Borrowed Light, Episode 14: Item One

Previously: In Cotonou, Ada found her father alive, working as a carpenter. Temi read the note her own father left before he died in Emeka's place. Ibrahim arrived in a black jeep. Emeka and Sade stayed behind while the women escaped across the lagoon in a leaking pirogue. On the USB, line six of the list said Balogun Traders' Cooperative, signatory B. Adekunle. Mama Bisi. Then her email arrived: an emergency board meeting, 10 AM tomorrow. Item 1: removal of the Chief Executive Officer.

---

Dantokpa Market, Cotonou, 1:10 PM

The pirogue hit the bank so hard Temi fell off the front seat.

Nobody laughed. Nobody helped her up either. Sikirat was already out, ankle-deep in black mud, dragging the boat in by its rope with her whole body.

Dantokpa swallowed them in less than a minute.

It was the biggest market Ada had ever seen. Bigger than Balogun. Bigger than anything. Rows of smoked fish stacked like firewood. Wax prints hanging in walls of colour. Car parts, cooking pots, crates of Fanta, a goat tied to a scooter. A man shouting prices in Fon, then French, then Yoruba when he saw their faces.

Ada looked back once.

The smoke over Akpakpa had turned from black to grey. It was thinning. Whatever had been burning was nearly finished.

"Don't look," said Sikirat. She took Ada's wrist like a mother taking a child across the road. "Walk."

They found a taxi on the far side of the market. A Peugeot 406 with no back bumper and a picture of the Virgin Mary taped to the dashboard. The driver wanted fifty thousand CFA to Seme. Sikirat argued him down to thirty without blinking. Mama Ngozi paid in naira from a knot in her wrapper, and he took it without counting.

They drove.

Temi sat in front. She held her phone in both hands, the USB still plugged into the bottom of it like a tiny black tooth. She did not look at the screen. She did not look at anything.

In the back, Ada sat between her mother and Sikirat.

For a long time, the only sound was the driver's radio. Some politician in Porto-Novo shouting about fuel prices.

Then Ada said, "Mummy."

Mama Ngozi did not turn her head.

"You knew what Mama Bisi's surname was before I asked. I saw your face."

"Everybody knows Bisi's surname."

"That's not what I mean."

Mama Ngozi closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was looking at her own hands. The lace seller's hands. Twenty-two years of measuring cloth against her forearm.

"In April 2016," she said, "one month after the funeral, there was a fire at Balogun. You remember?"

Ada remembered. She had been nine. She remembered her mother coming home at midnight smelling of smoke, sitting on the floor of the parlour, not crying, just sitting.

"Sixty shops," said Mama Ngozi. "Mine was one. Everything. All my lace. I had nothing. Your father was dead, or I thought he was. I had school fees. I had rent." She breathed out slowly. "Two weeks later, Bisi came to my house with a man from the bank. She said the cooperative had received a grant. A rebuilding grant. From Crestline Bank. Corporate social responsibility, she called it. They rebuilt all sixty shops. New roofs. New doors. Proper locks." She finally turned and looked at her daughter. "My shop was rebuilt with that money, Ada. Your school fees for the next year came from the stock I bought to fill it."

The taxi hit a pothole. Nobody reacted.

"Did you know?" Ada whispered. "Where it really came from?"

"Not then." Mama Ngozi looked away again. "Later. Bisi told me. Five, six years ago, one night after a cooperative meeting. She was crying. She said, Ngozi, I think the money that rebuilt our shops was dirty money. I said, Bisi, all money in this country is dirty money. Go home and sleep." She shook her head slowly. "I didn't know it was the same money. I didn't know it was his money. The money he died for. The money he didn't die for."

Temi spoke from the front seat without turning around.

"My father died for it," she said. "Let's be clear about who died."

Nobody answered her.

---

Seme Border, 5:50 PM

They crossed the bush route on foot.

No car. No Sade. No envelope for the Customs man. Just a narrow track through the cassava farms, a boy of about twelve who led them for two thousand naira, and red mud that pulled at their shoes with every step.

Halfway across, Ada's phone came back to life.

Two bars. Then three. Then the messages came all at once, a waterfall of buzzing that made her stop walking.

Tobe. Seven missed calls.

Uche. Where are you? Call me before 10 tomorrow. This board thing is serious.

Hauwa Bello, EFCC. Ms Okafor. Please confirm your whereabouts.

And one from a Benin number she didn't know.

It was a photograph. Two hands lying on a white hospital sheet. Both of them wrapped in thick bandages from the fingers to the wrist. Between them, someone had placed a piece of paper with words written on it in blue biro, in large, shaky capitals, as though written by someone holding a pen in her fist.

ALIVE. BOTH. THEY TOOK HIM. NOT DEAD. WILL CALL.

Ada's knees went. Sikirat caught her under the arm.

"What is it?"

Ada held up the phone. Mama Ngozi took it, looked, and made a sound that was not a word. Then she handed it back and kept walking, faster now, as if she could walk all the way to wherever they had taken him.

---

Badagry, 9:20 PM

The church was called Grace Upon Grace Assembly, and it was a converted warehouse behind a petrol station, with plastic chairs and a generator that coughed every few minutes and made the fluorescent tubes flicker.

This was the church Emeka had used for ten years. The pastor, a small, round man called Reverend Akinola, had received money from Cotonou every month and passed it on to two families. One in Yaba. One in Surulere. He had never asked questions.

"He told me it was for widows," the reverend said, setting down a tray of tea and Cabin biscuits. "He said, Pastor, these are two women whose husbands were taken by the same thing. I did not ask what the thing was." He looked at Mama Ngozi with soft, embarrassed eyes. "I didn't know one of the widows was his own wife."

Mama Ngozi did not touch the tea.

At 9:47, Ada's phone rang. The Benin number.

She put it on speaker.

"Adaeze." Sade's voice. Hoarse. Slurred slightly, like someone full of painkillers. "Are you across?"

"We're in Badagry. Where is he?"

"I don't know." A breath. A long one. "Listen to me carefully, because the nurse is coming back and she doesn't like me using the phone. After you left, there were four of them. Ibrahim and three boys. Your father hit one with a plank. I hit another one with the iron bar." A small dry sound that might have been a laugh. "It was the first time in my life I have hit anybody. I don't recommend it."

"Sade."

"They tied your father's hands. They put him in the jeep. Then the boys poured petrol on the wood shavings." Her voice stopped. Started again. "I was on the floor. One of them had kicked me. The fire caught the sawdust like paper. I put my hands down to push myself up and the floor was burning."

Temi had her hand over her mouth.

"It was Ibrahim who pulled me out," said Sade. "Not one of the boys. Ibrahim. He came back in through the smoke and dragged me into the street by my dress, and then he got in the jeep and drove away. He said one thing to me before he left."

"What?"

"He said, Tell the girl she will get a phone call. Tell her to keep the stick safe until then."

Ada looked down at the USB in Temi's phone.

"That makes no sense," said Uche, who had joined the call ten minutes earlier from Surulere and had been silent until now. "If they wanted the USB, why let you leave with it? They had you all in the workshop."

"I don't know," said Sade. "I have been lying here for six hours trying to understand it. I can't."

A pause.

"There's something else," Sade said. "I withdrew Harbour's investment this morning. At nine o'clock. Before the border. My lawyer filed it. The EFCC should release the settlement account tomorrow, by afternoon. Your traders get their money."

Ada stared at the phone.

"You said that was the deal. My page for the money."

"I know what I said." Another breath. "I don't want the page any more, Adaeze. Keep it. Give it to the EFCC with the rest. I watched your father pick up a plank against four men for you today. I have never seen anybody pick up anything for me." A rustle. Another voice in the background, French, scolding. "The nurse. I have to go. The board meeting. I'll dial in."

"Which way will you vote?"

But the line was already dead.

---

Kolo Office, Yaba, 9:35 AM

Ada had slept for two hours on a bench in the church, in her muddy clothes, and she had not changed them.

She walked into the Kolo office on the second floor above a phone accessories shop on Herbert Macaulay Way, and every head turned. Seven developers, two customer support girls, the cleaner. All of them looked at her mud-stained jeans and her shirt with the lagoon tide mark across it and the cut on her palm.

Tobe came out of the glass meeting room so fast he nearly knocked over a chair.

"Ada. Jesus. Where have you..."

"Later." She walked past him. "Is she here?"

"Not yet. Uche is inside."

Uche Nwosu was sitting at the head of the meeting table in a grey suit, with three printed copies of Kolo's articles of association lined up in front of her like knives. She looked up as Ada came in, took in the state of her, and did not comment on it. That was why Ada loved her.

"Sit," said Uche. "Listen. We have twenty-five minutes."

Ada sat.

"The board has three seats," said Uche. "You. Harbour, which means Sade. And the independent director, which means Mama Bisi. To remove a CEO, you need a majority of the directors entitled to vote. You are not entitled to vote on your own removal. Conflict of interest. Clause 14.3." She tapped the page. "So it's two votes. Mama Bisi and Sade. If both vote yes, you're out. If one votes no, it's a tie, and a tie means the motion fails. There's no casting vote."

"So it comes down to Sade."

"It comes down to Sade." Uche looked at her. "A woman who tried to take your company two weeks ago. Who is now lying in a hospital in Benin with burnt hands because of your father. You tell me how she'll vote. I have no idea."

Ada's phone buzzed.

A message from Hauwa Bello.

Release order for the Kolo settlement account has been signed. Funds should be accessible by 2 PM. You and I need to have a conversation, Ms Okafor. Today.

Ada closed her eyes.

Somewhere at Balogun, three thousand four hundred phones were about to light up with good news. Somewhere, Mama Ngozi's neighbours were going to stop calling her daughter a thief. It should have felt like winning.

It felt like nothing.

"What's on the USB?" Tobe asked quietly from the doorway.

Ada looked at him for a long moment. Tobe, who had sold her password once to save his mother's house. Tobe, who had come back.

"Later," she said again.

At 9:58, Mama Bisi walked in.

---

The Meeting Room, 10:00 AM

She came in alone.

Ada had expected the full chairwoman. The heavy gold earrings. The iro and buba in cooperative colours. The voice that could silence three hundred traders in a hall.

Instead, Bisi Adekunle came in wearing a plain grey kaftan, no jewellery, no headtie. She looked small. She looked older than she had at the last board meeting by about ten years.

She sat down at the far end of the table. She did not look at Ada.

Tobe set up the laptop for the video call. At 10:02, the screen came alive.

Sade, propped up on white pillows in a narrow hospital room with green walls. Her silver locs loose on her shoulders. Both hands wrapped in bandages, resting on a pillow on her lap like two white loaves of bread. Someone else was holding the phone for her. Her face was grey, but her eyes were completely clear.

"Good morning," she said. "Let's begin."

Uche read the formalities. Quorum confirmed. Notice of meeting confirmed. Item 1. Removal of the Chief Executive Officer. Proposed by the independent director.

"Mrs Adekunle," said Uche. "Would you like to speak to the motion?"

Mama Bisi did not move.

Ada reached into her back pocket and took out a single sheet of paper. She had printed it at a business centre in Badagry at 7 AM, with the reverend's money. She unfolded it and slid it down the long table until it stopped in front of Mama Bisi.

Line six. Highlighted in yellow.

Mama Bisi looked at it.

She did not pick it up. She did not seem surprised. She just looked at it, and then she put her hand flat over it, slowly, as if covering the face of someone who had died.

"Before you say anything," Mama Bisi said quietly. "I will tell you myself. Then you can say anything you like."

Nobody spoke.

"April 2016. The fire. Sixty shops gone. Many of those women had nothing. No husband. No savings. I was the treasurer of the cooperative. I had eleven million naira in our account, and eleven million naira does not rebuild sixty shops." She stared at the table. "Two weeks after the fire, a car came to my stall. A man from Crestline, in a suit. And a driver. Young. Very quiet. Black cap. He carried the papers in for the man in the suit."

Ada's whole body went cold.

"They said Crestline Bank wanted to help the market. A grant. Forty million naira. All we had to do was move the cooperative account to Crestline. I signed. The money came. I rebuilt sixty shops. Your mother's shop, Adaeze, was the first one I rebuilt. I did it myself. I stood there while the carpenters put on the new roof."

"When did you find out?"

"2017." Mama Bisi finally looked up. Her eyes were wet. "Kolawole Adebayo came to my house. He sat in my parlour and drank my malt and said, Mama, I am telling you this as a friend. That money came from a loan that should never have been given. If anybody asks, every shop you rebuilt is the proceeds of fraud. The government can take them. Sixty women will be on the street. Keep quiet and nobody will ever ask." She shook her head. "So I kept quiet. Nine years. I sat on your board, Adaeze, and I watched you build Kolo with honest money, and I kept quiet."

"And now you want me removed."

"No."

The word came out loud. Louder than anything she had said so far. Mama Bisi seemed surprised by it herself.

"No," she said again, more quietly. "I don't want you removed. I would give the shops back. I would give my own house back. I am not calling this meeting because of the forty million." She reached into her kaftan and took out her phone. Her hands were shaking so much she had to try three times to unlock it. "I am calling it because of this."

She turned the phone around and slid it across the table.

A video. Eleven seconds long. Sent at 6:14 that morning.

A bare room with a concrete floor. A white plastic chair. Emeka Okafor sitting in it with his hands tied behind his back and a cut over his left eye, crusted dark. He was holding nothing, but someone off camera held a copy of that morning's Punch newspaper in front of his chest so the date showed.

He looked straight into the camera. He did not look frightened. He looked tired.

He said nothing at all.

Under the video, a message.

Remove her as CEO before 12 noon. Send proof. Then she will get a phone call. If she is still CEO at 12, you will not see him again.

Ada watched it three times. On the third time, she put her finger on the screen and froze it on her father's face.

"Who sent this?"

"The number is not saved," said Mama Bisi. "But I know who sent it. Ibrahim called me first, at six. To make sure I was awake. I recognised his voice." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "The young driver with the black cap. The one who carried the papers into my stall in 2016. He is the same man. He knew about the forty million. He knew I would do what he told me."

On the laptop screen, Sade had closed her eyes.

Uche spoke first. Her lawyer's voice, very flat.

"Why would a kidnapper care who the CEO of Kolo is?"

"I don't know," said Mama Bisi. "I don't know anything. I only know he is alive in that video and I want him to stay alive."

Ada looked at the clock on the wall. 10:31.

"Call the vote," she said.

"Ada..." Tobe began.

"Call the vote, Uche."

Uche looked at her for a long second. Then she cleared her throat.

"The motion is that Adaeze Okafor be removed as Chief Executive Officer of Kolo Technologies Limited with immediate effect. Mrs Adekunle?"

"For," whispered Mama Bisi.

"Mrs Adeyemi-Cole?"

On the screen, Sade opened her eyes. She looked directly into the camera. Directly at Ada.

"Against," she said.

The room went silent.

"Sade..." Ada said.

"I have spent my whole life doing what frightened people asked me to do," said Sade. Her voice was weak, but every word was clear. "My brother. My investors. The senator. Everybody. I am not going to start my new life by doing what a kidnapper tells me to do. If they want your father, they can come through the front door like men. I vote against."

"The vote is one for, one against," said Uche slowly. "The motion fails."

Mama Bisi made a sound like something tearing.

"Then he dies," she said. "Do you understand? Then he dies."

The clock said 10:44.

Ada stood up.

She walked to the whiteboard in the corner of the meeting room. On the shelf beneath it, where the markers lived, there was a pad of plain A4 paper. She took one sheet. She took a black pen out of Tobe's shirt pocket without asking.

She sat down again and began to write.

"Ada, no," said Tobe. "Ada. Listen to me. We don't know who these people are. We don't know what they want with the company. You can't just..."

She kept writing.

"Adaeze." Uche's voice now. Low and urgent. "If you resign, you lose your seat on the board. You lose control of the company's decisions. Everything you fought for, for two weeks..."

Ada finished. She looked at what she had written. Then she signed it.

The capital A with the long curve. The little tail on the Z. The same signature Temi had stolen two weeks ago and pasted onto a forged agreement. The same signature she had put on Sade's term sheet with a K. holding her mother's money hostage.

The first time in her life she had signed something away by choice.

She pushed it to the middle of the table.

"I'm not being removed," she said. "I'm resigning. Effective now. Take a photo and send it to him, Mama Bisi."

Mama Bisi stared at her.

"Take the photo," said Ada.

Mama Bisi took the photo. Her thumb hovered for a second over the unsaved number. Then she pressed send.

Two grey ticks. Then two blue ones.

"Under clause 16," said Uche, very quietly, because somebody had to say it, "in the absence of a Chief Executive, the Chief Technology Officer acts as CEO until the board appoints a replacement." She looked at the doorway. "Tobenna. Congratulations."

Tobe did not look like a man who had been congratulated. He looked like a man who had been shot.

On the laptop, Sade said nothing for a long moment.

"That was a good letter," she said finally. "Short." And she ended the call.

---

The Kolo Office, 11:59 AM

They waited.

Mama Bisi in the meeting room with her head in her hands. Uche on her laptop, writing something with angry fingers. Tobe at his desk staring at nothing. The developers had gone quiet, the way people go quiet in a hospital waiting room. Somebody had turned off the Afrobeats playlist that usually ran all day.

Ada sat by the window. She could see Herbert Macaulay Way below. Danfos. Okadas. A woman selling roasted corn under an umbrella. The yellow and black of Lagos going about its ordinary Wednesday as if nothing in the world was wrong.

The clock on her phone changed to 12:00.

Nothing happened.

12:01.

12:02.

At 12:03, her phone rang.

A Lagos number. 0803. Not saved.

Ada answered it before the first ring had finished.

"Hello?"

Silence. Then breathing. Then a voice.

Not Ibrahim. Not a man at all.

A woman. Warm. Unhurried. A Yoruba voice with years of good schooling in it. A voice that seemed to be smiling.

"Adaeze. Well done."

Ada's hand tightened on the phone.

"Who is this?"

"You gave up something," said the woman. "That's a start. Your father never gave up anything for anyone. I wanted to see if his daughter was different."

"Who is this? Where is my father?"

A soft sound, like a woman settling back into a comfortable chair.

"You used to eat my moi moi every Saturday, Adaeze. In Surulere. You and my daughter, at my dining table, doing chemistry homework. You were the only one of her friends who said thank you every single time." The smile in the voice grew. "You called me Aunty Funmi."

Ada stopped breathing.

Across the office, through the glass wall of the meeting room, she saw the door open. Temi came in, still in the same clothes from the lagoon, holding two bottles of water, looking around for her.

"Is Temi with you?" said the voice on the phone, pleasantly. "Tell her Mummy said she should come home for lunch."

---

To be continued in Episode 15.