And I am spending the day with my mom.

We are waiting for a call from Nigeria.

She is righteously furious and hell bent on having her way.

It is about an ardous verification process.

Multiple stages.

On multiple platforms.

Designed to fail.

But she has refused the benefit of failure.

It is about her pension.

She grits her teeth and her words come out with a hiss.

"It is my hardwork. No one will cheat me and take it."

She doesn't have amnesia.

She continues.

"They deducted money from my salary for over 35 years and now they have to pay up, they are trying to pay tricks. Even my car loan, 15 years after I finished paying it back, they were still deducting from my salary until I caught them and they stopped."

"Mummy its okay."

"No its not. Imagine that small boy at the pension office telling me over the phone - mama you are in the abroad na, chopping life. What do you need pension for. Naira that has no value when dollar is plenty there. Leave the pension for us here let us be using to manage. Hmmm, he is lucky I did not swear on him with this my grey hair."

"Don't worry. They will pay up."

"I will worry. What they did to me before they will not do to me again. Over my dead body. 2012 they stole my N1.5million arrears in pension. I went there and saw with my own eyes that someone had signed for me and collected it. This was when dollar was less than N100. So that is more than $15,000 dollars someone just stole like that. They told me to pay N10,000 to investigate. Until today not a kobo did I get."

"Mummy relax. It is in the past."

"Look at Jude o. I will not relax. This people are not human beings. Weren't you there when they caught the boy at the pensions office that had been collecting my pension for over five years. Using my money to bleach, wearing gold teeth and gold jewelry. Calling himself Alhaji. You saw him kneeling down and begging me. Saying it was the Devil. Did he give me back one kobo? No."

Then there was silence.

Before she sighed in wonderment.

"How can a person just sit there and be a thief of other people's sweat? Those local government people are born criminals. Worse than even their fellow thieves in Abuja. They will see something today."

"Mommy don't stress yourself. They have automated it to stop all these thieves from cannibalising the process for their own benefits."

"If they like they should be cannibals, let them not just come near my money. You don't know them. It is all yahoo yahoo. They have brought this complicated process to make sure some of us old people give up and walk away. Android phone, web cam, finger print machine, ten digit passcode, 6 digits alpanumeric password, this and that. How many old people even have cell phone talk more of finger print machine. It is designed to fail so they can continue chopping."

"But mommy this one has a finger print and photo grabbed via internet, no one can impersonate you."

She laughs.

"Ah this your 7 months you spent in Nigeria did not teach you anything. You are doing suegbe. Look how will they know the fingerprint is fake or the photo they take is my own?"

"It is foolproof, they..."

"It is only foolproof to fools. If you don't have my real photo and real fingerprints in a database, how can you crosscheck it with whatever nonsense is presented? If they could submit fake signature which couldn't be crosschecked with a real signature, why can't they do the same thing with a fake fingerprint?"

"It is not that easy, mommy."

"It is. All they need to do is send this call out. All pensioners come out. They stress us out. Wait for call. Bring your this. Buy that. Book an appointment. Postpone the appointment. Fill this. Submit that. Buy this thing. Wait for another call. Record this. Jump up. Lie down. Remember this. Why didn't you remember that? On and on. They make most of us, especially the ones abroad give up. Then they jejely supply the fingerprints and photos of their own old relatives in place of ours and the thieving continues. Look techonology is also common sense.
All this grey hair you see is not a sign of stupidity."

Toronto.

From Mr. Jude's collections