My dad is a very funny dude, or so I think. He tells me that he doesnt know what it takes to be or see an ajebutter until he went to secondary school. My dad says he doesn’t call his father daddy, they call him baba and call his mum, mama. But our generation churns out ajebutters like minutes on the clock while we call our fathers, daddy. I sit laughing at this man who says the sweetest boy on earth calls him daddy. Even I, a toddler knows I am an ajebutter , how can he say he only met ajebutters when he enrolled into secondary as a teenager? I try to argue with my dad that all kids born are ajebutters, so he too is one when he was a kid. He stares at me and laughs his mischievous smile, the one that makes the ladies lose their cool or so he says.

He tells me that when he is my age, he doesn’t even know a word in English and here I am composing sentences. My dad enters school at the age of six while I before two years. My daddy describes how they write on slate and we use a board, electronic board with music to learn the alphabets. While they call it biro, my dad is contrasting that we call it pen. He dares me if I have seen or held charcoal? They write on walls during their time with charcoal before graduating to pencil. You see why I laugh and call him funny? What is a charcoal I asked? It is got from burnt fire wood used for cooking. So if I wait on mummy when she heats my bathing water will I see charcoal? My dad looks at me and smiles before saying no. Charcoal can not come out of gas cooker or microwave. That is why I call you an ajebutter generation.

I heard my mum telling aunty Bose to check the wee-wee in my pampers and my dad laughs. He says there were no pampers during their time and only a few were lucky to wear napkin. I get confused because I don’t know what a napkin is and I imagine how they run around without pampers. If you wet your bed at night you carry your mattrass to sun it the next day, he is sorry at my confusion and corrects himself with the word foam. My mum just opened my bottled water but daddy said they drank tap water. However since the supply of pipe borne water is erratic or dysfunctional as such we the children of this age have to become ajebutters by drinking treated water. My dad doesn’t see a generator at my age. He first sees a generator at the age of seven when they visit an uncle who lives in a new settlement that is not connected to the power grid at all. NEPA hardly blacked out like now, I even know how to start a gen, mentally. Sometimes I run to change over from PHCN to generator but for my height. Practice makes one perfect.

My dad is a very funny dude, or so I think. He tells me that he doesnt know what it takes to be or see an ajebutter until he went to secondary school. My dad says he doesn’t call his father daddy, they call him baba and call his mum, mama. But our generation churns out ajebutters like minutes on the clock while we call our fathers, daddy. I sit laughing at this man who says the sweetest boy on earth calls him daddy. Even I, a toddler knows I am an ajebutter , how can he say he only met ajebutters when he enrolled into secondary as a teenager? I try to argue with my dad that all kids born are ajebutters, so he too is one when he was a kid. He stares at me and laughs his mischievous smile, the one that makes the ladies lose their cool or so he says.

He tells me that when he is my age, he doesn’t even know a word in English and here I am composing sentences. My dad enters school at the age of six while I before two years. My daddy describes how they write on slate and we use a board, electronic board with music to learn the alphabets. While they call it biro, my dad is contrasting that we call it pen. He dares me if I have seen or held charcoal? They write on walls during their time with charcoal before graduating to pencil. You see why I laugh and call him funny? What is a charcoal I asked? It is got from burnt fire wood used for cooking. So if I wait on mummy when she heats my bathing water will I see charcoal? My dad looks at me and smiles before saying no. Charcoal can not come out of gas cooker or microwave. That is why I call you an ajebutter generation.

I heard my mum telling aunty Bose to check the wee-wee in my pampers and my dad laughs. He says there were no pampers during their time and only a few were lucky to wear napkin. I get confused because I don’t know what a napkin is and I imagine how they run around without pampers. If you wet your bed at night you carry your mattrass to sun it the next day, he is sorry at my confusion and corrects himself with the word foam. My mum just opened my bottled water but daddy said they drank tap water. However since the supply of pipe borne water is erratic or dysfunctional as such we the children of this age have to become ajebutters by drinking treated water. My dad doesn’t see a generator at my age. He first sees a generator at the age of seven when they visit an uncle who lives in a new settlement that is not connected to the power grid at all. NEPA hardly blacked out like now, I even know how to start a gen, mentally. Sometimes I run to change over from PHCN to generator but for my height. Practice makes one perfect.

I am struggling with mummy who wants to watch BBA while I am trying to watch my favorite disney junior’s Mickey mouse club house. My dad and his siblings will wait till 4 pm before the black and white television comes on with the rainbow colours. After which the national anthem plays before they watch sesame street. We watch LED or LCD, they watched NTA, we watch DSTV. I can dial a call, receive a call and even browse, this to my dad is pure beatification of an ajebttuter. Telephones were seen by a select few and owned by fewer privileged few. The poor couldn’t afford a telephone line. My dad sees more telephone poles and cables as a kid without seeing any telephone set, while I have seen different types of handsets without seeing a single telephone wire. I have toys, Teddy bears and games and want more. My dad says I am lucky if not I would have been cooking and eating sand in the backyard with children from other rooms in the yard. Yard? What is a yard? He tries to describe it as a compound with many rooms occupied by different families which share common kitchen and toilets. They go out in the rain to poo poo, and their mothers run inside the rain to the kitchen to cook food else the children will cry of hunger. I see mummy turning the stew in the pot from where I sit, but a kitchen is in the same building.

Daddy and other kids plant corn and beans in the backyard watering the seeds to germinate and sprout leaves, but that dirties them. I still look clean in my jeans because of the interlocking tiles in our compound. Mummy comes fuming and shouting my name; Salvadorrrrrrrr­rrrr! She is angry that I have scattered my wardrobe and she warns me that if she arranges it this time, I must be careful. I get pissed and ask my dad if his mum always disturbs him about his wardrobe? I do not have a wardrobe, we hit two nails in the corner of the room and tie rope to both ends, then hang our clothes. We get hangers to hang the Sunday clothes after ironing them. I get confused , what is this man saying? I want the gateman to hurry up and open the gate, but daddy’s yard has no gate, security was not a big deal during their growing days. They are free to come in and go out without tall fences and heavy padlocks. I can even turn the steering of a car and honk the horn, daddy can not remember touching a car unless when he is taken into a taxi or a bus. They walk to the church and climb moving vehicles like pick-up vans on their way or back from school. Daddy says fuel is expensive as we drive into the fillin station to refuel. My dad as a kid does not recall entering a filling station, I am eyeing the burger in the fast food inside the filling station as I tell daddy to redeem his promise of buying me an apple on his way from the airport. He shouts that they eat mango which falls off the trees or wait for special days that his baba will bring oranges. Can I see that I even know what an apple is before my third birthday? He never saw his dad off to the airport because there were good roads to travel on or trains to enter. Daddy blames the systemic failure for the rate at which ajebutters are born.

Power failure is why I know a generator at this age, I drink bottled water because the taps do not just rush any more. I eat apple because all the mango plantations or orchards have become plazas or supermarkets. I watch DSTV because daddy says NTA is a government propaganda channel. We go to school at a very early age because that is trend or our mums have to work to support the home. Insecurity forces us indoors and we can not play freely on the street, so we get compensated by toys, games and bicycles. Daddy pauses and I see the pains in his face, he tells me for every inch an ajebutter I am, it costs him money. His salary is not increasing proportionately­ as does the cost of fuel for the generator. The bills for DSTV, the electricity tariff, the guard man’s salary, my school fees since government schools are comatose.

For all those things that make me feel I am an ajebutter, daddy pays more and his pay check dwindles. He has to provide these and more for me to laugh at him calling myself an ajebutter. After paying tax, the government is not doing enough to provide security, infrastructure,­ education, social services, health and even conducive business environment. They have to pay the landlords so much money for us to live in our detached or semi detached bungalows so we dont get wet on our way to the loo when it is raining. Corruption does not allow regulators to do their work and as such MTN can exploit workers in Jos through their contract firm and multichoice can increase rates as they wish. My daddy like many other daddies have to provide all at exorbitant prices for us who call our selves ajebutters. I now know that my dad is no more the funny dude I say he is, I see the sobriety in him and I understand that not all of us are ajebutters but Nigeria has made us so, and with it comes financial implications for our parents who strive harder to make us live decently. It took me more than two years after writing my “Diary of a Credo Kid” to write my manifest, but my dad says I do well because he wrote his first letter at the age of eight. I look at my dad and he pulls my cheeks, kisses my forehead and mocks at me for calling myself an ajebutter. My dad says if I try harder I will become a good writer, I say I want to be better since he is good already. My dad who calls his own dad baba, laughs and blew me my favorite kiss. There is a big difference between theirs and ours, but I am glad he makes so much sacrifices to make me the ajebutter he is not, or was not. I tell my dad I can’t wait to have a second look at their yard sorry compound when next we visit Baba, I love it there because we go to the road to play with other kids unlike here where we are always inside. It is not always fun to be an ajebutter and after listening to daddy today, it is not cheap either.

By Samuel Stephen Wakdok (Samuel Stephen-Wakdok writes for Credo-writers)

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The manifest of a Credo-writer by Samuel Stephen-Wakdok