When Ifechukwu arrived in a matching ash crop top and leggings, Ngọọ berated her for “camera dressing” and for returning home thirteen days after the lecturers’ warning strike began. A few weeks later, Ifechukwu’s body inched towards paleness and lethargy. She took drugs and didn’t improve, and her voracious appetite for eggy spaghetti and Telemundo dropped. No illness of hers had been that transformative and relentless. Ngọọ wanted to take her to the clinic.
“Why go and waste money?” Ifechukwu asked. “This thing usually happens to me in school, and I always take paracetamol for it.”
Ngọọ laughed, unconvinced. She was unconvinced by Ifechukwu’s sudden thriftiness. In school, Ifechukwu never let a slight headache pass without saying she was about to die and demanding thousands of naira for a check-up.
Pillows of grey scudded across the heavens that Saturday morning, the kind of overcast that wouldn’t rain but growl and growl until the uncertainty of it ruined the day. But Ngọọ wouldn’t have returned from the market, seething, had it been solely about the weather.
Before she left the house, she had made a mistake. She used the mirror. The dust of powder she wanted to check her face for was overshadowed by the two sideburns and the stunted mass of coiled stubbles around her chin. The stubbles were besieged by small bumps that gave her a rough appearance. They reminded her of many things — superstitions that tied meanness to women with facial hair, people’s glances of incredulity, unsolicited suggestions on how to look better, and the harsh voice of rejection-stricken Mr James as he sneered that she should be grateful that a fresh-from-the-oven widower like him considered her.
At the market, Ngọọ made another mistake. She didn’t check her handbag before she arrived at a food store and frustrated the salesgirl with numerous item requests. Her purse was gone. Shocked, she tried to trace where the pickpockets must have done the magic. The girl, Ifechukwu’s age mate or younger, ordered her out of the store and almost yanked her wig off when she tried to explain.
Ngọọ met Ifechukwu lying sidelong on the couch in her cashmere nightie. That Ifechukwu, for whatever reason, left the door unlocked, fuelled her annoyance. Didn’t she tell her about Chris, the sleepless neighbour who took every open door as an invitation to grab? Heart in mouth, she went round, inspecting. The drips of water from the faulty sink had collected and snaked around, and the yam Ifechukwu was supposed to cook lay half-peeled in a bowl on the countertop, the white skins now a shade brown.
An adult was bawling threats at a kid on the next floor. Ngọọ felt Ifechukwu deserved that and more, but not before everything askew was put in order.
She wore her hairnet and cooked pottage with the yam. When she returned to the couch to wake Ifechukwu and cook for her as well, she noticed the drool that had coursed down the corner of Ifechukwu’s mouth.
Sometime in secondary school, Ngọọ had lived with and helped her syncretic grandmother, a self-employed delivery nurse patronised by young girls who wanted their bellies emptied. Her grandmother found out each girl’s pregnancy status by mere observation. Ngọọ, certain that the old woman’s lens of expertise wouldn’t be unfitting on her, had begun to test her ability to discern.
So, she stood over Ifechukwu. It made Ifechukwu look smaller, like a longleaf pine lying across an erect baobab. Ngọọ pored over her body, felt her breasts, and snorted knowingly. Telltale weight had been gained in telltale places.
Ifechukwu opened her eyes and quivered at Ngọọ’s hovering presence, then sat up.
Ngọọ left and sat at the dining table, an oak wood veneer table boxed in by four upholstered plastic chairs.
“Madam, your food is here,” she said. “Don’t allow it to get cold.”
Ngọọ liked small talk at the table. She would segue from hilarious episodes at work to discouraging Ifechukwu from eating the meat in a meal first, lest someone walks in and sees the food naked and assumes an inability to afford a decent meal. But, this time, she chewed all the small talk with the yam. Ifechukwu could tell, right from that sarcastic moment of servitude, that Ngọọ was offended, and that what offended her wasn’t just iniquity, but a cauldron of it. But it was an inconvenience to her 17-year-old ego to say I’m sorry, especially when unsure of her misdeed. She carried her plate to leave.
The peppery steam drew sniffles and sweat from Ngọọ’s face. “Ifechukwu,” she called coldly. “Sit down.”
Ifechukwu sat. “I’m not really hungry, Auntie,” she said.
“You’re not hungry. Ifechukwu, you’re not really hungry. How can you be hungry, Ifechukwu? Ifechukwuzitere, how can you be hungry since men now satisfy you?”
“Auntie?”
“So you’re pretending as if you don’t know, as if you don’t know that na ị dị ime? Who got you pregnant, Ifechukwu?”
Ifechukwu winced. She looked down her belly and up again. “Me…, pregnant? Wahala. Me that doesn’t have a boyfriend. Auntie, I’m not pregnant o. I’m not pregnant, biko. I’m not.”
“Then we’ll go for a test tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday, Auntie.”
“Then we go on Monday.”
“Monday is sit-at-home.”
Ngọọ clinked her spoon hard against the plate. Ifechukwu was rattled. “On Monday, we’ll know if you’ll remain in this house.”
Ngọọ ate up and didn’t talk to Ifechukwu for the rest of the day.
She spent the night agonising that the sun might have, once again, come to set in the family. Her mother, who birthed a child at 16, had told stories of how the sun of her value set into perpetual humiliation. That child would grow to be Ifechukwu’s mother, who conceived Ifechukwu before wedlock and married under a sizzling pressure that scorched her with regrets. Even Ngọọ herself, too, since six years ago, the sun seemed to have set on her desire to get married. Her belly had swelled, and when she got it back to normal, everyone believed that it was a lineal anomaly that she averted, not the fibrous tissues she testified about.
She was certain that the mouth of the church wouldn’t be shut either. The church saw her talk sense into young boys and girls who stood too close and for too long. It saw her preach her heart out against immorality and premarital sex, so emphatically that the guilty ones frowned and muttered and avoided Sunday school. It had seen her flaunt Ifechukwu as the model, the guided youngling, who wouldn’t stray. She was the sanctimonious hen, and she couldn’t imagine becoming the lampoon of the brood for the misdeed of her chick.
Ifechukwu, in her room, was scratching at her nape. The last time she was at the lab-cum-clinic, crescents away, Martha gazed at her. She prompted Ngọọ to hold her niece tight, as the teenage girls she had tested were sexually active. Ngọọ glanced at Ifechukwu and smiled a confident, not-this-girl-with-me kind. Ifechukwu smiled compliantly and prayed that Ngọọ wouldn’t ask Martha to test and see for herself.
Now, Martha could hand Ngọọ the result with a pout, and Ngọọ would scream whys at her before throwing her out. That wasn’t going to happen to her. It wasn’t going to happen to her after weeks of period misses, after nascent body changes, after a spell of uncertainty and an eventual silence of shame in school. It wasn’t going to happen to her after an insanity of thoughts, after settling on Google for safe solutions, after stepping out to buy and binge on aloe vera and raw pineapples whenever she was alone. She had swabbed all drops of their bitter juice, tied the peels and leftovers, and tossed them straight into the overfilled landfill spilling down the hostel street. The washout wouldn’t flow. She had waited until Ngọọ warned her that one more day in that hostel would cost her her education.
Ifechukwu expected all hostels to be fully locked by the authorities now because, in the first week of the strike, the water in the reservoirs reached the base and electricity was disconnected to force people out.
Throughout the night, she contacted her friends living off-campus. All had travelled except her least preferred choice, Ebere. Ebere, whom she once admired, had a gold-plated heart-shaped ring on her middle finger and she commended her and her betrothed for having good material taste. Ebere, who had grinned but pulled her aside after the lecture and told her the ring was a chaste spinster’s way to keep men at bay. They exchanged contacts. Ifechukwu, like every other person, would realise that Ebere threw pebbles at anyone who stayed in her room for long.
It took Ebere an hour to reply to Ifechukwu’s pleas. The reply was “OK,” but Ifechukwu didn’t mind. It was okay.
Ngọọ left for an evening church programme without the ritual of compelling Ifechukwu to dress up and wait in advance. When she didn’t see Ifechukwu in church, she returned home to check and saw a bunch of keys under the doormat. She called Ifechukwu’s number, saved as Ifee Baby, four times. None was successful, and she surmised that Ifechukwu had blocked her number. She used her private office line, and it went through. Ifechukwu didn’t pick, thanks to Truecaller’s slippery tongue. The call didn’t go through again after that first ring.
Ngọọ remembered the last passport bribe she collected at the immigration office to meet Ifechukwu’s miscellaneous needs.
Foolish girl. So you have run, eh? After everything I have done for you. Better for me sef. Gbaba ọsọ. At least, I won’t be disgraced. You’ll soon hear nwiii.
Later that night, when she felt Ifechukwu’s absence, when she remembered all the parts of herself she had attached to Ifechukwu, when she considered the boundless shadows that could ensnare a girl running from her mistakes, she became cold and worried.
So, Ifee really did this. How could she do this? I just hope nothing happens to her.
…
“Did that your aunt really send you out?” Ebere asked, covertly displeased with the varied shapes of Ifechukwu’s wet footsteps that had checkered the tiles after her bath.
“She told me not to return sef,” Ifechukwu said.
“That’s extreme. You better tell him if you haven’t.”
“You mean Emmanuel?”
“Yes.”
“That yeye?”
“Who you said was your spec?”
Spec. Spec was Emmanuel conducting a first-year paid tutorial class on a course that an associate professor shirked to teach for seven weeks. Spec was the spotlight that priced Ifechukwu’s eyes away from the whiteboard — the groomed appearance of his face and faux mohawk, his plummy accent, his inch-perfect kind of black and skin-tight joggers that brazenly modelled his penis after a zucchini. Spec was the linkup, the obsession, the consensual moving of Ifechukwu’s select belongings from her hostel to his room, the nights shuttled between her bunk and his bed. Spec was them guzzling themselves until a new girl crashed the party and caused one to pump questions and the other to hose whataboutisms. Spec was Ifechukwu asking him slyly what he would do if he got a girl pregnant, and he said, “Abeg oooo. Na abortion, ASAP.” Spec was Ifechukwu realising that the firework of lust had died out and she had been chasing mere fumes. Spec was the scabbed anger any talk of him scraped open.
Ifechukwu and Ebere lived through many things. They lived through the ginger and garlic that refreshed Ebere and wrinkled Ifechukwu’s nose, through the excess pepper that tickled Ifechukwu’s tongue and burnt Ebere’s, through the fresh fish that nourished Ebere’s stomach and churned Ifechukwu’s, through the lack of accountability for displaced possessions, through Ifechukwu’s strikes of morning sicknesses and aversion to domestic chores, through the conflict of leaving the lights on or off, through Ifechukwu boiling water and leaving the burner valve hissing in stealth, the mercaptan smell wafting dangerously thick. They lived through everything until Ifechukwu realised her savings had been used up. She hoped against hope that Ngọọ would send the usual stipend. Ngọọ didn’t.
Ebere’s best skill set came to the fore. She sucked her teeth more than she shone them, detached from conversations, and left the room for no apparent reason. Ifechukwu quietly accepted that she was no longer welcome and couldn’t blame the introvert for trying and failing to accommodate.
Once, she got lost in her thoughts. Thoughts of Ngọọ asking her to wait a little before seeking university admission, and eventually warning her about the jingles of horny boys. Thoughts of how she softened her life through Ngọọ’s stipends, extending generosity to friends in expectation of the next. She cried for hours. She wanted to call Ngọọ but was held back by fear and pride. Fear of reconciling when the thorn was still stuck in her skin. Pride that calling meant crawling before a pompous and dogmatic woman from whom she had long desired some independence. But she knew, just like Ngọọ resolved after her last ultimatum was ignored, that a girl big enough to move out of the house, big enough to ignore calls and instructions, must be big enough to stand on her own.
But her legs wobbled in no time because she had no marketable skills. Marketable, in every sense of it. Not the reach, consistency, or conviction of the vendors in her class. Not the time management and multitasking of the brilliant ones who fed from piles of people’s assignments. Not the guile of the parasitic ones living off their nutritious hosts.
Her moderately grateful friends supported her for a little while and gave way, lying time and time again about their absence to keep her at bay.
She moved to the hostel from Ebere’s lodging after hitting the deck. Some of her foodstuffs would be stolen from her corner, her milk, chocolate, and chocolate spread scooped from their tins, the covers pressed shut in innocence. She would count her clothes and footwear again and again to be sure she wasn’t being bad at calculation. The two roommates (would say they) didn’t have a clue. She needed money for a new start, money to refill her gas cylinder, money to return to eating four times instead of a miserable two, money for a new hair, new face cream, new body lotion, money for the compulsory textbooks, money for printing assignments, money for more aloe vera and unripe pineapples, and money for the handouts lecturers sold to get around the failings of the government.
Begging was insulting. Getting meals by visiting acquaintances wasn’t sustainable. So she began a job hunt. She hunted in inboxes. She hunted in WhatsApp groups created for job postings. She hunted in chalkboards and prints and banners kilometres away from the hostel. She would find job openings but would be put off by the pittance, location, or conditions that grossly conflicted with her studies.
Her whole body was throbbing from walking an unusual distance when a WhatsApp number forwarded a message. Daycare, she thought. Changing diapers and cleaning shit. But the ₦10,000 per week and the morning-evening meals were enough to trace the address attached to the message. It was a tenement with a fern-infested fence. A shaggy rooster with wounded wattles paced around the scatterings of gravel half-buried in the sand around the gate. A hen had beaten its chase.
The woman who interviewed her had a little paunch. Her eyes and tone straddled straightforwardness and no-nonsenseness. The interview, a litany of “how would yous”, lasted for ten minutes.
“I’m not giving you this job because you’re better than the other girl who didn’t get it. I’m giving it to you because you lack the experience the girl I already employed has,” the woman said after the interview. “Experienced people sometimes think they have nothing else to learn.”
Ifechukwu sent a long appreciation message to the number and noticed the username was Aṅụrị’s décor.
“Please keep an eye on those children,” the reply read. “I have a feeling that Madam P. could sell off all those kids in one night.”
“Please, may I know you? You are such a kind person.” Ifechukwu asked.
“My name is Aṅụrị.”
Ifechukwu saved the number. “My name is Ifechukwu. I’m in Obstetrics.”
Madam P. never called Ifechukwu by name. She called her “This Girl.” No one ever did enough for a break, even when the babies slept in their cradles. The older girl, tasked to help put Ifechukwu through, possessed a silent haughtiness and an annoying eye service that reminded Ifechukwu of Ebere when pretentious. She gave Ifechukwu more of the cleaning and laundry, and whenever Madam P. strutted around, she asked Ifechukwu why she left a baby crying, and why she left the pap and custard undone. Madam P. would think her a hard worker and scold Ifechukwu to buckle down if she didn’t want to start looking for another job.
A distraught visiting mother complained that Ifechukwu wiped her baby girl from buttocks to vulva instead of the reverse. Madam P. slapped Ifechukwu and called her a dunce. The other girl laughed, and Ifechukwu looked daggers at Madam P.
Madam P. made a face. “Come and slap me back since you don’t have respect for your mother at home. It’s like you’re tired of this work.”
It was there, that instant Madam P. spoke and stormed off, that Ifechukwu remembered. She remembered that Ngọọ, the pompous Ngọọ, had never hit her. She remembered all the haunting beginnings, all the adversities Ngọọ had been shielding her from.
At six, Ifechukwu’s father, a bubbly man with a bearded face and a tiny voice that caged thunder, travelled to Cape Town for business and never returned. Broken by his people’s willingness to dish out everything but support, broken by their suspicious proverbs that a distant man whose wife gave peace of mind would return to her, broken by her huge contribution to his travel that had left her penniless, Ifechukwu’s mother wrapped her arms around her, one for smacks of drunken frustration, the other for sober consolation. It was only her death five years later that granted Ngọọ or anyone else access to Ifechukwu.
A stinging sensation spread from Ifechukwu’s eyes to her entire body. She slinked towards the next baby, her steps lightening as she drew closer. She carried him out of the cradle and removed his diaper. The baby thrashed and kicked in the air. The diaper was wet with urine, stained with a butter-thick streak of orange poop. Ifechukwu grumbled and spanked him on the lap with a tender kind of hate. The baby bawled and bawled as if to plead his innocence to Ifechukwu, as if to release all pent-up pains. There was something in his screech, in his tears, that Ifechukwu couldn’t name, but it pierced through her flesh, through her spirit, through her soul, through her anger, through her hate, through her attempts to get rid of the one forming in her.
Ifechukwu learned to avoid viewing any WhatsApp status with a gazillion updates. That was why she didn’t see Aṅụrị’s multiple photo uploads until Aṅụrị updated her profile picture. Her hearty face had the baby’s pinched nose and downturned eyes.
“One of the babies there looks like you,” Ifechukwu texted. “But nobody comes to pick him up. He’s so fine.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Such a fine boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t think he has a name yet.”
“We need to talk.”
Aṅụrị’s decision to ship the baby off to Madam P. was a reaction to his implications on her life. When she got pregnant with him, she could have gone to any of the abortion centres like the others in school did. But, despite how wild her thoughts had gone, she still carried vestiges of domestications, vestiges of sermons, vestiges of morals, vestiges of consequences, vestiges that sterilised her true desires. It was insufferable to see her world spin around her baby’s, insufferable that something harmless stripped her wound of its bandage, her shame of its little scarf.
“I didn’t even breastfeed him. I can’t take care of a child now. I’m busy. It’s not fair, but…”
“You need to see him, Aṅụrị. I need to see you too. That boy is so fine and calm.”
The baby saw Aṅụrị coming on the eve of work closure and giggled. He pushed up and down as if trying and failing to hop. Ifechukwu lifted him by the hand and led him towards Aṅụrị.
“He held the table and stood today,” Ifechukwu said. “That’s very fast for a seven-month-old.”
“Leave him, let me see if he can walk to me by himself,” Aṅụrị said.
Ifechukwu let go of the baby gently. He stretched his hands and toddled forward. Ifechukwu clutched him on the arm. She threw him up and caught him three times, clutching his shoulder each time. She buried her face in his belly and blew at his navel. The baby giggled and giggled and squealed and squealed. His drool trickled onto her hand. It felt like gel spread on a sunburn.
The baby made a noise that sounded like “Maama.”
Ifechukwu whispered “Mummy” in his ears and he aped her and giggled again, his bottom front teeth like a twin brush of the sun on his gum line.
Aṅụrị wanted to cry.
“Will you take him home? At least, just for today?” Ifechukwu asked.
“Just say you want to visit me.”
Ifechukwu carried the boy as they left together. They got into a shuttle bus. A man with crow’s feet stared at Ifechukwu and the child. Ifechukwu recognised him and wished she could throw him out of the vehicle. The baby cried, and Ifechukwu soothed him.
The man heaved sardonically. “See as small girl like you don born pikin when big women still dey find,” he said.
Ifechukwu bared her teeth. “How is it your business?”
The man looked Ifechukwu over in her suspended tank top and skirt just shy of the knee.
“I know say you be ashawo. No be me do you o,” the man sighed.
An androgynous voice cautioned the man from behind in refined English. Ifechukwu looked back and felt a little relieved that it was a young man, not just a young man, but one with Emmanuel’s hairstyle and pink lips. The man told the boy to come clean and tell Ifechukwu that he wanted to fuck her too.
Aṅụrị picked the fight. She ordered the driver to drop her off so the man’s spluttering and spicy breath wouldn’t leave her and her company bedridden.
“I know that man,” Ifechukwu said. “He’s my foolish ex’s uncle.”
“No wonder,” Aṅụrị fumed. “It runs in the family.”
Aṅụrị’s place was no longer far. She and Ifechukwu trekked home.
Ifechukwu volunteered to come look after the boy in Aṅụrị’s place after Aṅụrị agreed to take him home on weekends. Food, clothes, and work, Aṅụrị would share. The seed of camaraderie would grow enough for Ifechukwu to open up to Aṅụrị.
“But it doesn’t look like you’re pregnant,” Aṅụrị said. “Your stomach hasn’t come out.”
Ifechukwu smiled. “Thanks to my body. And it’s just two months plus.”
“Are you sure? Or is it that one that they call Ethiopia abi Ethopic?”
Ifechukwu smiled. “None of them. It’s called ectopic pregnancy. But, it’s not it.”
“I hear you. It seems you want to have it.”
“I have been trying not to. Maybe God wants it to be there.”
Aṅụrị chuckled. “Are you on Twitter?”
“Not actively.”
“Let me show you something I bookmarked.”
Aṅụrị showed her a thread on X, the firsthand story of a newly married single mother who ended the marriage because her husband refused to pay for her child’s minor finger surgery.
The Twitter message read:
Na why me no go marry woman wey don get pikin like this oooo.
This gender, eh. That’s the issue with all these single mothers. They are only looking for who they will put big load on his head.
Am not surprise. They love their child more than the man.
See as my fellow woman shame don dey shame me.
Another man go knack, another man go carry responsibility. E choke.
You people should remain single and stop deceiving us, abeg.
The comments ripped through Ifechukwu.
“If you don’t have what it takes to prevent your baby from changing your life, Tam Tam does it sharp-sharp,” Aṅụrị said.
“Who’s Tam Tam?”
“Where do you know on this campus? You’ll know when you want to go.”
“Hmmm. Is she the one that they said uses hanger or…?”
“No. Hanger is dangerous nah. She gives pills. But she doesn’t give them without seeing the person.”
“You took one?”
“I went there then, and she told me it was too late. My friend was lucky, sha. Yours is still two months plus. So, decide.”
Ifechukwu spared a thought for the payments Aṅụrị was making, for the demands of her studies, for the inconveniencing job she couldn’t wait to leave, for all the conflicts the pregnancy would escalate. She had four more years to study.
“We’ll go there today. I need to talk to my aunt.”
Ifechukwu pulled out her phone but dropped it and dialled Ngọọ’s line with Aṅụrị’s. It rang and was picked. Ngọọ cancelled it on hearing her voice.
“It won’t be easy,” Aṅụrị said. “Give her time.”
Ifechukwu opened WhatsApp but remembered Ngọọ hardly used social media. She began to type a text message. The baby budged in the silk cloth strapping him to her back, but she continued to type, the screen awash with apologies.
The next morning, her phone vibrated with I’ll call you.
But Ngọọ didn’t call in two days. Ifechukwu read the message again, again, and again. She couldn’t determine if Ngọọ was gathering enough lines to berate her unceremonious departure. That’s, if she would call and say no way back, if she would call and say nothing, or if she would ever call at all.
But Ngọọ called at night while Ifechukwu lay beside Aṅụrị’s baby in a knitted lozenge-patterned pyjamas. Her heart skipped. She took a deep breath. Ngọọ started with a downpour of blame, and Ifechukwu allowed herself to be drenched by it without seeking cover.
“Ifee, you almost caused me high BP. I would have come to Nsukka if I had been the one who sent you away.”
The guilt of having told everyone that Ngọọ sent her away washed over Ifechukwu.
“Please, forgive me, Auntie. I was scared.”
“So you’re actually pregnant?”
“I was.”
“Ifee!” Ngọọ screamed. “So i jere mee abortion!”
Ifechukwu glanced at Aṅụrị, who chuckled.
“God forbid, Auntie. I lost it.”
“Eziokwu?”
“Auntie, I swear. I lost it.”
“We shall see.”
“But, have you forgiven me?”
“You just picked your apology at the right time. My wedding is coming soon.”
Ifechukwu laid out her teasing expectations of the wedding, but with unusual restraint because Ngọọ’s laughter lacked the characteristic bursts that underscored its genuineness. Before Ngọọ ended the call, she asked Ifechukwu to come home at the weekend.
Ifechukwu’s phone beeped, and it was a credit alert above the usual stipend. She smiled half-heartedly because the weekend was five days away. Unease impelled her to call Ngọọ back and tell her that she had a crucial test and would return the following week. But such, she knew, wouldn’t help anyone win over their disappointed aunt.
Aṅụrị sensed Ifechukwu’s panic. “You should be fine before then.”
For a lie to bring grace, all its edges must be smoothed. As Ifechukwu and Aṅụrị left for Tam Tam’s, Aṅụrị asked Ifechukwu if she “really wanted to do this.”
Ifechukwu affirmed and felt all emotions at once. She wondered if the pills would be red, white, blue, round, cylindrical, sweet, bitter, bland. She wondered if they would fail. If the process would be painful or painless. If there would be zero problems after, like Aṅụrị said. Or, if she would be clutching her stomach, cramping, bleeding, and screaming Aṅụrị’s name as life seeped out of her. ♦
Chiemeziem Everest Udochukwu’s writing appears or is forthcoming in EVENT Magazine, Evergreen Review, Efiko, Lolwe, and elsewhere. He won the EC Michaels’ Short Story Prize and has been a finalist for the Black Warrior Review Nonfiction Contest, the Quramo Writers Prize, the Kikwetu Flash Prize, the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize, and the Dawn Project Competition. He is an alumnus of the Nigerian Academy of Letters’ Creative Writing Workshop.
