By Ladeji Popoola
Durojaiye approached a Micra driver before he got to the Car park he was heading to. “Please sir can I get a taxi going to the University of Ibadan here?”
The old-looking man stared at him as he munched on Kolanut and replied yes.
The journey to nowhere soon began; Durojaiye sat in between two calm faces. He greeted the man on his right and the one on his left was on a call. As the journey continued Durojaiye looked weary and felt like asking the driver why the thirty-minute of driving had not taken him to where he was going. He cautioned himself, he thought Ojoo to UI was farther than Oyo town to Ibadan. The driver now slotted in a disc into the media player and the Micra was taken over by Naira Marley.
A man also sat next to the driver. He and the driver were now conversing. One of the men that sat beside Durojaiye exploded out of consciousness. “Where is this place? You have taken me beyond Mokola,” he cried out.
Durojaiye and the other man beside him were also beginning to agitate. They were also protesting at the top of their voices.
“Shut the hell up,” a voice rumbled like a midnight thunderclap. Durojaiye and the other men beside him were frozen.
Perspiration had begun to form a stream on Durojaiye’s face; he was stupefied and nearly dissolved like a cube of sugar that drops in a solvent when a gun was pointed at the head of the man sitting right to him whose voice was the loudest. These men now began to beg for their lives.
The wheels screeched, and at the speed of light, Durojaiye and the men were dumped by the roadside. Durojaiye embraced himself as miserable cold ran through his body. He watched the Micra as it vanished into daylight. One of the men seemed to have fainted. All their belonging was carted off. Durojaiye’s phone and folder were gone. He had no money left on him and did not know the exact place he was. The one that seemed to have fainted was now rolling on the bare soil wailing like a babe in arms whose mother haul to a daycare. The nefarious criminals had carted off his hundred thousand naira and other vital belonging. The other man was now oscillating like a pendulum; tears betrayed his eyes, he couldn’t weep but at times he gnashed his teeth, snapped his fingers, and shouting intermittently “Ole, Ole!!!!”
Durojaiye and the men were utterly derailed; Durojaiye could not contact home and had no way to reach Gbade at the University of Ibadan. Gbade who was a Mellanbite was to receive him. And he had since been waiting for him. When his number could not be reached, he had called Durojaiye’s father who was already shivering as he blamed himself for why he would let him to travelled to Ibadan alone.
Sympathizers began to hover around them. One sympathizer told them they were in Eleyele.
“Those who carried you were ritualists and that is how innocent souls lost their lives. Thank your heads,” a sympathizer said and left.
Scores of sympathizers commiserated with them but no one gave them a Naira; they wished them well and left. Now they began to crave help. Luckily, a Good Samaritan came to their rescue.
Durojaiye returned to Oyo town at dusk with many whys he could not give answers to. He had asked himself why he was so unfortunate the first time he set his foot on the soil of Ibadan. He could not answer why he would miss the post UTME exam he had for many days and nights preparing for. He thought he could answer why he met the Micra driver, but he could not. He was so worried; he knew his father would have phoned Gbade to ask for him. He thought of what condition he would be; he thought about Gbade, he knew Oyo town would by now be heading to Ibadan to find him.
As he was heading homeward, people were questioning him.
“Your father is worried, he was there going helter-skelter. He must by now be heading to Ibadan,” Mama Christy, one of their Church members told him when she met him on his way.
“Durojaiye! Durojaiye!!” People were shouting his name from a distance.
He burst into tears when he saw his father.
NB: Durojaiye’s story is a novel yet to be published by ‘Ladeji Popoola
Glossary
Ole: Thief
