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The journalist whipped out his note-book and began to write.
“It is an unprecedented crowd in the annals of Anata,” said Mr Nwege.
“James, did you hear that?” the Minister asked the journalist.
“No, sir, what is it?”
“This gentleman says it is the most unprecedented crowd in the annals of Anata,” I said. This time I clearly meant my tongue to be in my cheek.
“What is the gentleman’s name?”
Mr Nwege called his name and spelled it and gave his full title of “Principal and Proprietor of Anata Grammar School”. Then he turned to the Minister in an effort to pin-point responsibility for the big crowds.
“I had to visit every section of the village personally to tell them of your—I mean to say of the Minister’s—visit.”
We had now entered the Assembly Hall and the Minister and his party were conducted to their seats on the dais. The crowd raised a deafening shout of welcome. He waved his fan to the different parts of the hall. Then he turned to Mr Nwege and said:
“Thank you very much, thank you, sir.”
A huge, tough-looking member of the Minister’s entourage who stood with us at the back of the dais raised his voice and said:
“You see wetin I de talk. How many minister fit hanswer sir to any Tom, Dick and Harry wey senior them for age? I hask you how many?”
Everyone at the dais agreed that the Minister was quite exceptional in this respect—a man of high position who still gave age the respect due to it. No doubt it was a measure of my changed—or shall we say changing?—attitude to the Minister that I found myself feeling a little embarrassed on his account for these fulsome praises flung at his face.
“Minister or no minister,” he said, “a man who is my senior must still be my senior. Other ministers and other people may do otherwise but my motto is: Do the right and shame the Devil.”
Somehow I found myself admiring the man for his lack of modesty. For what is modesty but inverted pride? We all think we are first-class people. Modesty forbids us from saying so ourselves though, presumably, not from wanting to hear it from others. Perhaps it was their impatience with this kind of hypocrisy that made men like Nanga successful politicians while starry-eyed idealists strove vaingloriously to bring into politics niceties and delicate refinements that belonged elsewhere.
While I thought about all this—perhaps not in these exact terms—the fulsome praises flowed all around the dais.
Mr Nwege took the opportunity to mount his old hobbyhorse. The Minister’s excellent behaviour, he said, was due to the sound education he had received when education was education.
“Yes,” said the Minister, “I used to tell them that standard six in those days is more than Cambridge today.”
“Cambridge?” asked Mr Nwege who, like the Minister, had the good old standard six. “Cambridge? Who dash frog coat? You mean it is equal to B.A. today—if not more.”
“With due apologies,” said the Minister turning in my direction.
“Not at all, sir,” I replied with equal good humour. “I am applying for a post-graduate scholarship to bring myself up to Mr Nwege’s expectation.”
I remember that at that point the beautiful girl in the Minister’s party turned round on her chair to look at me. My eyes met hers and she quickly turned round again. I think the Minister noticed it.
“My private secretary has B.A. from Oxford,” he said. “He should have come with me on this tour but I had some office work for him to do. By the way, Odili, I think you are wasting your talent here. I want you to come to the capital and take up a strategic post in the civil service. We shouldn’t leave everything to the highland tribes. My secretary is from there; our people must press for their fair share of the national cake.”
The hackneyed phrase “national cake” was getting to some of us for the first time, and so it was greeted with applause.
“Owner of book!” cried one admirer, assigning in those three brief words the ownership of the white man’s language to the Honourable Minister, who turned round and beamed on the speaker.
That was when my friend Andrew Kadibe committed the unpardonable indiscretion of calling the Minister the nickname he had worn as a teacher: “M.A. Minus Opportunity.” It was particularly bad because Andrew and the Minister were from the same village.
The look he gave Andrew then reminded me of that other Nanga who had led the pack of hounds four years ago.
“Sorry, sir,” said Andrew pitiably.
“Sorry for what?” snarled the Minister.
“Don’t mind the stupid boy, sir,” said Mr Nwege, greatly upset. “This is what we were saying before.”
