WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND…FAST (A KITO STORY)

This story happened in 2012. I’d just changed jobs from being a secretary/personal assistant to a barrister in a law firm, to begin working as a volunteer church staff. As a secretary, I wasn’t getting paid much. So I began looking around and eventually got another job with the church. After about three months of working at my new job, 40% of my salary was added to my pay and I became a fulltime staff member.

Now, I had been saving some money to buy the phone that was the big deal then – a Blackberry. It was tough, but eventually I got the phone. And with it, I was able to be online regularly on Facebook, BBM and 2go.

I met Kelvin on Facebook and soon enough we became close. He told me he was staying at Ogba Barracks, and because at the time, I didn’t know there was any such thing as getting set up, I wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was a resident of an army barracks.

Soon, Kelvin began bothering me to come over to his place, and I was hesitant, because of the distance. I lived in Ikorodu. And I didn’t fancy myself going all that way just for a day’s hookup. Plus I had work, so it simply wasn’t looking feasible.

However, he eventually wore me out with his insistence, even providing me with the perfect excuse to give at work so I could get the day off.

I have a twin brother and I am out to him. My parents are divorced and we stay with my father. I was not out to him then, but I often believed that he knew deep down. Anyway, so upon agreeing to go see Kelvin, I told my twin brother about him and he said, “Can’t you make him come over, instead of you stressing yourself to go to an area you’ve never been to before.”

I should have listened, but I guess I’d already made up my mind.

The following morning, I left home and was headed to Ogba Barracks. All through my journey, I was communicating with Kelvin and he was telling me what buses to enter and where to highlight. It was a hectic journey. I mean, like seriously, this same Lasgidi that some people are saying is small; it’s actually BIG.

Finally, I got to Ogba Barracks and I called Kelvin to let him know I was around. He told me to walk straight into the barracks and enter a tricycle going toward his street. I did as I was instructed and was soon in a tricycle headed towards his place, making sure to tell the driver beforehand to drop me at the junction Kelvin told me to drop. But apparently the driver forgot, because he passed the junction and didn’t even remember me until he dropped the only other remaining passenger but me, and I asked him if we hadn’t gotten to my junction yet. He made a sound of surprise, saying he’d forgotten to drop me and asked why I hadn’t indicated when we passed the junction. I told him I was new in the barracks and so he reversed and took me to the junction.

And I alighted from the keke and stood there, waiting for Kelvin. I’d of course already called him to let him know I was there. To while away time, I engaged myself with my phone, until I got a call from him. When I answered, he asked what I was wearing. I told him. Some minutes later, someone tapped me on the back of my shoulder. I turned to find myself facing a completely different person from the guy I’d been getting acquainted with online. And this stranger introduced himself to me as Kelvin.

It was obvious he’d misled me with fake photos and I was displeased, immediately demanding to know why he’d used a catfish Facebook account to get to me. And he apologised and told me he was a very reserved person who was too closeted to use his real Facebook identity to chyke guys online. While his reasons made sense, it was still upsetting that he’d made me come all the way here under false pretenses. At some point during our chats, when he realised I was on the level, he should have come forward with the truth and his real identity. I told him this and he apologised again.

I was mollified because he wasn’t very bad-looking. He was of average height and well-built, with a full beard that added to his appeal. As we began walking, I noticed he walked with a limp.

He took me through a lonely side road, and as we walked, he asked for my phone, saying he wanted to go through it. Thinking he just wanted to amuse himself with the photos in my Gallery, I handed him my Blackberry. We walked for about three minutes on this deserted side road, chitchatting while he flicked through my phone, and then he fell behind me.

Then he asked me to turn around. As I did, the next thing I knew was a slap tearing across my face. I was so taken aback that as I staggered back, my brain was too busy scrambling with signals to make sense of what had just happened, too busy for me to even react. Before I’d fully recovered from the slap, this guy was in my face, his demeanour threatening as he told me he was a soldier and that I had just walked into his trap. That he could kill me for being a “homo”. He was talking fast and saying a lot of things, while fear held me rooted to the spot. I stood there, believing everything he was saying.

He asked me how much was with me and I told him. He collected it all, leaving just enough for me to transport myself back home. Then he ordered me to turn around and not look back. By this time, I was shaking so badly. I turned around, positive that he was about to shoot me in the back of my head.

But after standing there for a minute or so and I heard and felt nothing, I turned around. And he was gone!

This was when my brain started working. I began to realise that I’d been set up. This was the same person who had catfished me. He probably wasn’t even a soldier, but just a common thief who had hustled me out of my phone and money.

Oh God, my PHONE!

I think it was the thought of my brand-new Blackberry, the phone I’d scrimped and saved just to be able to afford – the thought that he had my phone with me galvanized me into action. I wasn’t ready to let go of it. What I’d seen him use when we met was a common Nokia torch. I wasn’t about to let this thief get away with my phone. Not if there was still a chance I’d get it back.

I started tracing my way back, and everyone I met along the way, I told them I’d just been robbed and asked if they’d by any chance seen a well-built, bearded guy who walks with a limp. After about 20 minutes of what was starting to look like a hopeless search for Kelvin, a woman I saw on the road responded in the affirmative. She said she’d seen a guy matching the description headed toward another route and that if we were fast, we could still catch up with him. She said she was a wife of a soldier and would not tolerate anybody coming to the Barracks to steal.

I was scarcely interested in what she had to say. I just wanted my precious Blackberry. The two of us set off toward where she said she last saw Kelvin, and eventually we caught up with him. When we confronted him, with me demanding for my phone, he laughed in my face. Then the woman began shouting and people began gathering. That quickly wiped the smirk from the fool’s face.

And what he did next shocked me. He began talking about how I was a homosexual who had come to the Barracks for us to have sex, and how he was disgusted by me and decided to punish me by seizing my phone and money.

I was shocked by this, yes, but not for very long – certainly not long enough to let him finish. I snatched my phone from his hand and cut him off, telling our rapidly growing audience that we were both homosexuals, and not just me. I went ahead to open our chats, holding the screen out for the people to see that he was as much a participant in this “abomination” as I was. I wasn’t about to go down alone.

While this mess was unraveling, two uniformed soldiers passed by and approached when they saw the commotion. The woman who had helped me nab Kelvin signaled for them to come over and promptly handed the two of us to them with a simple introduction: “They be homo!”

The soldiers’ first response to the situation was to tear slaps across our faces, even before the woman was done narrating to them in Hausa what she understood to be what happened. Then we were ordered to run to their checkpoint and that we must get there before them. We took off, with the soldiers coming up behind us. Because of his limp, the soldiers kept catching up with Kelvin and kept whipping and lashing out at him. Even though I knew a certain dire fate awaited us both at the checkpoint, I derived some savage pleasure from his cries and begging as they tormented him behind me.

Soon, we were at the checkpoint, and we were told to pull off our clothes. This after they had bruised our faces with several hot slaps. Then wearing nothing but boxers, they proceeded to beat us. The beating went on for what seemed like hours. We were both crying, bruised and bleeding by the time they stopped. Then they gave us cutlasses and ordered us to cut some grasses in a small piece of land close to the checkpoint. After that, they threw us inside a muddy pit and asked us to roll around in the mud. Then we were allowed to get out and rest under a tree.

It was at this point, when we were finally left alone, that this fool called Kelvin inched close to me and began to confess to me what I didn’t give a fuck about. He told me that yes, he was gay, but that he was into this setup hustle because of the “situation of the country” and because of the way cultists treated him back when he was in school, Uniben, and that he was really sorry for being the reason I was going through this.

And just when I was starting to warm up to his apology, he went on to say that it was partly my fault though, that had I not started a search party for him, that I would probably already be at home, safe and sound, and we wouldn’t be suffering this.

Upon hearing this, my anger was reignited. This moron was actually blaming me for what happened, making it my fault that I had come after him for stealing from me?! I was hungry and bruised and tired, but I turned to him and let loose with my anger, venting all the antagonism I’d been bottling up since he took my phone upon him. He quickly became contrite again and asked me to forgive him. I replied that the only way I’d even consider forgiving him would be if I made it out of the day’s humiliation in one piece.

The soldiers soon came back for us. They asked for the numbers of our loved ones. From me, they got my father’s number and they called him, telling him that I was being held at Ogba Barracks. That I was captured for practising homosexuality and that they would transfer me to the Federal High Court for judgment on my case. I don’t know what reason they would do that other than spite, because they didn’t ask for any money. They simply made the call, beat us some more, then handed us back our things – in my own case, my phone and money, which they confiscated from Kelvin. They however first smashed the screens of our phones – again, I had no idea why they would do this, other than spite. We dressed up and they released us, asking us to go and be gay no more.

I finally got outside the Barracks, bought some sachet water to drink and clean myself with, and then called my father at a business centre. I told him that the phone call he got earlier was a lie, that I’d explain everything to him when I get home. By the time I got home, I was an aching mass of cuts and bruises. I told my twin everything that happened and we came up with a right lie to tell our father. When he came home, backed by my twin, I told him that I was in the Barracks when some people pounced on me, shouting that I was a thief, and that because I’d been sagging my jeans, they also added that I was a homosexual. I think my father believed me.

I had to recuperate from that ordeal in the following three days. When I resumed at work, I told everyone that I’d been robbed when I went to visit my uncle and was beaten in the process. When I fixed my phone, I deactivated my Facebook account. It took a while, but eventually, I got to the point where I could laugh whenever my twin teased me with the incident.

Written by Decky