The Writer Corner

By the time they mentioned the cow and fifty tubers of yams, Kola stopped hearing the rest.

It wasn’t the heat, though the afternoon sun clung stubbornly to his skin. It wasn’t even the crowd of uncles sitting in a semi-circle, their red caps tilted with quiet authority.

It was the laughter.

“Ah-ah! Our in-law na Odogwu o!” one uncle boomed, slapping his back hard enough to push him forward. “Hope your pocket follow you come from Abuja o!”

The men laughed.

Kola laughed too.
Not because it was funny, but because if he didn’t, something in him might crack.

Yet, the list was still going.

“Two hundred thousand naira for wine carrying… one cow… twenty crates of minerals for the youth… wrappers for the women… drinks for the men…”

The elder paused, adjusting his glasses like a man handling sacred things.
“…and a token for the uncles.”

A small pause.
The kind that meant this is where it really begins.

Kola shifted slightly.
“How much is the token, sir?”

The men leaned in, eyes dancing like spectators waiting for the punchline of a joke only they understood.

The elder smiled. Slow. Knowing.
“My son… we will discuss that one later.”

A few men nodded, like that answer made perfect sense.

Kola nodded too. He knew nothing was ever exactly what it seemed. Every “token” had weight.

And love, love came with a receipt.

From the veranda, Amara didn’t look at him.

Her head was slightly bowed, but her fingers betrayed her: tight against the hem of her blouse, twisting fabric into silent knots.

This wasn’t new to her.
This was home.

Later, behind the house where the noise faded into crickets and distant laughter, she found him.

“I didn’t know they would bring out everything today,” she said quietly.

Kola let out a dry laugh.

“So, there’s a partial version where they take it easy?”

She winced. “It’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” he asked, turning to face her.

She hesitated, searching.

“My father… my uncles… they believe a woman’s value must be seen.”

Kola held her gaze. “Seen how?”

She swallowed. “In what a man is willing to give up.”

He let that sit between them.

“In cows?” he asked finally.

“In sacrifice,” she replied.

Kola looked away.

“Is this what it means?” he said, quieter now. “To marry you?”

Amara opened her mouth, then closed it.

“I don’t know how to separate it,” she admitted at last. “This is how it’s always been.”

Her honesty landed heavier than silence.

That night, sleep refused him.

He lay on a thin mattress, staring at a ceiling fan that dragged itself in slow circles, as if it was tired of the weight in the room.

Outside, voices carried—low, steady, calculating.

Kola closed his eyes and saw numbers.

His savings. Years of discipline. Careful planning. The rent already been paid in Abuja. The small shop he had mapped out in his head: shelves, customers, a future that made sense.

Now, everything rearranged itself around a list he didn’t write.

A cow

Uncles

Tokens

He exhaled slowly.

Was this how it started?
How men began to resent the women they loved, not because of who they were, but because of what it cost to keep them?

The thought unsettled him more than the list itself.

Morning came with the smell of fried akara and fresh tension.

The elders gathered again.

This time, Kola didn’t sit.
“I greet you, sirs,” he said, voice steady.

The elders gave nods of approval.

“I respect your home. I respect your daughter.”

More nods.

“But I need to speak as someone who wants to marry, not negotiate.”

That shifted the atmosphere.

“I did not come here to prove I can afford Amara,” he continued. “Because if that is the test… what happens when money finishes?”
A murmur.

One uncle clicked his tongue. “Love no dey cook soup, my son.”

A few men chuckled.

Kola nodded. “That is true, sir.”

He paused.

“But debt does not cook it either.”

This time, the laughter didn’t come.

Amara’s father had been quiet. Watching. Weighing.

“When I married her mother,” he began slowly, “I sold land. Borrowed money. For one day.”

The compound grew still.
“For years, I paid for that day.”

He glanced at Amara. Then back at Kola.

“And there were nights,” he added, voice lower, “I would look at her and wonder… if I married a wife, or something I could not afford to complain about.”

No one moved except stares of quiet agreement lingers in the room

“My Kinsmen, if a door is too expensive to open,” he continued, “people will stop knocking.”

He reached for the paper. Folded it once.

Then again.

When he handed the new list back to Kola, it was shorter.

Not light, but no longer something that would follow a man like a shadow.

Kola watched the paper in his hands.

Across the compound, Amara finally looked at him with a sigh of relief.
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©️ The Writer Corner
Promise Worth

People often ask me how I create my stories.

They expect a process.
A formula.
Something neat and structured.

But the truth is…

My stories don’t always begin with ideas.
Sometimes, they begin with feelings.

A conversation I can’t forget.
A silence that says too much.
A question that lingers long after the moment has passed.

Sometimes it’s pain.
Sometimes it’s faith.
Sometimes it’s something I don’t fully understand yet…

But I feel it.

And that feeling refuses to leave me alone.

That’s where it starts.
Not perfectly.
Not beautifully.
Just honestly.

To be honest, my first drafts are messy.
Half sentences.
Scattered thoughts.
Lines that I’ll probably delete later.

But I’ve learned something over the years, that clarity doesn’t come before writing.

It comes through it. So, I stay with the story.

I sit in it.
I listen to it.
I rewrite it—again and again—Until it stops sounding like words and starts feeling like truth.

Because for me, storytelling isn’t just about creating something people can read.

It’s about creating something people can recognize.

A moment where someone pauses and thinks:
“This feels like me.”
“I’ve felt this before.”
“I thought I was the only one.”

That’s when I know the story is ready.

So, no, my process isn’t perfect.
But it’s intentional.
It’s emotional.
It’s honest.
It inspired.

And most importantly…It’s real.

That’s how I create my stories.
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®️ The Writer Corner

MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER

The day my father slapped me, it wasn’t because I did something wrong. It was because I hesitated.

“Say it again,” he said, standing in the middle of our sitting room, which was just a small two-bedroom apartment, sweat clinging to his faded singlet after a long day at the mechanic workshop. The room smelled faintly of engine oil and kerosene, a scent that had become his second skin.

I tasted salt at the corner of my lips as I tried to find my voice, which trembled.

“I want to study… Fine Arts.”

The second slap came faster. Clean. Like a decision already made.

“Art?” he repeated, the word itself sounded wrong in his mouth. “Art will feed you? Will it pay rent in this Lagos? You want to waste your life drawing nonsense?”

The “I better pass my neighbour” generator outside coughed to life, filling the silence with a low, angry hum.

I didn’t cry. Not because it didn’t hurt, but because I knew crying would make it worse.

He didn’t understand tears. To him, they were a language for people who had the luxury of breaking. And we were not those people.

“You will study something that makes sense. Not this foolishness.” The drawing books in his hands came crashing heavily on the centre table.

I swallowed the ache on my cheek, straightened my shoulder and met his gaze.

“I… I still want… Fine Arts.”

For a moment, something flickered in his eyes, anger, yes, but also something else I couldn’t name then. Something almost like recognition.

That night, I lay awake, staring at the cracked ceiling, my hand trailing the fingerprint on my cheek, my future uncertain. But one truth settled quietly inside me.

I was my father’s daughter.

My father fixed cars for a living.

Not in a proper workshop with polished floors and uniforms or a signboard. He worked in a patched wooden shade under a mango tree, along the roadside in Abule-Egba. Half-dead engines were scattered around like things people had given up on, with men who smelled of grease and survival.

People called him “Engineer,” even though he never went to school. And somehow, he could listen to a car and tell you what was wrong.

“Everything speaks,” he used to say. “You just have to listen well.”

I believed him. Because he didn’t just fix cars.

He fixed everything. Broken chairs. Faulty fans. Leaking pipes.

And, in his own way, he tried to fix me too.

Growing up, my father was not the kind of man who said “I love you.”

Love, in his world, was not spoken. It was built, brick by brick, sacrifice by sacrifice.

He woke before dawn every day, long before the first rooster crowed. I would hear the metallic clang of his tools as he prepared for work, the low hum of his voice as he muttered to himself, planning the day ahead. By the time I opened my eyes, he was already gone, leaving behind the faint smell of grease and the echo of his discipline.

He never missed a school fee payment.
He never allowed food to run out.
And he never, ever tolerated laziness.

When other fathers carried their daughters on their shoulders or braided their hair on Sunday afternoons, mine handed me a broom and told me to sweep properly.

When others praised their children for small successes, mine only nodded and said, “You can do better.”

I used to think he was impossible to please.

But there were moments, small, quiet moments, that revealed something deeper.

Like the night NEPA took the light and I struggled with my homework. My mother had fallen asleep, and I sat alone at the table, squinting at my book by the dim glow of a kerosene lamp.

Without a word, my father came in, adjusted the wick to make the flame brighter, and sat beside me.

“Read it again,” he said.

“I don’t understand it.”

“Then read it again.”

“I’ve read it three times.”

“Read it until you understand.”

His voice wasn’t harsh that night. It was steady, patient.

So, I read.

And when I finally got it, when the confusion cleared and the answer made sense, I looked up to tell him, but he was already watching me.

There was no smile, no praise.

Just a quiet nod.

That nod felt like the greatest reward in the world.

I was not the daughter he planned for.

While other girls learned how to cook early and helped their mothers in the kitchen, I sat on the sitting room floor with pencils, crayons and drawing books, sketching everything I saw.

Faces. Hands. Movement. My mother’s gele, frozen mid-tie.

Sometimes I sat near his workshop, and drew the men as they worked: the way their muscles tightened, the way oil stained their fingers, and the quiet concentration in their eyes.

My father noticed.

Of course he did. He noticed everything.

But instead of praising me, he would shake his head.

“You like useless things,” he would say, not looking at me.

Still, he never stopped me. Not completely.

Until the day I told him I wanted to make a life out of it.

After the slap, something changed between us.

Not instantly. But quietly, like a crack spreading through glass. We spoke less.

And when we did, it was practical.

“Did you fetch water?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your brother?”
“Outside.”

The warmth we once had, the silent understanding, they all began to fade.

And in its place, something heavier settled: expectation.

My father had a plan for me. I was to study something serious.

Engineering. Medicine. Accounting. Law.

Something that would guarantee a future. Something that would justify all the years he spent under the sun, breathing in smoke and dust, so I could sit in a classroom.

“You think life is a joke?” he asked one evening, his voice calmer but no less firm.

“I don’t,” I replied.

“Then act like it.”

I wanted to tell him that art wasn’t a joke to me. That when I drew, I felt something I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t just about passion. It was about who I was.

But the words stayed in my throat. Because in our house, feelings were not arguments.

Results were.

So, I did what many daughters do.

I obeyed on the surface.

I filled out the university forms. Chose courses he approved of. Nodded when he spoke.

But underneath it all, I kept drawing.

Late at night. Early in the morning. In the margins of my notebooks.

On scraps of paper, I hid between textbooks.

It became my secret rebellion.

The turning point came the year I wrote JAMB.

I passed.

Well enough to get into university. Well enough to make my father proud.

The day the result came out, he didn’t say much. He just nodded, like he always did. But that evening, he brought home suya.

Extra spicy, which was my favourite.

And for a moment, it felt like things were okay again.

Until the admission letter came.

I had changed the course.

From Accounting to Fine Arts.

He found out two days before I was supposed to leave for school.

I still don’t know how. Maybe someone told him. Or maybe, like always, he just knew.

“Come here,” he said.

His voice was too calm.

Droplets of sweat gathered on my forehead. It was then that I knew I preferred when he shouted.

“Explain this.”

My heart pounded.

“I… I changed it.”

“Why?”

Because the life you choose for me doesn’t feel like mine. Because I am more than survival. And I want to create, not just exist.

But what I said was, “Because it’s what I want.”

The silence that followed felt endless.

Then he laughed, not with humour but with disbelief.

“All the suffering,” he said slowly. “All the work… so you can go and draw?”

“It’s not just drawing…”

“Enough!”

His voice cracked through the room like thunder. My eyes darted to my mother for help but was met with a sigh of disappointment.

For a moment, I saw something I had never seen before.

Fear.

“You think I am your enemy?” he asked.

I shook my head quickly. “No…”

“Then why are you fighting me?”

I didn’t have an answer. Because the truth was complicated.

Loving him and disagreeing with him felt like betrayal, and choosing myself felt like rejecting him.

He didn’t stop me from going. But he didn’t support me either.

He gave me money for transport and school fees. Nothing more.

“Since you know what you are doing,” he said, “go and do it.”

University was not what I expected. The University of Lagos was loud, chaotic, and alive.

And for the first time, I was surrounded by people who saw the world the way I did. People who didn’t think art was useless. People who believed it mattered.

But even in the middle of that new life, something felt incomplete.

I thrived, but the gap between my life and my father’s expectations never closed. Each time I achieved something, finished a piece, got praise from a lecturer, there was one person I wanted to tell. And couldn’t.

We spoke rarely.

Short calls. Careful conversations.

No mention of my course. No mention of my work.

Just distance.

The call came during my third year.

“Your father collapsed.”

That was all my mother said before the echo of her cries took over.

The ride to the hospital was surreal. Lagos stretched and twisted outside my window: traders shouting, exhaust choking the air, okadas weaving between buses. The familiar chaos now felt hostile.

When I got to the hospital, everything felt too familiar and too strange at the same time.

The smell.
The tension.
The quiet fear hanging in the air.

He looked smaller, like life had pressed pause on him.

For the first time in my life, my father looked human.

Not unbreakable. Not certain. Just tired.

When he opened his eyes and saw me, something shifted.

“You came,” he whispered.

“Of course,” I replied.

I sat beside him, unsure of what to do with my hands, my voice, my emotions.

For a long time, we said nothing. Just sat.

The hospital smell of disinfectant and medicine filled the silence.

Then he asked, “Are you happy?”

The question caught me off guard.

“Yes,” I said after a moment. “I am.”

He nodded slowly.

“That’s good.”

Silence again.

Then unexpectedly, “I don’t understand your art.”

I almost smiled. “I know.”

“But…” he paused, searching for the words, “I see how you talk about it.”

My chest tightened.

“And I remember… how I used to feel when I fixed something nobody else could fix.”

I looked at him. Really looked at him.

“And I think… maybe it is the same thing.”

Something in me broke open. Not painfully.

“I wasn’t trying to fight you,” I said softly.

“I know.”

“I just… didn’t want to lose myself.”

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.

“And I didn’t want life to defeat you.”

There it was. The truth we had been circling for years.

Not control. Not stubbornness. But love expressed in a language we didn’t both understand.

When he got better, things didn’t magically become perfect. But they changed.

He started asking questions.

Small ones at first.

“You drew today?”
“Hmm.”
“What did you draw?”

I showed him once.

He didn’t say much, just nodded.

But this time, it felt different.

A year later, at my final exhibition, I didn’t tell him about it. I didn’t think he would come either.

So, when I saw a man standing awkwardly at the back of the gallery, I froze.

He was still in his workshop clothes.

He looked out of place.

But he stayed.

Walking slowly from one painting to another.

Studying them like he studied engines.

Carefully. Seriously.

When he got to mine, he stopped.

It was a portrait of him.

Not as the strong, unshakable man everyone saw.

But as I had come to understand him.

Tired. Determined. Human.

He stood there for a long time.

Then he turned to me.

“You painted this?”

I nodded.

He exhaled slowly. “Hmm.”

He drew patterns on it with his finger. “It’s not perfect. But this one… will feed you.”

I laughed.

And for the first time in years, it felt calm.

He stood beside me, hands in his pockets, looking at the painting again.

Then, after a pause, “You see things… differently.”

I smiled. “I learnt from you.”

He didn’t reply.

But this time, he didn’t look away.

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