They had thought their names were written in the book of life. All they wanted was good life. Financial salvation could give that. And Emperor Odidika of Imo state promised them that and wrote their names in his book. They are Imo youths.
They were lured out with that promise to a public square and made to sing and dance and worship at the feet of the Emperor, the sole ruler of Imo state. Yes, they did everything because the Emperor has made their own lives, and life itself in Imo, a huge misery.
If only succumbing to worship him under the scorch of the sun from dawn to dusk would give us bread, they said to themselves, let us do it for the sake of our throats and intestines. Man must wack! And the worshippers filed out at Dan Anyiam Stadium like supplicant serfs before one Hellenistic king and his ferocious henchmen. Poverty is the slavery of the free!
When they had finished rendering their songs of praise for the pleasures of the Emperor, he commanded them to return to their homes, and vowed that before they would exit the venue of the worship of the demigod-emperor, bank alerts of N250,000 would begin to pour into their phones. He said N8 billion had already been doled out.
Days have rolled into weeks, and weeks into months, and many months have gone by, yet not an individual has received anything from the Emperor. Ahiazuwa! Just like Vladimir and Estragon, the two queer characters in Samuel Beckett’s celebrated play, Waiting For Godot,
waited under a tree till the end of time for one Godot who had promised to help them but never came, the hoodwinked Imo youths have waited endlessly, walking up and down with their phones and chargers, for the Emperor’s bank alerts which never came.
How Imo has become more fictional than fiction! It has also become a maze of antinomies, and how a book of life could become a book of shame, sorrow and death, only the decadent Emperor could tell.
Let fraud be fraud, and let governance be governance. They are two different things. They are also diametrically opposed. Mixing up the two is always catastrophic!
Imo ga-adi nma ozo!
My name is Collins Opurozor