I Do Not Come to You by Chance (26 page)

‘So let’s get on with business, shall we?’ Alhaji Mahmud began.

Protocol Officer got on.

‘Alhaji, like I was telling you, Mr Winterbottom is very interested in the development of Africa. His company has invested in several projects in South Africa and Uganda.’

He went on to elaborate on Mr Winterbottom’s sound qualities, speaking humbly and sparingly like a man who knew that he had limited time to make his case. He had started mentioning the bid for the Akanu Ibiam International Airport project, when Cash Daddy truncated his speech.

‘Where did you say you’re from again?’ Alhaji Mahmud asked. ‘Czechoslovakia, was it?’

‘I’m Argentinian,’ Mr Winterbottom replied. ‘My parents were originally English and then they lived in Uganda where I was born. But I moved to Argentina in the seventies.’

‘Unbelievable!’ exclaimed Alhaji Mahmud. Three diners and four waiters shot glances at our table. ‘I’m very excited to hear this! A real international citizen! And you’re also one of our African brothers. Unique. We don’t only have black Americans, we also have White Africans.’

Mr Winterbottom giggled. We smiled.

‘With our young democracy,’ the minister continued, ‘Nigeria is ripe for huge foreign investors like you right now. And we’re trying as much as possible to diversify. Most of the big contracts my department has awarded recently have all been taken by the Germans. I don’t want them to start thinking that Nigeria belongs to them. If it took so long to chase out the British, who knows how long it will take with the Germans?’

It sounded like a joke. I and Protocol Officer laughed. Mr Winterbottom did as well, after looking round to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping.

‘It’s time to open up our country to others,’ the Minister continued. ‘What better place to start than with a white man who is even our own African brother?’

Cash Daddy slapped Mr Winterbottom on the back. The giggling and smiling resumed. Abruptly, the minister sobered up.

‘Mr Winterbotom, let me tell you something. This Akanu Ibiam Airport project is very close to my heart. The Igbos have been advocating for their own international airport for a long time, and I’m delighted that in my tenure as Minister of Aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, their dream is being fulfilled.’ He turned to me and Protocol Officer. ‘You’re Igbo, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Alhaji,’ we said.

‘Ah.’ He shook his head with pity. He kept on shaking his head. ‘Mr Winterbottom, do you know what a nigger is?’

The white man recoiled, as if a viper had briefly flicked its tongue out of Cash Daddy’s mouth. He shifted his eyes to me and shifted them to Mr Akpiri-Ogologo, then back to the minister again. He seemed unsure as to whether this was a trick question, whether he was supposed to admit knowing what the dirty word meant.

‘Do you?’ Cash Daddy insisted.

‘Oh, it’s a term that never finds its way into my vocabulary,’ Mr Winterbottom replied.

‘But you know what it means?’

‘Errrrrrrrrrrrr . . . Yes.’

‘The Igbos are the niggers of Nigeria,’ Cash Daddy declared, pointing at us. ‘They’ve been maltreated and marginalised.’

He stopped and drew a valiant breath.

‘Ignored,’ Protocol Officer quietly added.

Cash Daddy glanced quickly at me.

‘Forgotten,’ I mumbled quietly, too.

‘Do you understand that they live in the only geopolitical zone in Nigeria without an international airport?’ Alhaji Mahmud continued, still pointing. ‘This one is going to be their first.’

‘Thank you very much, Alhaji,’ we said.

‘I’m not Igbo,’ Alhaji Mahmud lowered his voice modestly, ‘but I feel so honoured to be part of this historical event.’

The white man opened his mouth and swallowed the noble proclamation like a seasoned ignoramus. How could anybody look at Cash Daddy and imagine that his name could ever be anything like Alhaji Mahmud - a name that was more likely to belong to a Hausa person from the northern part of Nigeria? Cash Daddy had the unmistakable thick head and chunky features of the Igbos. Plus, a concrete Igbo accent. It did not matter whether it was a three-letter word or a five-letter word, each came out with its original number of syllables quadrupled, and with so much emphasis on the consonants that it sounded as if he were banging on them with a sledgehammer. The Hausas had more delicate and slender facial features, and the phonetic structure of their mother tongue gave them an accent that sounded almost Western.

Cash Daddy was right! The white people did not know such things.

‘I might be a Hausa man,’ the minister continued, ‘but I have always believed in One Nigeria. That’s why I’m so glad that Biafra didn’t succeed.’

He went on to narrate details of the Nigerian civil war with tears filling his eyes. How, as a child growing up in Kano, Northern Nigeria, he had watched a Hausa man slit open the belly of a pregnant Igbo woman with a dagger. The woman had lain there in a pool of blood while the baby wriggled about and gasped for air.

‘Why?’ he asked with tears in his voice. ‘After all, we are all one. One flesh, one blood.’ He sniffed. ‘Why?’

‘Oh dear,’ said the mugu.

‘They are our brothers and sisters. Why must we treat our own people that way?’

I could hardly restrain my admiration for Cash Daddy. His tongue must have been made of silver. If this was a rehearsal for his live performance as politician and future governor, my uncle was sure to win rave reviews. And there was something about his voice. It had a certain irresistible attraction like the smell of fried chicken. He could probably even talk a spider into weaving silk socks for him. The same magic was in his face. Under his gaze, you felt like the most important figure in his life. From Mr Winterbottom’s face, I could see that his soul was being thoroughly converted to mugu.

‘The time for unity has come,’ Cash Daddy proclaimed. ‘Allah has given the call. Unity amongst Igbo and Hausa, amongst Hausa and Yoruba, amongst Yoruba and Igbo. One Nigeria! My dear friend, it’s at times like this that I understand why America had to fight the Cold War. You understand what I mean?’

I did not. The white man, on the other hand, was several scales ahead of me in the evolutionary process. He understood perfectly.

‘I’m with you,’ he replied.

Cash Daddy speechified some more. By the time he stood up, ready to leave, even I was convinced that we had been breakfasting with the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

‘I have a meeting with the British transport secretary later this morning,’ Cash Daddy said, ‘to finalise discussions on the Nigerian-British Bilateral Air Services agreement. I need to make some phone calls before then. Mr Winterbottom, it’s been nice meeting you.’

The minister departed in a whirl of good humour. We were left sitting around the table in silence.

‘Quite a remarkable man,’ Mr Winterbottom finally said. ‘I like him. I like him very much. Very friendly and down-to-earth.’

Mr Akpiri-Ogologo reminded Mr Winterbottom of something.

‘Oh yes! I almost forgot.’

Mr Winterbottom leaned under his seat and brought out a carrier bag. It contained the two Rolex watches, one Sony camcorder, and two Nokia handsets Protocol Officer had told him that the chairman of the Contracts Award Committee had specifically requested as part of his bribes. Thanks to Wizard’s online search, Protocol Officer knew the exact high-tech models to ask for.

‘I hope I got the right ones,’ Mr Winterbottom said.

Protocol Officer dug his hands into the carrier bag and inspected each item.

‘I won’t know for sure until the Chairman sees them,’ he replied. It was always wise to make allowance for future requests.

Back upstairs, Cash Daddy flung one of the Rolex watches at me.

‘Throw away that toy on your wrist,’ he said.

I switched watches immediately. My new Rolex was as fabulous as Aladdin’s ring. But instead of throwing the Swatch away, I would pass it down to Godfrey.

That was one thing everybody liked about Cash Daddy. He was not a cheat. Unlike some godfathers who reversed tongues when good things came in, Cash Daddy always made sure that each participant in a job received his fair share.

In his own special way, my uncle was an honest man.

Everybody poured outside to look. Ben, the office cleaner, had bought his first car. It was a tokunbo, secondhand, Mercedes-Benz V-Boot. Smuggled across the border from Cotonou. He had driven it to work that morning, dashed into every room in the office and invited us out to see, declaring that he was hosting the whole office to free lunch.

‘Well done,’ Wizard said.

We all stood around, admiring the car and congratulating Ben. But there was no way he could maintain such a car on his cleaner’s salary. He had been working in this office for the past three years and the Port Harcourt Refinery mugu was his first ever hit - a very humble one, for that matter. Unless he made another one pretty soon, he might have to exchange his wife and nine children for spare parts and fuel to keep the V-Boot running. But then, who was I to worry about how another grown man had chosen to spend his hard-earned dollars?

‘You need to see how everyone in my estate came out to look when I parked the car in front of my house,’ he said. ‘From now on, they’ll all be calling me “Yes sir!”

We laughed. Everybody except Azuka. He declined the free lunch expedition, and so did I. Finally, both of us were all alone in the Central Intelligence Agency.

‘Azuka, are you OK?’

He sighed.

‘What’s the problem? You’ve been moody all morning.’

He hissed. The sound was thick with regret.

‘Kings, my brother. I don’t know what is happening to my life. Ben has already bought a car. Me, I’m still here writing letters and receiving insults from white people. Anything I touch . . . kpafuka!’

Actually, Azuka’s history was pathetic. He added a more unfortunate detail each time he narrated it. In his final year of studying Law, he had been rusticated from the University of Calabar for involvement in secret cult activities. He migrated to Spain. Two years later, he got stopped for a driving offence, and was arrested for not having a valid visa on his passport. He was deported to Nigeria after spending months being tortured in a Spanish prison. He resumed work with Cash Daddy and, in the past four years, he had not made a single hit.

‘Azuka, listen. This thing is out of your hands. You have no control over whatever mugu comes your way. All you need to do is just pray that whichever one falls into your hands is the right one.’

He snapped his head abruptly.

‘Kings, this thing is not about mugu or no mugu. It’s not. Just before I started work with Cash Daddy, I managed to hit four hundred dollars from one mugu I met in a chat room. As I was coming out of the Western Union office, the police stopped me and collected all the money from me, as if they were just standing there waiting for me. This happened on two different occasions.’

It did not require any special kind of bad luck to have had such an experience. It was for such reasons that people sought refuge under godfathers like Cash Daddy. Cash Daddy had enough clout to keep the police eyes closed and the Western Union mouths zipped. Such services were incorporated in the sixty per cent he scooped from every dime we made. His percentage also covered the expenses for forged documents, phone bills, internet connection etc. This business of ours was expensive to run. You had to have the financial ammunition to keep the cannon booming.

‘That could have happened to anybody,’ I replied.

‘But there are some people who never have problems. Why do you think Cash Daddy takes you along on big jobs? He knows you have good luck.’

I laughed. Cash Daddy had once told me that I had an honest face. He said it was good for business. Pity that my supposed good luck and honest face had not done much for me in all the oil company interviews I had attended.

‘Kings, you’re finding it funny but I’m not joking.’

‘OK, let me see the replies you received today.’

He shifted to allow me to view his screen. Each email was more vitriolic than the other. Finally, I came across one that was mild.

‘Please, move,’ I said to Azuka.

He allowed me more space to take over his keyboard. I hit reply and typed. This woman was clearly not the greedy type, but she had another human weakness. She was caring.