MAN-MADE HELL: Nigeria's Corruption Satirical Story.

A Ekoja

This article had been edited in line with front-page.com.ng editorial policy.

I wasn’t sure of whether I was asleep or awake, or whether I had gone blind. It was dark, pitch black, and I could barely make out anything. But I could tell I was standing, with no idea how I got here – It didn’t take long before it dawned on me.

Something seemed to be taking shape in the distance just ahead. All I could figure out was a humanoid. With…horns?!

Fear gripped me and I wanted to run. But my legs felt like lead, and I couldn’t move them, how much more turn around to run. Worse still, the humanoid being seemed to be approaching me without moving its feet. Or was I the one approaching it without moving my feet? hard to tell. But soon, I was close enough to make out few of it’s features. It was black all over with most features of a regular human, asides the huge horns protruding from both sides of its head. Completely unclad, it carelessly held a huge trident in its left hand.

Then the eyes and teeth, surprisingly white, stood out in stark contrast to the rest of its completely black visage. I was terrified.

“Welcome to hell” it said in a gravely voice.

“Hell?” I cried. “God forbid!”
I said, snapping my fingers over my head at the same time, to underline God’s forbidding it.

“Forget about God forbidding it. You are already here, so you might as well get used to it.”

” But…b- but… I can’t be in hell!”

“You are.”

“No way!” I cried.

“Why am I in hell?” I asked, confused. “I pray everyday before going to bed. “I ask God for forgiveness of my sins, I…I…”

“Are you not a Nigerian?” The horrific image asked without empathy.

I considered claiming to be Ghanaian.

“I can read your mind, you know” it said, muttering the thought in cold blood.

“Fine,” I admitted. I am “Nigerian.”

“Then you are in the right place. You guys can fit argue sha! Anyways, I have been assigned to give you a welcome tour of the place so you don’t get lost. My name is Frank. Don’t call me Frankie.”

I wasn’t planning on it.

“So, he started, pushing open a black gate I just noticed was there. “In you go. We don’t have all day.
Besides, the Gardener’s Daughter starts by six and I don’t want to miss today’s episode.”

“You guys watch TV?” I asked, baffled.

” What did you think?” He replied.

“In you go.” He pushed me inside and as soon as I was in, a heat wave struck me, very much like the one that strikes on those occasions when the national grid collapsed or the DisCos decided to go AWOL, and the generators packed up as well. The extreme heat began to make me uncomfortably sticky and sweaty.

“Is it always this hot?” I enquired.

“It’s hell, what did you expect? Though I would have thought you would have been used to this. Most of the casual staff here are Nigerians, mainly because they are used to the conditions.”

I was dumbstruck.

“Let’s get you registered, shall we? The administrative block is over there.” He pointed out a soot covered building up ahead of us

“What is that noise!” I asked, now observing a loud, grating, annoying but vaguely familiar noise coming from the side of the building.

“Oh, that’s the generator. No light for three days. It’s really annoying. We wrote a letter to the power authorities but they are yet to get back to us. Don’t they know diesel is expensive?”

I was amazed.

“No light in hell?” I wondered aloud.

“Is there light in your country?” Frank asked.

“No.”

“Good. So it’s nothing new to you.”

After the registration was done, (turned out I had to pay for the ink, pen, paper and buy lunch for the registration staff, who were all Nigerians) else, I would be asked to join the long waiting queue of heated furnace outside. Frank led me outside and pointed in the direction of a few derelict- looking buildings.

“Those are the living quarters. They should have been renovated years ago, but we awarded the contract to one Nigerian firm. You should know where this is going.”

I nodded affirmatively.

“Yeah, your country people are awesome like that.”

“C’mon,” I protested. “We are not that corrupt!”

“Yeah, right! There was no corruption in hell till we started letting Nigerians in! You guys have been the greatest load on our resources since this joint was opened. See the fence?”

I observed a perimeter fence manned by armed spirits like him at every interval of fifteen meters.
The fence was almost impossibly high and topped up with spikes, barbed wires and electric barriers.

“We had to install those after we recorded first escape attempt by a Nigerian, who managed to sneak out dressed like a woman.
We caught him at the border trying to bribe his way into heaven.”

I didn’t know what to say to this.

“Or those guys”, he pointed into the short distance ahead where I spotted a motley band shabbily dressed young men, drinking paraga, smoking weeds and harassing passers-by.

“Are those touts…in hell?!”
I exclaimed.

“Nigeria’s finnest.” Frank responded. “We have not been able to control them since they got here. They kept collecting money from us, telling us it is for motor parks maintainance. For Satan’s sake, we don’t have motor parks in hell!”

“Since the big boss decided to appoint a few of your countrymen to administrative positions, our annual budget suddenly started running deficit. And yet, we can’t identify projects eating the funds.
By now, you ought to have guessed that it’s a Nigerian that heads the power department. The torturers who should be making life miserable for dwellers now come to work, sign the register then sit down all day gisting while watching Telemundo. We acquired a new generator for the electric torture chamber but the Chief Executive Oppressor, a Nigerian had it moved to his private home. He called it part of his Structural Replacement Programme. Things have been very slow around here since torture equipments were sold, apparently to raise funds for better tools replacement, but we are yet to see those, so we just sit around all day playing Ludo.
Now, rumours have it that they are planning to rig an election to remove the big boss himself – Satan. It has gotten so bad that from next week, we won’t be able to accept new intakes. We would have to outsource our torture business. We have already made arrangements for where new intakes should go.”

“Where?” I asked, more amazed than curious.

“To Nigeria of course!” Frank barked.

This article written by A Ekoja, was first published in 2018.