With keen eyes
and meticulous gaze, her heart is praying in silence for a better deal. As she
peers searchingly at the tattered notice board designed with scribbling collage
of inks, her eyes come to meet girly self-advertisements: For your braiding call 08123456789 Block A Rm202 Corner B. Another
is prospecting for students who want a make-up artist. She is not concerned
about all these. Then her perusal meets what she came for. One in bold writing
reads: 35K Hall 2 Corner H, No Negotiation,
O8122222233. Another is in plain text: Call
07013666454 for Block C Corner G 40k. The most ludicrous confidently
spells: Hall 1 Block A 60K, last price
(recession ti take over).
"My sister, so you were
also not allotted a bed space?" A female voice grills Odinaka who has been
staring at the notice board for a long period.
Readjusting her focus to the
familiar voice, she replies; "Chisom, Na so we see am o."
"I wonder why the school
will not adhere to our plea of erecting more hostel buildings."
"It's true that it seems
as if the school does not care about us. But should we always blame authorities
for every irregularity? Why will a sane human profiteer 500 percent of his or
investment even at the detriment of another human?"
"Odinaka, that's the
case in UNIBEN o. Can you imagine that last session I got a Corner H space for
30k as the usurer made a whooping 200 percent gain amidst rigorous begging in
sweats. In the end, I thanked my stars that the seller was a churchly-minded
person or at worst a learner in the game for accepting to make a 200 percent
profit."
"What is most annoying
of this craze is that the sellers use the money to rent a self-contained or
two-bedroomed apartment at Ekosodin, Osasogie, BDPA or other private hostels. They
say they can't stand the repugnant smell and squalid state of the halls of
residence and would rather risk security factors and disadvantageous proximity,
than live in our dog-pen hostels."
"See ehn, what we are
doing to ourselves is unwholesome. Imagine most of us who chose UNIBEN because
it is a federal school so as to reduce the cost of attaining tertiary education,
while some of us used the holiday to do menial jobs to be able to pay their
school fees, feeding, and other important expenses, other students like us are ready
to exploit for greed: selling allotted spaces for thirty thousand naira,
forty-five thousand naira, and even sixty thousand naira."
"Apart from greed,
another cause for this is our country's do-me-I-do-you
mentality."
"I wonder when this
madness started and when it will end. People forget that if an eye was for an
eye, everybody would go blind according to Gandhi."
Ebere who hears them as she
also searches for a bed space seller spoke to them in palpable vexation, "make
una dey there dey form Martin Luther King. Mtcheww."
This pervasive madness dates
back to antiquity: an act forged into history of the University of Benin: an
institution which boasts of brewing intellectualism. It is now a celebrated
insanity as everyone, even the most righteous, is unconsciously absorbed in
this unholy practice.
But when dogs begin to eat
dogs, a vicious cycle springs up. When man reduces his humanity for greed the
future stands on precarious hope. If usury becomes our occupation, why do we
pray against inflation? Like saints of the holy of holies, we condemn
politicians and corruption in our offices, newspaper stands, classrooms, online
forums, and other public centers as a product of the government, but truly
speaking, corruption is an offspring of our immediate environment. Corruption
is within us.
© Chidinma Ahika. [B.A/Ed Eng. and Lit.]: A wonderful poet and easayist who currently studies at the University of Benin, Nigeria.
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