It was a long, tiring day at
our offshore flow station a thousand kilometres from the nearest mud house deep
in the Nembe high sea.
Tonye, my subordinate, had
made the day hell for me. It looked like he had chosen that day to flout all my
directives. When I had returned from the break from which he had relieved me,
he had made it look like we hadn’t worked the entire day. I looked good enough
to weep.
He had distorted my drawings, wrongly fixed
the well heads, forgotten to insert the pigging which was meant to monitor the
degradation of the pipe, and to kill it all- done one of the shoddiest welding
operations I have ever seen. Not even with the Ndike indolents who were so
intent on pocketing the juicy fortnightly allowances that they had insisted
they knew how to weld, but had performed abysmally on first sight.
The anger and frustration of having to redo
all that had welled up in me as I arrived the spot. What it meant was that I
wasn’t seeing Nana anymore this weekend…with all we had planned out. The
correction would take at least a day and half’s painstaking and careful work.
The Shell clients we worked for and their eye for detail!
I looked at him. I couldn’t yell at him; he
was at least three years my senior, both age-wise and in the profession. I
couldn’t report him; he was a guy I liked; just liked for likeness sake. I
could not risk my man being queried or on the tenterhooks of losing his job. A
job whose take-home pay could not even take one home successfully; it ended
back in the pockets of creditors; leaving one high and dry before one knew it.
For all it was worth, I couldn’t even point out what he did they way it
actually was; I ended up garnishing it and giving him the softest landing ever.
After all, we would do the damage control together.
Six hours later, I found out it wasn’t as
bad as it had struck me initially, and we had gotten to the level where there
seemed to be potentials of being with my darling Nana this weekend. The things
we would do together! I was also thankful I hadn’t vented my spleen on Tonye
the way it was instinctive on me to.
I was driving home, gaily and full of
expectation, when, close to the Benson-Adah junction my Samsung Galaxy rang
shrilly. It was a number that wasn’t
save on my phone. ‘Hello?’
With what I heard at the
other end of the line, I knew this was no drive-and-talk conversation.
I parked.
It was a gruff, drug-soaked
voice. The ones you hear in movies where a comedian is trying to imitate a
motor-park thug.
‘Is this Mr Johnny?’ the
voice asked heavily, as if he had just had his fix of cheap snuff.
‘Yes, who is this please?’
‘Don’t worry about who I am
for now. What you should worry yourself about should be where you will be after
tonight. I was sent to assassinate you. As a matter of fact, I have your
picture right here in my palms. Are you not the pucker-faced oil boy who lives
on 17, Coker Street, has a growing potbelly and drives a 2005 Corolla?’
My blood ran cold. My right
hand on the steering wheel turned clammy with emergency sweat.
‘Please sir, I cannot die
now. Who sent you? What can I do to buy my life back? Please sir, I will do
anything’, the words tumbled out of my mouth like the nozzle of a pistol was
before me. I had begun to shiver.
‘You will do anything?’
‘Yes sir. Just name it, I will do it. I cannot
die now sir. Please sir.’
‘Okay. What will happen is
this: there are five of us in the team. You will need to buy the boys over. We need
five wraps of cocaine.’
‘But sir, I do not know what
cocaine is, neither do I know who sells it or where it is sold. Can I give you
something else instead, or can I convert it to money or something?’
There was a long pause. What
I heard next, made my blood boil.
‘Okay, lucky punk. Send us
1500 NGN recharge cards. Make it quick.’
Two days later, we were still
on it. He was the one doing the calling now.
I put the phone on speaker,
and the seven of my friends were listening in, in our large company lobby.
‘Sir, sorry o, I couldn’t
find the NGN 400 recharge voucher you requested. Where I live the only woman
who sells has only NGN 200 worth of airtime. Will that do?’
‘This guyman, you dey use me
play abi? Oya send am.’
I ended up transferring NGN50
worth of airtime to him through MTN Share and Sell.
