HOW TO BE A NIGERIAN CAR OWNER

I write a lot about cars in Nigeria for two reasons. First, cars are one of leading causes of death in Nigeria – we are reported to have the second highest road traffic fatalities in the world. Second, and more importantly, because in Nigeria, a car is often the most visible evidence that God has listened to your prayers, looked favourably upon the tithes in your pastor’s pocket, and blessed your hustle.

If you grew up in lower to middle class Nigeria, you will remember when that neighbour bought his first second-hand car, to the fascination and envy of the entire neighbourhood. He parked it outside his house with an L sign hanging awkwardly from the number plate. Sometimes there was no number plate yet. No matter how used the new car looked, it always smelled new when you went close. And as far as your neighbour was concerned it was new. His children acquired a new swagger and waved more than normal whenever they were heading out in the car. In the back seat, they looked like stolen kids saying their last goodbyes. You envied them. You too wanted to inhale the heady scent of newly delivered second-hand cars. The children did not come out for football for one or two days after that and some of the other kids wondered if this disappearing act was a newly acquired superiority.

Many years later you have gotten that job, better than what your parents had. You have not only bought one second-hand car, but have changed it to one so clean it could pass for new. Maybe your faith was even big enough for your hustle to produce a brand new Korean car. A Kia. A Hyundai. I rejoice with you. It is important however to acquire the attitude of one whose hustle has been blessed. This article will help you do that.

It used to be fashionable to clip your car keys to the rest of your house keys and let them dangle from one of your fingers – the car key would always be unmistakeable, the largest with black plastic. I know how enjoyable the jiggling of keys is, but the era of that massive bunch of keys containing everything including the key to the kitchen store is over. Dead. Try it now and you will just look like a commercial taxi driver. Even if after work, on your way home in the outskirts of the city, you carry a few passengers, you do not want anyone to call you a taxi driver. Separate your house keys from the car key. Any car that still has a different key for the boot is a car you want to change. If you still have that type of car, this is the time to stop reading, go on your knees and beg God to bless your hustle with an upgrade to something that has only one multifunction key.

When you disembark from your car you need to hold that single key in your right hand in a way that is partly visible. That way when someone wants to shake you, they can see you move the key from your right to your left hand. They will see that single multifunction key and have no doubt what work God has done in your life. When you are in a public place or visiting someone, place the key on the table right by your smartphone.

When you arrive at an event and you can’t flaunt your single key, complain about not finding a place to park. Moan about having to park far away. When someone says they saw you buying something or eating, or strolling – any activity where your ownership of a car may be in doubt – quickly add that oh, you were just returning from the mechanic or the car wash. However, you don’t want to use the mechanic line too often lest people think your car is the type that always gives you problems. That would be disastrous for your reputation. Only people with poverty hangover constantly complain about mechanics. The car wash line however, says something about the sophistication of your hustle.

While I have advised before to cover your car in church stickers, this may be running out of fashion. It is fine in the first two weeks of the year to declare it to be your ‘year of anointing’ or your ‘year of unsurpassed success’. But after that it gets old. I will tell you what is cool these days, especially if you live in Abuja: stickers from foreign universities. Nothing says ‘God has blessed my hustle in the long term’ like a sticker from say, Harvard. Even if you went there for a two-week course. And it does not have to be Harvard. It can be from some unknown monotechnic in Eastern Europe or Asia. Once Nigerians know it is not from Nigeria, your respect will grow. Whether from America or Kazakhstan, a foreign trained graduate is a foreign trained graduate.

(If you have kids and drive say a Toyota Sienna Bus, acceptable stickers include: MY CHILD IS A STAR STUDENT. Because a bumper sticker about your child on a spacious Sienna says to the person driving behind: ‘I have done something useful and unselfish with my life. What about you?’)

As a car owner it is important not to leave fellow Nigerians guessing about which of the gods actually blessed your hustle. This is where a hanging rosary comes in. Whether cross or chasbi, hang it on the rear view mirror so that anyone who takes a look will know whether your God is the one who gives many mansions or the one who gives virgins. A rosary serves many purposes:

1.      Protection against car accidents

2.      When protection fails and you need to say last prayers

3.      Protection against car theft

4.      In case a religious riot breaks out, there is a 50% chance the people burning cars will be your spiritual brothers and will spare your car

It doesn’t not matter that half the time during road rage you will be saying “bastard”, “your father”, “idiot”, “ubanka” or “uwaka” right there in the presence of God. The Nigerian God knows how drivers can be. S/he will understand.

Most importantly however, and especially when you are able to buy that tear-rubber Korean car, when someone congratulates you on getting a new car, say: Na God. You want to show gratitude for the blessing of your hustle. Even if you run a criminal enterprise, the more you credit God with your success and thank him/her for it, the more your hustle is blessed. Because nothing, whether criminal or otherwise, happens without the consent of God. If S/he lets you get away with it, be thankful. You never know, one day you may find yourself flaunting a Range Rover Sport or something cool like that.

AN EKSPLANATION*

My husband,

Long time have pass, I know, but my body will not gree me if I don’t talk my mind once and for all. I know all these months you are looking me like devil pikin or even like devil but is okay. I gree. They say is the fault of dawa dawa if soup smell reach neighbor house.

But if you will let me say something, haba! Did it reach the one to pursue Blessed with sharp cutlass? If to say you pursue Pastor Gilead who look like those people in Wrestling, ehen, nobody could have get mind to lock you in mad people house. Blessed is just a child.

The thing is truly truly, nobody can have excuse for doing the thing I did to you to make you crase finish and follow that boy that all these years have been calling you daddy. Afterall you are the one that come from Makurdi all the way to Anguhar to find wife when your friends who have wife that read book are laughing at you. You are the one who look me in NKST church choir, by yourself without anybody pointing hand and tell me that you like my figure and my long hair and that Am very fine. That word you talk that first day that we went to chop point and kill is still sweeting me till today.

So you close eye and marry me even though you are graduate and civil servant in Benue State Ministry of Information. You even tell your sister to sharrap when she put mouth to scatter our marriage talk because I stop school in primary 5 when moto jam my father in front of Mama Kakaan shop together with the schnapps that he carry chop money to buy. (I wish that I get my mother mind. She did not cry common tears for my father. She say it is waste of time to cry over man.)

It is hard to talk these things because truly truly it is not small try you try for me and my brother that you help to find work in ministry as messenger. I know that it is not all husband that can register me in lesson to write WAEC of which I fail three times. (I will try again this year, even if it is 3 credits at least let me get.) So I must tell you thank you for those things.

But in another ways, you did not try for me. In the beginning it is small small things that vex me. Ok, maybe you are thinking it is the snoring that you are snoring like Mama Agnes grinding machine, but no that one did not worry me like that. Afterall my father before moto jam him with bottle of schnapps use to disturb all the people in our compound in Anguhar with snoring.

Me I gree it is from village I come so you can call me village woman, but that first time it was hard when you are lying down with me. All your body is smelling of sweat and you have gone to chop onions (abi is it garlic sef) and refuse to baff even when I boil hot water for you.

It is not a bragging something but true, village people are clean than town people.

Another thing, this one is hard to talk but I will talk the thing as everything have scatter finish between us. When you are sexing me it is like you have carry vex from somewhere and you now come and pour it in my body. Fast-fast, hard-hard, like government work until you finish and tire. Then sleep will catch you immediately as if sexing me is sleep medicine. If you are thinking that the thing is sweeting me, I will not lie to you, it did not sweet me at all at all. Even my breast sef you cannot touch and when I touch it when you are doing your own thing, you will vex and say that it is not good for woman to be touching her own breast. Is not that I like the thing too much, but I want you to hold me and touch me and do it small small. Abi you are not watching how they are doing it in film?

Anyway the true talk of how Pastor Gilead enter this matter is another reason Am writing this letter. They are telling me that you still read newspaper in the crase people house like before so I know you can read this. In fact if you ask me it is not crase that you crase, it is a very serious type of vex that when a person vex, it will look like crase.

Pastor Gilead advice me, the first time you slap me that slap that tear the corner of my mouth. See, it is not me that carry the matter go and meet him. If to say you use to come church very well, you will know how those NKST pastors cannot allow their eye to look something and keep quiet. Pastor Gilead keep asking, asking, asking, until last-last the thing touch me as Am thinking of why you tear me hot slap, and tears begin to fall from my eyes. As tears have disgrace me finish, what remain again? So I just close eye tell him that you slap me because I ask you if you have drink to stupor when you come back enter bathroom and begin to vomit. I didn’t even tell him that you carry me and throw on top bed and start to sex me by force by force even though Am begging you to stop. It is not the vex of the hot slap that vex me and make me do the thing that I do, after all my father, is it not army belt he use to carry to flog my mama? So a common hot slap is nothing.

But Pastor Gilead, and Am not talking this thing to vex you, he has the way that when he talk the thing can enter your bone marrow and you will not know when you just start to tell him all your life secret. So small small I start to tell Pastor Gilead everything and as Am talking he is listening and looking me in the centre of my eye. He is not repairing my English or laughing me like you. So in my heart I begin to wish that it is my husband letting me talk like this and not telling me I don’t know anything. Good English is not sense. Village people have sense.

Truly truly, Pastor Gilead didn’t start with bad things. In fact he ask me to talk all the things that is worrying me with my husband but every time I try to talk something with you, you will carry money and push in my hand and ask me to stop disturbing you. All this could have not happen if you just hear me when I want to talk.

So that is how one day I don’t know what enter my mind, I will say is devil but you say you don’t believe in devil. I begin to talk to Pastor Gilead about the bad way you use to sex me and I ask him if it is bad for woman to touch her breast when her husband is sexing her. Because the issue really disturb my mind. I could have find another woman to talk with but all those NKST women, nothing they know than wrapper and contribution for this and that. And my sisters or my mother, I cannot talk sexing talk with them.

Pastor Gilead talk all the things that cool my mind that day. But you know how it is with that kind of talk, if you talk it plenty, your body will begin to feel like doing it. So as he is looking me in my eye and talking the sexing talk and Am looking in his eye, somehow somehow, the thing catch us at the same time and it happen. If to say he did not do all the things Am wishing my own husband is doing, maybe it could have easy to say no or stop. But by then my mind have fly comot from that place to bad bad places.

Am not prouding of what happened. Am not prouding that after 3 years it is only the time that Pastor Gilead touch me that I pregnant. I did not plan to pregnant for him or hide it all these years until your amebo sister, I don’t know how she carry and know this thing begin opening her mouth. And me, you know me I cannot lie. I could have swear to God inside NKST church that it is all lie and you will never know that it is lie because you and Pastor Gilead resemble very well and Blessed nose and ears resemble your own. Am not a liar. I can do any other thing but to lie, face to face like this, I cannot.

My mother is still throwing curse on my head everyday for greeing that Blessed is not your own. Me I have talk my own and my mind is clear.

I have pack from your flat in Makurdi, me and Blessed that you nearly kill. Your sister want to cause fight because I want to carry the TV back to Anguhar so I tell her she can go and chop the TV and the rug and the cushion all. Does she know my story? It is so so fight that she knows. Let her go and find husband instead of chooking mouth in people matter.

They have drive pastor Gilead from being Pastor in NKST. He was telling me to come and follow him so that we can marry and I can pregnant again. But last month a small girl in evangelism group pregnant and she say it is for Pastor Gilead. Me I cannot fight small girl because of man so I have leave him to pregnant anybody he want to pregnant.

I know sorry cannot cancel everything that have happen and put you in crase people hospital, but sorry. Even though I have tell you that you have hand in the whole thing, it is me that allow the devil inside Pastor Gilead trouser to enter me. So sorry. I don’t want bad blood between me and you anytime they release you.

Should in case they release you Am in my mother place in Anguhar. And I carried two standing fan. Should in case you want it, just come and I will give you back.

I will change back to my father name as everything have scatter between us. My uncle will return the money you pay on top my head to your people this week so that should in case person see me and like me, he can marry me. It will be hard but my body have not too spoil like that as it is only one child I born.

I hope they are treating you fine. I could have come there but  shame is still catching me after everything. My only worry is that if they let you tey in that crase people house your crase can come and permanent. Because now I know that it is only a very serious vex that is doing you. Only one question that is doing me. Why do you change your name inside the crase people house?

Till then.

DOOWUESE AONDOAKAA

*this is a sequel to TO THE EDITOR