How My Sim Card Nearly Killed Me

You can’t understand fear until somebody starts shouting ‘Ole’ at you in a market.

Trust me, what you think is fear will evaporate. The day a woman grabbed my shirt and started shouting ‘Ole’, was the day that my life changed.

I nearly passed out!

I was walking outside the Ogba Retail market and an angry woman of about 50 years, standing with two policemen, kept shouting at me from across the street. They were standing beside a police van. She looked slightly familiar, but I couldn’t place her face, so I ignored her because my phone was ringing very loudly.

I had just gotten an iPhone 8 Plus and I needed to be careful in getting it out of my pocket (I was scared of thieves o). Besides, I didn’t buy a phone cover or a protective screen guard, so I was extra careful. I didn’t have the money to repair a 2-day old phone.

I picked up the call and I heard a woman abusing me in fluent Ibo. I dropped the call and continued walking. I couldn’t annoy my boss again since I had been late every day of that week.

‘Gba!’, someone hit me from the back, and I turned to see the angry woman from across the road shouting at my face. Instantly, she pulled my shirt and began crying. The next thing I heard, chilled my blood, “Ole ooooo!Thief o, onye-oshi!”, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

I froze, I couldn’t even speak or defend myself. All the lynching stories I had ever heard flashed through my mind. What did I steal? I hadn’t even taken breakfast. My life had not begun. My girlfriend was quarrelling with me, my mother was still angry that I was dating a girl from another tribe. What was happening?!

My mind was playing tricks on me, yet the woman was shouting and bouncing violently beside me.  A police man was trying to remove her hands from my neck but people began to gather and finally, my mouth opened. “I’m not a thief”, I croaked reaching for my ID card. “I’m not a thief, please. I’m a teacher at Orion Nursery and Primary school”, I said just before another person slapped my face. I was deathly scared when I saw somebody search for something on the side of the road. A large crowd had gathered and they were not letting the policemen to talk or move near me.

Two days after, I sat outside the Ogba Police station, my mother was shaking her head at me from the car. I had spent 2 nights in police custody. My iphone was in a nylon on the police station’s counter. The screen was broken, caked in mud and it was rubbish, and yet I could not be happier about the outcome of my predicament.

Turns out that the woman meant business, she had tracked the sim card after I made a few calls, she had gone to the police, the telco company, the court!  She visited my house just before I left, I had absentmindedly passed her on my way out and my olofofo neighbor had pointed me out! Who does that? She had been on the way to my school and had spotted me!

I had almost lost my life because the guy who sold me the iPhone in computer village – I think his name was Kenneth – had ‘helped’ me with a SIM card. He said he would give me for free and I didn’t have to go through the wahala of registration and blah blah.

I had been happy that I didn’t have to spend an extra N100 or go to any experience centres. See, I could have died because of N100 and because I didn’t want to register a SIM card! Kai! Imagine that! So, 6 months after the wahala, I now use a phone of N45,000 and I’m more than satisfied.

Two days after I bought my phone at a proper store (I paid the transport to Shoprite), I used my two legs to walk into the MTN store there, with my drivers’ licence to register and I was out in 10 minutes. I walked outside and nobody was shouting my name or trying to kill me. Abeg, be careful and don’t move near used sims or sims that have been registered already. Don’t summon your village people with your own hand.