Adaobi Nwaubani - I Do Not Come to You by Chance

Condoleezza would be delighted to receive updates on how much progress her African mentee was making down the straight and narrow path. If her delight translated into Benjamin Franklins once in a while, none of us would complain.

The chain of good luck seemed to have been unleashed. An Iranian mugu replied to another one of Azuka’s emails some days later, and soon Azuka received $10,000 for initialisation fees.

‘Kings, maybe it’s your good luck that rubbed off on me,’ he said.

We were still laughing when my phone rang. It was Charity. Sobbing with all her might.

‘Charity, what’s the matter?’ I asked without much panic.

In between thick sobs, she told me that she had just seen her JAMB score.

‘I scored 198.’

Fortunately, she did not hear me gasp. No university in this world was going to give her a place with such a malnourished score. For once, I agreed that my sister had a valid reason for shedding tears.

‘Charity, stop crying,’ I said. ‘You know they have a funny way of marking this JAMB. Even the most intelligent people sometimes make low scores.’

She continued crying until the customers waiting in the business centre grumbled loud enough for me to hear. She hung up, rejoined the queue, and rang back an hour later. Her sobs had not subsided.

‘Charity, stop crying. Failing JAMB is not the end of the world.’

‘Mummy said I’m not allowed to hang out with my friends again,’ she wept. ‘I can’t imagine staying at home for a whole year, waiting to take another JAMB.’

Could my sister’s poor score have had anything to do with the weeks she had spent in my house prior to her exams? Charity had watched quite a lot of Nollywood movies on my VCD player. There was a corner shop at the end of my street which stocked these movies that were released in hundreds every week. Each featured the same yellow-skinned, abundantly chested actresses and the same dreadlocked men, and each had a Part 1, a Part 2, and Part 3 – at least. Too bad that the JAMB exam did not test knowledge of Nollywood.

‘Charity, don’t let it worry you, OK? Just go home and relax and forget about it. I’ll talk to Mummy later.’

But it was hard to forget my sister’s sobbing. My mother must be in great distress and my father must be revolving in his grave. The following day, I spoke to Buchi about it. I had once overheard her telling Wizard where he could purchase expo GCE question papers a week before the exam date.

‘Is there no one you know?’ Buchi asked me.

I had never needed to know someone for things like this.

She gave me the name of one of the faculty deans in her former university.

‘He helped one of my friends get into Accounting,’ she said. ‘He might be able to help.’

But my visit to the professor would have to wait. Mr Winterbottom was coming to town.

Abuja was different from other Nigerian cities. There were no hawkers in the streets, no okadas buzzing about like flies, no overflowing bins with unclothed schizophrenics scavenging in them for their daily sustenance. None of the roads had potholes and all the traffic lights were working. And unlike in our parts, where a flashy car was the ninth wonder of the world, most of the cars here were sleek, many with tinted windows.

I and the hired driver waited at the entrance to the arrival lounge. Mr Winterbottom soon appeared, sweating like a hog. I strode across and welcomed him with a handshake. The driver rushed out and grabbed the handle of his suitcase.

‘It’s so terribly hot,’ the mugu groaned.

The Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport was even fully air-conditioned. Fighting for space high up on a prominent side of the arrival lounge wall were massive portraits of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, of the minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria, of the minister of aviation of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and of the chairman of the Nigerian Federal Airports Authority. I placed my hand on Mr Winterbottom’s shoulder and steered him away from the incriminating view. Just before leaving the hotel, I had remembered to take off my Rolex.

‘Thanks a lot for coming to get me,’ he said.

The pleasure was all mine.

A few weeks after the London meeting, Ozu High Seas and Changeling Development Cooperation were awarded a $187 million contract for the upgrading of the Akanu Ibiam Airport, Enugu, to an international airport. The government officials had insisted on a $10 million bribe before the contract documents could be released.

Mr Winterbottom sent the money in four instalments. The arrival of the first batch threw me into a massive shock that left me in a species of trance for days. Two and a half million dollars! In one transaction. Just like that. Did such amounts actually exist in real human beings’ accounts?

And from what I had seen, Mr Winterbottom was a normal human being like me. He did not have two heads.

I tried to imagine a life with access to that kind of money. Glorious. All my problems solved forever. But how? By what means? Not even the oil companies paid enough to give anyone that much. Many Nigerian superbillionaires I knew of had attained their wealth after stints in high public office but such an opportunity was not likely to come my way anytime soon, even if I had the heart. Siphoning from foreigners in parts of the world where the economy was sound was one thing, but stealing from your own brothers and sisters who had entrusted you to serve was the abyss of wickedness, especially when you had the firsthand opportunity to witness their daily sufferings and struggles. I was not hurting anyone by taking a little of what the Winterbottoms of this world had. There was much, much more where those millions had come from.

When the subsequent three instalments arrived, I received them without flinching a single muscle.

Now that everyone had received their due bribes, Mr Winterbottom had come to finalise things at the Ministry of Aviation and to sign the memorandum of understanding. Since it was his first time visiting the Lion of Africa, as an act of goodwill I reserved his ticket, booked his hotel room, and picked him up from the airport.

‘Your country is beautiful,’ he said on the way back to the hotel. ‘Everywhere looks so well organised. This isn’t what I expected.’

No need telling him that this was all film tricks; our beautiful Abuja was a Potemkin village. Mr Winterbottom would probably never have to cross the River Niger to Igbo land, where poverty and disarray would stare him eyeball to eyeball. Not only was Abuja the Federal Capital Territory and the new seat of government, it was probably the most expensive city in Nigeria. Whenever the masses complained about the astronomical costs of living, the government reminded them that Abuja was not for everyone. The journalists and opinion-eds were still debating who the ‘everyone’ was. Meanwhile, it was probably time for me to speak to an estate agent about buying some nice property here.

The meeting took place in the Ministry of Aviation complex. The real complex. World Bank’s wife number two’s cousin had risen to the level of having a somewhat fancy office in the building, and for a fee, he had agreed to lend it to us.

Cash Daddy was sitting in the executive chair when we entered. He was in a hurry to attend a meeting with the president, he said, but granted us a brief chat before handing over the necessary documents.

‘We’re still expecting the National Assembly to OK the budget,’ the minister said. ‘So, we can’t give any mobilisation fees to any contractors right now.’

Mr Winterbottom assured him that we were loaded enough to go ahead, and he was happy to wait and collect all the outstanding payments later.