By Christavera Odife
I had a dream last night, of how everything I have would soon vanish. It was a reoccurring dream, almost every night now, I am having this dream. Maybe it was Baba’s way of saying, “You need to redo the ritual.”
Back in 2016, my friends started this online scheme of scamming foreigners. We’d get a foreign number and account, pose as somebody that we were not, and play along until they believed us and send us money. It was a big cash-out, it still is, but times have changed.
Then it was harmless, it was exciting, almost like playing with fire knowing that you’d get caught anytime but willing to try anyway. We had the latest accessories then, we had everything we wanted. These foreigners would never know we were scamming them. To us, we weren’t scamming them, we were just taking back what they took from us.
Back in the 16th – 18th centuries when they had enslaved us, they should’ve known karma is real right? They should’ve known that just because our ancestors forgave them, doesn’t mean that we would too, right?
Anyway, times have changed. Now they have known. Now they are more cautious, now it would take about 6 months to convince a foreigner to leave their money with you. Now everybody is in the market, the predators are more than the prey, many young Nigerians with phones are now into internet scamming. “Yahoo boys don plenty pass clients.”
To get rich faster through this method, we would visit Baba, who would perform rituals for us and tell us to provide insane things. Sometimes it’s the left side of a woman’s breast, sometimes it’s a kidney. Sometimes even Oke-ite.
Most of the times we eat waste products of cows, or eat a full feathered live chicken, so many crazy things that we normally won’t do, but societal pressure is so much that we would succumb.
We can not accept defeat.
Whenever you look at me, I’m smiling, I’m laughing, I’m spending money. Deep down, my days are numbered. I want to enjoy as much as I can. Life is vanity anyway, we would all die someday. But as my guys would say, “it’s better to die rich than die broke.”
Everything is vanishing right before my eyes, my life too.
This work of fiction was submitted exclusively to Umunna TV.
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