Nigeria Content Online

Nicholas Ibekwe,
now an award-winning reporter, did not have such a good start. As a
rookie reporter, one of his earlier stories was so salacious that his
editor asked him to take it elsewhere.

“Go to Sahara Reporters,” the editor said.

Mr. Ibekwe had been
in a bus that morning when a girl sitting behind him suddenly squealed,
pointing at the man beside her who was hastily pushing something down
his pants. She was talking so fast that her lines ran into each other,
like a child painting in watercolours. It took some time to separate
her words from sobs and string a meaning together. Apparently, this
fellow had, without investigating her taste, brought out his penis
right there in the bus as she bent her head, and proceeded to wag the
thing close to her face.

“Why did he show that to me?” she asked in horror.

Mr. Ibekwe’s story
tried to answer this question, and show how a peddler of sex-on-transit
met his Waterloo. But the reporter’s story, including comments by
passengers, were considered too risqué for a family newspaper, and Mr.
Ibekwe ended up with a lecture instead of a byline.

I took a bus from
Obalende to Oshodi recently, and a boy on the bus made such a gallant
effort to woo a deaf girl that Mr. Ibekwe’s report came to mind.
Although, nothing as brazen as the whipping out of privates took place,
the entire “conversation” – full of gestures, vigorous mime, and missed
cues – left little to the imagination. When the girl spread her palms
to ask what he wanted, he cupped the palm of his hand and put a finger
through. The girl covered her mouth in shock.

It was high drama and the young Cassanova’s brother who was sitting beside me ran commentary.

“Kunle is like that,” he told me. “He likes girls too much. Our father is tired of talking.”

When the conductor
came round, Kunle paid for the girl and gestured that his brother would
pay for him. My seatmate had to pay for two, and he wasn’t too happy.

“Kunle,” he warned, “Wait first. I hope you know that you cannot bring this kind to the house?”

The girl,
blissfully deaf, was giving Kunle her full attention. By now their
public romance was in full swing, and bemused passengers egged them on.
She was laughing at the boy’s reckless use of sign language. While she
could convey a lot by a small gesture, a twirling of the fingers, the
boy had to dramatise everything, talking the whole time, sometimes
forgetting that she couldn’t hear him.

“How much will you take to follow me home tonight?” Kunle asked, using a combo of words, signs and dance.

The girl put her palms together.

“Ten what?” asked
Kunle eagerly, “N10?” and he brought out a N10 note to show her. She
shook her head vigorously. “Oh, you must mean ten tens then,” he said,
taking out a hundred naira note. But the girl laughed.

“You people are hard to understand,” said Kunle who delved into his pocket to fish out a crisp N1,000 note.

“Kunle!” exclaimed
his brother, “You said you had no money when we went to eat, and now
you want to give N1,000 to a deaf girl, abi?”

Loverboy, deaf to
recriminations, was busy pressing the money on the girl. She shook her
head, and brought her palms together, again. Kunle was now confused.

“She said she wants N10,000,” said an old man beside him, helpfully.

Kunle flipped his lid and abandoned pantomime altogether.

“You are a thief,” he shrieked. “If I give someone like you N10,000, how much will I give the ones who can talk?”

And there was politically-incorrect hearty laughter all round.

“Good for you,”
said his brother, alighting as the bus came to a stop at Iyana Oworo.
“Are you going to come down now or are you following the deaf one
home?”

Still, our friend
continued to press the girl to reduce her charges. The driver engaged
gears, warning that he wouldn’t be stopping until Oshodi.

“What of N3,000?” Kunle asked, one eye on the door as the bus began to move.

Suddenly, as if on cue, a number of voices shouted: “Kunle!” and he scrambled out of the bus to fits of laughter.