There was a stirring in the land, and it seems everybody was aroused. On her own, Anita couldn’t fathom what it was all about. She was aware that the circle of excitement that came every four years has come around when promises that were not kept were made. It was the period that pasta and clean vegetable oil , and foreign rice, were distributed in small portions . If your family was lucky, they got on the list of one politician or the other and consequently were be paid a monthly stipend of between 10 to 20 thousand Naira monthly. This was everybody’s wish and prayers.
But for Anita, this was far from her mind as she prappled with the vicissitudes of Life that had almost overwhelmed her. She tried to eke a living in AMAC market as a hairdresser in a container that she had put by the roadside. She had paid 50,000 for space first to the previous owner, Then, when Amac officials had started troubling her that she didn’t have the original AMAC receipt, they told her. She had to squeeze out another 50,000 she had no helper, and in a short while she was looking gaunt and undernurished. So, for her this coming election was important, like everybody else she wanted good governance. maybe with a good leader in place her situation would change, periocularly as an uneducated person plying her trade as a hairdresser which she was very good at…
Day after day, she hoped for a better deal but things got worse, the economy worsen, inflation spiralled and the number of calls from her family members Increased. Once she got a call from home, her heart would start palpitating, she would start worrying and fretting until she was able to send the money to her mother, uncle or any of her siblings who made the request. So she kept on hoping daily that things will be better. One day, an officious- looking man brought her a letter with her shop number on it; they were going to demolish!; All shops not within the market should vacate their spaces , they wanted to use place for a car park. The car park in the market was being used for additional shops,
What kind of trouble was this ? Anita asked herself. In a short while everyone had gathered to discuss it. They had no choice! Either vacate of have you shop demolished! Anita wept that night why was she so targeted by the evil forces in her family line? Why was she singled out for disgrace? In the whole wide world, only she had nobody that could assist her so she felt. Others were discussing one rich uncle or aunt they would take their woes to, But then, the the stubborn streak she had inherited from her father kicked, she wasn’t neither going to give in or give up!
The problem with Anita transcended the market space. At 32, she had not been lucky in relationships. He last relationship crashed Irretrievably two years earlier and she didn’t know what to make of herself. She was dignified in relationships; she was not going to throw herself at anyman because her mother and family members were heckling her for a husband! Not at all. But she felt that if the country had good governance especially now that the elections are at hand, things would get better across board, and the demands for assistance from home would reduce drastically or stop altogether !
All these prolblems were giving her a great headache! Maybe she should head for Edo state. Her new boyfriend whom she met shortly after the last breakup had taken up farming as a profession and had been asking her to come…His cassava had matured, he wanted her to come and help him process Garri-a staple food in most part of the country. Maybe she should go to cool off, and get her bearing there. Now that it had occurred to her, it was greatly appealling and she thought of it more often. She enquired on how to get to that location in Edo. If she left Abuja for a week or two, it wouldn’t kill her. Matter of fact, it may be a period of refreshing that she needed and she could use the period to recalibrated her life.
A week later she was on her way to Edo. A was a journey of redemption, a journey of affirmation, it was also for her a journey of renewal. As she entered the bus from Gwagwalada she took told herself she would not fret nor worry. The journey was thrice as expensive and it was immediately evident that there was no cash in circulation. The journey lasted all day, and she was welcomed at Edo by a worried fiancee by evening. She immediately settled down to making the outpost a home. Barely two hours after her arrival she had met all the crew the shrewd wife of her fiancee’s junior brother, she took to petty trading as a way of killing boredom, she however made life worse for the people in the outpost by doubling the cost of her ware. She seemed to take a great satisfaction in the fact that everybody around called her “.Madam” She had never seen such a self styled egoist. In no time her worries started fading away. The issue of AMAC demolition faded in her memory and in this jungle it was crowded out by being close to nature; here, she needed not worry about the prices of things: she got everything she needed fresh. Yam, vegetables, pepper and her fiancee often came home with animals caught by his traps. I’m the evening he brought home fresh palm wine and the thoughts of the elections receded in her mind. In this place nature provided for her and she forgot about the elections. In week she had started putting on weight and all her body filled out. She could see on the screen of her phone that her face was well- rounded and she had peace of mind.
It seemed she was one with this place, and being close to nature was good for her. The only problem was that the phone networks was terrible and calls hardly got in. Usually people in this place had a cut off mentality: it’s as if they were on a distant planet, and news of the happenings in the country got to the in bits and snatches.
It took her only two weeks to make up her mind…she belonged here! She had peace. She was free from the worries, and stress of the larger society…if she planned her life well, she could excel in the place. Everything was here, she just needed to open her eyes. Her fiancee, Andrew, had a fairly large farm that provided everything except rice. And she was a hard working lady. In two weeks, she had set up a garri processing centre where they were processing three bags of garri per day. These they sold for N10,000 each. She noticed there was a quantum of plantain and if harnessed well, she could start a plantain chips making industry. There were also plenty of oil palm trees on the farm and she knew just how to go about making palm oil. Control the food basket and you control the people she thought.
She had gotten to her last bus stop. In just one year she knew where she would be. The next day an excited neighbour that was always sticking to his radio came to inform them that the presidential election had been won by the party that was always reiterating agricultural revolution as number one of its manifestoes, she excitedly told her fiancee no to worry, things were looking up. The era of plenitude was finally here- at least for them
Written By Victor Oluwasegun
