LIKE COCONUT FRUIT
Copyright © 2021 by Tochukwu Chike Muonagolu
All rights reserved
The total or partial reproduction of the contents of this book is totally forbidden without the author’s permission. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to publishingwithpermission@gmail.com
༛ ༛ ༛ ༺༻ ༛ ༛ ༛
The sun was low in the sky as a cool breeze swept gently across the land, throwing dust everywhere. It was just a few minutes past seven in the evening, and all over the town of Oshodi, people rounded off their businesses in the joy of retiring home. In Oshodi, the buildings, which were all old and shabby, leaned close to each other in crooked rows and columns, and several narrow roads cut through them, linking the small town with other parts of Lagos. But there was really no place in Lagos like Oshodi. The town was a chaotic place that constantly buzzed with vehicles and people from all walks of life.
In Oshodi, there was a famous motor park beside one of the pedestrian bridges that ran over the Oshodi highway. It was a big motor park with a bustling market, a popular destination for buses travelling into the city of Lagos. In front of the park’s main entrance, just around the corner where men from the North sold cigarettes and candies, a large signpost read: Welcome to Oshodi City Park.
That evening, a passenger lorry stood in front of the park’s main entrance. At the back of the lorry, the phrase “BACK TO SENDER” was boldly printed for those with an evil eye. The man who drove the lorry had dropped off some passengers at the motor park earlier that day and was now leaving with a new set of passengers. Meanwhile, the traders at the motor park, who sold everything from vehicle parts to books and pencils, were stowing and locking up their stores. As they did so, their voices mingled with the music that blared from several audio systems. Also, the motor park’s kingpin, a famous woman who went by the name Mama Oshodi, had instructed her men to lock all the gates leading to the motor park to prevent motorists from driving in. After her men had locked the gates, they retired to leisure activities and their places of rest. It was this way every evening with Mama Oshodi and her men and the traders who sold at the motor park.
Everyone knew who Mama Oshodi was. She was something along the lines of a local champion at the motor park. Her real name was Eniola. But only a few of her men knew her by that name, not to mention the traders at the motor park. She had a sturdy physique and was neither tall nor short. Except for her breasts, which stuck out a little, and her high-pitched voice, nothing suggested that she was a woman in her late forties. She kept her hair short and walked around in oversized shirts and jeans. The thirty-something man gang she controlled functioned in a loosely organized way. The gang comprised young men between the ages of sixteen and thirty, and these young men helped her run the motor park. Their duties mainly involved assisting her in collecting the park’s entrance fee from motorists, and ensuring that they parked their vehicles in the right places to avoid congestion. For this work, Mama Oshodi let the men keep some of the money. Most of her men, if not all of them, revered her to a great extent.
Amongst Mama Oshodi’s men, was a young man named, Chibuzo, an Igbo name that means God is the way. But everyone, including his parents, called him Uzo for short. He was about six feet tall and heavy-looking, and his skin was as black as coal. He looked a lot like his mother and very little like his father, who was short and yellow like papaya. That evening, Uzo retired with members of his unit, a small section of Mama Oshodi’s gang, to a popular roadside restaurant managed by a middle-aged woman known as Mama Bisi. Bisi was her daughter’s name, of course; no one knew her actual name. To the novice, Mama Bisi's place was just a typical Buka that sold street food. But the people who visited there frequently knew the extra goodies Mama Bisi provided. Now, Uzo had almost finished smoking his fourth roll of Ibo, the street name for marijuana, but he still could not smother the anger and restlessness in him. On the bench in front of him sat two big bowls of Amala and Ewedu. Kehinde, his closest friend, sat beside him on his left side, while Ajayi, Tunde and Dada—who was also known as Idowu, sat opposite him. These were the members of Uzo’s unit. And Ajayi, the most intelligent of them, was their leader.
Everyone was in high spirits that evening except for Uzo. He had no appetite for the food in front of him, and he kept adjusting himself on the bench he was sitting on as if someone were poking his buttocks with the tip of a nail. It was not hard, however, to see the reason for his discomfort because it was clearly written all over him. There was a nasty bruise on the left side of his face, and the eyelid there was so swollen he could barely open his eye. At the corner of his upper lip was a deep cut that made it difficult for him to close his lips, and his football jersey was torn along its rib and length. Most of the people he had come across since the incident occurred that afternoon did not bother to ask him what had happened. They just told him, “Pẹlẹ” Sorry, or made consoling remarks along the lines of, “Don’t worry, it shall be well.”
So now, Uzo sat there, smoking and worrying about how to avoid his mother when he gets home. When his friends suggested he come with them to the house party that was happening later that night at the apartment of a young man known as Jay-B, he angrily declined. He thought it was stupid of them to ask him to come to a party when he looked like a person that had just been run over by a car. Moreover, he did not like Jay-B. His actual name was Jide Bankole, and his father, Chief Bankole, was a local politician and a wealthy landlord in Oshodi. He was familiar with those parties Jay-B threw on the weekends, and he knew it would be good for him to avoid it now. Showing up there would only make him a laughing stock. Besides, Akani, the girl he liked very much would most likely be there, and this was not how he should appear looking in front of her. He stood up and walked out of the restaurant without saying goodbye to anyone. The one-bedroom flat he shared with his parents was not far away.
Outside, the sky had turned completely dark, and under the few stars that shinned brightly, Uzo headed down the dusty road that led to Balogun street where his parents’ flat stood. In front of him, the dusty road curved like a carpet viper, and noisy vehicles rushed up and down, honking loudly at themselves. There were many yellow Danfo buses clumped together in a long yellow line along both sides of the road, and a dirty smell from the canal that ran along the road’s concrete pavement filled the air. People walked up and down the pavement, brushing past themselves as they hurried to their destinations. But Uzo walked at a slow pace, as if all the time in the world belonged to him, and though this made some of the people behind him angry, he did not care. He was thinking hard of a suitable explanation to give his mother for his tattered jersey and the bruises on his face. It would be difficult to make her believe something other than the truth because this was not the first time he was coming home looking this way. What happened at the motor park that day had been happening quite often recently, and he had always had to come up with an excuse for his bruises and ruffled look. The last time it happened, which was only a few weeks ago, his mother gave him a stern warning not to come home looking like a homeless dog again. He thought of going to the party that his friends had invited him to so that he could avoid his mother for a while, but Akani would be there, and he did not want her to see him this way. Her full name was Akani Alakija, and she was a lean beauty with a skin as black as his. But that was all they had in common—the skin colour. They barely spoke to each other, and whenever he tried, he always found himself stuttering and saying rubbish: things that did not make any sense and things that did not whet her appetite. He could always tell from her reaction, the way she would roll her eyes and curve her lips into a mocking smile. Except for his name, she knew nothing about him. But he knew everything about her. That her father was a barrister and the owner of a successful law firm, and that she was the only child of her mother whom she lost in a road accident when she was only twelve years old. Of course, he knew that part of her because she always narrated the tragic event to her friends and anyone that cared to listen in an effortless way, as though none of it really concerned her. Whenever she recalled the events of that awful day, she would shrug her shoulders and explain that the thin scar on her left temple was an outcome of the accident. He thought the scar made her look even more beautiful, but he had not yet found the courage to tell her that.
“Brother Uzo, How far? You don return? You buy anytin for us?” It was Damilola, their neighbour’s six-year-old son. He had noticed Uzo walking into the yard from the corner of the balcony where he was playing and was greeting him with a wide smile on his face.
“Ta! Comot for my face Joor!” Uzo replied, irritated by the boy’s greetings. “I resemble your papa?” He added. “Abeg, make you mind how you dey shout my name for this compound O. I no be your mate.”
Uzo sucked his teeth, then took off his worn-out rubber slippers and held them in his hands. “Dis world sef,” He muttered angrily to himself as he went into the room he shared with his parents. “Pikin wey dey just born yesterday no dey fear person face again.”
Inside the room, Uzo’s mother sat next to a cooking stove. She was patiently removing stones and black ants from a large tray of uncooked beans while humming to the gospel song playing from her old cassette player. The only light in the living room came from the dim kerosene lantern that sat on the dining table, but Uzo could easily make out the features on his mother’s face and knew she would, likewise, not have a hard time noticing that there was something off about his appearance. He shut the door quietly behind him and waited.
“Ah, Uzo,” She called. Then a worried expression crept over her face. “Kedu ihe mere gị?” She asked. What happened to you?
“Mama, good evening.” Uzo replied, his words barely audible. He was avoiding her gaze, and he pondered how to get to the bedroom door across the room without having to confront her.
“Yes, nnọọ, mana gini mere i jiri di otu a?” You are welcome, but why do you look this way? She said to him, her voice rising with alarm.
“Eh?” Uzo replied, pretending not to understand the Igbo his mother was speaking.
“Na me you dey ask eh? You dey craze?” His mother said, changing the tone in her voice. “I say why you be like person wey panel beater knack!”
“Nobody beat me, mama.” Uzo muttered, adjusting his t-shirt. “Na just one small crisis wey catch me for road today.”
Believing he had said enough and cautiously avoiding his angry and bewildered mother, he dashed across the room, went into the bedroom and banged the door close. Outside the room, his mother threatened and shouted at him to come back out and explain himself, but he ignored her.
The bedroom, which was where Uzo’s entire family slept in, was a very small one. It had just one window for ventilation, and the window had a green mosquito net built into its sliding sash and grey metal bars. At the centre of the white concrete ceiling above the room, hung an incandescent light bulb that dropped down to provide illumination. The four walls of the bedroom were painted teal blue, like the ocean at the Lagos bar beach. And on the back wall, hung a wedding picture of Uzo’s parents—his mother smiling broadly in it as she towered several inches over his father. On the dot patterned concrete floor, were two foam mattresses for sleeping: one for Uzo, and the larger one for his parents.
Uzo had known this room all his life, although his mother once told him that they moved into the flat from Onitsha, a small town in Anambra, when he was barely two years old. He could not remember much about then, except he had felt quite lonely being the only child of his parents. He used to cry and demand that his mother give birth to another child, and a boy to be precise, so that he could have a partner to play with. But when his mother eventually gave birth to another child, he was disappointed because it was a girl. His father, however, had named her Obiageli, which means, the one who came to eat. He had promised her in an ecstatic joy the first day he met her that he would spoil her with all the luxury money could buy. But Uzo’s father knew he was not wealthy enough to keep that promise. He only believed that saying such things would make the newborn child bring some luck to his business, because according to his tradition, babies had not yet forgotten the gates to the spirit world.
Unlike Uzo, Obiageli was a replica of his father. Her skin was as yellow as the sun, and her eyes were big and brown. She was a beautiful baby, and everyone was always quick to assert it. She cried a lot the first few weeks after she came home from the hospital. Some nights, when it rained and she cried, her wails would pierce the sounds of angry waters splashing against their zinc roof, so much so that sometimes the rain would stop just to console her. Later, when she started to take her first steps, unsteady as she was, Uzo would lead her gently and patiently to their balcony and point out things to her.
"Dat one is a motor."
"Say, Maangoo Treee."
"You see dat Okada? Na Uncle Musa own." Uzo would say, often asking her to repeat after him.
Obiageli always watched him eager to do everything he did. It made Uzo laugh sometimes, but he was happy. He loved her, more than words can describe, and he felt a strong sense of duty to protect her. So, when she died three years later after falling ill with malaria and typhoid because that was what they assumed she had, he blamed himself for her demise. But that was many years ago. Now, Uzo laid on his mattress in the tiny bedroom, listening to the gentle voice of King Sunny Ade coming from a record player outside the building. He found the pleasant melody of the song relaxing, and it made him want to sing along. But he did not know the lyrics of the song that well. Only the first two lines which he sang pensively as he stared at the concrete ceiling above him.
Ori mi ye o, jaaaa ja funmi.
Eda mí ye o, jaaaa ja funmi.
He sang with a voice filled with sadness.
Every now and then, he felt the stinging pain from his bruises. To ease the pain, he dipped his jersey into the bucket of water in the bedroom and pressed the cloth gently against his face. When the music died, the memory of the fight that occurred at the motor park that afternoon crawled back into his mind, and arranged itself in sequence like soldiers falling in line. He felt anger rising in him again as he wondered why Kehinde and the rest of his mates had not come to his rescue. Defending themselves was their unwritten law, something they did to reinforce their sense of brotherhood, an instinct embedded deep within them. But Ajayi had warned him about that man, and he had chosen not to listen. He had measured the stubby man himself, and did not think he was going to be that much of a problem.
It was only a few minutes past one that afternoon when the man drove his old Volkswagen bus to the gate where Uzo and his friends were stationed, blaring his horns loud as if to alert everyone of his long-awaited arrival. When Kehinde noticed him, he quickly placed a handmade tyre-killer in front of the bus, thus forcing it to come to a halt. That was the tactic they used to prevent drivers who did not want to pay the entrance fee from escaping them. It was Uzo’s turn to collect the fees so he approached the bus. He observed the bus closely and assumed the driver must be coming from one of the neighbouring states due to the Yoruba slogans impressed all over the body of his vehicle. He thought the driver looked familiar, but he could not recall any encounter he might have had with him. He observed the man at the front passenger seat, and the woman who sat beside him with a child suckling at her breast. When Uzo caught the driver’s eye, the man’s face broke into a wide smile that revealed his bone-white teeth and stretched the deep tribal marks that ran up his cheeks like old wounds from the clawing of a wild beast. From of the corner of his mouth, hung an over chewed chewing stick. He greeted Uzo, and his smile turned into a wicked grin. Uzo returned his greetings but gave no room for light conversations. Then, with a stern look on his face, Uzo told the driver that the entrance fee would be three hundred Naira and nothing less. The man stared at him for a few seconds, then burst into a laughter that exposed his full teeth and the dark gums in his mouth. He laughed so hard that his chest heaved and tears formed at the corners of his eyes. Feeling insulted, Uzo’s face tightened and deep lines formed in his brow.
“Bros, you no know who I be?” The driver asked as he tried to catch his breath that reeked of tobacco. “Ah, you think say I be JJC for Lagos, abi?”
“Oga, na three hundred everybody dey pay to enter Park. If you no wan bring money, abeg clear comot for road make oder people see space enter.” Uzo replied, throwing his arms away to tell the man he could go to hell.
The driver laughed again, but not as much this time. Then, adjusting the chewing stick in his mouth, he said to Uzo, “Bros, no be say I no wan pay to enter Park. I go pay. But no be three hundred wey I go pay.”
“See,” He added, pulling out some worn-out banknotes from his breast pocket. “Na only one hundred Naira remain for my body. Abeg, collect am make I dey go. I no get time to waste.” He said to Uzo.
“For where! I no fit!” Uzo retorted angrily “If you no get three hundred for hand, carry dis your nonsense motor comot for my face joor!” To show the man he meant business, he feigned searching the ground for an object to strike the bus with.
The man grinned, then dug into the pockets of his trousers and pulled out a Twenty Naira note, and a Ten Naira note. Then, he arranged all the banknotes neatly and in ascending order and held them out in his hand for Uzo to collect.
"Oya, na everything I get be dis." He said with a solemn look on his face. "Open de gate, make I pass."
Feeling frustrated, Uzo nearly spat at the man. He thought the money he would gain from the One Hundred and Thirty Naira was too small. He did the calculation in his mind. If he gave fifty Naira to Mama Oshodi, and thirty percent of the remaining amount to Ajayi, as their custom demanded, he would be left with just about fifty-five Naira only. A violent storm rose in his chest at the thought of this.
“You be bastard!” He blurted out, stretching out his palm and hand towards the driver, his temper flaring like a wild flame. But the man would not be intimidated. He stepped down from his bus, and staring into Uzo’s eyes, dared him to call him a bastard one more time. The baby that had been suckling at its mother’s breast began to cry. And when Kehinde, Dada and Tunde, noticed the tension building up between Uzo and the man, they ran towards them to ease things up.
Uzo and the driver were still sizing up themselves when Ajayi arrived a few minutes later. A small crowd had gathered around the two men, and amongst them were some passengers who had disembarked from the man’s bus to help resolve the quarrel. Ajayi knew the man. The two were acquainted.
“Kilode, wetin happen?” He asked Uzo as he pulled him aside and away from the crowd. Uzo’s feet were unsteady, and he fumed like a kettle on a stove. He made an attempt to return to his face-off with the man, but Ajayi restrained him.
“Farabalè!” Calm down! Ajayi said, forcing Uzo to stand still and explain what had happened. Uzo narrated his experience with the man. But then, he claimed that during the face-off, the man had referred to him as Inyamuri, a tribalistic slur for a person of Igbo descent. Ajayi understood Uzo’s anger, but he wanted him to see things from a different perspective so that he could let what the man had said go away. He told him that the driver was not a bad man. He visited the bus park frequently and was even well acquainted with some of their friends in Oshodi. Besides, the man used to be in the military, and he knows quite a few people there. It would be wise, he explained, to maintain a good relationship with the man.
“Just collect de money. E no too small like dat sef.” Ajayi told him.
But Uzo would not listen. He was too offended by what the man had called him. He fought his way out of Ajayi’s arms and charged towards the man, who had been beckoning him to come forward and do his worst. Seeing as Uzo charged at him, the man armed himself with a rock and took a fighting stance. There was an upheaval in the small crowd that had gathered around. Some of the people in the crowd moved in front of the man to prevent Uzo from getting to him, but Uzo had calculated his move and was quick. He ducked under their arms and grabbed the man around his left thigh. The rock fell. Quickly, Uzo tightened his grip and yanked the man around, hoping to throw him down and get over with the fight. But the man was heavier than he thought, and his right leg stood firmly on the ground. They struggled that way until the man managed to wrap his arms around Uzo’s waist. Then, when he felt more secure in his balance, he grabbed Uzo’s neck with his right arm, pulled his head under his armpit, and locked it there. Then using his right hand again, he grabbed Uzo along the waistline of his trousers, lifted him into the air, swung around and knocked him down with a heavy thud. It was over then, but the man was not done. Pinning Uzo to the ground like a cat to a mouse, he dealt his face many blows until his mouth became filled with the metallic taste of blood. Behind them, the crowd only clamoured for the man to have mercy on the boy.
Now, Uzo sighed, letting out a long deep breath. The night had become serene, only disturbed by the sounds of singing crickets and toads. He dug into his pocket, took out the One hundred and Thirty Naira and studied each banknote as though they were something unfamiliar. The driver had thrown it at him before walking back to his bus, and Ajayi had told him to keep everything. He was glad, but he was not sure if the money was worth the beating. He turned around on the mattress he was lying on to ease the pain on his back. He was just about falling asleep when the bedroom door swung open, and his father staggered in, the stench of tobacco and beer following strongly behind him. He said something to Uzo, but his words were too slurred and incoherent for Uzo to figure out what he wanted. Uzo ignored him, and soon they were both stretched out on their mattresses, snoring away.
༺༻
Uzo’s father’s name was Uche Ejiofor. He was a taxi driver, but he found the title demeaning. Chauffeur sounded more pleasing to him, even though what he did was not any different from what the taxi drivers in Lagos did for a living. He drove a yellow 95 Volkswagen Golf 3 around the city of Lagos, picking passengers and dropping them at their various destinations. It was a job life exerted on him, and it showed in his bearing. But it had not always been so. His story goes back to the days when he used to drive passengers in those rickety lorries with large wooden boots around the town of Onitsha. He was only sixteen then, but he had hopes and dreams big enough to fill the ocean. At the age of twenty-one, he started driving long distances, transporting traders from Onitsha to the big cities in the western part of the country. He drove up to the North sometimes, but only as far as Lafia and Jos. It was on his return from one of those long-distance trips that he met Chinelo and fell in love. She was two years older than him and taller too, but that did not discourage him. He would visit her at her mother's shed at the Onitsha Main Market to confess his love for her, and she would give him bananas and peanuts to eat. He used to tell her some of his dreams: how he wanted to start his own transportation company someday and his plans to travel the world when he becomes rich. Chinelo developed an affection for him because she found it amusing that a man like him, a man from her side of the planet, would be dreaming of travelling the world. She was a pragmatic kind of person. Buying and selling, and calculating her profits and losses were what she knew best. Travelling the world, however, she thought, was the kind of thing you only saw in the movies or read in books or heard musicians sing about on the radio. She did not believe he would ever travel the world, and she teased him every time he mentioned it to her.
“Ọ bụ obere ụkwụ gi ị ga-eji gaa London na Paris?” Is it those short legs you are going to use to go to London and Paris? She would say to him, laughing and rubbing her palms in that manner that looked like she was removing dirt from them.
But the two were in love. Some evenings, after she had taken permission from her mother, he would drive her in his lorry until they reached the bank of the River Niger, and there they would sit and watch the fishermen paddle their colourful canoes back to shore under the setting sun. Whenever a canoe arrived at the sandy shore, fish sellers would flock around it like ants attacking sugary food. They would haggle and tussle with the fishermen over the cost of their fishes, and when they finally left, the canoe would be empty of all the fishes the fishermen had caught. Sometimes, Uche and Chinelo would buy peppery fried fish wrapped in old newspapers from the fish sellers at the river bank and eat together at the boot of his lorry while grooving to the sounds of Apostles of Aba and Billy Ocean. They courted that way for three years before getting married at a small catholic church on Oguta road in Onitsha. There had been no proposal. Only discussions, visits and lots of planning. A year after they got married, they had Uzo. And while Uche continued to drive his lorry, Chinelo and the child lived with Uche’s parents in a small apartment in Onitsha. Later, when one of Uche’s cousins offered him a job that involved driving a Lebanese expatriate who was working with an oil company in Lagos, Uche decided to give the job a try. The job paid considerably well and was less stressful than driving a lorry all over the country, so he sold his lorry soon after he started the job, bought a one-bedroom flat on Balogun street in Oshodi, and moved his family there. Uzo was barely two then.
When they first moved to Lagos, Chinelo complained a lot about how noisy the city was and how it robbed her of her privacy. She wanted to go back to Onitsha, but Uche thought they needed the change of air. Besides, he said to her once as she complained, Lagos is like a Coconut fruit. It is only those who break it that can drink its water. But she kept complaining, so he bought her a partially furnished lock-up store on Church Street, which was a walking distance from their one-bedroom flat, and stocked it with provisions so that she could trade to keep herself busy. Later, when Chinelo gave birth to Obiageli, Uche repainted their flat and refurnished the living room. He was happy because life had been kind to him, and the future seemed bright. But when Obiageli died three years later, he became depressed and turned to alcohol for relief. It took him nearly two years to pull himself out of the mess he became: after his Lebanese boss had threatened to relieve him of his duty, and after Chinelo had confided in a neighbour who advised her to take her husband to a prophet in Mushin for prayers and exorcism. Surprisingly, Uche stopped drinking after the prophet prayed over him. But Chinelo knew it was the shame that came with the public confession and rejection of alcohol, a mortification the prophet had forced him to do, that made him quit his behaviour.
Uche drove the Lebanese for ten years, until the oil company he worked for suddenly terminated his contract, and the man left the country. He was only in his mid-thirties then when he stopped driving the Lebanese, but being jobless and having to depend on his wife made him feel like a failure. He had saved very little from the money he earned while driving the Lebanese, so there was nothing for him to fall back on. Nothing to start a business or a trade, and nothing to buy even another lorry. Uzo dropped out of secondary school because there was no money to pay his fees, and their family became the joke of the neighbourhood. Everyone gossiped behind them, and friends, or rather people they thought were their friends, stopped visiting. Their little world had crumbled, and the rubbles fell on Uche’s head. And though he could have found another driving job to keep his family afloat, he chose not to do so. He had the feeling life had packed all her belongings and walked out of his door for good, a feeling of despair even he could not understand.
When Uche’s mother died a few months later, he started drinking again. Alcohol and rage, then the feeling of despair and alcohol again. It became a cycle that entrapped him. Sometimes, he would weep at night and Chinelo would take him into her arms and console him. She did not think their situation was that bad. As long as they were all alive and healthy and together, there was hope. But Uche could not see things that way. It was as if he had broken himself while trying to break the coconut fruit. Uzo felt sorry for his father, but his weakness and selfishness repulsed him. So, for a long time, he dug a deep trench between he and his father, and guarded it with a cold attitude. He only started being a little sentimental towards him, when at the age of fifteen, he came home one afternoon and found his father trying to end his life. He was standing on the kitchen stool, a blue polypropylene rope tied around his neck and a bottle of Ogogoro on the floor. When Uzo saw the distant look in his father’s eyes and it dawned on him what he was trying to do, a fear that took weeks to fade away seized him, and he screamed so much that their neighbours came running to their flat. They prevented the suicide from happening, and when Chinelo returned from her store that evening, the neighbours told her what had happened. She wept as expected, but she was quick to gather herself back together. She did not believe getting back the man she fell in love with was a task beyond her control. So the next day, she went all the way to Badagry, a town located on the outskirts of Lagos, to see an old friend of theirs, one Bamidele who was a used-car dealer. After Chinelo told Bamidele about Uche’s condition and pleaded for assistance, the man decided to sell them a Volkswagen golf 3 at a price that was less than half the purchasing cost, but on the condition that Uche would register the car as a city taxi. Uche did as Bamidele advised, but he never recovered from his alcohol addiction. The depth of that pit was already too deep for him to climb back out.
Comments
Post a Comment