– It started in a melee
“Wow! This dude’s got swagger,” Fryer exclaimed.
“Shhh! He’s a soldier,” Soji D his hand partly covering his mouth said in a low voice, his eyes alert leaning towards his best friend.
“I said it, the hottest dudes on earth are soldiers,” Fryer cried. “They took all our babes when they were on campus. OMG, look at this guy!”
Soji D’s mind ran swiftly to the unprecedented nerve-raking tension the school came under after the recent quelled cult war. He remembered how names were secretly collated and passed to red beret soldiers. And he thanked Goodness for sparing him when some of the campus most dreaded boys were disappearing one after the other.
The Tiv prince locked his car with a remote control security. Then he whipped out the most powerful handset on earth that Soji D knew, the ridiculously expensive Bang & Olufsen handset.
He flipped it open and made a brief call. Soji D strained intently to hear what he was saying but was unable to – people like him never spoke loud – give me a Yoruba guy anytime – Soji D mused. J walked briskly into the restaurant. Soji D caught the whiff of his cologne blown his way by the wind.
Jamin Nguuma Torkula! Soji D marveled. The Tiv prince was larger than life. Newshounds and news-watchers alike knew all about him, his family’s incredible wealth and his unattached lifestyle. No newshound had been able to pin him down with a girl. Yet, he must be sleeping with some girl, he was not castrated.
There had been noticeable changes in the lives of the famous Tree (three) Tall Girls in Akoka campus of the University of Lagos since after the quelled cult war. J (aka) Major Benjamin Nguuma Torkula came into their lives.
Then, Bisi became a sentinel, Bukky; more energetic, more talkative, while Ulari’s reticent nature had become more shrouded with an air of sobriety. Bisi, who was an intercessor, knew that aura, the aura of one who’s in deep supplication because of a great need.
Bisi urged Bukky to borrow a leaf from Ulari and seek God’s face concerning this soldier she just met on the day of the quelled melee. Bukky had suffered a mishap on that day and it fell on the soldier to rush her to the clinic.
Since that day, he had become a regular visitor to Bukky’s room much to the displeasure of Bisi who was sisters’ leader in the campus fellowship of the Anglican Communion.
The intrusion into their perfect lives of the ‘pestilential’ fellow J as Bisi regarded him wasn’t funny at all to Bisi. She had been very vocal about the soldier, using words like ostentations, wolf in sheep clothing, bad egg to describe him.
Ulari always aborted arguments about the soldier whenever the girls were together. She feared that people might eavesdrop on them and carry tales of what they quarrel about to the whole school, and then she wouldn’t know where to set her face on campus or even the ground to walk on.
Bukky was clearly excited about the soldier. Bisi who always used what her class was studying to make illustrations during conversations, citing D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, said confidentially to Ulari, “I tell you, this thing might end in sexual sin.
Just imagine Paul thinking that sooner or latter he’d have to ask a girl for sex! (Ulari knew who Paul was, although she’d not read the book, Bisi had told her the story.) He’s not considering commitment at all, just a selfish desire to satiate his lust…”
“At the expense of another…” Ulari remarked.
“Exactly! And he would move on…”
“To another girl…” the two girls said in unison.
“Exactly! But, Bukky isn’t seeing beyond her nose right now…”
It was reported that Bisi began to mark Bukky closely and the two of them fell apart. Bukky said she was an adult. Were they not in their final year? Bisi insisted that as the sisters’ leader in ACCF (Anglican Communion Campus Fellowship), that she had a spiritual authority over them. ‘Leader ko, spiritual ni!’ Bukky would snort confiding in Ulari, “See, she’d be there doing sisters’ leader, that’s how she’d end up an old maid as she snoops around peoples’ businesses leaving what concerns her. Mitchew!”
Ulari was not just torn between two friends, but she was torn into pieces. They were church girls for goodness sake! Nobody would believe the story of what had befallen three church girls on campus. She couldn’t even breathe it out. She was at the crossroads of life; her emotions were at conflicts with the holy B.
Soji D squirmed. There were three kinds of guys he hated: rich boys, very cute boys and smart boys who made straight as in school. They were out of his league. The Tiv prince was in two of these categories.
A feeling of elation hit the newshound as his left ear began to twitch. It was usually a sign to him of ‘good news’ in the offing. He gave the Tiv prince sometime to settle down and then walked into the deserted restaurant to see what he came to do. Surely, it could not be food that brought the solider from his Apapa office.
When Soji D located J in a private room marked OCCUPIED, he eavesdropped on him. But the plain clothes solider was speaking in a strange language on the phone.
The room was an exclusive reserve of super rich kids in the school, the oppressors. To use the room one had to part with a few thousands of naira which would mean nothing to the soldier. Soji D knew immediately that he came to see a girl. He dashed out to tell Fryer that he suspected a tryst.
He almost shat in his boxers with excitement. He could see in his mind’s eye some guy’s pepperless girlfriend sneaking out to see the soldier before the restaurant filled up for the evening. He could not wait to splash the story across the Kampus News cover.
And tabloid papers outside would pay handsomely to get the news too. He started raking his brain on how to photograph the prince and his date. Just recently, Prime People magazine had written about him and a general’s daughter at a party but when he read it, it was dry stuff.
Soji D was excited now; this looked like the real deal. He would just sit in the reception where he would be able to see anyone walking into the passage leading to the room where the prince sat.
Freelancing for tabloid print media and editing his school’s tabloid newspaper, Kampus News was Soji’s stuff. Early in his life in the university, he had made other peoples businesses his business. Gossip was his turf and he netted good profit from it.
His bank account had swollen by reason of his tale-bearing activities. Having spent seven years in Unilag he had no plans of leaving. He loved the easy and fun-filled campus life.
He was one of the oppressors with such necessary accessories as a car, a cell phone (GSM) and a stuffed wallet. Loafers loved him and campus babes clustered around him like moths to light bulbs since he gave out free drinks and dough.
The only accessory that eluded him that he had very much desired at a time and could not have was one of the Tree Tall Girls. Not minding the disparity in their heights for the girl dwarfed him at his five nine height. The stunningly beautiful music undergrad left him counting the ceilings at night.
She had rejected every gift and every billet-doux he sent her insisting that she was not on the dating market. She even tried to persuade him to register his name in the Lamb’s book of life but he was regretfully, not ready. That was four years ago.
Soji D respected her faith and distanced himself from her while watching her progress hoping secretly that he might get born again someday and marry her because they would eventually finish school and get married , wouldn’t they? – Soji D used to console himself.
Jamin sat in the room with a lone table for two. He ordered a bottle of table water and 5 Alive for his date. His body literally trembled with anticipation. He could not believe that one could miss another human being as much as he missed this girl.
He had been shuttling between Kalmajo, a little border town in northern Sokoto and Niamey on official duty and network in those areas was bad so he just flew into town an hour ago and called her.
Jamin’s phones rang incessantly and he continued to attend to them knowing he would soon switch them off as soon as his date joined him. Precious moments were not to be wasted. She deserved his undivided attention considering all their rendezvous hitches: her wariness and students’ nosiness.
Soji D mounted a sentinel at the bar watching the corridor when a girl breezed past him with the speed of lightening. Then, he heard the prince’s door open then closed and then opened again.
He got up and entered the corridor, walked down to the convenience at the end of it, flushed it after a while and came out again. Soji D’s heart almost stopped. He couldn’t believe who he saw.
She sat facing the Tiv prince, her face flushed with excitement. Soji D stumbled out of the restaurant shocked. Fryer was literally bouncing on his seat when his friend joined him.
“You can’t believe who just walked into the restaurant now!” he cried.
“I know, I saw her,” he replied in a flat unenthusiastic voice.
“You need to see how she hurried in. I believe she thinks herself the best thing that happened on campus after Agege bread,” Soji D grunted his mind on memory lane.
Apart from the fact that Jamin was a soldier and in his profession, there was the occupational hazard of people threatening professionals like him, bribing them or out-rightly trying to kill them, this story staring him in the face had corrupted his faith.
Every desire to write the story drained from Soji D’s system.
“And why do you have to pee so many times, you can’t be drunk on coke?”
Soji D was too weak to reply.
“So she got all spiffed up to see a lover boy, enh?”
Soji D’s mind wasn’t there. To say he was displeased was an understatement. No guy on campus was good enough for her. She was born-again as long as she had not met the super rich prince, now she was suddenly un-born again? As if reading his mind, Fryer said in a loud whisper, “I told you, none of those CU girls is born-again, they make out with the brothers!”
To be continued…
.Culled from The Girls Are Not to Blame by Lechi Eke