When we were living in Uyo. There was this tall slim guy who owned a restaurant at the back of our compound.

His food tastes nice but he doesn’t get customers. What this guy does is every day after he finishes cooking he will be going from shop to shop and house to house reminding people he sells food and they should come and patronize him.

Sometimes this guy will cook and the next day the food will get spoiled due to lack of constant electricity then in Uyo. So what he does was any food that remains before he goes home he will still call he’s neighbors to come and pack the food instead of the food to spoil.

All this was happening around 2014. This guy didn’t give up despite he doesn’t make too much sales. Then around 2016, he started selling roasted bush meat, Dog meat, palm wine, and roasted catfish too. He gradually turned his restaurant into a beer parlor and customers started coming.

The small spot couldn’t accommodate his customers and he rented an empty land which many of us knew how he got the place with loans he took.

Around 2019 the place started booming. Me and my friends go there two or three times a month. What I normally eat there is dog meat or pepper soup and if you taste what they prepare there àla agbà godî small. Oh, I forgot to tell you he then got married and started running the new place with his wife.

Last year the pictures of this guy were all over Facebook. People were dragging him that he was using water bathed from a déàd body to cook and that was why he was having massive customers. I quickly called one of my friends in Uyo because I had left Uyo already. Immediately he picked the first thing she said to me was:
O boy you have implicated me oh how do I start vomiting what I’ve eaten from this guy you introduced me to?
What he was saying wasn’t what I wanted to confirm from his I ended the call instantly.

I told myself this guy couldn’t handle this because I knew him too well. I started commenting on every post they made against him. I started defending him and was telling the story of his life how he started from nothing to something but they would only call me names, attack me, and call me one of them.

His BP rose and he was admitted to the hospital. The dragging got worse on social media. They started posting he was confessing in the hospital. I remembered our neighbor who knows him too well I called him. He said I shouldn’t mind what people are posting online that he didn’t do any of those things and he wasn’t confessing. None knew how that story came about it was just a sponsored attack on him. I told our neighbor this guy I know will not survive this the guy agreed with me because we all know him.

This guy didn’t last up to one month he dîéd last year and people also rest too. The truth is this guy was innocent of everything they said about him. The dragging was sponsored by people selling the same thing he sells. Many people living in Uyo will know the story.

We live in a wickéd world always remember that. The same people who will ask God to bless you during your hard times will still be the ones to fight you when they see God has started blessing you.

Some will know you make your wealth genuinely yet they will tag you a ritualîst just to bring you down to where you started.

And please before you join people to drag anybody make sure you know the whole story.

Thousands of people will be shouting God forbid I’ve never kîlléd someone before and I will never kîll anybody not knowing they have mûrderéd someone through dragging.

Lastly, anytime someone or a of people starts calling you out online please deactivate all your social media handles and stay indoors for a while. Your sanity first. If anyone comes to you to tell you what they are saying about you online kindly walk the person out. We mostly say we don’t care about what people think or say about us but secretly our pillow receives all the tears.

©: Amaka Ember