Please my brother, do not mind all these people who are laughing and yabbing you that you carried a chair for our President. What do they know? Let me tell you something about what you did and the causative factor of that reflex action.
You see in Shomolu, when my father lost his job, my mother, a soldier, called us one night and said, “Joe, your dad has lost his job. By right, I am supposed to leave him but I will not. So, you and I will do everything within our powers to maintain the standard of living we are used to.”
I stupidly agreed, not knowing what was coming next. The following morning, she told me that we will start hawking bread to augment the family income. I looked at her incredulously. Was she serious? Me, fine boy to be hawking bread all over Shomolu? The same Shomolu that I have been terrorising young girls.
I went straight to my father and asked him what really happened with his job because I can’t be caught selling bread, that he had better go and beg to get his job back. My people, to cut a long story short, I hawked bread for Shomolu for three years.
I suffer like thief. I would carry bread on my head and hawk from Abiodun, through Igbo Igunnu, to Onipanu through Pedro. Then, I will start from Onipanu and do Igbobi and enter Myoung Barracks and appear at Abule Oja and pass through Fola Agoro and end up at my mother’s shop at Fakorede tired.
Miraculously, my father got his job back the week I got admission to the University of Ibadan and my three-year sojourn as a bread hawker ended. Phew.
I was very handsome then. A ladies man o. You should have seen me on campus. I was fine, tall and a good dresser. That was how I settled with the delectable Toyin – I will not mention her name, make her husband no knock am this night.
Anyways, we were a very powerful couple. She was beautiful, dark-skinned with a charming gait. We made heads turn on campus each time we stepped out.
But there was a small glitch. Anytime we went strolling and someone shouted “Omo oni bread,” I would automatically respond. You know say, I don sell bread for three years, so that cry — omo oni bread — don enter my DNA.
One day, Toyin asked me: “Darling, you don sell bread before? Why is it that anytime they shout ‘omo oni bread’ you turn your head as if they were referring to you?”
See denial.
“Me? God forbid. Me sell bread ke.”
My reaction to that call is what we saw the other day at the National Assembly. That reflex action from our dear Senate President na either a past career in maiguard, driver or houseboy.
That is why immediately the President moved to sit, the reflex action kicked in. It is automatic and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It is in the DNA, not even the protocol of the ADC can stop it. The thing that they have been doing for years, before they even enter the Senate?
So let me assure the ADC not to fret. His job is safe, he should not be worried, na something them must do. It is not a deliberate ploy to take his job or render him irrelevant in the scheme of things. It is ok, na Nigeria we all dey.
