her a gift for the first time in her life. It was a King James Version of the Bible and was just another of the twenty-something Bibles in their house but she did not mind. it was a great start.

Afterwards, Barbara had gone out of her way to be as bad as she can be and after each occasion and her confession, her mother would welcome her with open arms, take her into her bosom and cry with her through the night. She would keep reiterating to her through the night that tell God is an unconditional lover.

She agreed. God is an unconditional lover except when one is a homosexual or a liar or a thief or an alcoholic or a drug addict or a fornicator or an adulterer. Through such nights of morbid mother-daughter bonding, her mother often cried more between the both of them, her tears bathing her back as she hugged her a little too tight. They were tears of relief and of memories. Deep into the night when she stirred, she would see her mother sitting up on the bed reading a portion of the scripture with the bedside lamp turned a bit lower than was healthy for the eyes.

Her innocent mind could not fathom then that maybe her mother may not just be trying to exorcise the demons in the present life of her only daughter, she may be trying to exorcise the demons in her own past.

In her innocence and in a frantic but ill-advised pursuit of her mother's attention she had embraced the "fast lane" to her lifelong damnation. She was disvirgined forcefully in her eighteenth year.

She was raped by a masked man whose identity was only unravelled at his orgasmic abandon, a face that would forever haunt her dreams unforgivably.

She blamed her mother and as long as she could not forgive her rapist as long as the sun rises from the east and sets in the west, she would never forgive her mother. In a bid to take her to heaven in the afterlife, she had condemned her to hell in this life.

In the present, five years later, she was content in giving her a hell of her own. She changed her name and started answering to Barbara, a name she had chosen because it sounded alien to her environment; precisely how she felt.

"May I come into your room? I want us to talk"

"No Anna...I don't feel like talking to you or anyone" She said dismissively fishing out her keys from the pockets of the tight black midi shorts she wore for emphasis. She saw her mother's eyes stray to her pink crop top and disapprovingly at her navel piercing adorned with diamond-studded silver ear rings.

"Will you ever call me mother again?" She asked in a plaintive, teary voice, clasping her hands into her right palm and her glazed eyes rolled up in supplication like that of a dog expecting a treat. Barbara was taller than her mother and could see that her hair was dishevelled and the black scarf was dropped on her head rather than tied meticulously. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had not had enough sleep. That realisation oddly made her happy and sad at the same time.

"Anna...please I had a long night" She unlocked the clasped fingers one after another. Free, she turned away briskly, her long silvery earrings jingling in her wake. She walked away from her mother and started climbing the stairs to her room, her soft-soled wedge shoes barely making a sound on the flight of stairs, behind her, her mother trailed, she could confirm this because her flip-flops clicked on the tiled floors and tapped on her heels.

"Where did you sleep last night"

She ignored the question. She felt no obligation to answer her.

"My daughter..." She rushed the stairs to catch up with her, slightly panting she asked Barbara "Did you sleep in a hotel again?"

"Yes" She answered bluntly not even pausing her steps. She could almost hear her flinch.

"Did you sleep with a man?" The tension in her voice was palpable, her mind already dreading the answer she would definitely hear.

"If that is all you want to know, I did not sleep with a man" Her mother heaved a sigh of relief.

"You know my daughter, as a 22 year old, you should not..."

"Anna, I slept with a woman" Barbara interposed, hurling the words down like thunderbolts from her height o

n the stairs to her mother trailing below her, as she took a left turn towards her room.

She could hear her mother's sharp breath echoing off the walls of the duplex as the words struck her. She stood in front of her door, inserted the key into the keyhole but did not open it. The key dangled in front of the door as she heard her mother cry "Chi m egbu o mu o". Her tears were not that of victory anymore, it was that of anguish.

In front of her door, Barbara sat down, resting her back on the sturdy wooden door, she let loose her own pangs in a torrent of tears; silent, excruciating and helpless.

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Chibok Kidnapping: A tale of Intricate Cruelty.

Onye sikwa ma o buru ya.

In the wee hours of 15th April of 2014, the boarding students of Government Secondary School, Chibok were relieving the stress of the external examinations. Some were in their beds while others may be burning the candles in an ill-fated attempt towards brightening the prospects of their very bleak Nigerian future when a group of militants, largely believed to be Boko Haram insurgents, gave them an unanticipated awakening, rounded them up, unperturbed by the Nigerian security agents in an attack that spanned for more than two hours. After the attack, over two hundred girls were reported missing.

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The Ghost of Christmas Now.

"Why won't you travel?" Chimezie asked me again as he took a swig of his chilled beer. We were sitting in a cavernous but empty bar. We are the only "customers" in that bar; actually, Chimezie was the only customer because I was not taking anything. I was intensely preoccupied, too preoccupied to enjoy my favorite bottle of Guiness stout. I could not even order anything. Chimezie's voice echoed through the bar making his statement sound distinctly judgmental like an angry god who has been denied a fattened animal sacrifice.

"You don't want to answer my question?"

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“To Touch or Not To Touch”: Troubling Pieces In The Sign Of Peace.

                                                                                                                               Okwuanya Pius-Vincent

The day could pass for any other day. It started as a sunny bright day which was a rarity in a week where the heavens were either pummeling the earth with stone-like hails or caressing it with a careless drizzle that was as frustrating as it was intermittent. Thus when I woke up in the morning and saw the rays of sunlight sneaking through the window and gnawing at my eyes, I knew that I had no other excuse. I had been wishing that the week’s pattern would continue on that Sunday as I was frantically searching for reasons to not go to church.  I opened my window to glare at the sun but it was just there smiling indulgently like a teacher trying to pass a lesson to a particularly thick student. However,

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