THE PLIGHT OF AN AGBOWOITE: WHO’S LOOKING OUT FOR US?

My name is Hari (short for Buhari); it’s now the trend to name things after a president we are losing faith in. You know how people complain that the last semester break was over before it started? LOLOL. For me, it was too long. Time dragged on so slowly, I started to wonder whether 60seconds was what now made a minute I mean, we are in the time of change and I possibly just didn’t get the memo. Let me tell you my story I’ll start from when I still had a phone, laptop, speakers and a girlfriend.

My girl only just recovering after being hospitalized for several weeks. I had met her while I still stayed in one of the BQs in school. Our quarters were close and ippity-bappity-boom! We ended up in a relationship some months after. I suffered landlord problems and so I had to move out when my rent expired. She decided the rent was too expensive and together we sought out accommodation in Agbowo – separate accommodations though (no be marriage yet na). I had heard the tales but they always seemed so distant, my own incident bought these tales to life.

She went for a girl’s night out, got her periods 2 weeks early and decided to take a straight bike home. Because her street road was untarred, the bike man dropped her at the junction and she had to do a short walk home. This was already past 10pm and the gate to her place was surely locked. She was trying to call out her next door neighbour when she received a deafening slap to the same ear to which she held the phone. She reeled and the phone fell. But to her right, away from the attacker, came a voice “Heyss! Heyss!! Wassapuning there?”
She thought this was a saviour but perhaps he saw what he stood to gain by joining her assailant or perhaps they were working together already, they both beat her to the pavement and then robbed her of everything on her save for her attire. Her neighbour came out shortly after, raised alarm and my girl was rushed to the hospital where she spent a few weeks.
The week she returned home I hoped would be undramatic. She was still a sorry sight though her jaw that was shifted had been reset and her bruises were now just scratches. She had the slow-eyed look of one that had had too much bedrest and needed some daylight. But the doctors emphasised bedrest and so rest she did. It was hard moving around anyway when it caused her pains in places yet to heal. She needed time to ease slowly, physically and emotionally, into normal life. As if knowing my plea (of hope), and in a twist of events, my own robbery incident occurred at end of the week and it could not have been any less dramatic.

I and my roomie stay two streets behind my girl’s street. Ours is a three story building with an open roof, fences as high aa Jericho's and a padlocked gate-every tenant has a key.

Each floor however has a front and back gate that can be locked thus cutting off all access. Each room has both a key lock and a slide-in lock. As far as Agbowo accommodations go, I live in Pentagon. So you imagine my surprise the 5:30am I woke up to find all of our gadgets gone – 2 laptops, 3 phones, 1 Bluetooth speaker, oh and his wallet (imagine doing ID card replacement for the second time in a session). All of this without any confrontation. It felt like rapture.
You can be like Nigerian parents and blame us for making it easy for them. Only the feeble key lock secured our door the night we got robbed. Only our floor does not lock its front and back gates at night. And of course all the gadgets were strewn all over the floor and table. But how a thief managed to get, first into the compound, pick our locks and gather all these without waking both of us baffles me yet. Neither of us were drunk, high or slow and there was no light through that night.
Oh but it’s quite alright. Agbowo is a savage garden I never should have thought this bed of roses I had found would not wither and in its place carnivorous plants and cactuses would grow.

I would like to stay in the hall accommodations but not as a squatter. Sadly, I know no big-shot lecturer or so-so willing to write me a reference letter, making friends with the porters did not work out the previous year and I am not a 1st class student so a departmental letter of introduction is not in my options.
So you see, I spent that semester break without a phone or laptop. Girlfriend? We got in a fight that very night over some master’s guy who’d been on her case from way before “we” became “us”. Turns out the girl’s night out was a ruse for a meet up with “big boy” and his friends. But it’s okay, it’s okay. Did you know vampires have a mother and father from which they all stemmed? Well, they do. Yea, I spent my whole break reading Anne Rice books on vampires with nothing but time for company.

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ARE YOU AN AGBOWOITE? HAVE YOU HAD INCIDENTS RELATING TO ROBBERY, CULTISM, LANDLORD ISSUES, INADEQUATE AMENITIES OR OTHER SUCH? DO YOU HAVE A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE?
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