₦airaland Forum

Chapter six


It was the shock of the moment, as Chuks never looked the part. Tade did not know about it until a fair-skinned babe came asking after him.

"Please is this Chukwuma Onye's room?" She asked with a precise, faked British accent. Probably she was trying to learn how to speak with such accent. Tade sized her up, wondering what lady will come to a guy's room and no greet before asking questions. She even had the audacity to raise her nose at him before asking that question.

"Will you answer me!" The lady said aggressively. Tade obviously pissed off, slammed the door at her, leaving the poor girl sobbing and calling Chuks.

"Na wa o! Korede, Tade's current roommate said. So na so your friend go come get girlfriend before you. You sabi say him score na 2-1 wey you still dey play 2-0." Korede was a tall, fair skinned dude, who despite his humble background was tastefully polished in school, courtesy of his girlfriend who is a wealthy half-caste running a beauty spa in Victoria Gardens in Lagos.

Wetin concern you? Tade answered, obviously unimpressed with the angle that he was bringing to the convo. Made had just 'acquired' a girlfriend too, and that one had no discretion in his behavior about it.

The two guys continued arguing about the issue until Chuks suddenly showed up, carrying some papers with him.

Tade watched more drama on TV as each day passed, getting more convinced of how annoyingly corrupt the government had turned. He found it hopeless and chose to turn his attention to the less mundane things of life; Salisu and Shukurat's love affair was on top of such a list, the whole issue becoming comically serious.

Not that he cared though. Like he really did not care, for he had the company of his friends. Most of them, including Shade were his friends on BBM and Shade, if not any one else pestered him with messages and 'hellos' and 'his' and what have you. Made was the next in line and so on.

The new session came quickly enough and he arrived at school in the way many people expected, fresh as ever. Everyone seemed to have made it to the next level; Malik and Andrew were already done with their school work and were clearing up things.

Tade soon got a new place on campus through the usual 'selling' practice- illegal yet much in practice due to the amazing lack of hostel accomodation. He and Chukwuma landed in the same room, yes the same Chukwuma that was quiet and taciturn.

Yet he saw a great change in this lad, for Chukwuma had become a Class representative!

Back home, Tade watched as the country's leaders plunge themselves in the usual political drama. Yet another Minister was accused of stealing Government funds and was been queried by the Anti-Corruption body in charge of such cases, in full glare of the National Assembly. Of course this was due to a dare by the opposition party to conduct the investigation in such a manner.

Tade continued to watch the drama,shaking his head in disgust. His dad, often absent-minded at the affairs of his son, looked at him.

"What is happening?" He asked Tade.

"They are questioning the Minister of Education, sir." Tade looked at his father, surprised and a bit intrigued that his dad took interest in the situation. He was known to be apolitical.

He sat down and observed the proceedings.

"What do you think will happen?" He asked Tade.

"Well, they will release him eventually, isn't it this country? Tade said a bit consciously, wondering what entered his father's head. Am sure that even if there was concrete evidence of his guilt, nothing will happen. We are too used to corruption to deal with it."

"Hmn, we are too used to corruption." Wale said,feeling his brow. "It was not always like this, especially during my time. Government officials were honest and loyal to the course of improving this country. Petroleum was not really sought after like that due to the stunts the U.S and U.K pulled on people. Our people's eyes began to get clear, as they say and we starting electing good leaders who brought up policies that improved the country. Then someone sabotaged the U.S storage of shale oil and money started coming towards crude oil. Then we lost it."

"That's what all those activists say. Tade said, trying to feel relevant in the discussion. They are always against the 'Capitalist' economy we are running."

"Can they do better? His father replied. Tade, don't allow their sweet talk to deceive you. Most of them are as corrupt as the leaders they profess to hate, and the few good ones are surrounded by those who just want a shot at power. If anything, don't join them, especially when they protest, because they use the innocent, blinded ones among you as shields against any aggression while they hide somewhere. The best that happens to them is that they enter an office and do worse. We just seem to have a problem with handling power." He concluded.

"Tade! He stood up. Be careful of those activists wherever they are." Wale walked away, leaving his son to enjoy the hearing

Thanks Harjibolar and Tholuwani.

I do need constructive criticism if there is.

Enjoy.

"What were you expecting? A pity party?" Malik asked Tade. Tade had just relayed what happened between him and Dr Fakunle to the room.

"Of course he was not going to apologise to you, which part of the world did you come from?" He asked Tade again, as Made looked at his roomie. Ajebutter folks can be so stupid! He thought.

"Well, I expected him to show some sympathy at the least." Tade answered back. "Not like I wanted him to prostrate for me."

"You are on a long thing, Tade. Made told him. Don't you know that its a hidden rule that elderly folks don't apologise to their younger ones, including and especially if they are not so wrong. Even when they are in the wrong, they won't apologise and woe to you if they are in the right! You will be roasted."

"See Tade, you just have to forget that treatment meted out on you and move on. These men are not worth it and in four, five years you will be done with them." Chuks advised him.

"Yes, behaving like a kid whose candy was seized from him won't help you. Andrew said. Mind you, you have an exam tomorrow and he has none. Its you that is losing if you continue thinking along those lines."

Tade sighed and moved to prepare for the next day.

The exams continued with no incident. Soon it was time to go home as the session had ended. Most of the other folks had left and the rest ( Malik and Andrew) were not in the room when Tade started packing his load. Again, he had excess raw food to give. As he was about locking his locker, a certain fellow showed up.

"Na you dey form James Bond for me abi?" He asked. Tade turned round and saw the fellow who first accosted him in school over a packet of Indomie.

"Hungry boy, what are you looking for here?" Tade looked menacingly at him. The young guy cleaned some sweat off his head and started removing his shirt.

"Na me you dey call hungry boy? A whole Jugo! Yee, I don die! Who be you sef? Wetin you feel you get?" He said, flexing his muscles.

"See, see if you have nothing to do, I have somewhere am going to. Isn't it disrespectful to yourself that you have to be making all this noise, like a village tout despite your age?"

The boy could not take it any longer and lunged at Tade with a punch. Tade was swift, and comfortably dodged the attack before landing a choke-slap at the guy's throat. The action forced the guy to beat a retreat, his eyes betraying the sensation of shock as he gasped for air. As he make another attempt at Tade, he missed and fell on a wooden chair. Enraged at his failure, he swung an arm to Tade, who dodged it again and then land two quick, heavy blows at the fellow, before dragging him off the chair and laying hold of his neck.

"Now listen to me, idiot!" Tade started. "If you can't ask for something nicely, don't ask at all. This will be the second and last time I will let you off nicely. If you continue to harass me, I will make sure that the face of amoeba will have more structure than you, you understand?"

The guy nodded as Tade released his grip and kicked him out of the room.

"Nuisance!" He hissed out

Is anyone reading this?

CC:
Festwitz
Crazyscientist
Tholuwani
Fanatasywriter.
Kingphilip
Onemansquad
Larrysun
Fataveli
Bluestarry
Divepen

Tade broke into a sweat. His feet agitated as he did not want to offend the man, in as much as the older man had to know the truth.

"Sir, some students stole it from me." He blurted out, hoping that it will be the end of it. His luck then ran out.

"How did that happen?" Dr Fakunle asked.

"They waylaid me on the day you gave me the bag sir. Tade said a bit more confidently. They beat me up and collected the bag. In fact I was in the Health Centre for a week."

"So those lads went after the bag, eh?" Dr Fakunle said quietly before breaking into a big, hearty laugh, surprising Tade who did not know what to make out of it.

"The fo.ols! He said. They fell for it, the idio.ts!" He then looked at Tade.

"I told them that the bag contained the question papers for the exams and told them that they will never see it. For course they were the ones who came around to ask for favours that I was not willing to give." He grinned again. "I put some random questions from other Universities into the bag and used the department answer sheet to cover it. I don't believe what they did."

"Please you can go." He told Tade, who was expecting an apology. When the lecturer turned his back and faced the window, Tade walked out in anger.

He hissed.

So this man remembered me today? He thought to himself as he walked briskly back to the department. He did not want to spend much time in there.

'Good evening sir.' He greeted the lecturer, who seemed to be busy and had faced the window.

'Oh, there you are.' He turned and faced Tade. How was the exam?

Tade looked at him, trying to decipher his thoughts from his face. He failed woefully.

It was fine, though a bit tough. He answered sincerely.

'I expected it to be a bit tough for you and more difficult for other students. That's the way to breed fine students, pass them through the fire of examinations!' He grinned, leaving Tade to imagine if the older man was with his senses. The topics from which the questions came from were basically uncharted grounds as he just touched on the topics in class.

'But sir, you hardly taught us this aspect of the course.' Tade tried his luck and spoke out, just in case the man gave some information about the reasons why he did what he did. His luck just shaved the area.

'Of course! That's why you have textbooks; so that you can read more about the topics! You students like to be spoon-fed! In our days we always went ahead to search for textbooks and we were always ahead of the class.'

But you guys had free meals and less distractions. Tade thought to himself.

'If the result is bad, I will see what I can do.' He concluded. He then looked at Tade squarely.

'Where is my brown bag?'

The exams came with the usual buzz of reading even though in actuality, the buzz of reading is always established far earlier than usual. That is often due to the high amounts of assignments and church/mosque work to be done, not adding the conferences and meets around.

Tade was hurrying to his room after a dracula of a exam which spanned two hours before seemed like six hours to the students, including Tade himself, when some students accosted him.

'Shebi na you be Dr Fakunle's pikin, why you no answer us wey we ask for answer for exams? You dey form holy, holy for us abi?'

Tade's looked at them squarely in the face, his face almost bursting into flames.

'What is it with you people? Can't you read for your own exam? I was beaten and wounded in the hospital a few days to exams, none of you ask after me. I struggled to get the latest material from him, you guys could not help me there. The only thing you three know is to be copying people everywhere. You can't get give people answer if they asked.'

He now turned to their leader. 'If you know that you can't read for your exams, go and sort yourself out. I had the worst exam today and I can't start petting you people.'

He stormed out in their presence, obviously fuming. How can humans be so careless and tactless? He had gone through the toughest period of his life and still had to do this exam, yet all they care is about themselves. Not even a "how are you doing?" from their mouths.

He was about taking a bike when a student stopped him.

'Dr Fakunle is asking after you.'

The exams came with the usual buzz of reading even though in actuality, the buzz of reading is always established far earlier than usual. That is often due to the high amounts of assignments and church/mosque work to be done, not adding the conferences and meets around.

Tade was hurrying to his room after a dracula of a exam which spanned two hours before seemed like six hours to the students, including Tade himself, when some students accosted him.

Shebi na you be Dr Fakunle's pikin, why you no answer us wey we ask for answer for exams? You dey form holy, holy for us abi?

Tade's looked at them squarely in the face, his face almost bursting into flames.

'What is it with you people? Can't you read for your own exam? I was beaten and wounded in the hospital a few days to exams, none of you ask after me. I struggled to get the latest material from him, you guys could not help me there. The only thing you three know is to be copying people everywhere. You can't get give people answer if they asked.'

He now turned to their leader. 'If you know that you can't read for your exams, go and sort yourself out. I had the worst exam today and I can't start petting you people.'

For a week Tade laid in the hospital, feeling useless and dejected. He had fallen for a trap and failed to keep what should be important documents away from those thugs. He was sure that those guys were from his department.

However, he had friends which included his ever loyal roomies, Shittu and Made, while Quadri and Malik came in once in a while. That cheered him up, even though he felt an bit empty afterwards.

By thursday, he had recovered well enough to leave the hospital, something he was glad about. However, a cloud seemed to hang on his head as the lecturer who seemed to have put him into so much did not so much as send a student to check after his wellbeing, making Tade feel used.

He relayed his feeling to Malik.

'You should not take it personal, besides he has not asked for his bag now, has he? Na you dey carry matter for head like say na your money dey inside the bag.'

'But its one kind. E be like say im no send wetin wan happen to me.'

'Wetin you expect, that one na persin? See, better face your exams and bone the issue. They no go look say you no well give you special questions, so read.'

Tade looked away from Malik and faced his books, knowing that Malik was right.

Some of the guys could not take it again. Not that it was odd for the class representative to see a lecturer at this period; granted that he was not seeing questions of course. It was more to the character of the person in question. Dr Fakunle was not the kind of man that sees his students during this period, even if it was the class captain.

So some students decided to take action and watched Tade from a distance, planning to trap him and then get anything they could from him. The day they finally chose to implement their plan was the day Dr Fakunle gave him a certain brown bag filled with papers, purportedly question papers for the exams.

Tade was just leaving the department and was passing through what was called Science MiniMart, it was 9pm at this period, when he realised that he was cornered.

Two guys in black outfits bearing the mark of a scorpion at their backs were standing directly in front of him. He turned back to retrace his steps, only to meet three angry looking faces and mean bodies charging at him. With them so close to him, there was no time to run, so he stepped back a bit as they started sending punches at him, one by one.

Tade dodged one and a two, but three became a bit too much and when one of them held his hands at his back, he was ruthlessly exposed and beaten by the other two, at least until an overly sensitive watchman noticed the fight and faced some shots at their direction, causing the others to flee. They did take the bag, however and scurried off before the watchman could make out the identity of any of them. Tade, who was already a bit weak from the beating, moved slowly towards his hostel, aided by the watchman, then decided to take a detour to the Health Centre.

This was a week to the start of examinations.

Funny enough, it was not really as they saw it.

Dr Fakunle was notorious for been a cynic when it came to dealing with his students. It was on record that he had thee highest number of students retaking his course, and he always obliged to fail them mercilessly if they did not perform. Money did not move him, neither did hot legs or big boobs. He was seemingly so unmovable that it was rumoured that Old Sammy, who was a student in another department taking the course (for it was not only Law students that had the misfortune of facing the man). had to take the course five times, a very unwelcome experience. Of course this only scared fresh students in the department, as stalites had already become hard to his behavior.

But no student wanted to fail.

What he saw in Tade was still a mystery, up til now, but he decided to trust this rich, butter-eyed class rep with a whole lot of things. Hand-outs that he rarely gave the class, shifting of his lectures to suit students ( not like him) and he even once decide to waiver a test he had planned to give the unsuspecting students, all because Tade was not around on that day. This was not surely him!

Of course, such closeness is hard to miss and before Tade could say hey, female students, desperate to move ahead with their lives and dump the man's course started moving towards Tade, not like he had not had enough attention from the ladies before. Some 'bad-belle' guys were insinuating that he and Dr Fakunle were in an intimate relationship, a rumour that led to Tade calling them to order and threatening them with a court order. Others were watching, while a few male students shelved their pride and went to meet him for help. Tade obliged gladly.

Then second semester exams were driving close and he made a stunning announcement.

'My questions are all objective. They will be here by tomorrow. I expect no one in my office unlee my class rep. Do you understand?'

"Eh? Class rep again!"

Am sorry for how short it is, am having a bit of a writer's block at the moment and my BIS is ending today, so it may take some days before I update. Am seriously sorry.

Hopefully before next week, I will be back.

Chapter Five

Now as the class captain, Tade then began to understand what Ortega may have faced in that position. He had a couple of issues; making more copies of some lecturers hand-outs, some students had issues with lecturers, finding free venues for make-up classes, e.t.c.

And then there was threats from cult members.

He had found much to his dismay, that Dumuje would be a pain in his neck as long as they will be taking courses. Fortunately for Tade, he and Dumuje were taking no other courses, at least until Part 3. However, one or two extra students were trying to use cult influence to force him into wrong decisions. One of such happened during a test period.

Two of the students were colluding to steal a peek at one of the lecturer's questions. They had made all the plans and were bent on fulfilling them. Unfortunately for Tade, the lecturer had trusted him with the questions which was in a leather bag.

So he was now their target!

I am in church retreat, so I have not been able to continue the story. We will be done by Saturday afternoon, so I may be able to put something later this night.

Tade was baffled. Was Dumuje failing the course purposely or did some conditions hinder him? What conditions could they be?
He looked at the result for some time, eventually picking out his colleague on that day, who passed the course, baffling Tade the more. Did Dumuje know that he will fail the course and then orchestrated Ortega's death?

He walked away, having more questions than answers streaming through his mind. Malik said something about Dumuje having a power bike, in fact Dumuje was the only person with a power bike on campus currently. The report going round campus was that Ortega was killed by a person on a power bike, minutes after he reappeared on campus. Not up to 24 hours later, Dumuje reports that his bike was stolen and then reports again that it had been returned. It looked too simple, yet very efficient to dismiss Dumuje of any wrong doing. The situation irked him badly. Why did Ortega have to die like that? He walked straight to the hostel with a heavy heart.

Ortega's burial held two weeks later in his hometown. Tade managed to gather some of his Law colleagues to go for the burial. Ortega was no one's friend, but considering that he was the past class representative or captain, he had to do something about it, even if its just to honour him. Wande and some of the Faculty executives followed, with Wande sticking close to him, which irked Tade. Since the day that Shade gisted him all about her, Tade had kept a tape-rule distance from her. Now she is closer than he was comfortable with. To add more discomfort, she was playing more familiarly with him, asking questions all around the place. He just had to bear with the whole situation, so he answered her questions in an evasive manner, giving no clear answer to her questions.

Back at the funeral, they were welcomed by Ortega's family, coldly at first before they eventually warmed up to Tade and his entourage. Tade could blame them really, it was the fault of the cults that Ortega was dead. It can never be easy to look at a group of students kindly when you know that one of them could be grinning secretly at them. Watching Ortega's body being laid to the ground, Tade was briefly shocked to the bones. Was that how everyone's life will end? Despite your beauty, riches, intelligence et al, you will just be dumped to the ground, a lump body with no idea of what will happen to it, then maggots and earthworms that you have fought so hard to drive away from you now have free access to you? Karma is real, folks!