It's really funny how individuals formulate lies out of the blue to cover up their wrong acts or doings...some could be unbelievably good, stupid, engaging, uncoordinated, obvious, and ugly.
The bitter truth is that when such lies are told, more lies have to be told to cover them up. As a child in a catholic family, I was thought especially in catechism and in children church to always keep the 8th commandment of God which says 'thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour'. In my little underage brain I simply stuck to honesty and some called me 'tatafo' or 'report card' for saying the truth all the time because most situations were primary school classroom mischievousness demonstrated by youngsters who felt they were smart. I was disliked for sure but it didn't change my mind and the 'always say the truth' mantra I had made for myself.
Now I'm older, I have a bigger picture of what it takes to make a lie seem believable even when it's not...and how to keep the flow. When one has started on a lie, every other thing following is a lie...at least, that's what is thought by others who've been fooled all along. In secondary school, liars were called 'Samba Queens' back in the hostels and your gist will go round even to the hearing of the male folks bringing about humiliation and disrespect. When it was gossip time back then in the hostels, different girls would sit down comfortably and narrate different things...CHISOS!!! what have I not heard in my life bikonu. That’s how one said she saw ‘Hannah Montana’ on Arik air flight to Bonni Island in Rivers State, Nigeria (bonni island can’t be reached on air, it’s speedboat). That Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) sat beside her on the flight. Everybody almost committed suicide. Other lies that when she (another friend) was on air, the aeroplane was too hot, so she opened the window while on air. ‘Ewoooooo!’ ‘Just kill me so I’ll know I’m dead instead of shooting invisible stray bullets at me…Chai! People dey for this world’. How others also said rubbish things as well, claiming being daughters of goddesses of rivers and going there every night.’ 'Stay there and be claiming demons as family members; that is your own cup of garri’. Another claimed her father owned more than 5 oil companies in Nigeria; ‘only one person o’, and they always have summers in Hawaii. ‘’Hmm! This bombastic idiot only got to know Hawaii through the allure (vanguard) magazine her school mother gave her, now she has summer vacations there, how abeg? When she has lived in Rivers State all her life and has never visited any other state and has no passport; does not know what an airport looks like even because she knows at least what an aeroplane looks like. And if her father owns 5 oil companies, why does she arrive school with ‘Emmanuel Missionary Association’ bus every resumption day?
Someone else said her mom was a prostitute when she gave birth to her at a chief priest's shrine (babalawo); and immediately she came out, she shouted 'blood of Jesus Christ' at a day old that she was and thunder struck the chief priest...afterwards, she disappeared and found herself in America.
'and you're still in your father's house in Nigeria? Incredible!'
Babe! Your 'samba' carry weight sha! One really rather interesting and 'brain bursting ' lie I heard back then in senior school by a loquacious girl that was my classmate because she was never my friend... was that RIHANNA the popular American artiste was of Igbo Nigerian descent and her full name was 'Chukwurihannanonso Ebube Egwuejiofor Sixtus'. She didn't stop there o, she dragged CHRIS BROWN another popular American artiste inside her outraging lie. She said and I report from the horse's mouth..' you people know Chris and Rihanna are brother and sister, don't mind the 'luf' play they're playing there..Chris stands for Christian and his full name is Christian Chinazom Onwudilichukwu Brown. He's from my state Anambra sef'. The 'luf' in her statement meant love. She said all this in her unperturbed, fluent igbo accent with a confirmed smirk so full of assurance and pride. Suddenly, the air around me was thick, for some reason I was dumbfounded and speechless. I quietly got up from where I sat, went into my room and slept off quietly on the bed I first saw...I was very weak infact ..thanks to 'Somto's' terrifying gist/lie. I never regarded her as a friend because she disgraced the entire igbo communities with her stingy, lieing attitude. To make things worse, she suffered from kleptomania even to the point of stealing used underwear..not that she didn't have o, it just was her nature. At least, her fellow 'kleptomaniacs' had high taste for things they stole like perfumes, wrist watches, good sums of money etc.. SMH for the low-life though!!
Now, in university, lies so far are on very trivial things. The soap you use to do laundry will disappear, or your bucket of water won't be where you kept it when you return after class hours. Then you'll say to yourself, 'the water spirit has come again' to console your grief *sobs*. Anyway, students in university from what I've observed in mine tend to adopt lieing as a defence mechanism when confronted with come-backs on being 'boxed up' (rich), having designer clothings and bags, reigning makeup kits and plenty times, the dream girlfriend or boyfriend.
An incident i'll never forget in my life even when I'm asleep and woken up, i'll render full details of the story.
My friend, let's call him 'Fly-G'...got into a heated argument that he had more than five hundred thousand naira in his account and that he could get any babe of his choice in school. His 'crew' (friends he hangs out with often) decided to place a bet; that if he did what he claimed he could do, all six of them would give him ten thousand naira each, and if he didn't, he was going to show them his bank account details to prove his bragging. 'See life!'
That's how my nigga asked me to give him details of one Tonye Briggs babe in my hostel who was in 200 level Economics and was also light skinned; to him, she was the complete package. I did the favour and soon, they started chatting on whatsapp and BBM, hanging out in cafeterias; going to chapel Thursday evening and Sunday services together. Fainting was almost my recourse because I didn't believe Fly-G could pull that off as a rather short, yoruba tongued, averagely semi-dark skinned guy he was. His saving grace was probably his 'wooing' techniques he had acquired from months of constant flirtation and blind dates in school. Fly-G asked this girl out some weeks after and she agreed, he won the bet.
I took up the gauntlet to find out the real truth beyond this critical situation on ground because it was surreal. Things just didn't occur this way now...Ihe mere!! (something happened). On asking Fly-G to tell me the truth, he said there was nothing to tell because he was in love with Tonye Briggs. 'o chukwunna!!'.....with this as my reply, I 'jejely' (unquestioningly) agreed and chose Tonye his 'new found love' as my next target. I got to her through different techniques, helping her fetch water in the morning, carrying her spread clothes on the line when it wanted to rain or when they were dried up since she was only two rooms away from my room. Other times, I compelled her to watch movies with me on my laptop since hers crashed and wouldn't be changed until she returned home. Suya was gotten for her by me when I felt too nice...with my acts of generosity, I earned her trust and she really liked me so. When she finally got her comfort zone and we began discreet conversations, she talked about Fly-G and what really went down between them. Their relationship was a fake based on a contract to expire few weeks to second semester examination time. I smiled inwardly and kept a straight but rather shocked facial expression; this I had to do after swearing on my late grandmother's grave and crossing my heart countless times to never disclose this 'top secret' information. Asked why she did it, she said he, Fly-G begged and as a nice person that she was, she agreed to his request helping his shameless ass in the process. Tonye equally said that he was a cool guy and now a good friend to her but she'd never date him and if he was catching feelings, he was on his own. I gave up the satirical look I had on my face because she said this with a childish 'I don't care' gusto that was demeaning at the same time insinuating that Fly-G was so not her class and type of guy; and trust me, she was right...they contrasted in almost all ramifications. Tonye spoke polished English language, was calm, spoke very little chosing her words carefully,kept little company as friends, was classy and from an extravagantly rich family. Fly-G on the other hand was just yoruba in every sense of the word..annoying, insensitive, abusive, flirtatious and from a normal Christian family situated somewhere in 'Oshogbo', capital of the state in which our university is situated. I burst into uncontrolled laughter and fell off her bed touching my belly and sides that hurt because I laughed so hard. The day had been saved, Uzochi AKA 'inspector gadget' had come to the rescue.
Frantic and extremely ecstatic as I was, I told her immediately that Fly-G fed off his room mate Nelson who she didn't know because he was a nerd and overly pimple faced guy...there was just no space on his face. Also told Tonye that Fly-G received a monthly allowance of twenty thousand naira from his parents because the governor refused to pay civil servants their salaries and pensions to retirees since his father was old and weak. Immediately I said this, her demeanour changed and she had this wearisome look like 'see how this boy has come to school to disgrace himself and instead of reading his books, he's busy chasing girls up and down forming 'Notorious B.I.G'. Advised her to shrug it off because the deed had already been done and the bet, won.
To cut this funny tale of mine short, I told 'Fly-G' I knew the stunts he pulled and it was fine because I'm faithful and wouldn't tell a soul. I advised that he should never do such again because if Tonye was a bitch, she'd let the cat out of the bag and ridicule him making his friends jeer, laugh and mock him whenever and however they liked.....and if this had happened, his 'Bad guy, Big boy ' reputation he built for himself would be soiled. Fly-G solemnly nodded his baseball cap fitted head in agreement.
Girls equally do the same thing and pretend to have lovers outside school who are money bags and give them 'goody bags' all the time. When such girls are discovered, there's no rest. Their matters are carried on the heads of different students and it becomes 'top-gist' in school.
A rather different type of lie is 'white lie'. This entails an individual refraining from the truth to save some other person from immediate harm or pressure; thinking It's harmless.
To me, all lies o, black, pink, green, red if there are, are all lies. A bad thing is a bad thing no matter how sugar coated it seems.
Illustrating my point of view is when Kelly accidentally breaks Sarah's mug in her absence and doesn't tell her even when Sarah asks in the room on her return. Kelly could claim later on that she forgot to tell Sarah because she didn't want her to scold her or get mad at her. This doesn't change the fact that the mug has been broken and cannot be re made. Kelly might be forgiven, but she's told a lie and committed a sin.
Honesty truly is the best policy and should be stuck to. A life could be saved with the truth or even saving ones self from unforeseen harm.
"A spade should be called a spade, not a shovel".
#KOSISOCHUKWU™
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