Chapter II
We all graduated that year with good grades and we were mobilised for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program. Ireti, Ayinde and I were posted to the east. Ireti and I were posted to Cross river state and Ayinde to Enugu. Fabian and Ayo were posted to the north, Fabian to Kaduna and Ayo to Sokoto. The first three weeks on camp were the most interesting for me; I enjoyed every bit of every activity. I enjoyed meeting new people, some who became friends and others who remained acquaintances. It was during that period that I noticed a change in my friend Ireti.
He was more reserved, yet happier. He had this air of satisfaction around him like he had everything in the world that he needed. He talked less to people, made less friends and the most surprising of all, Ireti stopped womanizing. I was of the opinion that my friend will be one of the guys that will rock the NYSC camp for those three weeks. That he would attend parties, date as many girls as possible and what have you? The reverse was the case. I was surprised. I later found out that Ireti sacked all his girlfriends before we left school.
We left camp in Calabar and were posted to different places to serve. I was posted to a school in a remote local government while he remained in the capital of the state, Calabar where he worked as an analyst in an IT firm. I envied him. My friend was getting everything he desired despite the fact that he never went to church. He wasn’t as spiritual as I was. I was baffled, because I used to believe that in order to get anything you want, you had to fast and pray earnestly. So I decided to visit him in Calabar one weekend. I had only one mission in mind which was to ask him what really was causing all these changes. I was determined to know and apply the same principle to my life.
Ireti lived in a two bedroom flat in Calabar. According to him the flat was the Boy’s Quarters of the main house where his boss lived. I remember we used to argue about adapting to living conditions in school and Ireti would insist that he can never live below certain standards. I remember bringing up the issue of NYSC accommodation during one of those discussions and Ireti telling us that he will live in a two bedroom apartment during his NYSC program. Of course we thought he was just bluffing or as Christians call it ‘confessing by faith’. I believed him when I saw him in his apartment that weekend and of course, I became more baffled.
The impression we all had was that Ireti knew someone at the company who pulled the strings together and got him an employment there. He proved me wrong. He knew no one at the office. The company needed a NYSC intern who studied computer and would be trained for later employment, so they requested from the NYSC and Ireti of all people was sent. The branch manager of the company happened to like him and offered him an accommodation in his Boy’s Quarters since it was empty for the mean time. Ireti jumped at the offer. I envied him because most of us — coppers — spend a large part of our allowance on accommodation, and here’s someone who lives in a larger apartment for free. If I didn’t know his parents I would have said his father is probably a native doctor. There were actually many things I knew about my friend yet I still felt like there was more I didn’t know compared to that which I knew. I knew Ireti was a thinker. He could brood on anything and think it through. He also had a very wild imagination. He could imagine anything and this was evident in his writings, both prose and poetry. We usually made jest if him that he made a mistake in choosing computer. He should have been in the arts we thought, but art was just a second interest for him. My friend was a great thinker and had a wild and active imagination.
The living room was large, larger than my one bedroom self-contained apartment. He had it decorated to taste. It was obvious he was earning a good sum. Ireti was living large.
“Ireti I’m beginning to suspect you. Are you part of some cult or something?”
“Ohhh guy haba now?” he managed to say amidst a fit of laughter. “I don’t even know anyone who is a cultist” he added laughing even more.
“I’m serious here Ireti. How come all the things you always said you wanted are coming to you?”
“That reminds me” Ireti cut in “you remember that car I talked about in school?”
“Yes the Mercedes M class. Well you don’t have that yet”
“I’m getting it this year. And guess what? I’m not going to get the one I showed you in school. I’m getting this year’s edition.” He said so confidently with a broad grin on his face.
“You had better come down to earth and stop fantasizing. Where would you possibly get the money to buy that?” I argued, not because I doubted he would get it but because I wanted to know from where and how he would get it.
“Guy everything I ever fantasized about is coming to pass. So tell me why I won’t go ahead and fantasize about more. Besides it’s not necessary I buy it.”
“So you are going to steal?” I pushed knowingly.
“Of course not,” he exclaimed ‘what do you take me for? Guy abeg no go dey tag me. I nor be thief. I’m just following my instincts. Can’t you see? I don’t know what’s happening either. I just know it is happening and I’ve been observant enough to notice the trend.” He rattled on taking it serious this time. “Everything I desire, everything I really want in my life, I brood on it so much that I begin to hallucinate about them. When it gets to that point they manifest in real life. That’s just it. That’s what is happening and I can’t explain it myself.”
“You mean you just imagine it and it happens?” I was more confused now, than I was when I arrived at his place.
“It’s really more than that but it starts from imagination. When I imagine— I’m not sure if everyone is the same —it becomes part of me like it’s really happening to me and I begin to feel good about it. I remember some time ago in 100 level, I didn’t have money at all. I had squandered my pocket money for the semester on those girls. I just started imagining that I had money, not deliberately though. I started thinking of doing the things I’d do normally if I had money. And I felt good about it. It was so intense for about three days. I began to carry myself around like I had that sum of money. In my head I had it, in my subconscious I had that money but I didn’t have it in hand It came that Friday five days after I began my imagination. The exact amount of money came into my hands. That was when I began to take note of these strange things.”