₦airaland Forum

Tayo, was that sort of guy that told watery stories of things he never saw and people he never met. He was no doubt the cutest among my friends, and all the ladies that crossed his part never remained the same; except for a few. He has that charming brown eye, that sexy fleshy lip that required the extracurricular lips service of beautiful ladies to make it less tempting. Tayo, was everything a LUSTFUL lady dreamt of: tall, fair, handsome, muscular body and a well patched moustache nestled through his face. He has that unshattering confidence, that unblinking expression of a man who owned the world and had it cringed between his palms. He would take on every opportunity he has to tell us how he could get any girl he wanted in ANGWALAMGBU. He would go as far as telling us about the things he did when nobody looked; how he ran Muna’s body and made her speak in Japanese tongue; how Titi would call him every night and tell him how nostalgic she felt without the warmth of his touch. Tayo’s flair to get any lady he wanted had no boundary...One Friday night after he had a heated quarrel with his girl friend Sabiana, he came back home his face scowled with rage and told us he felt like visiting the new girl who just moved into one of the rooms in our lodge two days back; and when we dared him ,we watched, our eyes grimed with jealousy and uncertainty as he walked into her room and came out after two hours with his body dripping of perspiration and our mouth singing the tune of fulfilment: “BADDEST GUY EVER LIVETH!”
Tayo was good at many things but his proclivity to tell lies was epic; no wonder he always had his ways with the ladies. Two weeks into our friendship, he came back from school one Monday afternoon with a bottle of red label between his hands and told us to celebrate with him because his dad who he claims is the richest man in Osun state just bought a private jet. I didn’t know how to take this lie, but i was helpless to this reality and if the words that left my mouth that day were nothing other than the complimenting solidarity he expected from me, hell would have been let loose: “enemy of progress na so una go just dey jealous person wey pass una,” he would bust anytime i told him his stories were unbelievable. I had no option but to join in his praise singing, “ OMO BABA OLOWO” we hailed as he nodded his head, his hands coiled around the un opened bottle of Red Label we never drank. I found it difficult to decipher why one whose father had all the money to spend on a private jet could not afford him the best private university in Nigeria. It felt right to lie about certain things; but PRIVATE JET? Ah! Ah! That one is too much now! Unfortunately for Tayo his scripted world crashed after his most trusted allay Emmanuel who was the verification button of his lie got fed up with tayo’s attitude. Emmanuel, who attended the same secondary school with Tayo knew him up down and centre; so when he found it too compressing to be allied with someone whose father could barely afford a tricycle; someone who he knew would never compensate him for the many times he sold his integrity, he broke loose when the opportunity presented itself. Tayo had gone to visit Emmanuel in his house, and coincidentally not knowing that they were conducting their groaning service, barged into his room without knocking only to see them pants down making sounds that needed a computer software assembled in Eggon language before it can be deciphered. Who would have expected that Tayo would go to Manila’s house the next day and beg for his own share; well, that was what he did. He came back that day with the pitch of his voice almost shattering my door: “meeen i chop am...i chop that forbidden meat,” he said gesturing his body like an Igbo man who just won 50 million naira lottery. “Chop wetin?” i asked my ears eager for what seemed like good news. Tayo had barely finished telling us how he dribbled the bird like maradona and climbed the Sisyphean Mountain, when we heard a bellow coming from the direction of the gate: “I swear i must expose your papa today, where that mechanic pikin dey? You think say you fit back stab me go free? Oya tell them now, tell them say na my papa borrow your papa money wey you take come this school.....” Emmanuel roared, our eyes gripped with surgical amazement...Emmanuel livid that the guy he called his friend had eaten from his forbidden fruit. It was difficult for us to see the son of the richest man in Osun state suddenly flattened miraculously into the son of a mechanic. Emmanuel spilled Tayo’s sin making sure he didn’t leave any details. He told us how Tayo had lied to everyone in their secondary school that his father was a car dealer, and that they didn’t use one car in two month. He told us how he denied his father and announced to all the students in his dormitory that the man who came to visit him with a rickety tortoise car was not his father but their gateman who came only because everybody in his house had travelled to London. For days Tayo’s story lingered in our mouth; the story of the young man from Osun state whose father couldn’t even pay his school fees, who fictionally aimed for the best in his imagination. But, days were not how the other people in our lodge that were of the opposite sex took it. For weeks they would ring themselves together, clap their hands and hit their legs about the many stories Tayo had told them when he visited their room: “he even told me his grandfather is related to Tinubu’s grandfather....ehehhe! “Some would chorus to spice and lace the tragedy of the FRESHEST KID, while others would hum as if to say they just heard the story for the first time. Amarachi, the short beautiful perfect girl in our lodge who Tayo broke her heart after two hours took it upon her to tell Tayo’s story in a sort of way that i felt was quite aesthetic: “heeeee! Tayo self, una know wetin him do?” She would ask and answer even before her audience understood what she was saying.this period was the most difficult time in the life of Tayo in ANGWALAMGBU. But as weeks passed his story became less entertain.
Days after Carolina unleashed her mayhem on me and left my head ruthlessly swollen, Tayo who was aware of the full details of my predicament invited me to go with him to a new church he was recently invited to. He claimed that my problems were spiritual and i needed a powerful man of God like PASTOR THUNDER to release me from my captivity. As we got to the building of CHURCH FOR ALL FIRE FORE FIRE INTERNATIONAL MINISTRY, that wee hours of that dewy Sunday morning, i was disappointed by the unpaintedness* of the church, the damp litterdness of its compound. It was without that firedness and lush spirit that enveloped her ushers.