The marble floors of the Presidential Villa do not just shine; they judge. They reflect your face back at you with a clarity that insists you are merely a smudge on the grandeur of the state.
My name is Musa, though to the Chief of Protocol, I am simply “You-there-bring-the-chilled-water.” I have spent fifteen years in the belly of the beast—Aso Rock—dusting mahogany tables that have never felt the weight of an honest day’s work and polishing the brass handles of doors that lead to rooms where the fate of two hundred million people is decided between bites of imported French pastries.
It is a curious thing, being a servant in the seat of power. You learn early on that the walls have ears, but the people inside them have none.
Take last Tuesday, for instance. A meeting of the Economic Council. I was tasked with replenishing the mints. The air in the conference room was thick enough to carve with a bread knife, scented with expensive cologne and the desperate, metallic tang of shifting loyalties.
“The inflation rate,” the Minister of Finance was saying, his voice a practiced tremor of concern, “is simply a matter of perception. If the people would just perceive it differently, the numbers would look quite stellar.”
Around the table, heads nodded in grave agreement. They wore suits that cost more than my village’s primary school budget, and they looked at the spreadsheets with the same distant, intellectual curiosity one might apply to an alien species.
“Exactly,” His Excellency murmured from the head of the table. He was staring at a bowl of grapes, looking deeply offended that they were green and not purple. “It is a branding issue. We need a committee. A Committee for the Rebranding of Hunger. Perhaps we call it ‘Strategic Calorie Management’.”
I placed the mints down with a gentle clink. No one looked up. To them, I was part of the furniture—a sentient side table that occasionally fetched beverages.
“The people are complaining about the price of fuel,” a Senator ventured, his voice barely rising above the hum of the air conditioner.
“The people always complain,” His Excellency sighed, finally popping a grape into his mouth. “It is their hobby. If we lower the price, they will complain that the quality is bad. If we keep it high, they complain that they are poor. There is simply no pleasing them. It is quite exhausting to be the father of a nation that refuses to be disciplined.”
They erupted into polite, hollow laughter. The kind of laughter that doesn’t reach the eyes, but ripples perfectly through a room designed to contain secrets.
Later that evening, after the ministers had departed in a convoy of SUVs that roared like hungry lions, I was left to clean the remnants of the state. I found a discarded speech draft near the wastebasket. It was titled: The Roadmap to Prosperity: A Vision for Tomorrow.
It was covered in coffee stains, and the bottom half had been used to jot down a grocery list for a party in Dubai: Champagne, caviar, vintage cognac, and six rolls of silk ribbon for the centerpieces.
I stood there in the silence of the Villa, watching the sunset bleed over the Aso Rock formation outside the window. The rock is ancient. It has watched empires rise and fall, and it has watched us. It sat there, unmoved by the Committees for Rebranding, unmoved by the SUVs, and unmoved by the men who believe they are molding the future while they are merely rearranging the seating chart of a sinking ship.
I picked up my broom. My back ached, and I knew that tomorrow, the price of garri would have jumped another hundred naira. I would go home, turn off the light to save the bulb, and listen to the radio announcers talk about the “bold new initiatives” coming out of the Villa.
And I would smile. Not because I am happy, but because there is a special, bitter comedy in knowing that the people who rule the country are currently arguing over the color of the grapes, while the rest of us are busy learning how to eat the stems.
