File photo
The story was shared on a facebook page 'The Social Microscope Weekly' as a short story and titled 'Fuel Scarcity and the Missing Prick'
Read below:
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Lagos is a very crazy city. There, everyone is in haste like the blades of a rolling fan. There, Mondays are more sacred than Fridays and Sundays, for traders would never entertain nonsense on Monday mornings. There, a saint becomes a devil when he holds the steering wheel of any godforsaken vehicle. Lagos is a city for smart people; it is the only city in the world where a person pays for a smart phone and gets a wrap of fufu instead.
Lagos is full of unusualness too. You cannot urinate anywhere. You cannot park anywhere. You cannot even cross the highway in places where there are no pedestrian bridges. And let me add that everything is stealable in Lagos. There is a popular story of a stupid fat woman who slept off in a 'Molue' but woke up to find that her breasts had been stolen and replaced with two large water melons. As a matter of fact, I now write to tell the story of how a young man's prick was stolen and found miraculously.
Yesterday, I was in Agege to buy about ten litres of petrol to fill my "I pass my neighbour" generator. Recently, nearly every citizens of my country have had a glimpse of hell - no fuel; no light; no water and jobs. Those who voted for change now seemed to live in chains. It was under these circumstances that I left my house at about 3.00am to queue for fuel in a nearby Mobil filling station where petrol was still sold at reasonable prices.
The reader would think that it was stark dark and Lagos people should be in bed but it was not so. Vehicles running into about fifty had formed a long queue already. 'Okada' riders numbering well over seventy had also formed a separate queue together with those who came with the tanks of their generators. And then, there were those who came with sleeping mats. Crazy city; crazy citizens; crazy government, I thought.
At once, I joined the queue of those who came with their own tanks and waited quietly. Policemen were very much present too to protect, or perhaps, extort us. Our confidence level remained intact, although there was no single pump attendant in sight. We believed strongly that Mobil would save us, not the government.
At the time the loudspeakers from the nearby mosques blarred, no single petrol attendant was in sight. By now, the filling station premises had become a Mecca, bodies pressing against bodies; buttocks pressing against buttocks. It was an opportunity for some rascal guys to pick pockets. And then it happened.
"My prick, my prick," a slender-looking young man shouted a few paces away, wailing like a starved goat. His slim legs looked like the stem of a premature banana tree. "My prick o, this Alhaji don thieve my prick. Make una help me beg am make him return am o."
"How him take thieve your prick na," a woman who had gripped Alhaji's agbada asked curiously.
"I dey here dey queue for fuel jeje. Nahim this man come pass hit him hand for my back. My body do 'gree-gree-gree' like say scorpion bite me nahim I see say my prick don disappear. Make una help me beg am o. Make him bring back my prick."
"Walaitalai, me I no thieve am for this boy prick. I get my own, Oga"
"Shut up your dirty mouth, Alhaji abi wetin dem call you," yelled a septuagenarian who had just joined the ring which had formed round Alhaji and the poor boy.
"Return this boy prick otherwise we go burn you alive. If money no dey the country since Buhari enter, why you no use your own prick do money instead of this boy own? Wicked man."
Clicks from Android camera phones filled the air; the happening scene, though not a story about snakes, had already made Nairaland's front page and found its way in Linda Ikeji's blog.
"You must return this boy's prick," one hefty man, who resembled a chimpanzee, left a heavy slap on Alhaji's face."Return the prick now or I'll kill you."
"Walaitalai, me I nover thieve am for any prick for my life."
"Return the boy's prick, Alhaji" the hefty man roared again, leaving another staggering slap on Alhaji's face."Before you turn this boy prick to Dollars, I go kill you."
While Alhaji sat on the floor, his flowing agbada gathering dust, a pregnant woman remarked, "Don't punish the innocent for nothing. Don't punish the innocent for nothing. This boy suppose open him boxers make we see with our korokoro eyes say true true him Gala dey miss"
"Oya open your boxers," the impatient crowd yelled. "Make we see say your Gala dey miss true true."
The young man, whose name I knew afterward to be Emeka, rose to his feet. He had cried out his eyes and misplaced his voice.
"See, everybody see."
His boxer shorts had now fallen below his kneels and we saw, amongst what appeared to be a scanty black forest, an inch of black rope. Nothing more. A door had seemed to appear in his waist through which his prick had vanished, leaving its tail. How can a boy in his twenties have such a length of Gala? Alhaji must have stolen it with his charm, we thought.
"Una see say I no dey lie? This man don thieve my prick" Emeka cried.
The hefty man who would pass for a tamed chimp moved his great head forward, grabbed Alhaji by the neck and started to drag him away from the filling stations.
"By the time way I set you on fire, you go return this boy prick way you thieve, idiot."
We all followed this strange hefty man.
"Oga, put this tire for him neck. I get small fuel for here and we fit buy matches for that shop make we burn am to ashes." Someone whose face I couldn't see jeered.
"Okay"
"Walaitalai, Walaitalai, me I no thieve am for anybody prick." Alhaji cried helplessly but nobody listened to him.
Just when the hefty man was about to lit the fortunate match that would roast Alhaji like cashew nuts, two events occurred simultaneously. "I go return am. Oga, I beg I go return the prick way I thieve. Make I touch the boy back."
"You better do."
Alhaji was still walking towards Emeka's direction when someone in the crowd screamed, "Mobil don dey sell fuel oo."
At once Emeka's shrunken prick started to rise like a yeasted flour. It rose steadily until it became as strong as a rock.
"Don't touch me," Emeka yelled. "My prick don come back." Emeka started scampering towards the Mobil filling station to join the light queue that was forming. I ran too. Who does not want to buy cheap petrol?
"I don see my prick, Godwin" Emeka repeated, as he ran.
At the end, nobody could say whether it was Alhaji or the Mobil filling station which started selling fuel that returned the missing prick, if there was any missing prick in the first place.
- By Ademule David