Hello guys, thanks for keeping a date with us on A Poet’s Diary for yet another glorious week, I sincerely hope that our edition this week will be even better with the new story that we’ve got here. A lot of folks have either emailed me or commented about the characters in my stories, sometimes they’d identify certain individuals that are similar to real life individuals, as much as I wish that these persons were real, they are not real, and they are all just characters that were built for your reading pleasure.
Thanks for all the emails and comments that I received via Facebook, twitter and BBM, they were absolutely fantastic, I have also noticed that majority of our readers are facing certain difficulties posting their comments. We’re very sorry about this development and are working speedily to rectify it.
Now back to the story of the week….
I had just walked a few blocks from the house when I realized that I had completely forgotten to my phone. So I decided to run back to the house for it. As I got back to the house I realized that I had picked the phone initially but had dumped it inside my backpack. I cursed silently about my stupidity as I began my walk back to the road.
It was 7:45am and I was absolutely sure that I was late for work, but I didn’t panic, neither did I increase my pace as I was walking to work. Work had begun to irritate me, I had become increasingly detached from my duties at work since I resumed from my thirty days leave of absence which took me to several interesting cities especially in the oil rich South-Southern part of Nigeria.
I whistled for an okada, (a means of transportation on motorcycle, common in Nigeria) based on the fact that I was already late for work, it made a lot of sense if I tried to beat all the rush hour traffic that might be ahead by boarding an okada. The okada man ended up offending me because he seemed to have considered how neatly and sharply dressed I was, before calling his price. The idiot did not consider the distance or how long it would take to get to our destination before he opened the large hole that was attached to his face and say N500. I simply wished him a nice day without any argument and went on my way.
The day had not kicked off the way I had expected at all, earlier an argument had ensued in the house between me and my mother about what I was wearing. I had combined a nice TM Lewin black shirt with my dark blue Paul Smith suit without a tie, but my mother insisted that I changed the attire all together because in her opinion, everything seemed like black and I could not convince her otherwise, even though I did not eventually answer her, but too many arguments before 8:00am could spell doom for the whole day, at least that is what the superstitious old lady that lives behind my house had said.
“Today has to be perfect” I muttered to myself and after hearing my own voice say it, I began to wonder why it was important for the day to be perfect, then I realized that my mind was just acting the scripts of the book that I had read the previous night. “These self-help books won’t be the end of me, I hope”. But somehow I couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was coming up even though I had no clue about what it was.
Another okada zoomed past me despite my best efforts to stop him; I began to scan the area for a vantage position from where I could stand and wave down any available okada. I found one under a tree after a very short scan and I started moving towards it, but before I got there, a van stopped beside me and my neighbor from next door parked in front of me and motioned for me to enter.
“This must be my lucky day” I muttered with a smile. “Good morning bro”
“Good morning Tolu….looks like you were stranded out there” Bayo said as he brought the vehicle back to life. “Stranded would not do justice to how I’m feeling jare. I wish I could just stab the office (Yoruba metaphor) today.” I said with a grin.
“Hahahaha…..” laughed Bayo. “I don’t envy you government workers jare, heard that the new governor is giving you guys a tough time where punctuality is concerned”
“Yea, he is, but I couldn’t care less anyway, the idiot lives just a couple of minutes from the office and he seems to believe that every government worker should emulate his punctuality. Our house is like thirty minutes’ drive to or from the office, assuming there’s no traffic and I am certain that there are some people that live even farther than me, are we supposed to emulate his idiocy?”
Bayo was silent for some strange reasons that I couldn’t fathom, it was as if I had hit some points that was too close to home for him, and so I pressed even further. “The guy goes to the gate and stands there with his idiotic looking cap and starts taking late comers and by 8:00am gives a directive to the security guards to lock the gates. Who does that?”
“A governor that wants to ensure discipline from his workers, that is not wrong?” I didn’t know who spoke, neither did I know from where the voice came from, I just assumed that it must have been Bayo.
“No…no…no Bayo, you’re getting this all wrong. This is not a question of discipline, but that a governor of a state that is idle, he seems not have anything better to do with his time.”
“I remember when you were looking for this job; you didn’t have a problem with lateness or an idle governor”
I could hear the voice clearly now, it wasn’t Bayo that was speaking, it was his mom. And she probably was the most annoying human being in the world, at least the world that I belonged to, where all characters and scripts were written by me.
The best thing that I could do at that moment was to keep my mouth shut. But she surprised me; she didn’t press the issue any further as we got nearer to the state secretariat where I was supposed to get down. So I apologized for not greeting her earlier and got out of the vehicle as I made my way to the unclosed gate much to the surprise of Bayo’s mother. Apparently she was expecting to see a manifestation of the picture that I had painted earlier about our dutiful governor. I made a mental note to explain the reason why Mister Governor wasn’t at his unconstitutional duty post.
Mrs. Adeboye is a retired civil servant and she retired as a Permanent Secretary (the irony of that position is so baffling when they become retired) and I had gotten the job based on her recommendations, so to some extent, I think I owe her. I walked slowly to the block where my office was situated; I was relieved to see that my immediate superiors were not yet at the office because their allotted parking lots were still vacant. I got to my sit only to realize that today was the weekly sanitation exercise which explains why my superiors were not yet on their sit.
I removed my blazers and hung it on the nail directly behind my desk, and scanned my table for leftover work from the previous work day, there were several, so I settled down and began work at once, I didn’t even notice the fact that my clerical officer and messengers were absent, I just dug into the work that was before me, because I had certain deadlines to meet, even though I was already behind on some of them. It didn’t take long before I became neck deep in what I was doing I began to ignore the obvious that were surrounding me, especially the fact that it was almost 9am and nobody else was in the office with me.
The euphoria of the victory of the super eagles of Nigeria at the nations’ cup was still very much evident as certain people that were passing through, were talking about it. Despite the fact that I loved the beautiful game of football, I had decided to spare myself the heart ache of watching Nigeria lose. But things had turned out differently as the Sunday Mba strike made all the difference against a very resilient Burkina-Faso team. I had followed the game via the internet and celebrated as much as most people. The door to my office was swung open by an unseen hand, and it creaked, then it noisily cried like a new born child and a powerful scent clouded the environment, it almost knocked me off my seat. Then two well-dressed men in black suits appeared by either sides of the doorway and stayed there. I stopped what I was doing to get a better view of the two men, they didn’t look like people I knew, and why were they standing with so much intent and precision by my door, my mind quickly raced through the events of the past few days, i couldn’t find any criminal act worth two secret service seeming guys standing at my door post, I rose to my feet and walked towards the door.
“Sir, can I help you?” I asked calmly facing one of the two men from the door way in my office, he simply looked on, and stared past me, he didn’t even move a muscle neither did he look like he was going to give me the answer that I was seeking. The scent that had shadowed the environment earlier was getting thicker as I stood by the door, slowly I saw where the scent was coming from, it was the Executive Governor himself that was conducting an inspection of all governmental offices and he was flanked by the Head of Service and my own direct boss, the Permanent Secretary of my ministry and one other individual that I couldn’t recognize. Every officer in the ministry had been served a notice for over two weeks about this inspection exercise, we were all supposed to be on the arcade ground waiting for His Excellency to finish his tour and address us, but I had totally forgotten, I tried to make a dash for it, but was immediately stopped by the two guys by my door who lifted me back to my seat quite effortlessly. It became clear who the guys were, they were either with the secret service or they were protocol officers of the governor and they were standing by my door to tell the governor not to enter. The man with the weird looking long cap finally got closer to my office and my heart beat quickened, until today, I had never seen him closely before, but here he was almost at my door and probably going to scold me and order the Head of Service to direct my Permanent Secretary to issue me a query. My mind wandered here and there, I wondered if the guy knows that I have rather strong opinions about him.
“Why are you in the office?” said a voice from nowhere.
I started stuttering…I could easily guess who the voice belonged to; I had heard him speak on radio and I couldn’t believe that the man with the funny cap was actually talking to me.
“I came in to finish up some of the things on my desk”. The Head of Service winked at me, as though she was trying to pass a message across to me, the message if I wasn’t mistaken was to shut my mouth and not say another word. I stood up from my seat rather slowly and faced the set of eyes that were staring down at me.
“He seems rather young for this position of his, isn’t he?” The governor asked the Head of Service who seemed more preoccupied with shutting me up than answering the governor.
“He’s an Administrative Officer; it is always preferable to hire people that are quite young”
“Is that right?” said the Governor with a sly smile.” So, young officer, how old are you?” It was a question that seemed easy enough but it didn’t feel right for me to answer, maybe because of the signals that I received from the HOS earlier.
“I’m 24 years old sir”
To be CONTINUED
