Nigeria vs. Scotland

“You think you’re mucking around with a Nigerian whom you can twist around your little fingers!”

As he spoke, or rather, raged, his normal Caucasian skin acquired a tine of red, which spread all over his face and then deepened, till there were blotches of purple at different parts of his face. He was spitting all the time.

“In my first year, eleven did not graduate. In my second year, two did not graduate.” He went on to recount how he had caused calamity to various numbers of students. Apparently, he was deriving joy from it; his purple acquired a tint.

The other man, of average height, standing in front of his office, spoke for the first time: “who are the main culprits?”

“The members of room 5,” came a voice, whose owner was beyond my field of vision. I did not bother to turn to look at him; I would probably have puked if I did.

“Room 5 members, into my office,” said the man of average height. I got up from my kneeling position, not bothering to beat the dust off my black trousers. I would do it all together. As I walked past him, I caught a whiff of his fragrance. Acrid stench, I meant to say. It was a strong mixture of alcohol, sweat, and cheap, dilute perfume. It reminded me of a burning heap of junk. Only yesterday, this man made me kneel and then crawl on concrete under the sweltering heat of the sun. Worst of all, we partially shared a name. I wished I would have the pleasure of attending his funeral. Then I would spit on his grave, and a great sense of achievement and fulfillment would wash over me. I hate as well as I love, and I think I hated this man as well as I loved myself.

Recounting the harbingers of the fact that we would be flogged will only create excess undue displeasure with this man, whom I have already labeled an extortionist, thanks to a totally different incident. To cut the long story short, all eight inhabitants of room 5 were given five lashes of a cane. A cane I threw away much later, after failing in my attempts to both break it and treat it with concentrated acid. We went back to kneeling outside.

My super-duper Caucasian man appeared again, and as always, his belly preceded him. The buttons on his shirt threatened to fly off, but I bet they kept still because of the waves of anger that he was exuding. He started saying something in that British accent that I hate so much. I managed to catch the words “suspend” and “expel”, but his first words rang in my head.

You think you’re mucking with a Nigerian whom you can twist around your little fingers.

What did he think Nigerians were? I remember him saying once, in his uncontrollable fury, that he didn’t want the place looking like the rest of Nigeria, when he was talking about litter. He was probably labouring under the delusion that Nigeria was a dunghill.

If I had the means, he would have been long dead.

Nigeria – 0, Scotland - 1