.....
Alhaji was not a loquacious person ,he rarely talked and when he did,it sounded more like whispering and you really had to lean in close to him to hear his voice.Obi said maybe it was the torturing they gave him while in police custody that had affected his voice.
'Jojo,u no know say na only one shirt and one trouser follow Alhaji comot from prison?...........Obi informed me.
'Before nko,dem dey dash clothes for prison?...
'But forget o,Alhaji was bragging to yesterday that he will soon get a car o'....
'Person wey no get work dey buy car?........i quipped...
'Sebi him wife de work'.........
'Mscheeeew,how much she de collect?...........we ended the gist on that note.
Before the arrival of Alhaji from prison,we already made it a habit to always make chicken soup every weekend by seizing any available chicken that mistakenly comes near our house.
Obi would use a trail of corn to tempt the chicken inside the house and from there ,it ends up in our pots but since Alhaji's arrival,we found out that we no longer had chickens coming around again because Alhaji was in the habit of killing them everyday.Alhaji had a younger brother of his living with him and both of them were brothers in crime.
Not that we as students were not also committing the same crime,but we felt ours was born out of necessity.This was getting too much ,we had an emergency meeting.
'Omo ,this one wey Alhaji don pai all the cowboys we dey this area i hope the landlord association dey take notice o,make dem no go dey yan say na students now'..
'Jojou funny o,dem no wan know o,if anything miss na we o'...Obi corrected me
'Haa,that one no go funny o'.......
'We need to change tactics and prey'.......Uche suggested.
'Like what?...
'Four wheeler'..................Uche replied
We all looked at each other ,if what Uche was suggesting was what all of us were thinking ,then it would be a jamboree every month with enough meat to go around.Uche suggested we should move our mark from chickens to goats!!! The meeting was not concluded,we had an indigene living in the house now and the guy was also an immigration officer,we had to be very careful.Uche was telling us to up our game,that needed a lot of thinking and we all agreed to think about it.
The next day was a weekend and i was relaxing on my bed when i heard Obi banging on my door ,i jumped up and quickly opened because with Obi,anything can happen.
'I no tell you say Alhaji say e go buy car?'...Obi was excited.
'Eh ehn,wetin come hapun?'
'come outside'......Obi started dragging me..
On getting outside.....Alhaji was leaning on a blue coloured Mazda 626,grinning from ear to ear.
Alhaji had struck again!!!!!!
This was not the era of yahoo yahoo and the only way Alhaji could come up with cash was to carry out an operation.
We did not know the kind of operation he did and none of us had the liver to ask him,all we could do was celebrate with him as he ordered for crates of beer and resigned ourselves to everyday life of fear not knowing when the police would come again,we could only prepare ourselves by making sure we did not harbour any incriminating stuffs in the house.
This particular day was the only day i remembered that Alhaji bought any livestock with his money,he bought some live chickens and we fried them to be taken with the cold bottle of beer.
In a lame man's terminology, when referring to someone that had suddenly come across good fortune,we say......
Alhaji has arrived!!!!
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