20.
Ehis grew up with a strong dislike for Collins. His father did not provide food for them and he was not hard working. Ehis felt his father ran away from labor and lied that he had been sacked from his job. The son could not stand sleeping in the same room where his father slept. And so, after waiting for almost an hour for Esosa who had said she wanted to urinate, he stormed out and went outside, trying to calm his fury by taking a night stroll. If only he had not been in a hurry, he would have seen Esosa’s slippers dangling beside the door to Evan’s room. Ofure came home very late these days and the children had to spend longer time staying alone in the apartment with their father, who always sat with red eyes and appeared lost in thoughts.
Ehis walked ahead to the only football viewing center in the area. There, he saw his friends, and some familiar faces. They had all grown up in the same area. Ehis saw his friend, Bright and walked towards him. Immediately they saw him, they whispered to each other and walked away. Ehis assumed that bright was still very angry about the last meeting between them.
The last time they met, Ehis had gone to visit bright to ask him why he had stopped coming to school. He met bright at home, along with a group of boys who were fast engrossed on their laptop screens and typing convulsively. Ehis knew some of these boys and his eyes widened when he saw Bright, sitting comfortably with them and passing marijuana between one another.
Bright led Ehis outside when he saw him. He smelt of weed and sweat. Ehis did not need a seer to tell him what he had seen and he had no intentions of playing dumb with his friend.
‘Why Bright? Why?’
Bright spoke as if someone else was speaking through him. It was the usual reason why every boy in Aj had joined the modern-day fraudsters who were springing. The country was degenerating into poverty and they were no jobs. This was the only way he could make a way for himself and his mother and sisters who were depending on him for success.
‘You know I don’t have a father like you Ehis. And what I will make in a month will even be what a banker will make in a year. I tell you’.
Ehis in that moment, told himself that his mother being the breadwinner of their family made him similar to Bright who had no father. Enraged with what Bright had said, Ehis stormed angrily out of his house.
‘You are a thief. Simple. A liar and thief. That is what you are’.
Days after Bright had ignored Ehis in the viewing center, Ehis saw him driving a car around with a woman. Bright mother still sold fufu in the boundary and his sisters still hawked around Apapa road. Ehis wondered deeply why Bright, who had made money through illegal means had not deemed it fit enough to help his own mother. This was the new trend of boys who used their family’s despicable situation as a front for going into fraud. They always came out of their poverty, clawing their way to the top by dragging others down. But they never really helped their families or friends. Perhaps if the government provided good jobs, would people stop fraud? Or are people just greedy to the core and the reasons are an excuse for them to paint their own conscience?