WHERE LIES THE EDGE OF REASON: Nigeria’s space exploration program.

To make a new world is sometimes not the work of reasonable men but rather the effect of the actions of a few unreasonable men. This may be the only way that Nigeria can see past the shambles of its current state towards a future free from the shackles of inherited corruption and cynical mediocrity.

 

The world is full of reasonable men. Nigeria is full of apologists of reason. Whether it is the obviously poor man who stands on the street littered with his own excesses such as pure water bags, Tom Tom wrappers and cigarette butts or the man who sits in his office no different from the former. He drinks his water from a plastic bottle, smokes his cigarette and pops a Tom Tom into his mouth to mask the strong and unmistakable smell of nicotine. Then he disposes of his excesses in the waste paper bin, justified in his self-righteousness that he is positively different from the other man on the street. At least, he has done his part. And quite reasonably too don’t you think? But then the cleaner cleans out the office at the end of the day and takes out the trash. The trash then goes to the overgrown plot at the back of the office and is discarded there regardless of the obvious caveat that reads, “Do not dispose of refuse here, by order.” By the next day the wind blows in its mischievous fury as it heralds a rain storm or the relentless harmattan winds. The disposed trash is then blown into the street and no one is the wiser where it must have originally come from. He never asks how the trash is disposed of after all, he’s the boss and he is reasonably not accountable for his employee’s actions in the course of his duties. His chain of command ends in the trash basket, nothing more! How reasonable.

Just recently, a third world country launched its first space exploration rocket headed for the planet which has been the subject matter of various speculations and curiosity in the astrological community for countless years. That planet has also not been spared by Hollywood who have also exploited such curiosity and made several block buster movies one of which is titled, “The red planet.” And so, on the 5^th of November, 2013, India launched its first ever unmanned rocket scheduled to arrive at its destination in approximately ten months. This launch in itself was quite significant because India was in a race to beat the Asian giant China to be amongst the elite few countries to have ever placed a technological foot –or in this case a technological wheel, on Mars. But then here, we must be reasonable. A third world country, spending millions of dollars to reach worlds beyond the earth’s moon in a race which does not benefit the vast majority of its masses, poor and privileged alike? It would simply have been reasonable if India had just diverted such immense funds and sunk it into let’s say… its growing medical field, the educational sector, infrastructure, social security, food and of course its economy generally. How reasonable, a reasonable man would have said.

But let’s now be unreasonable as the cliché of reason may have been flawed from the onset by reason of the human factor involved. After all, I did say that the world is full of reasonable men. What then would be the gain to repeat to them what they already know? That would only be tantamount to giving an answer to an obvious rhetorical question, wouldn’t it?

I also did mention that Nigeria is full of apologists of reason. But with all our reason, we have created monsters out of our youth who have either seen more comparative advantage in being educated by militants or insurgent terrorist organisations like the Boko Haram. With all our reasonableness, we have succeeded in driving millions of people to seek employment in the lucrative world of cyber fraud and we have even gone as far as popularly nicknaming such self-employed entrepreneurs as “yahoo boys.” Yet, we have always been reasonable. Just as it would be reasonable for us to turn up our noses at India’s rocket launch to explore Mars and in the process beat China to it just like the United States beat the USSR to land on the moon!

And so from here on, I have decided to see what the other side of reason is, the unreasonable side. Or as some may say, that to stand on the edge of reason is to be unreasonable itself! I stand to be wilfully unreasonable when I say that Nigeria should start investing in sending its own rocket to Mars. And by the word investing, I mean heavily so. For after 53 long years of being reasonable, I can without doubt say that we seem to have  found ourselves right back where we started, arguably some even say we are worse off. After being ruled by those who plundered our natural resources for their personal aggrandisement, it seems fair to finally ask, where lies the edge of reason so I may stand on it! We have blamed the colonialists for ever so long. Laid woes and bitten our fingers at their legacy and cursed that providence can bear witness to the current shambles and tatters of what remains of our proudly Nigerian society. In our bid to shake off the shackles of the past, we have turned on each other. Blowing ourselves up in the name of one cause or the other, picking up arms against our neighbour while we vote politicians capable of deadly machinations into the corridors of power where boundaries are unevenly drawn like the face of an old woman. Nepotism hath never seemed more righteous, bribery… familiarly justified in the name of survival. Yet, after listening to this reasoning that seems to have worked as good as using a hammer to slice butter, we grasp on to that same reason and bare our yellowed teeth at any one who dares to upset that balance of familiarity. So as an afterthought, being unreasonable may very well be better off.

But what does it mean to be unreasonable you ask? I could outline a hundred meanings backed by several reasons but that would only convolute the essence of this process. How about being unreasonable by urging Nigeria to follow the example of India? We can say ours is a race against South Africa or some other country where the balance of power presently lies here in Africa. After all if Nigeria decides to invest advisedly just as India did in sending her own rocket to Mars, by doing this, we would have inadvertently caused certain benefits to present themselves as a result of our actions. The benefits of such an endeavour to Nigeria are numerous. Suspend your desire for reason for a brief moment and I will assure you that the benefits of space exploration are numerous as America can undoubtedly testify. For every now and then, we hear bits and pieces of these benefits yet we are oblivious to them. For instance, the creation of the artificial heart is a beneficial result from experiments on space shuttles. One of these experiments was in partnership with a renowned heart surgeon Dr. Michael Debakey. So also the popular hand held “jaws of life” used to cut twisted metal in order to save victims of car wrecks. This piece of technology originated from the system used to separate the space shuttle from its booster rockets. Moving further towards the edge of reason, space exploration creates new job opportunities and helps create a bridge between the public and private sector to partner in major sectors of the economy; the nature of this partnership also extents to the building of mutual understanding as a result of international cooperation among space-faring nations. Other fundamental benefits can be seen in various technological sectors with new innovations, new means to address global challenges, culture and Inspiration of the society especially the  younger generation, economic expansion, new business opportunities as well as creating a deep sense of patriotic  entitlement and national pride amongst the citizens of a country only to mention a few.

While the challenges in the near-term may seem to be a heavy weight to bear especially by a third world country such as Nigeria, India has proved beyond all doubt that it is not an impossible task. Of what purpose is it to dream today –even if convincingly unreasonable, if not to make it a reality tomorrow? Mistakes will be made, in fact, they must be made. Lives may be lost on this journey which is normal when breaking old boundaries to create new worlds. But if the Nigerian youth today, in such a daring and unreasonable venture can see a better future not just for his children but for generations yet unborn, then, we must ask ourselves as Nigerians, how unreasonable is it for us to stand on the edge of reason? I end this with the words of Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet born in Calcutta [now Kolkata], India, short-story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist, and painter who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, “if you shut the door to all errors, truth will be shut out.”

IDENTIFYING YOUR TARGET MARKET VALUE - (TMV).

Not every business can be run on the same principle(s). Each has a unique ideology depending on various factors that stares the  entrepreneur in the face but there is a principle that will never change and that is, identifying the target market value of any business.

One of the numerous problems business men and financial institutions in Nigeria face is the devaluation of the importance of focusing their resources and energies to the accentuation of a target market. Most of the time, they forget that major investments in a growing economy like ours in Nigeria does not necessarily start with the big giants of the corporate world. In essence, the unique circumstance of such growing economies encourages the ideals of investing in the individual. I like to call this concept, “TARGET MARKET VALUE.”

In the bid to maximise their profit making potential, investors in the Nigerian financial world tend to put their hands in to so many brews at the same time. They become the jack of all and masters of none. However, this does not have to be so. There is a simpler way to focus their potential and maximise the same profit they target by simply targeting the individual target market.

How can this be done?
This can be done by re-evaluating their Initial Target Market - (ITM). What Investors need to do is to identify a single sort of market that stands the potential to rake in their maximum profits. An isolation of this market should then be followed by refocusing their best resources towards this market. In other words, this is a similar principle when creating a niche in any industry.

The next step is the “identification of the needs of this target market.” It is not enough to invest in the best sectors of the Nigerian economy giving its volatility and its potential for erratic change. The internal socio-political terrain has seen to this, hence the reason for the irregular figures that keep making the headlines in the country’s GDP. The best way out of this is to identify the needs of the individual with the best investment potential. There is no need to over emphasise that the satisfaction of the need of the target market should be of utter most importance to the investor if he intends to play a lasting role in the vicissitudes of the Nigerian economy. This is where professionalism, flexibility, innovation, perseverance, efficiency and patience will be the most important rungs in getting up the investors pyramid. These key factors open up the market there by creating the distinct opportunity of trust amongst the identified target market. This is important because trust is like a time capsule which has the potential to protect any investor and especially corporate institution so that they may stand the test of time.

Another key factor that the Nigerian investor should use is, “know the budget of your target market.” The best way to convince and negotiate the best investments for both parties is for the investor to know the depth of his target markets pockets and of course the budget his plans to spend on an investment opportunity. This is a negotiation principle. Knowing what an individual or group is likely to concede to is the key to making concessions where necessary that will benefit everyone. This also helps to cover up unrealistic projections. An investor who is aware of the budget his target market has stands the chance of identifying the sort of investment(s) such a target likely has in mind. He can use this knowledge to find out the best possible way to provide such investment to meet the distinct need of his target market.

All these factors will not necessarily come together if the investor is not “willing to adapt.” Adaptability in the Nigerian economy is one of the most essential tools of survival. Adaptability breeds consistency, consistency breeds experience, experience breeds professionalism and professionalism breeds maximised income. All these make up what I call the investors pyramid. In essence, being able to change strategy the instant it is required is important in manuvering on whatever terrain the investor finds himself.

MAXIMISED INCOME
^
^
^
PROFESSIONALISM
^
^
^
EXPERIENCE
^
^
^
CONSISTENCY
^
^
^
ADAPTABILITY


Chart showing the investors pyramid.


These secrets have the potential of making an investor seem like he has the third eye or what some would rather call a nose for the financial market and the most appropriate investment(s). Sometimes the best investments may not necessarily be the most appropriate investments, so the aim here is transforming the most appropriate investment into the best investment.

So we need to change our thinking and be more calorific to the needs of our Target market. We need to improve on our strategies thereby improving on our services. Being efficient as a financial institution in Nigeria is not a myth. A new generation is being born and with it, a new way of thinking with new needs and better dreams. What investors need is to equip themselves better especially in a world where the alliances of technology, investments, and economic growth is slowly shifting towards Asia with China in the fore. It is only a matter of time before the Nigerian economy, it’s potential and untapped resources becomes a decisive ground for who know how to identify what their TARGET MARKET VALUE is and how best they can satisfy that target market and be the investors who will shape the world of tomorrow.

PROCURING THE END-USERS DREAM.

What if I told you that the clichéd saying, "The customer is always right," no longer applies in the Nigerian procurement market. Most managers, procurement offices or consultants at this point will be wondering why a trusted saying that has been borrowed from financial and management mammoths they -more than likely, have only heard and read about in text books would be so suddenly wrong. In fact, they would look at this article and wonder how on earth would I dare try to debunk their age tested conformist philosophy!

Well, I will give you more than one reason why sometimes, it shows a certain level of ineptitude to follow a borrowed philosophy without necessarily knowing just how far you should go in making it into your biblical dictum. I'm sure I must have pricked the ears and egos of most Financial and business managers in Nigeria willing to take their purchasing, supplying and pricing prowess to a whole new level entirely. This article is for people who are tired of watching mediocre decisions which have no significant bite -if any at all, in their percentage of productivity. For business men who are no longer convinced that just following the rules and philosophies that they have been taught eons ago is enough. Such men and women are demanding for more in the exponential market of the Nigerian economy. For them, it is not enough to say that the customer is always right and leave it at that.

What is this secret then? Simple! Procuring the end users dream is a technique that has been taught by most business development procurement trainers by rote. Such persons have never really fully understood the meaning of the letters in between the lines. What I have done is to bring interactive answers and a fresh perspective to the whole conundrum.

The concept here is not simply to say the customer is always right and leave it at that. What you need to do -as procurement and pricing officer, supply staff, financial manager, consultant or business individual, corporate or otherwise, is to find out what the end users demands are. Find out what their desires are their aspirations and expectations in the products you supply to them. This will help you focus on what is necessary and to concentrate your resources and energy on what really matters. Gone are the days when a supplier will simply stock his store and shelf with all sorts of products in a random display that simply speaks of indecisiveness and unprofessionalism.

The simple way here is that there is no one more predictable and easily read then the end user! Their single minded purpose is "UTILITY". All they are after is their satisfaction and nothing more. The nature of that satisfaction is what I shall magnify so as to put a corporeal statistics to the dreams of the end user.

What you need to know is, know your end-user(s). I will help you know how.

1. The Undecided end-user: I am starting with this end user because they are one of the most powerful forces in determining who your future purchasers will be. They are like the clean slates that are waiting to be convinced. They are impressionable and mostly keep an open mind.

2. The Price convinced end-user: They are the sort of end-users who base and make their decisions on the prices of products they require. This group is further sub divided into two. (I) the Best High Price convinced end-user and (II) The Best Low Price Convinced end-user.

(I) The Best High Price Convinced end-user or the BHP end-user -as I would like to call them for easy reference is more on the side of the exotic purchaser. This group not only has a high end taste but they also have the deep pockets to bag the size of their taste. To them, the high price of a product simply connotes its grade quality. They pride themselves in the jaw dropping price tags and would rather flex their huge purchasing muscles in a market with a fixed non negotiable price tag.

Those who fall in this group have this mentality either because they were born with affluence and were never really broken in to the negotiation way and hence have no patience or passion for it as it can make them feel cheap -after all they can afford it. Or, they were born in the have-nots side of life and have managed to change their status. They are compulsively conscious of this. It is especially evident in their light handed display of unguarded spending. This is a sort of statement if you may, against a history they despise or never want to be associated with again.

(II) The Low Price Convinced end-user on the other hand bases his choices on the best lowest price concept. I would like to simply call this group the BLP end-user. The BLP end-users are swayed by the lowest prices. They would rather bargain to       get to this point yet this group still has the same sweet tooth for the same quality of     the BHP end-user. This group is skilled negotiators. It will be important to note that this may be as a result of the shallow depth of their pockets or something that             they may have picked up from one of their parents while growing up. The supplier should be aware that this group also makes up a good -if not the highest percentage of end-users in Nigeria as a developing economy.

3. The Time Tested end-user: This group is more patient then other end-users. They, have a practical nature. They are slow to make a final decision on a product and have the tendency to patronise more than a "Single Source supplier" before they eventually settle down to make their choice. They could be more conservative in nature and are more faithful to the product than to the supplier. That is why the idea of procuring their dreams is a very useful strategy when you must have identified these end-users.

4. The Product Name end-users: This group is a little bit indecisive. They sometimes have no clear idea on what it is exactly that they want. They are prone to being influenced by adverts, propaganda, friends, and mentors and especially by the BHP end-user. They associate their patronage of a product to the popularity of the product, the prestige of the name of such a product and pride themselves that they are also patronising not only the same suppliers as the BHP end-user but the same brands as well. They do not necessarily make up a large percentage of end-users and they can be unpredictable as they may look up to several classes of end-users for an informed choice. Pointing out the popularity of a brand and the class of influential persons purchasing the said brand or product is a good way to convince this group.

5. The Satisfaction end-user: Here is a group whose single minded requirement is their satisfaction. These end users are the most confident of the rest. They are also predictable to a professional supply and procument officer. They desire quality, utility and reasonable prices. They are intermediate spenders. While they are not totally desirerous of the BLP or the BHP, they will not compromise either if they can help it. They are after satisfaction and suppliers will easily loose them if they are victims of buyer’s remorse especially as a result of a supplier who wants to sell inferior goods at the pricing standard of quality goods. They are very stable and make faithful end-users as long as their satisfaction is being sustained.

Therefore, knowing what the end users requirements are before they even decide what they require is the key to unlocking your procurement potential and improving not only on the quality of your supply but boosting your sales. In other words, you would have experienced a windfall and will happily begin raking in a higher income than the competition that has simply refused or just doesn't know how to evolve from the prehistoric philosophies spawned from an ice age of the procurement industry. By implementing this technique and perfecting it into a skill, you would have wittingly taken advantage of the idea that though your customer /end user is right, the fact that you have studied his or her needs and what his preferences are will make you right person in their eyes. They would see you as the sort of supplier whose tastes and vision have created a unique bond which they will never be able to get from any other place or person for that matter.

In the end you would have the lee room to determine your pricing strategy and ultimately you then have the potential to determine the prices of the market around you. No longer will your prices be determined by external factors, but you will become the factor by which pricing is determined.

ANOTHER DAY AT ANTHONY BUS STOP.

What is life but a series of complicated mistakes catalysed by half thought actions, a myrid of emotional proclivities and a basic desire for the things that we do not have. In reality, we are just material compounds of biological matter that begins the long or sometimes short process of decomposition from the very day we are pulled into this germ infested world. We live most of our lives like boxers moving round and round in antithetical circle while in a square ring, watching, hoping for that opening to swing one good punch in, one fatal attack. But all the while what we are really doing is blocking, defending and retreating most of the time. We think we are defending ourselves or like to think that we are when in reality we are the ones responsible for hurting others when we see an opening. You may call it whatever you like if it makes you sleep well at night; self-preservation, truth, reality, pain... I simply call it life.

If life is just a string made long by time with no end and no beginning, then we are just like the commuters on a bus who come on and get off the bus with no idea who last sat in the sit we are sitting in, what he or she ate for breakfast, if they cried that morning, had make up sex the night before with some barely understood girl friend who like the morning fog can no longer remember the depth of the commitment she thought she shared as she promised to love you for the rest of her life. What neither of them knows is that they are just an accident waiting to happen, just acquaintances in familiarity. Would it then be bad to say that in most cases we stumble upon our purpose in life by accident or some half chance or speculative idea which just occurred to us only because of a past experience which equally happened by the same odds of half chance? Maybe.... what if... why... how... will I... ??? In the end, it only begins to make more sense when you don’t even think about it, a conundrum of life’s dramatic sense of humour.

Maybe in the end it will be better to just lift your hands and trust in some higher power. Spontaneity, second chances, forgiveness, faithfulness, decisiveness and love; these are the bane that condemns humanity because of its sardonic regard for these concepts. The lack of even one of these is a miss that is as good as a mile. Maybe God is the answer. But what if? A man who can find the answer to this, is a man who truly has found the meaning of life. Until then, I would take my chances at Anthony bus stop and dare to make the mistakes I was too afraid to make only yesterday.

These were my thoughts as I walked towards the bus stop like I had done every other morning for the past seven months. I had been in Lagos since 2010. Nothing had changed in all those years. Of course they had finally sanitised Obalende. The Government had passed a ban on the popular Okada saying that no bike below 200cc was allowed on the Island –not like the so called LASTMA who were charged with the enforcement of this law could really tell what a 250cc bike looked like. If it looked like a power bike then it must be above 200cc –was their thought. So the courier companies took advantage of this. They imported the same low powered Okada with the same cheesy sounding brand names with cheap parts from all over Asia. Only this time the bikes looked something like the love child of an Okada bike and a power bike above 200cc. Not even the devil himself would have dared to think of designing a chimera like that but trust the Asians to out-design even the devil himself. And by some ignorant miracle, people never thought to call the cheap Asian toys by their generic name of Okada and if they did, they never said it out loud. Who said rebranding doesn’t work. Well, it does!

 The road to Epe was now dualised and no longer did it sound like you were having an unholy love affair with a mad person when you said you wanted to buy land in Epe or even Ibeju-Lekki.  They had successfully sand filled Eco Mega City and built a man-made paradise that will further give the common Nigerian one more reason to discover new ways to love his neighbours pocket more than he cared for his life. Yes, something’s had changed but something’s never would. Like the traffic that spat in your face like an unpaid prostitute as you passed Keffi Street and turned left onto Awolowo road towards Falomo. Or the rumours that was commonly passed amongst the common people of Lagos that Mudi the fashion designer actually built his company on dealing drugs, that Tinubu was the King pin who ran the Action Congress which was the ruling party in Lagos as against the Nationally all powerful umbrella of the PDP, that Victoria Island –popularly called V.I, was slowly sinking inch by inch into the sea and would one day be the site of a big lake instead of the once-Island-now-turned-peninsular by the insatiable desire to have more land within the already over populated content of overcrowded humanity of all sorts of languages, tribes and sexual habits that made up the inhabitants of this Economic heartbeat of the country. “Eko oni baje O!” Beni, something’s would always be the same.

I was now a part of this changing yet unchanging society. It had come over me like a Lagos down pour, suddenly and without warning. I no longer donated buckets full of sweat when I was having brief, guiltless sex. Oh yes, the guiltlessness was also a part that this proud society had christened me with. I felt the heat less or the humidity that once felt like I was being press at night by the demons that famously mistake human beings for their stools. Or did they do that intentionally, them being demons and all? I really do not know, but if by chance anyone happens to meet a demon, on some random pedestrian bridge, with a pot of draw soup swimming in palm oil, dried fish and kola nut, they should please help us find out. Yes, you know yourself and I say us because of the unfortunate victims who say they have been or are being pressed at night. Maybe somehow in the midst of this demonic shit, this information will help them find some sort of closure. Ha ha!

This was the life which I now had. And so, after my NYSC (National youth Service Corps), I simply slipped into the pool of festering unemployable, many qualified, some confused, other dumb, illiterate and almost so post NYSC University graduates who obliviously welcomed me with their stressed out stares, desperate stories which to them sounded courageous and to me sounded like brouhaha and a tall stiff glass of cheap 501 Chelsea whiskey downed too fast by an armature drinker. In time they would learn to handle the liquor of unemployment. So, like many other mornings before this, I crossed the busy, death courting dual road to Ojota that passed in front of Anthony village. Under the bridge that stank of vestige urine and a cocktail of fossilised dried excrement which laid in inanimate swirls or lumps like beggars sprawled on the side of a tightly fitted street. Past the cheap watch sellers, past the cheap Igbo man selling cheap substandard shoes and even cheaper palm sandals, past the cheap watch repairer who was strategically placed so you could easily find him after the cheap quarts knock off watch you wore had stopped working. I even turned and stared for the briefest moment at the cheap sun glasses which were in reality a memento mori of how they would screw up your eye sights if they didn’t kill you faster by making the car that was speeding like ten crazed baboons towards you look further than it actually was. Lately I was beginning to truly appreciate the meaning of the expression, cut your coat according to your size. 

It had started with buying cheap hundred naira sox, then the shoes which barely made it across the thresh hold of two thousand naira –in fact, the speed at which the man sold the shoes to me had left that bitter taste of buyer’s remorse and injured pride. As I had walked to catch a bus that day from Obalende, I had felt like a cheap porn star who had just accepted the lead role for a low budget porn movie for the price of what would have barely bought a plate of amala, ewedu soup and worse of all, without meat! Only the shirts remained of the quality that was once a reminder of the extravagant demand I had placed on my parent’s financial benevolence.

But that morning, I decided to just glance at the cheap sun glasses, just glance. In reality, I could not afford to buy any of them. The hole that a spontaneous and extravagant decision like that would have created in my painful and choice less financial intelligence would have cost me more than I was willing to allow. Once upon a time, but not this time. So I passed and thought no more of it just like I had trained myself to whenever I saw a really young man or woman barely my age drive by in some new Japanese car or whatever flashy plastic toy the company welfare package had wheeled into his or her life. I was a man out on a mission. The text message in my inbox had debriefed me on the location of the interview but not the name of the company hosting the interview. 

The message had read:

“You are invited for an aptitude test by 9:00am at number 3

Kini Olodo Street, Jibowu, Yaba. Applicants are advised to come

along with an updated copy of their CV, their application letter

and original copies of their credentials.

Be advised that an interview will follow if the applicants are

successful in their test.

Please call Bumi Martins: 08023382550 for further information.

Thank you.

I had been running the message over and over in my mind, trying to remember which offer amongst the so many applications I had sent was responsible for the text invitation. I had read the message trying to read in between the lines like it was the first question of the aptitude test which was tricked with a Trojan hint just to tease you into failing. But I had not been able to decipher any inconspicuous answer to my questions. Even after pondering all the way to Anthony bus stop, I was no closer to solving my mystery offeror than scientists were at finding a cure for the common cold. But as I thought and thought, standing in lost thought and significance amongst the unknown circumstance hard faces of other Lagosians, I caught myself really wondering about something entirely different. I had actually first caught myself staring at the fair, scar less, stretch mark free legs in front of me and was subconsciously wondering what sort of face would carry such near perfect smooth legs. For some inexplicable reason, time seemed to have slowed down except my mind which –at lightning speed, flipped through archives of unremembered faces in night dreams and day time fantasies. I could feel my black trousers feel tighter. Had I been the man I was pre Lagos infection, I would have looked away in a realisation of self-inflicted embarrassment and shame. Alas, I was not, I was no longer my father’s son or my mother’s for that matter. Layers and layers of tectonic changes had taken place in me over the course of time. Heart breaks, brief stints, cougars, disappointments, hunger, pain, regret, distance, life, time, reality... the list was as long as human faces are distinctively different. 

So, I felt no shame and embarrassment was just another smelly Lagosian armpit in a danfo bus which you could avoid by simply turning your head towards the open window. And if gods were not on your side and you were stuck in the middle with no open window to grant you temporary escape from the fumes of another person’s bodily fluids which had fermented over like old palm wine..., then the gods were surely not to blame because you were on your own.

Slowly, I let my eyes shamelessly wander up those smooth shaven legs and continued up past where the suit skirt stopped, just millimetres above the caramel lines that signified the back of her knees. That skin, my mind queried. And I recalled Sewuese, a faint memory from my secondary school days now more vivid than any text invitation. I recalled that Sewuese had had such fine skin as well. So fine that there were days when just day dreaming about her silky looking skin had also  seemed more important than the first chapters of my government text book “The Nigerian Parliamentary system of government (1960 – 1964).” Amidst my voyeur distraction or in this case, attraction, I mused at the ease with which the topic had come to me after so many years especially when it was on account of a woman’s silky skin!

“You know, Tiv people have very good skin,” Sewuese had once said as she giggled girlishly with tinkling delight when I had mustered up the courage to tell her what I thought of her skin. So, was she Tiv –this icon of bipedaled seduction standing just barely an arm’s reach before me? Encouraged by memory and basic desire, I continued my visual forage.  I was like a child who had just been brought into an ice cream parlour for the first time. I stared until my eyes hit a further land mark.

There is a popular saying which in my pre Lagosian days had seemed more like an urban legend than a rumour. Like a vivid kaleidoscope, my mind was a myriad cocktail of emotions, recollected thoughts and present thoughts.

I seemed to recall the title of an old movie. “The Evil that men do...” I reckoned it was called.  Then the whole sentence came to me, “The Evil that men do lives after them.” A Charles Bronson movie, it was indeed a glorious day in my mind. I chuckled to myself, half amused at the way my mind was working and half impressed. And I impressed myself further with a twist of my own, “The evil that men do stands in front of them.” Now I was truly impressed even though I was the only one laughing at my pun.

All this while, I took no notice of the happenings of the world around me. It felt like I was a in a bubble. Like time had decided to take a vacation. I felt immune. Somewhere an unseen hand tugged inside me. But it was weak. The guilt was gone, the shame... further down the road. If my conscience was trying to make a last ditch effort at a comeback then it was making an effort in futility at this point. The truth was that I had never felt more alive, more lucid, more empowered, more ... manly.

“The thing about sin is that it tastes so good!” I could hear some distant voice interject over my thoughts. Was it my pastor’s voice or my mother’s?

“It turns you away from the light and love of God and condemns you to the roaring lion. But it must never win. Let Daniel tell you. Let Joseph show you. Let Shadrach, Meshack and Abednigo explain to you for if you will not heed my voice on this day then maybe, you will heed the signs of the Gods wonders to those who are faithful! Let somebody shout HALELUYAH!” I simply tuned it out like changing the frequency of a radio.

I stared now with a lope sided grin on my face. Thinking back now I think I must have looked like a man who was just told that he had the biggest asset in a men’s fellowship meeting. The thing that makes a man proud to be a man, I guess that is why they say men are from Mars. Yeah, I thought, I’d rather be that single man in the men’s fellowship with a massive something from Mars than to be that single man with a little something on Venus. All this while I was trying to decide which it was, Tiv or Yoruba. I felt like a man told to choose between two different designer fragrances from two different companies with the same perfumer. Now I was staring at her back, her upper back. While it was a fact that my physical eyes saw nothing, I could not vouch for my minds eyes. Like Robin Hood staring at the red round dot in the middle of a target, I had squinted my eyes due to the intensity of my stare. Not from the glare of any sort of light but from the effort of concentrated vivid imagination.

At that point she turned around. Why? That was a question I would never in a million years be able to answer. Was it because she felt someone’s eyes on her? You know that feeling, the way you sometimes feel when walking all alone on a dark, quiet street, and suddenly you feel like you are being watched from behind, maybe that was how she had felt. What must have creeped her out. But even a creep hates being caught on duty. I turned my head just in time to save whatever self-respect I had left. In retrospect, that was what I should have done. If you are a guy and I do mean any guy, maybe you can understand my current disposition. I could not help the flood gates of name that came pouring out of some hidden cess pool thesaurus that all men have. “Mellons, water melons, Rack, Oh boys, mamma mias, milk factories, oboink’a boinks, pillows, boobs, twin towers, babies, papayas... I could go on and on but I think I’ve made my point.

“Mstcheeeeewww... useless man! Stupid basterd! Ori e da! Mstcheeeeewww....”

Was what I was expecting, an impending bombardment of qualitative phrases and words alike. And trust me, I would have taken it in good faith like ten kobo change chinking together in my pocket. But just like we no longer hear the chinking of change any more in Nigeria, so did I not hear what I knew I deserved to hear. In retrospect, I think I would have felt better in the long run if she had uttered some words of disapproval. Believe me, when  a Nigerian woman disapproves of something, especially a Lagos girl, there is no way you will go home and not run those abrasive words over and over in your mind wondering if a toilet brush was what she used to brush her teeth that morning. No offense intended.

What had happened was that she smiled at me! Can you believe that?! After I had given her smooth silk legs a region in Nigeria, given her bum a tribe and christened her norrs, half expecting the blast of the trumpets of hell reign down on me... all I got was a “job well done, would you like my name and phone number as well? If I get to know you better and like you then I’ll text my BB pin to you and maybe see how we can hook up this weekend... at your place of course. Thank you.”

So I went back to Anthony bus stop the next day and the day after that and the day after. The truth is I was so stunned by that smile that in the time it took me to recover from my disbelief and put into action the open invitation, and she had turned and ran after the yellow danfo Volkswagen, gone ahead of all the men who had stood beside her including myself and took the only available seat.