Idris Shehu

Agege

Agege: The shiny sand of our childhood buried under
the dark bitumen of internet fraud. Honest living had flown away
long ago as bulldozers fell trees and football parks to allow exotic mansions,
watered with ill-gotten funds, sprout like weeds along the mouths of our gutters.
Agege: A prostitute choked with illicit monies
from lands faraway, while edifices get stabbed into her, without protests.
Internet fraud is the computer running the programs of her economy.
Benefit boys are the ROM. Cash App boys are the RAM. Lotto boys the Motherboard.
Markets, shops, rentals balanced on the shoulders of these crimes. Family enterprises
where parents laundered the money. And siblings dried it.

Idris Shehu is a journalist from Lagos, Nigeria. He enjoys the musicality of words and the power they can conjure. You can follow him on Twitter @shehu_idris95