WHY?- (my first attempt at short story.)

The afternoon sun was mercilessly extricating saline exudate out of everybody that day, even the lecturer that had sworn to make life miserable for the students was already finding it difficult to make do with his threat of a five-hour marathon class. He was literally swimming in the pool of his own sweats as he struggled to explain the concept of ‘post- colonial literature’ to the visibly dehydrated students. What had angered Babs the most was that puritan – as the lecturer is popularly called amongst students because of his ascetic and strict dispositions towards life, had decided to hold the class outside the lecture rooms despite the fact that the class rep had informed him that lecture theatres have been taken up by other lecturers. Babs was fuming with anger as he tried to rub off the trickle of sweat that had found its way to the tip of his nose when Azuka mistakenly hit his hand on Babs’s face. “I’m sorry”, muttered Azuka who was also visibly uninterested in the ranting of the man in front of the class. “No wahala, that one na small thing now” replied Babs whose response coincided with Puritan’s declaration of defeat as he had decided to bring the class to an end after two hours of struggle under the intense solar menace. “Mttteeeeeew oloshi radarada, is he the only lecturer on campus?” muttered Yetunde. I wonder oo, im wahala too much jare, must he hold the class today despite the obvious inconviniencies?interjected Azuka. Yetunde seems to have noticed the obvious silence of Babs who had not contributed all this while to the charade going on around him and decided to nudge him back to planet earth. “A penny for your thought Mr critical thinker, u seem far removed from the subject of discussion, what’s bugging you? Nothing serious o, I just dey try understand whether na puritan get the blame for wetin happen today or something dey wrong with our educational sector as a whole. Imagine a school with insufficient lecture theatres and you expect the lecturers to teach the students; then somehow someone will surely be at the receiving end of this negligence and that eventually will be us! Sincerely, Puritan’s fault in what happened today is minimal. I only blame him for keeping a rigid disposition towards work. Yea, you are right. The fault lies with those whom we’ve entrusted our vote but have failed us. ********************** Ebube was simply enjoying the head of his life as the Yoruba popular cliché directly translates into English. He is in every way an embodiment of what one can call a spoilt brat. Attending classes does not feature as part of his mission in the university. As far as he is concerned, you only experience life as an undergraduate once and such never-to-be-repeated occurrence should not be wasted on attending classes in an irksome and innovation-sapping atmosphere, thus he spends most of his time punching the game console connected to his apple MacBook air. He was in this riveting condition when Babs entered the room looking worn out and exasperated. Don’t tell me you were in the room throughout the whole day, ehn?, Babs managed to ask. “Before nko, where you expect make I dey if not my haven on campus, Ebube retorted. Wetin make you frown like say dem collect your bread like dis? Ebube asked having noticed his puckered brow the moment he stepped into the room. If you had been in class today, you wouldn’t have been asking me this question; rather you would have been cursing the damned set of people in power. Could you imagine Puritan treated us to a two-hour class in the sun today? Impossible! What happened to all the lecture theatres on campus? Apparently other lecturers were making use of them and instead of the workaholic to postpone the class; he decided to hold the class under the unforgiving glare of the sun. Well I don’t really blame him for fulfilling his obligation as a lecturer; I place the blame at the doorstep of our insidious political leaders who have become so unconcerned with our plights that our various epistemic bases can no longer stand shoulder to shoulder with their counterparts around the world. What do you make of a government solely concerned with squandering millions on the centenary celebration of an apparently failed state while its educational sector wallows in retrogression due to unavailable funds? I guess this is the price we have to pay for tampering with God’s preordained settings. God’s preordained settings? What do you mean? Of course the demarcation of the northern and southern protectorate with river Niger was a signpost from God that we were never meant to be together but then Lugard and his wife thought it worthwhile to tamper with the divine plan for Africa and here we are today squandering money on a failed state. Ebube who had been listening aptly so much so that the game console had fallen from his hand to the floor felt tongue tied and could only move his head like that of the red headed lizard. He couldn’t understand why he felt drawn on the same plane with Babs who seems to have reached an all-time high level of anger with the lackadaisical temperament of public servants. He couldn’t understand how Babs a known passivist would suddenly start questioning a government he had once tolerated with an I-don’t-care attitude. Probably it was the two hours in the sun that did it or a lot had already been going on his mind and this was just the catalyst to the cataclysm. Whatever it is, he knew Babs would never sit in silence again and accept the situation as it is. Something tells him this definitely is the beginning of a long sojourn into unraveling why things never worked out in his country; a journey of questioning into why his country remain a powerless giant.