‘I do not think there was any full-blooded Nigerian male who did not have a crush on this wonder from heaven in the 80s’. Mbok, my sister was extremely beautiful.
I still remember her eyes. Those eyes where something else and used to follow me in my dreams. Those days when my father stumbled on my cache of playboy magazines under my bed and seized them, leaving me lonely with nothing to keep me company during those long dark nights after NEPA had struck, I would just bring up the goddess, Regina Askia and keep her in my head.
I would now dream of me and her in my village stream in Nsit Ibom. We would just be playing in the clear waters and be singing some Ibibio folk songs and I would be whispering somethings in her ear and she would smile and whisper back to me and I would be so happy and then I would hug her and she would hug me back and then she would be calling me in a romantic fashion ‘Ini – which is the pet name my mummy calls me – Ini I am so happy, I am yours and I would say Adiagha which is the name I gave her in the dream – Adiagha I am so happy that out of the 30million people who watch you every Sunday on NTA, you chose me.
She would now smile while looking into my eyes with those exquisitely wonderful hazel eyes and say Ini I love …….
Then the sharp knock from my mother on my big head would wake me up just at the point I was about to lock lips turning me into an angel. My mother’s sense of timing was suspect. Today, so many years after, I have rediscovered her and she still looks as beautiful in a much more profound way and I am happy that she is considering working with me on Joromi, my next play after Aremu. I want to cast her as the mermaid who captured Sir Victor Uwaifo. We are talking, she is open and very interested.
She is beautiful and ibi Sofekun now sent me a picture of her taken while she was at Unilag and I wondered, why life is so unfair, bequeathing so much beauty on one person. Adiagha, see you this night by the village stream, please come early o, we must complete the assignment before the knock. Great lady.
