LOGINIt is about failed political promised and an attempt to cover up inability to deliver on statecraft. The characters and name not real as well as the the location mentioned. The main character is a failed politician from a state in Africa and his love for projects that have never seen the light of day.
View MoreTraffic was heavy on the highway and on the streets of Beijing but Cynthia drove effortlessly and soon, we were at her brand new house. The house contained a large living room, a small study, a medium- sized kitchen and three bedrooms of an equal size. I was amused that there was no master bedroom here. Cynthia read my thoughts. “Prof, this is not racist America. China does not have a history of slavery and we do not have rooms reserved for masters.” I had no idea that the concept of a master’s bedroom had any racist connotation but I did not push it since Cynthia did not say anything flippantly. Later on, during a tour of the house, Cynthia and Li ming took me to a small garden where Cynthia grew tomatoes, basil, peppers and spinach. I had read the glossy publication, China Illustrated, when I was in primary six and the magazine had several articles on the role of gardening in Chinese cultures. I noticed that all the houses in the neighborhood had small gardens.Li
I knew there was no way I could find out about the secrets of the cargo airport without traveling to China to talk to the main contractors but how would I start on the China trip? Where, in China, would I go and who would I talk to? Who in China, knew the secrets or would be willing to divulge it? What would it take to find out and how would I go about finding out? Then it hit me. Four years earlier, my then head of department, Prof. BJ Varun, barged into my office. His eyes were red and he was breathing very hard. He was agitated and beads of sweat danced on his forehead. He was not looking like he had seen a ghost but the shock on his face was palpable. Varun was always impeccably-dressed but this day, his shirt was ruffled and a speck of ketchup stained his otherwise immaculate white shirt. Two years earlier, he had had a heart attack. He had exaggerated the severity of the attack claiming that he beat death by just whiskers. Varun peppered every conversation after this heart epi
My navigator instinctively trusted my judgment. He did not ask me why we would be returning to Abuja that night. He noticed my encounter with the SSS officer at the hotel and he sensed that returning to Abuja would be safer for us. He reassured me that if anyone tried to secretly trail us, he would out-maneuver them with his superior driving skills. I trusted his driving skills but I was not counting on those skills to keep us safe that night. I had an old flame in the capital city who owed me a big favor. Time for her to repay part of her debts to me, was my immediate thought. I called Dorcas the Babe and I explained the situation to her. She was very sympathetic. Her new boyfriend was an assistant commissioner of police at the state capital. She assured me that she could call him and ask him to send extra police security to her house. Dorcas said that I could spend the night there and stay for as long as I wished. I told her that that would not work. Her new boyfriend knew of our
My navigator was right. In less than two minutes, we were at the cargo airport or more appropriately, what was supposed to be a cargo airport. Even the motor park of Ikpeba, where no automobile had ever been parked, looked more crowded and busier than what was before our eyes. It looked like a project that was abandoned even before it got underway. There were no dead machineries and broken down cranes typical of wasteful projects in Nigeria. Absent too, were tell-tales signs of workers using the nearby bushes as their toilets. The entire place was bereft of any life. I looked to see if a lone security guard was roused from an afternoon siesta. I saw none. Apparently, there was nothing of value that needed to be protected against thieves and marauders. It was like what someone with a lot of dough but little gray matters in his skull would conjure up after an afternoon bout of consuming too much cheap booze. There was a lone building in one corner of the large expanse of land. A build