This Nonsense Must Stop

Oh God! This must stop. This will not be acceptable to my mother, and she would be asking a lot of questions. Where would she get the rest of the money? Would any additional expenses be deducted from my educational endowment account?

The questions were juggling through my head and I felt as if an artery would just burst out a hole in my brain. The noise from the rest of the passengers in the bus from the long ride between Owerri and Port Harcourt just added to the melee.

What could be the trouble with management Practice Coursework that the Lecturer would not give me a merited A. If it were other papers like Operational Techniques or other Statistical courses, I would understand it as my poor approach to them, but what could be wrong with my approach to a presentation on a course like Management?

There is no topic in that course that if anyone would wake me in the middle of the night, that I would not explain satisfactorily to qualify for a management job interview. But Dr. Okoro thought otherwise and had taken it upon himself to frustrate my GPA score.

I looked at the other passengers in the bus, a fifteen seat Hiace bus, with a surprisingly clean interior, considering the type of buses that ply this Owerri-Port Harcourt route. An elderly man and a younger man were sitting in front with the driver. The younger man looks like a trader who is returning from the commercial eastern Nigeria city of Onitsha where he has gone to buy his wares.

There were four other passengers on the seat behind the driver; a man and three women. I was sitting by the window on the middle seat with a man and two other women. I could not turn around to look at the type of people sitting on the last seat. It would have seemed obvious why I was looking at them, but I knew there were two men and two women sitting.

The woman sitting directly behind me was throwing talks around the bus like an FM radio, answering and questioning every talk from any other passenger, at the same time, discussing her market adventures of the day with the woman sitting next to her. The sound of her voice, monotonously, echoing and vibrating in my head.

I looked out of the window at the bush, stretched out far into the horizon, a dense grassland with a sparsely distributed palm trees standing out dejectedly. I could see some farmers, mostly women, with basins balanced on their head, and cutlass in their hands, walking along the side of the road to or from their farms.

These are the women that are feeding this great nation. Their seemingly insignificant individual contribution gathered together in the local food market and pushed forward to the markets in the cities constitute all the food requirement that sustain us as we run around our job and city life.

I wondered about what little contribution my grandmother' s farm; back in the village then, had helped someone. Every one of us, even as children, had a knowledge of farming. There is no household that does not have a little subsistence farmland.

Why then would these lecturers in the school not have a little garden or farm in the home to assist them in their insatiable financial requirement, than pirating on the works of others' textbooks, and forcing them down the throat of students with an exorbitant price tag; punishing students who would not buy those contraption of forgery with failures and low score marks, in their final examination.

I knew of no other reason for Dr. Okoro's attitude toward my work than my refusal to buy one of those cloned books he had made. Our class rep had brought copies of textbooks titled 'Management Practice: A key Concept,' authored by Dr. Okoro our Course lecturer to the class.
I have objected to the idea of buying that text on the ground that I have enough material for that course, and also, that the quality of work done on the book was so low, given the price tag of three thousand Naira for a copy he had put on it.

My objection to buying the book had spurred up other students and the sale of that book had been an abysmal flop. This had not gone down well with Dr. Okoro, who had threatened to pay us back in a pound of flesh at the time.

He had waited till our final examination to exert his revenge on all those students he believed had been the brain behind the disaster of the sale of his book.

Our attempt to push the case through the school management had not been successful as Dr. Okoro seemed to have the listening ears of a majority of the lecturers and the authority.

My mother was sitting on the veranda of our house with another woman as I pushed the gate open and matched into the compound, dragging my luggage behind me. She could not afford a security guard at the gate.

It is much for her to struggle to push my two younger brothers and myself through school with the little proceed from her cloth shop and the little educational endowment fund raised by my father's friend to assist in our education.

She had insisted that my father's name, Claude Matthew Ikiomo, would not fade away. She had guarded us jealously like a hen watching over her brooding chicks.

Surprisingly, she had been able to keep the compound cleaned; the flowers along the fence and in the front of the veranda were well trimmed. She had always believed that the cleanliness of the environment has a positive reaction to our inner self, and would results in a clearer and outstanding output in our performance in life.

"Hello, my baby," she smiled and pushed forward the tray in front of her, in which she was slicing Ogu leaves, trying to stand up. "Why dear, you're early, I've not finished cooking."

"Oh, Mummy, I'm not starving," I said walking the short driveway to the veranda. "Good Afternoon, Aunty Gloria," I greeted the woman that was with my mother.

"Hello, Beautiful Betty. You're looking radiantly gorgeous every time I see you.The School doesn't seem to have no ugly side on you; truly your mother's daughter, evergreen." She stood up, her face spreading into a broad smile as she came down the steps with an outstretched arm to hug me and help with the luggage. "How's School?"

"Aunty, School is fine, and we're almost rounding up," I allowed her to drag the luggage from my numb fingers.

Aunty, Gloria has been my mother long time friend; the longest of them all, I could remember. Sometimes I would imagine if they are not sister. Slim but tall, almost five feet eight, she is a beautiful woman in all standard, about 48 years with beautiful sets of flashing teeth when she smiled. She always regarded me as her daughter.

Gloria was the only friend that stood with my mother when my father died and his family members were trying to dispossess his house from us. She went with my mother to court and literally chased them away from us.

"What are friends for if not to lift up one another," she would always tell my mother whenever she shows appreciation to her friendship.

I saw my mother searching my face, looking for what to say. "Mummy, I called you earlier today to tell you that I would be coming home."

"I knew, that's why I'm preparing your delicious egusi soup with Ogu and okporoko to welcome you back from school." She looked toward the kitchen door beside the veranda. "Now where is this girl? Blessing... Blessing...," She called out to the house-help.

"Ma, I'm here," the girl answered, appearing from the back of the house, cleaning her hand with a napkin. She looked up at me. "Ah! Aunty Betty, you are welcome. I did not hear you coming in." She came up and held my hands, smiling at me.

"Hello Blessing, how are you?" I answered patting her head.

"I am fine," she said staring at my mother.

She is a brilliant girl, about 14 years of age. She had volunteered to come and live with my mother, to assist her with the house chores from the church.

"Blessing, please take Betty's luggage into her room and then come and take the vegetable to the kitchen." She looked at me, "Now, young lady, take that chair and sit down and tell us about the problem in your school that you called me to talk about."

She would be 48 years in November of this year, which is barely two months from today. Her eyes seemed to be hidden from a frown that was becoming a permanent feature of her facial expression. She is wearing a long pink gown that reaches down to below her kneecap. Her bare feet were resting on the top of a brown leather slip-on.

"Mummy, you're gradually beginning to put on weight. What has happened to your gym classes," I slipped onto one of the plastic chairs, adjusted the belt on my jeans trouser. I knew that she does not approve my wearing a trouser, but I have insisted that whenever I am traveling, I have to wear one.

My blouse was a loose a light fabric that covered most of my upper body. There, I knew that she would not have any complaint about my dressing today.

"It is not about gym these days, my dear. Okay, tell us what is this entire problem with this Dr. Okoro about?"

I have done all the explanation to her on the phone, but for the benefit of Aunty Gloria, I had to repeat my story.

I looked at her, sitting in the other chair facing the two of us. She was wearing a long dark long skirt on a red blouse. She crossed her legs and regarded me soberly.

"Betty, your mother called me this morning and told me about your travails in the hand of that randy lecturer in your school," she looked at my mother who merely nodded her head.

She reached across the short space between us and patted my thigh. "My daughter, your friend, Ebiere, had a similar experience in her 200 level examinations. A lecturer in her department was tried to frustrate her with all types of flimsy excuses why her paper would not receive a pass.

"When she accosted him to find out why she find out that the man was just trying to solicit for a sexual favor from her to let her paper fly," she brought her legs down heavily on the floor, shaking her fist.

"It's so frustrating Aunty, what those male chauvinist lecturers are turning the school system to be. They are almost making it appears as a legit business. They call it sorting to pass your examination."

"That was why I called my friend, Gloria to come and listen to what you have to say, so that we will take up the matter with the so call Dr. Okoro. He will regret ever touching the tiger's tail. Come on Blessing, take the leaves to the kitchen, I'll come to add it to the soup." She handed over the sliced leaves to the girl, who hurried away to the kitchen.

"Betty, after you've had your meal, we will go with you to meet my friend, Ijeoma Okorie. She is a Lawyer, a human right activist on gender equality. She helped us in my daughter's case and took the matter up with the school authority. That lecturer would be running with his tail between his legs where ever female issues arise as long as he teaches in a school."

"Wow! I would not wait to meet that barrister friend of yours, my friend. What type of woman is she?" my mother asked clapping her hand together.

"She is a male woman, if you think I'm tall, wait until you meet Ijeoma. She is huge, over 6 feet. When she stood before that lecturer, he seemed to cringe under her height and stare.

"'You think you can go around intimidating and harassing young innocent girls in your school compound because you are a lecturer and wearing a trouser,' she bellowed at him. 'What do you have under that archaic trouser in your waste to be harassing female students in the school?' and she made to reach out to him as if threatening to pull down his pants but for the timely intervention of the HOD and other lecturers that were present.'"

"Oh, how I wish I was there to see that little gnat crawling inside his over-sized shirt," my mother was shaking her head and stamping her feet on the floor.

"Ah Mummy, it has not come to that level,"

"Eh, don't Mummy me here. Does that Dr. Okoro or whatever his name is, know how I managed to send my children to school? And he wants to dupe me out of my hard-earned joy. This nonsense must stop."

"Don't be worried Betty, Barr. Ijeoma will dig up all the rubbish that's been perpetuated in that school under the guise of lecture materials, to make young girls venerable to their antics and manipulation, and stop it once and for all."

I walked up to her and embraced her. "Aunty Gloria, I'm so grateful."

"You are my daughter; always remember that," she said smiling.

My mother was also smiling, as she stood up to go to the kitchen. "Baby, I think you are now hungry enough to eat?"

"I can smell the aroma of the okporoko from your soup, Mummy. I think I'm really hungry now, and ready to go."

I turned to stare at Aunty Gloria and went into the house and she came in after me.


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