04/06/2026
I remember Sola.
Not the Sola who left for university, all sharp elbows and holy books, but the one who came back three years later, smelling of foreign cologne and other people’s secrets.
You see, Sola’s story doesn’t begin in a dark club or a backstreet hotel. It begins in a cramped dormitory on the edge of a sprawling, chaotic campus. He was the first son of a retired civil servant, a boy raised on “please” and “thank you,” who believed that hard work was a straight line from lecture halls to a corner office. He arrived with a suitcase full of ironed shirts and a head full of dreams.
As time went by, he began to experience serious financial problems.
His monthly stipend always arrived late. His roommate, a loud, flashy fellow called Big Kay, never seemed to have that problem. Big Kay wore new sneakers every month, wore designer fragrances, bought takeout when everyone else was soaking garri, and beautiful girls swarmed around him like bees. Their visits were brief, but they always left happy with gifts.
Sola, hungry and curious, finally asked, “Big Kay, what work do you do? I beg cut small soap for me?”
Big Kay laughed out loud, “What soap? I’m a broker, my friend. I have a demand and supply chain, and connect the two. It’s just business.”
That was the first eye opener for Sola, who had been taught to trust a slower, poorer process than the one Big Kay was operating.
It began with a little favour. Big Kay had too many “clients” and not enough time. He asked if Sola could help him hold some numbers? Make a few calls? He was organized, polite, and wore the face of a studious boy. No one suspected the person on the other end of that call was the same quiet soul who sat in the front row in class.
The first girl he managed was named Efe. A theater arts student with a voice like honey and the figure of a beauty queen. Sola didn’t force her; the system had already done the forcing. All Sola did was hand her a phone number and say, “He’s clean and pays upfront. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.” He knew what those “clients” expected, and he knew Efe was desperate enough to accept.
Within six months, Sola had three girls. Then seven. Then a good number of them, spread across two universities and a polytechnic. He stopped going to lectures and focused more on his new gig. His dream of a degree in mathematics was put on hold. Every time his mother called to check on him, he’d tell her, “Mama, I’m studying hard and maintaining my top position in class.”
He was at the top of a different class entirely. Sola learned to read vulnerability and knew which girl needed rent money by Friday, which one had a sick sibling, which one was one bad grade away from losing a scholarship. He became their accountant, their therapist, their alibi. And in return, he took his cut.
Sola was never cruel, but nice to his pawns. He remembered birthdays, paid for a girl’s mum’s hospital bill without being asked. When one of his girls, a quiet political science student named Amara, broke down crying after a particularly rough client, Sola didn’t yell. He sat with her on the cold floor of a dingy apartment, held her hand, and advised her, “ just one more year, save everything, and you’re out.”
He truly believed he was helping them and that he was a bridge between their poverty and survival. He told himself that without him, they’d be in the hands of real monsters; men who took more than money.
As the years rolled by, his younger sister, Bisi, got early admission to the same university. Sola saw her name on the list and felt his stomach a mixture of surprise and sadness. Because he knew what the older boys would see when they looked at Bisi, “A small, pretty, naive girl. Fresh meat.”
He called his mother that night. “Mama, don’t let her come here. Send her to the northern campus or anywhere else.”
His mother, tired and confused, said, “But you are there. You will protect her.”
Sola hung up. He looked around his apartment. The leather couch bought from a client’s “gift,” the bottle of whiskey on the table, the burner phones charging in a neat row. He thought of the girls he’d manage. Some had graduated and some had simply disappeared. One, he’d heard, had been found in a drainage channel, her story never made it into the news.
He thought of Efe, the first one. She had finally quit. Moved back to her village, opened a small provisions store, and was battling depression. She sent him a text once: “I don’t blame you, Sola. I blame the poverty and hunger.”
The next morning, Sola deleted every contact. He packed a single bag and left everything, the phones, the cash, the cologne, and designer clothes; all proceeds of his pimping business. He walked to the bus station and bought a ticket to a town no one had heard of, far from the university, far from Big Kay, far from the faces of the girls whose numbers he still knew by heart.
Sola simply disappeared. No one knows where he moved to, not even his family. Alone with unfulfilled dreams and memories of deception and young lives and futures destroyed.
THE END
