We Could Do More Parenting in Otu-Onitsha [Opinion] by Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

Talk about business, talk about wealthy men and women, talk about commercialization in every sense; talk about Onitsha, with the largest market in west Africa.

Yet again, talk about touts, streets, pick pockets and petty road side thieves, stubborn boys and girls, wild, yet inexperienced children and adults, negligent parents, misinformed children, still come to Onitsha.

Still talk about the slangs in the whole wide world; where the mother is miss, the father is man, girls are shima, friends are aloba even currency values are not left out. When fifty naira is white, one hundred naira is 0, two hundred naira is 00, and so on. And expectedly, have given into the name, Umu Otu Onitsha.

I have always noticed the aggression, the default roughness and toughness of people, especially as a child, aside the natural aggression of being a citizen of a failing Nigeria, a Nigeria that neither knows nor values your existence as her citizen, a disgusting Nigeria. It was worth being angry over. Yet, Onitsha was different. The aggression was advanced. There was never a day when you won’t see people fight and rant.

One of the two men, one day around where I live, in the heat of a misunderstanding promised to tear down heaven on the other one. The other man, in rage, ‘do you think hell is far? Dare me and I will send you to the nearest one'. What did he mean by that? Were there as many hells as there were planets or even streets? Were some closer than others? A man promising to send another on a voyage to hell would do so on what grounds? Was he the devil’s only begotten son? Whatever it was he meant, I didn’t want to know, I didn’t care to know. My pastor had said already that it was only God in Heaven that had the ability to cast both the body and soul into hell. But come to think of it; God in the heaven the other man promised to tear down? Horrible!

I could not stop learning and unlearning and constantly relearning. What I learnt in school always contrasted with what I learnt on the street. Driving was supposed to be done on cars and other drivables, but here, human beings were driven too. It was on this Street that I learnt that driving was the illegal snatching of people properties either with the threat of harming them or as a show of superiority. This was popular among cheap small boy cultists we had in the neighborhood who played the roles of gods.

This driving properties was so rampant when I was little that our parents did not send us out after 8pm at night, and even if they must, they would have go in pairs and with heavy torchlight -some of those with radio which were in vogue then, and on the order that we should neither talk to anyone on the road nor waste time.

Not having to waste time when sent on an errand has a fresh spot on the Igbo child’s memory. 70 through 85 percent of Ndi Igbo families travel down to their villages every December for the Christmas celebration and my humble family was not an exception. We have only missed traveling once with reasons our parents did not want to tell us but growth has started to make us pinpoint some of the reasons why families do not travel for the celebration. Its in the past now though.

My grandmother always, as I did not meet my grandfather in person and have only come across his enlarged photograph which was beautifully kept in my grandmother's room – it was their matrimonial room, would want to send me on an errand but first spits saliva on the ground on the promise that if the saliva dried up before I came back, I would be in hot soup. The thought of the saliva drying up was fearful so it was always a no distraction, sprint, do not talk to anyone type of errand. I would always after each errand check the saliva to know if it dried up.

We thought we were heroes. Having to come back and see that the saliva has not dried up yet was enough reason to be a superman for the rest of the day. The funny thing I got to learn while growing was that the spit would never dry off even in hours. Now that I am grown, quite verily, and my grandma, Gladys of the blessed memory, would not play such tricks on old me anymore, would instead of the spitting ritual, tell me to sleep there if I liked. I was never going to sleep there.

We lived with the fear of cultists till late 2012 and early 2013 when cyber crimes took many of them away, youths and cult children, off the streets. Hit took some, natural death took some, law enforcement agencies took some, repentance took some. So it started becoming a conducive environment again though the entire aggression was not flushed out entirely. It still resided with us.

Cheating Onitsha brought ups during business was always impossible considering the number of times they have been played those cards on. People wanted to take advantage of other people. People wanted to be at the gaining side, always at the gaining side in every transaction.

My first and second attempts to buy phones from the popular Emeka Offor plaza ended in tears, in stories that touches not just the heart but the anus. I had given three good phones in exchange for one bigger one. This was called cantabalance, where you had to swap a phone with another phone and either get paid or be paid depending on whose phone has the greater value.

I had given three good phones and some amount of money in exchange for a Tecno Camon C7 phone as that was the trend then. Pitiably, the guy who sold the scrab, as that is what I would call the phone, was an onye oso ahia. It was until he disappeared that I found out that what he had sold to me was akpu.

Akpu was the slang name for really bad phones. I felt my world crumbling. In pursuit for one bad phone, I had lost three good ones. That was when I recalled what I had read earlier at the entrance of the plaza, ‘Do not listen to these ndi oso ahia. They have sweet tongues but they are as dangerous as… ‘ I felt like fainting over and over. Have I just been sweet tongued? Or were we playing? Was he going to bring the phone back at the end of our play? No, he was not, we were not playing. Everything had happened too fast.

My second attempt? It was worse. I literarily had to give out all the money I had to not get beaten up and driven.

After my first encounter, I had promised myself to be very careful but on getting there, these guys were every where around. I maintained, as though I knew what I wanted. This time, I came with a Samsung Galaxy S6 edge with a bad screen which a guy volunteered to take me to where I would fix it. I agreed immediately, like there was something that lets you lose your mind as soon as you step into that premises. We got to this nicely furnished shop, air conditioned. I was comfortable. The shop owner who unknowing to me was a criminal too, welcomed me. He said I needed to detect the particular screen for my phone but that would need system assistance. I asked how much it would cost to use the system, he said it was twenty naira per OS.

What was twenty naira? I could afford it ten times provided that what was wrong with my phone was fixed. I sat close to fifteen minutes waiting for what seemed like a bar to get filled. What do I know? I was running out of time. When I told him, he said it was done already and the screen for my phone had been detected and we could procure it at a closeby shop. I thanked him, and brought out twenty naira out of the fifty naira the keke bus driver had given me as change when I gave him two hundred naira as the fare from where I stayed to main market, gave him and he asked with disgust, ‘what is this?’ I told him it was for the OS. He pointed at the screen and I saw six hundred and thirty one OS, total of twelve thousand, six hundred and twenty naira. Just for OS? Ego ole buzi screen ? Like how much is screen? He did not respond. He only wanted his money. God, which money?

Other men, whom I suspected were touts, started to troop in and for the fear of getting hurt, I begged the man who collected the whole money I had on me, leaving me with just the amount to take me back to Ugwuagba.

This time, I knew that I was not coming back to that plaza, never again. I would simply send my friend who has a shop there so he can do the buying for me. It was safer. It was enough lesson to still fall into wrong hands again. This is likely or closely the same fate with my umu otu fellows in one way or the other. It was my growth experience.

Read Part Two Here;

Experience: We Could Do More Parenting in Otu-Onitsha -Part 2 [Opinion] by Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime

My name is Obiagwu Uchechukwu Godstime. A student and a lover of fine literature. I am a process of a continual effort to become better, brighter and bigger. This essay, I would say is my first attempt of prose as a genre of literature. Unlike my poems, I do not yet have a name for this essay as an organically whole material. At the end our collective reading exercise, we, you and I, will give it a name. Stay tuned.

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