Loko Loko Part Two By Tunji Suleiman

a man that has a beautiful wife and a man that has a mango tree by the roadside have the same problem.” Igbo proverb.

Her allure is strong and her magic potent. Men beg to spend on her of their own volition. It is to her that you will hear a man say “Your wish is my command” and mean it. Her currency is wealth, power and fame. She cannot endure hardship or lack or sacrifice of any description for any length of time in a relationship; it must be abundant and jolly always or she exits or turns the man’s life to hell on earth in the meanwhile. The omo òdò àgbà who learned from parents, cousins, uncles, aunts, housewives and grannies in the agbo’lé, (unlike the ajebutter, whose only tutors are parents and schoolteachers) knows not to be taken in by extraordinary beauty that no man may possess. He has heard the refrain, “Don’t fall for Lókolóko” for so long. Like ìjímèrè, monkey, he was counselled to climb trees selectively, lest he lands atop igi aládi, one infested with ants. If you heard the stories but missed the lessons, you may go and buy èko, corn pap, where the ledge is high and beyond reach. The lad that didn’t ask or listen at home will learn outside, the hard way. That you don’t marry gold digger and social climber rolled into one as bride for marital bliss. Because, say or do whatever you may, she will dá e kojá, walk over you, from the commons to the royals, from courtier to prince and onto king. The ablest of men is pawn on her chessboard. Woe unto the Dangote or Elumelu or Otedola that crushes on her. Oh, he may escape bankruptcy for sure; but not emotional damage from unrequited love and loss of breeze-like beauty to higher male forces of nature. Even if you are on the Forbes list, but not No. 1, you are dispensable transit towards the next on the line-up of which none is the terminus or destination. Oligarchs also have masters, e.g presidents. With her, the rich also cry. The Ibos of southeastern Nigeria contemplated her dilemma in a proverb which roughly translates “a man that has a beautiful wife and a man that has a mango tree by the roadside have the same problem.” Every passerby may want to pluck; and, as a cultured friend puts it, “the rule of numbers must apply”. The daring bloke who finds himself thus entangled is told to stop, take stock and recalibrate. One such devised to take the most for the least he could give, while it lasted. He chose to chop and clean mouth, wash hand, drink water and drop cup in a manner akin to chewing but not swallowing or spitting out, and instead hiding under the tongue or inside the cheek for longer draws on juicy before discarding chaff. The prudence of his workaround proved tenuous and the prospect risky. For he who feeds on what he has provided not from a woman finds that he eats feces. And he who tarries with a lascivious woman soon succumbs to heartbreak or fatality.She may bring home death or disease unknowingly, passed on by males outside, sharing the goods and looking to take over. Also, she may strike preemptively by procuring do-as-I-say or other metaphysical apparatus that kills a man in all but body, yet keeps him alive; or worse conspire murder by poison or contract. No one knows better than the Lókolóko that chances for the next marriage may be served better by widowhood than divorce. Widows may be looked upon with sympathy, but divorcees are usually viewed with suspicion.Man, lend yourself brain and make that early call – you don’t have and may never muster the means to please or keep an unfettered beauty, strive as you may. This woman is not only a predator of men, but also a blight unto other women. The average woman will get a suitor who will marry her and they live happily or manageably ever after. The above average may attract perhaps half a dozen. She will marry one and they may make a passable life together. The beauty of uncommon appeal attracts 1000 and 1 men. She too will marry one per time or in succession. Problem is: 1000 others caught in her web will long for her, unable to get over her, for life. Invariably, their 1000 wives would also be unhappy, husbands rendered incapable of love, bound as they are in the spell of one extraordinary but unattainable woman. For the men that know her intimately through marriage or concubinage, her description would vary on a binary estimation of the relationship, uphill or downhill at the material time. When she has just been won, usually when all is hunky-dory, as romance sizzles and titillates and she condescends to be possessed; she cuts the angelic façade of the prized trophy, proudly displayed to friends or visitors or shown off at parties. When the relationship sours and enters the downhill precursor to divorce or separation, usually either because the man has fallen on hard times, or she has ‘seen him finish’ and/or has cast eyes out and/or set sight higher than his means, the mask drops and the beholding eye sheds scales, clearing all presence and illusion. Clarity descends and angel turns to fiend. True pictures, through the fog of complicated emotions and mental trauma emerge starkly, depicting insufferable vanity, mundane emptiness, unmitigated avarice, seared conscience, venomous loquaciousness, and the icy meanness of toxicity. At this stage, Lókolóko resents marital or romantic claims and rejects accountability demands on her, that she terms másumátò. She sets her own schedule to come and go and to do as she pleases. She leaves without ìdágbére, notice or restraint or sentimentality especially if she has started to look forward to a new life with a new lover that is already waiting outside, or simply wills for somebody’s son to come one day to take her far away. It is rare, but not unheard of for her to move down the social ladder, e.g. from the professional soldier to the Oluomo type, with assurance of plentiful free bread. And sometimes, but infrequently, she gets thrown out by the husband she has started to devalue on her way out while still bidding her time, especially when she gets caught in philandering games, or when the man comes to term with the futility of trying to please or keep her, gives up or simply tires out of carrying her burden made heavier by inclusion of fanciful bubble and packing in stones. There is no gain for him who invests fortunes on Lókolóko; for he will, as surely as dawn follows dusk, lose her. To count on love and conjugal bliss is to daydream as she is incapable of love or commitment to anyone but herself and her amoebic, insatiable desires. The return on invested time, resources and emotions to him that falls deeply for her is loss, heartache and premium tears.Back to Òróbìnrindòrí.The bank eventually showed up to drag him to court to answer for his fraud. It had been two torturous months of anxiety through which every knock at the door brought panic and fear, heralding the coming day of reckoning. When it finally arrived, he was ready. He locked himself in the toilet. By the time the door was broken open, it was his lifeless body that the police brought out and laid in the yard for all to see. He had committed suicide by ingesting poison. As Alhaja predicted, there was no happy ending for the uncle of modest to moderate means befallen by the misfortune of romantic entanglement with a beautiful woman with wanton eyes and long throat. I don’t know what became of her, but doubt that she ended well either. I may ask if or when I run into the original narrator of her tale and maybe pen a sequel. Young men: Stay away from Lókolóko. Her wanton eyes enchant. Her bosom leads to the grave.Young women: Don’t emulate Lókolóko. Her àtibòtán, legacy, is dubious. Her wage is death.

Suleiman, entrepreneur and public affairs analyst writes from Lagos, Nigeria.