Welcome to Lagos

by Chibundu Onuzo

  “Who said so? I fought for the democracy we have in this country. Check it anywhere. I marched. I was tear-gassed as a member of the Yoruba People’s Congress. I have been speaking out for years.”

  “Perhaps against the military, but you’ve been oddly silent during your one year as minister. In fact, there has been no recorded criticism from you until now.”

  “When you are first appointed to the top of the system, your response is not to throw your hands up and say, ‘This place is so dirty, I have to run to the papers.’ You want to clean it up. If you’ve done your research, you’ll see, as a private citizen, I took education to the deepest, most underdeveloped parts of Yoruba land. They knew me as ‘Teacher’ in those days. But I couldn’t duplicate my success in the ministry. I could not. The rot has gone so deep. Even to the smallest clerk.”

  “Let’s widen the interview to the accusations you made a month ago. You said, and I read from the now infamous Nigerian Journal article, ‘The First Lady has three foreign accounts in Dubai. She calls it her shoe and handbag money.’ How does one know about corruption at the highest levels of state without being part of it?”

  And the Chief was ushered into his element. He dropped his voice confidentially when he spoke of sex scandals, his voice rose to prepubescent levels when he mimicked the reckless political wives, and finally, in his closing, he thundered against the system.

  “Let’s move now from allegations concerning others to one closer to home. The ten million dollars, Rẹmi. It has been alleged it was embezzled from the Basic Education Fund. What happened to the money?”

  “Before I answer you, Richard, let me ask. Who are you to question me?”

  “This is an interview, Chief Sandayọ.”

  “In your country, the descendants of the biggest thieves, are they not the ones making the decisions? Your House of Lords. Who made them so? Was it not by oppressing the poor, by swallowing all the land? Today, we are calling them ‘My Lord,’ calling them ‘Honorable.’ Your banks built on the slave trade, Lloyds, have they returned any compensation?”

  “You’re saying the British judiciary of today should pursue centuries-old crimes?”

  “What of the ones of today? Where does all the stolen money in Africa go? Your being here is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. And because the pot is bigger, more powerful, better armed, it can talk anyhow to the kettle. But one day, in my lifetime, I can assure you, there will be a revolution in the kitchen.”

  “That may very well be so, but till then, the question remains: is the kettle black? Did you or did you not steal the money, Rẹmi?”

  After a pause, West said, “Chief Sandayọ?”

  Taj zoomed in on his face, the surface of which was placid.

  “I took it.”

  “You admit you stole the money.”

  “I took it but not for myself. I was tired of seeing projects we designed at the top never trickle down to the bottom. So I decided to become my own personal Ministry of Education, like I was in the days of the YPC. There are over ten schools that my team and I have fully equipped.”

  “Your team?”

  “Yes. I and a team of committed Nigerians who love this country and believe that she must be great again. In a few weeks we have achieved all I have been trying to in one year in the ministry.”

  “Chief Sandayọ, you are aware that your claims are easily verifiable.”

  “Mushin High School. Agege Primary School. Mile Two Elementary. Kudirat Shagamu Primary School. Those are some of the names. Check it.”

  “We certainly will. Thank you for coming on West Presents, Chief Sandayọ.”

  “Thank you, David.”

  “This is David West from Nigeria, on this exclusive edition of West Presents. From me and the team, good night.”

  “Cut.”

  54

  “YOU AND YOUR TEAM fixed the schools?” Chike asked when the journalists had gone, stale excitement left behind, the room warm from their crush of bodies and machines.

  “Is that what is bothering you? Isoken, clear this place, please.”

  “She’s not your maid. Sandayọ the benevolent, the great benefactor.”

  “What did you want me to say? It was that tall man in the corner who fixed the schools. Hail him. Interview him instead. Is that it? You want to be famous? I can call them back. Tell all with Chief Sandayọ, part two. Chike, the brains behind the mission. The brightest—”

  “What if you’ve put those principals in danger?”

  “How? Once you take the crew to interview them, it’ll be obvious they know nothing about where the money came from.”

  “Who is taking them where?”

  “You heard what David West said at the end. They want to verify my claims about the schools.”

  “No.”

  “Isoken can take them.”

  “Not me,” she said.

  “Fineboy will do it, then.”

  “Do what?” said Fineboy, stepping out of the corridor and yawning. “Is it over? How was it?”

  “Chief Sandayọ lied and said that he stole the money on purpose to renovate the schools and now the journalists want to go and see the schools that we fixed but Chike has refused to take them,” said Isoken.

  “Were they white?”

  “What does that have to do with the price of fish in the market?” asked Isoken.

  “I’ve never met a white man before. It wouldn’t be so bad if I went,” Fineboy said, turning to Chike. “Surely it doesn’t matter who gets the praise as long as the schools are fixed.”

  “Do whatever you think is right,” Chike said. He climbed out of the flat and into the early morning. It would be dawn soon, another day in Lagos, two school deliveries to supervise. There was rain in the air. The soil had opened to receive moisture, a metallic scent rising from the earth.

  Chief Sandayọ’s words had stung him, perhaps because they were true. If he stopped Fineboy from going to Kudirat Shagamu with a film crew, he would not be doing so out of concern for the principals. No one watching them would ever think they had been party to a conspiracy, not when they thought their benefactor was a woman.

  Showing the schools could even bring about some change. International shaming always drew responses from a government sensitive to foreign opinion. More schools might be renovated. More children given a chance at a better future. No, it was not the principals he was worried about.

  Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. And if you didn’t believe in heaven or a Father there? Who would see and know that Chike Ameobi should be credited?

  IN LONDON, THEY RECEIVED Taj’s editing with mild surprise. At the introduction, instead of West’s usual stare down the camera, only his crisp voice, rendered anachronistic by the images of the young maid it played over. She was beautiful, like many anonymous Africans who had made their way to the BBC on film reels and photo stills.

  “We can’t use this,” the producer said after they watched her fill a glass in silence. The room was too dark, almost sinisterly so, the dimness made pronounced by the Chief’s white clothes catching what little light there was. He sat like a sage, with his hands folded in his lap or drifting into the air when he wished to emphasize a point. The bitterest accusations were offered in an emphatic, lecturing style that gave weight to his words. On occasion, when West pressed him, he would lurch unsteadily to an answer, the epidermis of composure thinning but never disappearing, even under the most direct questions.

  Above all, West’s trademark circumspection was missing, replaced by a hungry, inexperienced journalist, so eager to trip his subject up that he opened a new lead at the end of the interview. They could not run this episode without further investigation into the schools Chief Sandayọ claimed he had refurbished. The crew would not be pleased.

  “YOU’RE BLOODY JOKING. IT’S my cousin’s wedding this weekend and I’m a b
ridesmaid,” Tito said, packed and ready to return to England. It was her second trip to Lagos—the first was when she was a toddler—and she was finding the experience unpleasant. The water tasted funny, the food upset her stomach, and the staff mumbled “Ọrọbọ” when she walked past, staring at her hips.

  “Down with the BBC,” said Taj, whose mortgage was the only thing stopping him from quitting his job and backpacking through Asia. He, too, felt vaguely harassed by the hotel staff. He had wound his locks into a bun and covered them with a beanie. Still the doorman called out, “Bob Marley!” every time he passed through the lobby.

  “I’m staying. You people have British passports. If they sack me, where will I go?” Mike said. His relatives did not know he was in Lagos. He did not want them to.

  “We’ll find one or two of the schools Chief Sandayọ mentioned. Film a few shots and we’re out of there. You’ll be able to take the evening flight if you want,” said Richard.

  They had accepted by this time that Richard was the leader of their mission. West seemed to be wilting in the heat, water running out of his pores as quickly as he consumed it. “I left my dog with my ex-wife and she won’t keep him for longer than two days.”

  Chief Sandayọ had declined to take them to the schools himself, instead proposing a man who was rather curiously called Fineboy.

  “He’ll meet you by Kudirat Shagamu School at nine tomorrow morning.”

  55

  “HOWDY,” FINEBOY SAID, PEERING into the van full of journalists. There were two white men in the back. They would have been worth millions in the Delta, catapulting him to fame as he read out demands in a clear accent, the muzzle of his gun pressed to their heads.

  “Good morning. You’re the man Chief Sandayọ has sent to take us to the principals?”

  “Yup. If you’ll just step right out and follow me.”

  Fineboy did not know if his accent would impress. The British refused to Americanize, leaving their broadcasts nasal and difficult to understand. He always swung the dial when he landed on the BBC.

  “How do we know it’s the Chief that sent you?”

  It was the only woman in the group speaking, dark with a frizz of blond extensions scattered around her face.

  “I’m here to take you to the principal of this school.”

  “My colleague just said that. I’m not going anywhere with this man until he gives us some confirmation. This is Nigeria. People go missing here.”

  “We don’t need a makeup artist for this section. You can stay in the van if you don’t feel like coming, Tito.”

  “Who said I don’t need makeup? I am sweating like a pig. You’re not the one standing in front of the camera.”

  “Look, Chief sent me to meet you. You guys are from the BBC and you’re covering the work he’s done here. Come with me now or forget about your story.”

  “Well, I’m not staying in the van. How long have you had this driver?”

  The woman climbed out backwards, her jeans sliding down to reveal the lace fringe of underwear. The leather belt lashed to her hips was for show, it seemed. The rest followed with their equipment.

  “Let’s move fast. We don’t want any touts asking questions.”

  “You didn’t tell us your name,” the woman said.

  “Fineboy.”

  “Well, at least that’s the name the Chief gave us.”

  “It fits me, right? Am I not a fine boy?”

  She was large for his tastes but it would not hurt to have a girlfriend in London, one stop from America.

  The children were outside their classrooms, covering their new swings and slides. They stopped playing when they saw the white men.

  “Oyinbo,” a few called out, too shy to come close. Both before and after the renovation, these children were lucky. School for Fineboy had been a paddle away, a dense, terrifying mangrove forest on either side, an empty building at the end of the journey, staff gone off trading in the creeks, supplementing their small incomes. School had been a transistor radio, kept in a box and draped in protective cloth throughout the day, a household shrine cosseted with care and waterproofing. Every evening the black machine would speak like an oracle, prophesying a future of milkshakes and soda pop, jazz and hip-hop, freeways and shopping malls. He learned English from that radio, he learned how to steal batteries for that radio, and the day it died, after his younger brother dropped it into the oily water under their house, he cried more than he would for his father, found dead with neat slashes in his wrists.

  “All this is brand-new. I’ll take you to the principal and she can show you around. I’ll be mentioning a guy called Chike a lot. That’s Chief Sandayọ’s agent.”

  “Why isn’t he the one showing us around?”

  “He’s down with a fever.”

  Fineboy had overseen this school, down to the last desk delivered, and so, in a way, it should be him, not Chike, showing the oyinbos around. He knocked on Principal Amadi’s door.

  “Fineboy, morning. You saw my text saying that we got the final batch of textbooks. Who are these people? Shut the door,” she said when she saw the two white men.

  “Morning, Principal. Chike sent me with these journalists to see the renovation work that we have been doing here.”

  “But he said the donor wants to remain secret.”

  “I have a letter of authorization.”

  He gave her the forged note, the signature at the bottom swooping and large. The principal lifted it to the light, like one trained to spot counterfeits.

  “Why didn’t he come himself?”

  “He has fever.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Not very long,” one of the white men said. “Just a few shots of you talking about the new things you’ve received and then some footage of the equipment and we’ll be off. Don’t want to disrupt the school day.”

  “Yes. These things can distract the children. I won’t give you more than fifteen minutes.”

  She showed them desks, one to each child for the first time, and the rows of books, lined like bricks, and lastly the computers, waiting for the arrival of an IT teacher to be switched on.

  “It’s not that our teachers don’t know how to use computer. I myself, I can surf the Net and all of that, but we want to hire someone that can really use the resource. We’ve been asking for these things. Government has promised to provide but sometimes the demand is too much. It’s good that a concerned Nigerian with the funds has decided to help us. We are hoping for more like her.”

  ON THEIR WAY TO the next school, Fineboy sat next to the female member of the crew, leaving no space between them, his thigh touching hers.

  “So how you finding Nigeria?”

  “Hot.”

  “Met anybody interesting?”

  “Look, I have a boyfriend if that’s what you’re trying.”

  The van laughed as he shifted away.

  “Tito!”

  “Give the man some hope.”

  “Is this how the women are over there?” he asked one of the white journalists. “So hard?”

  “Yes. It’s all this feminism, isn’t it, Tito?”

  “Shut it.”

  “You know I’m part of the team that fixed those schools.”

  “Really? Chief didn’t mention any of your names. We’ll pop you in front of a camera, then, if that’s OK with you. Ask a few questions. Are you happy to do that, West?”

  The other white journalist, who had been leaning silently against the window, shrugged.

  And just like film trick, after the story had been confirmed five times, they pointed the camera at him.

  “No, I don’t want you to show my face. Just my voice. And I want you to use my presenter name. Golden Voice. I’m a radio guy.”

  “OK. Taj, if you shoot in the other direction so we just see the back of his head. Excellent. Rolling.”

  “So you’re one of Chief Sandayọ’s team.”

  “Yeah. I sure am.”

&
nbsp; “Please tell us why you chose to join him?”

  “Education is my passion, my vision, and my mission. A country can’t have a future if there is no provision for the kids to go to good schools. I met the Chief and I believed in the promotion of his vision and so I signed up. We said the donor was a woman so nobody would suspect us.”

  “And what would you say to those who think that it’s wrong for you to have adopted this method? That it’s a crime for you to take government money and use it in this way.”

  “I’d say the Chief is the minister of education and he’s just doing his job in an unusual way.”

  “And cut. That was excellent, Fineboy. You did it like a pro. One take.”

  56

  THE ENTIRE PRODUCTION TEAM of West Presents was gathered in Meeting Room 12. The inner wall was made entirely of glass, an aquarium design that allowed senior members of staff to peer in without stopping, time-saving on taxpayers’ money. A rectangular light wood table took up most of the room. In keeping with his Marxist leanings, the producer sat at neither end. A bold intern, overly bold, was first to speak.

  “We can’t use this as it is. It’s too . . .”

  “Too much like propaganda for Rẹmi Sandayọ.”

  “People will be bored by an honest African politician.”

  “Hardly honest.”

  “He robbed the rich to educate the poor.”

  “Nigeria’s Robin Hood.”

  “That’s good. We could use that for follow-ups.”

  “Someone is sure to be offended.”

  “The Nigerian government might sue.”

  “It’s about time the BBC started offending people again.”

  “Easy for you. You’re retiring soon.”

  “With no pension to speak of.”

  “Let’s stay on topic, please.”

  “What are we going to do about the girl at the beginning?”

  “Leave her in.”

  “Take her out.”

  “We’ll lose West’s introduction.”

  “He can record another one when his flight lands tomorrow morning.”

  “No, leave it in. It adds something.”