The money collectors Season 1

Season 5 years ago

The money collectors Season 1

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The sun was at its peak that Saturday afternoon as Nwabueze Obinkpu struggled along with the bag of money he was carrying. The money was in different denominations. He was sweating profusely and his spirits were low. About thirty-two years of age, fair in complexion and tall, Nwabueze had huge hands and feet and the muscular shoulders of a wrestler. But few would guess that his strong musculine body housed the spirit of a mouse.

He was walking gently but with a tinge of fear in his large black eyes, fully aware that he was carrying one hundred and twenty thousand naira, and the situation
was made worse by the fact that everyone in the area knew it.

Every saturday, at exactly the same time, he performed this duty which lasted some five good hours. During those hours, he collected money from traders who had received their consignments of cosmetic products
from Amby-Jack Cosmetics Enterprises, W.A. Ltd., an associate firm to Otike Security Organisation. The varieties of cosmetic products produced in this company were given out to traders for retail business, and commission was paid to them accordingly at the end of the sale.

Nwabueze always carried a list of the traders’ names whenever he was out to collect the money. And as he went from one trader to another, he sweated with fear, expecting at any moment that someone would shoot him down and grab the money.

For over three hundred Saturdays, he had successfully performed this task. But even with such an unblemished record of success, he still could not banish the fear out of his mind. He kept telling himself that if it wasn’t this Saturday, it would be the next.

It was difficult for Nwabueze to believe in the vaunted power of his boss, Otike Abakpo. He couldn’t believe that any one man could have this sprawling town of about one million inhabitants in such a tight grip of fear that no one – not even a dare devil- would attempt to snatch the bag of money that Nwabueze was carrying. The Security Organisation he worked for was a household name; people often reffered to it simply as ‘The Organisation’. And the man at the head of it, Otike Abakpo, was widely reputed to possess mysterious powers the limits of which no one appeared anxious to test. Nwabueze often took solace in this fact, and Dike Ochiagha, who was considered the best gunman in the security organisation, was always with him on his money – collecting trips.


‘If anything happens, Nwabueze,’ Dike had told him time without number, ‘fall on the bag and leave the rest to me. Remember, I have a duty to safeguard the money.’ Nwabueze would then look inquiringly into Dike’s eyes as if
he needed more encouraging words and Dike would nod reassuringly..