The Governor’s Matrimonial Problems

20 Sep The Governor’s Matrimonial Problems

Governor Huud was lost in the euphoric sensations of the flesh. His wife, Rika, beautiful and insistent, if less voluptuous than Huud liked, groaned and rocked. The encounter would have been more satisfying if he weren’t fulfilling an obligation. His wife’s insatiable sexual appetite demanded to be sated.

This morning, as it ended, Rika looked over at him and sucked on her lower lip, a sure sign she was annoyed. “Romance is a candlelight dinner and a diamond ring for dessert. This is sex.”

“Rika!” Huud called out, thinking of the woman he had really loved, the one he wished with all his heart could share his bed, but quickly pushed her image from his mind. Arguments about sex, how much and how often, were nothing compared to their arguments over power. Rika reminded him constantly of what she had done for him and what he owed her.

“I made you governor. I am the undisputed First Lady. You can’t cheat me!” His wife’s shouts still echoed in his mind.

That morning, they fought again as he dressed. She wanted him to make First Lady an official position, complete with perks, a limo and driver, a salary and a healthy budget.

Huud kept promising he would speak to Party Chairman Timo Tiko. But he constantly put off the conversation because he knew it would raise eyebrows. Money was scarce already, the government in debt, basically broke. Sending inordinate amounts of cash and perks her way would incite resentment. Not among the populace, mainly ignorant dirt farmers, but within his government. And Huud already was siphoning off a lot of cash secretly.

He did not tell Rika because he couldn’t risk her indiscretions. She drank inordinately and when she did, she talked. Besides, Huud had long-term plans, a life he intended to lead after he left the government, and these plans did not include his demanding, shrewish wife.

After escaping the bedroom, Huud walked slowly towards the swimming pool, trying to dissolve his lingering anger in deep breaths, but the sun, even at 6.30 A.M., was scorching hot. He had barely done three minutes of his leisurely walk when the heat sent him scrambling back to his car, his face taut.

As he retreated, a gust of hot wind blew over him, ballooning his flowing gown and ripping off his cap. He struggled to deflate the robe as his aides scrambled for the cap amidst a chorus of, “Sorry, sir, sorry!”

As Huud was chauffeured to his office in the month-old black Mercedes, he wondered at the excessive heat.

“What is this, this much heat in Bammakk City?” he muttered. He felt beads of sweat on his forehead and reached for a handkerchief in the right pocket of his trousers. To his surprise, his hand shook.

“It is 6.58 on Tuesday morning and the temperature is thirty degrees, thirty degrees,” the soft feminine voice said over the speakers. Huud breathed heavily, lost in thought. At the shaded entrance of his administrative centre some ten minutes later, the Executive governor of Tinnaka State strolled in to his office.

Behind his massive glass desk, Huud slumped into the swivel seat, sighed loudly and buried his face in his hands. He remembered that despite his near fanatical and unwavering belief in the existence of God, to whom he prayed several times daily, he had not raised his face to look at the sky in many months.

That would not have been possible during his childhood in Premuase, a village where residents had to look at the position of the sun during the day, just like Huud looked at his wristwatch now, to know the time. At night, the children would look at the moon to see its mysterious movement behind the clouds and play gleefully in the dim light.

That had been the situation forty-five years before. Now he had unfailing electricity at his command to light up the night. During this period, he had been shielded from the rays of the sun by his modern air-conditioned office and residence.

He began to relax, letting the cool air caress his face. His thoughts turned to the other woman, the one who represented the opposite of his wife, Ms. Comfort Deree during their last telephone date. She worked as an official in the Ministry of Agriculture. She was an assistant to Idi Camp, whom Huud both admired and feared. The man was brilliant, but honest to a fault. He needed to be watched, and it was convenient having Comfort so close to the man. If push came to shove, Comfort would be loyal to Huud, not to Camp.

But it was not politics that preoccupied Huud at the moment. Comfort left a lingering scent in his memory. She was a buxom woman with a full body and a beautiful face. Huud knew that if it were Comfort instead of Rika in his bed, he would have no trouble performing. When he imagined her large round breasts, dark stiff nipples and full thighs, Huud became instantly hard. He ached for the woman and thought she felt the same. Someday they would have each other.

Huud’s thoughts were interrupted by James Issa, his secretary. The man knocked, then entered without waiting for Huud to bid him. Issa had this habit, as if knocking were the same as being invited. But he was efficient and kept his mouth shut, and so he was useful. It didn’t stop him from scolding the man, however, rebukes which were never heeded.

“Did you hear me say, ‘enter?” Huud asked.

“Oh, I thought you said to come in. My apologies.” This was total nonsense, and they both knew it, a ritual repeated daily. Huud shrugged and gestured for Issa to get on with it. What did he want?

“Doctor Camp has requested a meeting for later today.” Issa placed a thick file on Huud’s desk. Huud regarded it with suspicion.

“What’s this?”

“Agricultural figures, economic indicators. You’ll want to review them before the meeting. Should I call Doctor Camp’s office back and set it up?” Huud nodded, still thinking of Comfort’s delicious chocolate body. He had to force himself to take an interest in his job.

“James. What do you make of this heat?” Huud was vaguely worried that perhaps the drought in the north, the desertification everyone talked about, and the unusual oppressive heat were issues he might have to address sooner than he thought. People seemed to expect it of him. But what could he do? He couldn’t control the sun or the rain. And if people were too uneducated and backward to make their way, why was it his job to prop them up? God helps those who help themselves. That was Huud’s philosophy since he had become governor.

“I am sorry, sir, but this heat is nothing unusual. Not these days. It has been like this for the past few months, and they say it is even worse in the Limi area.”

This irritated Huud. Truth delivered without a salve often did.

“Idiot,” Huud shouted back at him. “It has always been that hot far up north, but not here.”

“Sorry, sir.”

The buzz of one of the many telephone receivers on the desk cut through the tense air. Huud waved Issa out as he picked up the phone. The sweet canary-like voice at the other end of the line always soothed his pain. It was Comfort.

“So tell me, what happened?” he asked throatily, his eyes beaming.

“The workaholic commissioner wouldn’t let us go. For most of last night he trapped us at a meeting to discuss his idea for growing more food in Tinnaka State. But he thinks it’s tied to water and water means drilling wells. And of course there is no money. He wants to know where it all went. We kept going round and round trying to make the numbers add up. When he finally ended, I was too worn out to lift a limb.”

Huud knew the numbers would never add up, but he wasn’t about to tell Comfort. He changed the conversation, “I was worried!”

“I was itching to call, but I didn’t feel safe using the phone.”

“That talkative man! If he does that again I will send my boys to close the meeting. When can we meet next?”

“Next week,” Comfort said and blew her nose. “Next week, so I can get over my cold.”

“The long meeting?”

“No, the weather, but I will see you. Bye, governor.”

Huud found her salutation too formal, but he ignored it. Perhaps someone had walked in on her and she had to disguise the real nature of the call.

“Okay,” he said. “And don’t forget, the position of First Lady can still be yours.”

Huud hung up, shaking his head in regret over what his wife, Rika, had cost him – a real home and true happiness.

Just then, Issa buzzed to say he’d set the meeting the Doctor Camp for two o’clock. Huud frowned, thinking that Camp and his infernal penchant for work had kept him from spending a pleasant evening with Comfort.

“Tell him we can’t meet today,” he ordered. “I’ll see him tomorrow at ten.” Let the man wait. He picked up the Agriculture file and tried to concentrate, but his mind drifted back to Rika.

When Huud and his wife met fifteen years earlier, Rika had struck him with her stunning beauty and an extroverted nature he found intensely sexy. She was a businesswoman, and he, a civil servant with some personal business on the side. Donning the blindfold of love, he never noticed her weaknesses. After one year of hot dating, he proposed and married her in a society wedding she paid for almost entirely.

Only when he became the boss of Nigeria Airtravels Authority did he discover her greed. She pestered and blackmailed his managers for contracts, generating a thriving rumour mill around him. Although he begged her to stop drinking, she refused, and in the resulting marital clashes after the birth of their only child, she chose to spend most of her time in Bammakk City running her business.

He later discovered that her staying away from home gave her cover for her drinking habit and her promiscuity. Gradually, his love for her waned. He made it clear that her behaviour was the cause. At first, she refused to alter her ways. Then she seemed to undergo a miraculous change. It was not lost on Huud that this change coincided with his campaign to be governor. But no sooner was he sworn in that she slipped back into her old habits. She drank to excess and bedded any man willing, though she still took pains to hide her indiscretions.

After a loud party organized by her friends to celebrate Huud’s victory, she proposed he create an elaborate and powerful office for her as First Lady, to run a four-hundred-million-naira organization for the empowerment of women. She wanted wives of local councils to report to her. Huud tried to put off her request, saying other more pressing matters had to come first.

“No!” she shouted. “I’m the First Lady. Ask Tiko. I worked for it, and you are not going to keep me from enjoying the fruits of my labour.”

Tiko, the party chair, said he was inclined to grant her request. An attractive and active First Lady involved in charitable work couldn’t hurt Huud’s image. But the governor suspected Rika would misuse the funds, and a scandal would follow inevitably. He didn’t want to make others in the government resentful.

He managed to put Tiko off, and Rika’s intransigence caused the couple to argue more and more, as she continued to blackmail commissioners and local council chairmen for contracts.

In the widening void, he found happiness with Comfort Deree and decided to work on her to break down her defences, possibly to make her the First Lady. He had to keep the relationship quiet, however, until he had convinced Comfort, gotten rid of Rika, and tested the temper of his subordinates.

As Huud sat in his office going over the Agriculture file, he was suddenly stung by anxiety over Rika. They had parted on bad terms that morning, and he worried she would take vengeance. The last thing he needed was to have her creating trouble. He decided to call and sweet-talk her. It was something he still could do, manipulate her with visions of good things to come, feed her penchant for luxuries, which was almost as large as her sexual appetite.

Huud buzzed Issa and asked him to get his wife on the line. A minute later, Issa knocked and entered all in one motion.

“She is in the living room upstairs,” Issa reported. “But I think she is talking to Mr. Tiko.”

Huud became anxious, as he always did when he heard Tiko and Rika were together. With their combined ambitions, the two of them were capable of almost anything. But he couldn’t order the leader of his party to stay away from his wife. It just wasn’t done. Besides, in truth, Tiko ran things. Huud needed this man to keep his government afloat, so he had to tread very lightly around him. If Tiko were so moved, he could destroy Huud, and they both knew it. Tiko’s political acumen and strong-arm tactics had put Huud in power. Huud suspected Tiko had also rigged certain districts’ election results.

Huud knew, as with Rika and some VIPs in Bammakk City and Abuja, there was something more than business between them. She seemed to have a weakness for VIPs, but Huud had long since learned to ignore his wife’s sexual proclivities as long as she remained somewhat discreet. But it worried him that these two, while nominally his allies, were ruthless. And if they ever teamed up and turned on him, he would not survive.

( ( ( ( (

Sitting in his office in the Ministry of Agriculture, Doctor Camp hung up the phone, shaken. His request for a meeting with Huud had been rescheduled. No reason given. Camp, already anxious about what powers within the government might know about his dealings with Peter Abel, wondered if this was Huud’s way of telling him his cover was blown.

He decided he was reading too much into something as mundane as a postponed meeting. It happened all the time. Perhaps Huud had more pressing business at hand. He was the governor of a state. Things came up at the last minute. So Camp tried to resume his work and put such thoughts out of his mind.

( ( ( ( (

In his office, Huud’s thoughts were also on the meeting. Camp made him nervous, not for anything he had ever said, but for what Huud knew he was, an honest man swimming in a sea of sharks. And Huud, much to his surprise, had become one of those circling the hapless Camp.

Before all this, before he got talked into entering politics or becoming governor, Huud had thought of himself as an honest man. He had performed well at the Airports Authority, and this success had made him a strong candidate for office.

Once elected, things began to change. Huud saw what all politicians in Nigeria saw – a chance to cash in, secure a future. The fact that he was surrounded by men, who not only encouraged such behaviour but also acted as if it were to be expected, did not help. When Tiko first suggested moving some money “off shore” as a kind of salary bonus, Huud hesitated. But Tiko gave him a kindly-worded civics lesson, Nigerian style. Despite the gentle delivery, Tiko made it clear that Huud would not last out his term if he stood in the way of his cabinet making a “fair profit” for their service to country. And of course, Rika made demands. Her insistence on a lavish life-style forced Huud to make compromises and agree to some skimming at first, then outright theft. Nobody but Huud thought of it as graft: it was what underpaid government officials did to balance their books and repay a debt their country owed them. After a while, Huud himself had forgotten what it felt like to be an honest man. He thought only of the future and of the graft as something he was owed. In his increasing unhappiness, he thought less and less of the responsibilities he was ignoring and the people he was condemning to pathetic lives of penury.

So people like Doctor Camp were troubling and unwelcome. Huud didn’t like boy scouts whose very presence made him feel guilty and reminded him of the kind of man he once was. He was not looking forward to speaking with Doctor Camp. But he had to pretend they were colleagues and that they were serving the public welfare. Huud could not be sure of Camp’s motives, and he was certain Camp felt the same way about him. The meeting the next day would be a slow political dance, each sidestepping land mines the other had planted.