I’ve just asked a carpenter  near my house to make me that kind of prop Stella Obasanjo uses at public functions so she can be seen.  But mine would be like those high shoes that reigned in the 70s. In Lagos, it’s called “Igbobi shoes”  but in my place we called them “saika.” Anyway, I need that ladder of a shoe to impress Chief, Dr, Engineer, Deputy Governor Chris Ekpenyong of Akwa Ibom State.

Ekpenyong sent for me about two weeks back but got very furious that I was short and “small.” The way the man was angry, I thought he was going to “dash” me height and a bigger frame. But he only exploded in a “guber rage”  that made me wet my trouser. 

His rebuke and bulky frame didn’t frighten me. But his threat was annoying. “You are too small to start that war with me,” he raged. I eyed him like you watch a rattle snake. By the calendar, it was January 15, 2005. In anger, I felt like “pissing” urine to cause a tsunami that could have swept away his lodge. Haba! They would have had to call in the Fire Brigade to “quench”  the quake, I swear.

Now, the only reason you’re reading this is because I got an expressed permission from the dep gov to “go back and write worse things.”  I’m an “obedient servant,” though  I like to write “good things.”  Like my daughter’s name. “I sent for you,” said the BIGman. “But I didn’t send for you to beg you. When I came out, I expected to see somebody bigger than me, somebody taller than me, somebody who has achieved more than I have.”  I felt like giving him a hug. At least, he had not slapped me yet, the way he does his security details. The only thing that stopped me was the realisation that my hands wouldn’t have gone round his body.

Anyway, Ekpe  means lion and the man lives his name. He almost “devoured” me. He was angry at my piece entitled, “Ekpenyong Is a Married Man, iya-iya –o!”  Tell magazine had done a detailed report of how a committee Ekpenyong headed between 1999 and 2003 allegedly squandered  about N2billion of Akwa Ibom money on failed and fake contracts. But rather than defend himself, Ekpenyong had insulted the reporter. He rebuked her for being “small.”  Then offered an unsolicited information: “Do you  know I have a wife at home? I only just finished calling her before you walked in.” I didn’t see a link, and I said so.

But the BIGman was not pleased, as if I worked for him. “I saw what you wrote about me. You have never met me before but you picked  to write about me because one stupid girl came to ask me about contracts I didn’t know anything about and  I didn’t want to talk about it,” he said.  “I have the capacity  to say a lot of things but I don’t want to… As a public officer, I was trained to keep quiet about certain things. If I were to say all I see, this state would boil. But I keep quiet because I want the peace of this state.”

Hey! While the man spat at me, I made a discover. Ekpenyong is clairvoyant, too. He told me my age and gave free lecture on philanthropy. “As I see you, you are not more than 35 (years). How many people have you given scholarship? I have given so many people scholarships, not only in Akwa Ibom but many are in Lagos. Go and find out. I don’t know how many  people you sent to school, but I started sponsoring people in school at the age of 19.” A deputy governor can’t  tell lies, can he? But, those who know say at 19, somebody had just offered Ekpenyong  money to buy form for admission into school. 

Anyway, the only thing Ekpenyong said that made me happy was that I am still from Akwa Ibom. I thought after bathing me with all kinds of detergents, he would order me out of the state the way the state House of Assembly did a Punch reporter in 2003. Besides, oga still called me his brother. “Instead of you coming to ask me as your brother, you wrote that nonsense about me.”

I had always known that I was not intelligent. I attended night school and NEPA wasn’t ever kind enough to give us light. And my teacher died prematurely after the chalk fell and hit his mouth. End of school. In fact, if I was intelligent, I would have been in the “Intelligence Service,”  abi?  “I asked them to call you because I saw your name and you are from this state. I thought you should have been intelligent enough to come and ask me but you were so unintelligent to pick your Sun (Newspaper) and write the whole nonsense about me because I am Annang. You were  trying to mess yourself up.” But Sir, even if you came from tsunami ravaged Myanmar in South East Asia to award questionable contracts in Akwa Ibom, you would still be a public officer,  who should be accountable to my grandmother and her goats. I’m stupid, but why is Ekenyong always skipping the issue to whip up sentiments? Was he implying that Annang people are gods that take no blames, even when they’re wrong?

I hereby accuse Ekpenyong  of being a hater of “small people.” I call him a “smallist.”  Like a racist. If he denies, let him tell me how many “small people” he gave contracts. He hates the sight of “small” people. He snubbed Ibim Semenitari of Tell because she  was “small.” Then, he “washed me down”  for the same offence(?). But does he expect everybody to be a BIGman? Why won’t I be small, when I’m not as rich as Ekpenyong? My tailor once told me that what you eat determines your size. And what the deputy governor doesn’t know is that I am watching my height. What’s the use growing so tall when you have no money to buy a bale of clothes for a pair of trousers?

 Ekpenyong is a busy man and so he told me. “I am busy, I don’t have time now. I have a state function.” But he wasn’t too busy to threaten my life; after pouring enough sentiments to compete with Tafa’s bank lodgments. “You wrote about me simply because a small girl bashed into my office asking me about contracts.  I was talking to my wife who went for medical operation abroad on phone because she is more important to me. If she died you would have said I used her to make money… Your being a journalist has nothing to do with me. If I wanted to be a journalist,  I could have read Journalism but I chose to read Engineering.” Oh yeah!?

The meeting lasted about five minutes. Then, he moved to the door. “If you like you can come back, to show you that I have an open mind. My mind is free. If I were to harbour something against people…”  I tried to speak but the BIGman wouldn’t listen. “Your Excellency, when should I come back?” “Anytime you like. But I didn’t call you to beg you. I just wanted to see the person who wrote about me”.  His aides promised to fix another appointment that evening. I’m still waiting for it!

• First published in Saturday Sun of  Jan 29, 2005