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Dawn was approaching. A cock crowed twice some distance away and soon the muezzin would be heard, calling all the faithful to the day’s first prayers. There had not been electricity in the vicinity for a week and the residents had lost all hope of it since there were rumors that the transformer would have to be taken away.
Ignatius carried a bucket of water to the bathroom. He always had his bath early, as his co-tenants in the face-me-I-face-you knew; but today he had it earlier. After a quick five minute bath in the cramped bathroom that all the tenants used, he dashed into his room and hurriedly changed into his clothes that had been neatly placed on the chair. His alacrity was like that of a soldier rushing for a parade. In three minutes he had combed his hair, dressed fully and even knotted a black tie on his white shirt.
As the solitary candle in his room flickered, he picked up a CD placed on the bed and opened the case to be sure it was the right one. It was labeled with blue permanent ink: PAY-DAY. He slipped it into a small envelope, blew off the candle and emerged from his pension. As he stepped out on the street in a quick trot, the muezzin started his cry and he knew it was 5 a.m.
Ignatius got to the bus-stop after about 10 minutes. There was a middle-aged lady waiting for a vehicle. Even though he had a tie, she looked at him suspiciously. He ignored her brazen stare and looked out for a vehicle, tightly clutching his envelope. After a while, a molue approached with the conductor shouting .Oshodi! Oshodi! Ignatius quickly boarded the vehicle which barely stopped to pick its fares. His journey had begun.
When he arrived at Oshodi, it was almost seven o clock and the place was already a madhouse with commuters and vehicles moving helter-skelter. He went to a taxi park and haggled for a ride to Akin Adesola Street on the island.
“How much?”
“1,000 naira.”
“You won’t take 200 naira?”
The cabbie frowned and looked away. He spat out and said, “700 naira, last price.”
“I can’t pay you more than 400 naira. In short, I’II take a bus,” and he stormed away.
“Oga, Oga, please, come back.” Ignatius turned around.
“OK, I will take you.”
Ignatius smiled as he entered the vehicle, knowing that his bluff had paid off. When they got to Victoria Island, he realized that the taxi driver didn’t know the street as he had claimed. After stopping and asking a few people, they finally got to Ignatius destination: Octan & Phillips, consultant engineers. It was a neat five-storey building. He paid the taxi driver and entered the building. It was 8.00 a.m.
“I’d like to see Mr. Phillips,” he said to the receptionist.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Yes, tell him it’s Mr. Imodibo, Ignatius Imodibo..
“Please, hold on a moment,” she said as she clutched the receiver of the phone, her long nails, like the talons of an eagle, encircling it.
“Sir, a Mr. Ignatius Imodibo says he has an appointment with Mr. Phillips.” She dropped the phone shortly and led him to the lift.
“5th floor, just go straight down,” she directed.
Shortly afterwards, Ignatius was in a large office, sparsely furnished but with a lot of taste. It was rugged with a soft blue carpet from wall to wall; there was a small conference table in the middle with a vase in the middle and four chairs around it. A small bookshelf stood unobtrusively in one corner. There was a large woven tapestry showing what seemed to be a map of Lagos on one of the walls. The opposite wall was all glass, offering a breathtaking view of the lagoon. All the furniture showed class.
Mr. Phillips was staring at the view his large windows offered. He turned as Ignatius entered.
“So, Ignatius, I hope you have something good for me.”
“Yes, sir,” he said as he retrieved the CD from the envelope.
Someone came in behind Ignatius.
“That is Peter Owu. He handles our new IT arm now. I will value his opinion in this matter.”
Ignatius turned to shake him.
“I think we have met before,” he said.
“Oh, really, I can’t place the face,” Peter responded.
“The last time I came here you were at the visitors’ waiting room. Remember, I told you I was a programmer, and you gave me some words of advice.”
“I remember vaguely, that day was a really busy day.”
“As all days are, let us get down to business quickly,” Mr. Phillips cut in.
The three converged round a small table. Peter placed a laptop he had borne with him on the table.
“So, let’s see what you have.” Peter said, with a lisp.
“For this thing to work well, the computer needs to be connected to the internet.”
Peter raised an eyebrow. Mr. Phillips nodded in agreement. That wasn’t a problem.
“It is, go on,” he said.
Ignatius opened the CD case, retrieved the CD within it and placed it in to the CD ROM drive of the laptop. The disc started spinning as he bit his lips in expectation. He was tense but he tried not to show it. Beethoven’s ninth symphony filled the room as the screen flickered. A digital clock appeared in the middle of the screen, showing that the program was still loading. It started its countdown: 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1.
The screen was suddenly filled with splashes of color as Ignatius announced, “This is Passmark Pro, an integrated virtual office software that allows you to keep tabs on the progress of all aspects of the office, to update jobs and to source for help on any aspects online. It allows different users to see different things depending on the level of control you want that user to have. There are links to Accounts, Human Resources, Engineering Department, Site Managers, Projects, Marketing, Clients and the Web. All of his has been designed as you requested. Since it is going to be online, the workers can update their own job schedules online and tie it to the bonuses they are meant to receive. Also, it enables you to see that the clients are never behind schedule as there is a link between level of progress and payments made by clients, telling you those that are behind schedule in payments, deadlines that have not been met by the workers etc..”
He showed them the links as he worked his way through the site. He felt his voice sounded dry and hoarse because he was still tensed, so he tried to relax by talking slowly. He had been working on this project for close to a year now. Initially, his former classmate and friend, Mark, had gotten the job after lobbying for quite a while. He knew that if this worked, he could get any other IT-job he wanted because they had tried to integrate so many things into this one. In fact, Octan & Phillips had been using a limited version of the software for six months now. They had not completed it yet so they gave them a part to try out. So far, Mr. Phillips had not been won over by it. Mark had gotten fed up after that and a postgraduate scholarship to study in Ireland had suddenly bailed him out three months ago. Ignatius, now alone, was determined to see it through.
“Why don’t you give it up and look for a scholarship to leave this country?” Mark had counseled.
“I like finishing anything I start,” Ignatius replied through gritted teeth. “Besides, I really think that this job can make me a king in this country.”
Ignatius knew that Octan & Phillips had found his program very useful, especially since it integrated software that made the engineering calculations that normally took time easier, enabling them to perform more jobs quicker. However, they had to pretend they didn’t like it to enable them negotiate a low price for the package. They had not received a dime since the initial 50,000 naira advance handed at the beginning of the project which had now dragged for a whole year instead of the initial 6 months agreed. He now had to work nights in a cyber café, to earn his keep, and share his daytime between working on this project and sleeping. He always wondered how he managed to live from day to day. It wasn’t his fault that the contract had been so extended. Mr. Phillips had kept on suggesting more and more things that it now seemed like a never-ending project. Then, he had forced him to give him a final and definitive list of modifications wanted, so that the project would come to an end and he would receive the final 250,000 naira severance pay. He had some doubts about Mr. Phillips making good his own side of the deal, since he always seemed to find fault with whatever he presented. This, however, was to be the last visit he was to make here, he promised himself.
“Okay, we will deploy it for two weeks more, then I will pay you the balance,” Mr. Phillips concluded after the demonstration and question-and-answer session. He had surprisingly left most of the questions to Peter this time around. Peter had only asked some elementary questions about the architecture of the portal: questions that did anything but rattle him. The questions only betrayed how little Peter knew about the project since most of the measures he wanted in place had been well taken care of.
“But I thought you had tried it for long enough, after all, I was only making slight modifications which you now seem to be satisfied with. I need the money badly. I deserve it.”
“Yes, you deserve it, but nobody gives out money for merchandise that he has doubts about. You should know that. Just two weeks,” he said with a tone of finality.
He was shown out. As he passed the reception, the receptionist was engrossed in a society gossip magazine and barely raised her head when he passed.
He came out to the road again. He thought that he would be in the clouds after collecting his check and would indulge himself by taking a cab to go home. Now he didn’t even feel up to entering a bus. It was a bright day with the sun glorious in the sky but it could have been a dark rainy night to him in his gloom. He walked down the street, ignoring buses calling Obalende, which he should have entered. He just needed time to cool off, to simmer down the anger that boiled within him. He had woke up today with a lot of excitement but the climax had turned to an anticlimax and it pissed him off. Two weeks seemed like an eternity since he had been stalled for too long.
He was lost in thought and didn’t notice a guy running towards him from a side street. He was on a floor in a heap with the fellow before he knew what was happening.
“Oh, sorry. I am very sorry that I didn’t see you,” the young man who ran into him apologized profusely. He pulled Ignatius up and dusted him. Ignatius was still in angst land all this while. He didn’t even notice the man beat the dust off his clothes.
“Sorry sir,” the young man kept repeating.
“No problem.” Ignatius finally managed to mutter, to assure the man that his entreaties had not fallen on deaf ears.
The man soon disappeared in a flash, running in the same direction he had been on before the accident.
Ignatius walked on. Then, he felt his pocket. His wallet and mobile phone were gone.
There was a lot of activity at the bus park at Ojota that afternoon. Many buses speeding on the expressway screeched briefly under the pedestrian bridge to discharge their passengers before proceeding on, calling their destinations in their wake. Motor park boys crisscrossed the road, grabbing the bags of people whom they believed to be traveling and conveying them quickly to their bus of choice: each one wanted his bus to be the first to be filled, so fierce was the competition. Some of their victims struggled to have their bags back while others just gave in. There were two policemen stationed on one side of the road, ready to apprehend anybody who, failing to use the overhead bridge, decided to cross the expressway. However, they never seemed to be able to catch the touts - or they didn’t dare to. Hawkers were everywhere, carrying all kinds of wares from toothbrushes to whisky, meandering in the throng of pedestrians heading in different directions.
Cordelia was like a misfit in this throng. She kept on obstructing people because she could not be in as much of a hurry as they were. She didn’t know where to go because this was here first time in Lagos. All she had was an address and a description. However, she had to ask for directions on the bus to take. Before she left the village, she had been told to be wary of Lagosians. She’d heard all sorts of stories about people selling their souls for money and using other people to make juju. She stopped by a woman selling roasted plantain by the roadside. Surely this woman would look kindly towards her.
“Excuse me, ma. I am looking for where I can get a bus to Oshodi.”
The plantain woman looked up at her and then looked down again at her wares as if she was not being talked to.
Cordelia repeated her plea.
The woman now looked up at her again, sized her up and pointed to her right, without saying a word. Cordelia went off in that direction. She got to a place where there were some buses, preparing to load and asked the touts there which of the buses was going to Oshodi. The touts thought for a moment and then one of them said: “Ah, sister, go down this way then cross the road over there. Then you will see the bus to Oshodi.”
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