All Italians are not Mafias
A Loser’s Business Transaction with an Italian could make the rest of The People in Italy Dare-Devil swindlers or even Mafias proper. One could be persuaded to sum up after an unpleasant verbal exchange with An Igbo Man that all Igbo Men are Inept Conversationalists. Hasty Conclusions would come begging one to try them in moments of frustration, depression or stark betrayal…
Alright, simply try to act differently from an Akin Nigerian Yoruba, who had partnered with an Igbo for both A Motor Spare Parts Dealership and Building Materials, ten out of their Fifteen Million Naira to go into the former and five into the latter. His Igbo counterpart Mr. Ocha Monday had to man The Motor Spare Parts Segment, for having long got down to its nitty gritty. Mr. Akins’s relative mastery of Purchase and Sale of Building Materials had to mean his squarely facing all its headaches.
In a matter of a year-and-a-half, the two men’s sapphire Holdings had turned out an amazing success, thanks to their fast Sales, quick turnover and realization of substantive profit from risked prolonged hoarding of motor spare parts against the time of jacked-up prices to commercialize them. Indeed, Akin and Monday were not just coping with the demands of their business but making real exciting progress in it. Then, a need to travel home and attend to some family obligations arose and Mr. Akin begged to do so from Monday.
“Oh! Fine!” first vibrated Monday overflowing with a self-trust he wanted Akin to amply feel and journey with it to Yoruba land from Federal Capital Territory. Mr. Akin Wande should feel free to stay back at Yoruba land for a full month and for the same full month, he Mr. Ocha Monday, would keep breastfeeding their Sapphire Holdings Joint Enterprise. You can already guess Mr. Akin’s Ibo partner was only too willing to grant him a go-ahead, having been scheming to aggrandize his own account by disposing of their assets, if possible, entirely!
So, it was that Akin Wande left for their Ibadan hometown on the Friday of 21 August 2020 and Ocha Monday cashed in on this action vanishing with more than seventy percent of their assets and proceeds to God-only-knows! On his return and discovery of the fraud, Akin simply meted like Glucose in the mouth of an exhausted sprinter. Commendably, for Akin was not The Praying Type, he remembered for solemn saying Jesus-Approved Lord ’s Prayer glowingly hoping that it would speedily produce Mr. Monday for at worst incarceration.
Twenty four hours gone ‘Nothing’ at all, Forty-Eight Hours ‘Naught,’ Seventh-Two ‘Nil,’ Ninety-Six: ‘Zero.’ Finally, Mr. Akin Wande was ready for a little display of Insanity. His own rooftop he wanted to pull down with either sound or physical movements or both and, when a neighbor sympathetically took him in, he accidentally broke a reachable china of his! Of course the china ware was nothing of comparable value to what he had lost in both his estimation and owner’s. Hence, he could not cease screaming “Foul Fraudster! for as much as his fifty-year-old larynx could allow him…
For all Akin Wande knew every business man, old or new, had better for life keep dreading a partnership venture with an Igbo and if he could help it keep hating the entire lot.
“Ah! Mr. Wande! That’s a bit uncharitable” observed one of his sympathizers, who with his brief silence further remarked that he himself would not mind contracting deals with an Igbo man he could honestly trust. For an answer Mr. Wande walked out on the man and from a distance threateningly warned him against airing unsolicited opinion.
Meanwhile, Akin had begun to itch for another business alliance. He would want to float another splendid enterprise and needed something close to ten million naira as initial capital for it… Sadly, he no longer had that kind of money. Not after what his dubious Igbo trade partner had done to him. Much to his disgust his next business contact was also a man of Igbo background. At first, though, the fact did not come clear to him owing to the man’s deceiving Enugu tribal marks. When eventually he established his Igbo foundation he raved and raved, point-blank accusing the new guy of being his ex-business partner’s emissary for their devilish design of his fresh impoverishment…
“I don’t understand, besought his prospective partner “Something bogging you like seriously?”
“Yes, that you’re seriously standing in my way,” breathed Akin “And seriously need to simply get out of my sight,” he finished off.
A wish to transact with a man of his tribe suddenly seized Akin and he began fervently to work towards it. His pasted advert for a business associate in front of his father-transferred single-storey building reflected the wish as a precondition…
“A Business Partner Yoruba by Birth!”
All these were in sheer disregard by Akin Wande of revelation that the new Igbo man he had treated with indiscretion was doing wonderfully, in Capital Letters, in his contracted Motor Spare Parts Dealership with an Igala. Much in favor of The Igbo Guy in the handed story, he was The Go-getter of The Two Associates, his Igala Colleague rather The Sleeping Partner.
“I tell you it’s not going to last!” Akin Wande burst out in a waiting prophecy “… Igbo people!”
Not even firm counters of his ill-judged forecast by somebody within earshot to the effect that the fellow in question - familiar to him - had had honest transaction with another chap in a previous alliance…
“Then, surely I’ve lost A Rare Gem,” Akin Wande made sure he said carelessly.
But Akin’s carelessly uttered incurred loss through careless self-deprivation was rather Plain Truth that was getting ready to graduate into Painful Truth. He had no good reason for foreseeing Summer Season after an across-the-sky flight of A Single Migratory Swallow from North Africa to Europe: indeed, no hard-punching reason for turning his back on The Second Guy or him treating with vulgar flippancy. Because a man of the same ethnicity had hit him below the belt. Akin Wande - God bless his soul - was to get A Consummate Fraud in his new Yoruba business partner, unaware to him A Die-Hard-Crook. Not quite six months with him, the Yoruba Guy, obviously with an assumed name, had cleaned out both the initial capital of their thriving Building Materials Business and its mouth-watering profits, long before Akin could see The Air-Borne Missile coming for him!
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