This is superstory.

It is very easy for you to tell me you will give me $5 million this evening and get me a brand-new 2024 G-Wagon the morning after. You can also say you will buy me shares in Apple worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and fly me to Dubai to shop for gold till I drop at the souk. But that, of course, will only be a super story. Wale Adenuga did a lot for our nation with the weekly Thursday entertainment, but nothing compares to the super stories that are running on a daily basis around us.

The first super story performance was from my father. In 2005, he went missing, probably after saying he was going to get diapers or milk. When he resurfaced in 2010, he said he was going to buy me a mansion and make up for lost time. This is super storryyyyyyyyyyy.

The echo of the promise was as empty as when the president proclaimed “renewed change” during his campaigns, only for us to experience a life of strife and sorrowssss after he settled into office.

Then there are the stories parents love to tell, how they fought demons and bush babies on their 200km walk to school, only to still be the first in their class. God bless my mother, she never gave me any of those tales. The only thing she ever told me was that I would fall pregnant the moment a boy rubbed my arm, right after I got my first period. Thankfully, Mummy Basit corrected her and explained, in crude detail, how pregnancy actually happens. Imagine if she hadn’t? I might have gone on practicing social distancing with boys, ensuring no one touched my arm so I wouldn’t end up pregnant.

In JSS2, the teachers, especially our buxom principal, emphasized the importance of virginity to us girls. In fact, the math teacher, Mrs. Ilechukwu, told us she gave birth to two beautiful girls after years of infertility because she used her virginity as a prayer point. We were therefore encouraged to use ours as intercessions to become whatever we wanted in life. Since then, I have been using mine to pray for a brand-new Benz. Yet here I am, still trekking across Lagos while inhaling the spicy odor of bus conductors’ armpits. It seems that, once again, I have been told another super story.

I also remember crying myself to sleep one night after my older cousin told me I was going to grow agbalumo on my head because I mistakenly swallowed a seed. I stuck my fingers down my throat and drank gallons of water, but the seed refused to budge. My cousin then suggested blows to my belly to force it out. Thankfully, one of my aunties walked in, suspicious of our sudden silence, and stopped the madness.

And there are painful stories that hurt as deep as the collective pain we all feel on Thursday nights when NEPA suddenly takes the light. But even that is nothing compared to an uncle whining you and telling you he was going to send your CV to his friends that work in CBN, Microsoft, NNPC only to leave all your Whatsapp messages on read. A simple “I don’t have any feedback yet” would have sufficed, but why be honest when posturing and performance of kindness earn a better reputation?

The same thing happened when sneaky Ibrahim told my friend Jumai that he loved her and wanted to marry her. She asked for time to think, but she was angry that he had hidden his feelings for so long with the flimsy excuse of not wanting to distract her from her studies. As if a law student would abandon her books just to daydream about him. Men really do rate themselves. Anyways, Ibrahim turned out to be another storyteller because he got married exactly two weeks later.

One of my friends, Toye, once asked a Sabi Boy how he was suddenly making so much money. The guy said it was from streaming on an app called Bigo, where you build a community and get paid in dollars. I told another friend, FK, and the three of us downloaded the app. We came out with nothing. Imagine us thinking Bigo was how a Sabi Boy bought a Toyota Highlander. LMAOOOO.

Not all stories are ludicrous, though. Some are just plain hilarious. What is funnier than your boyfriend relocating to the UK and promising to send for you once he is settled, only for him to keep postponing the reunion date while swearing the white lady you keep seeing in his video calls is just a flatmate?

Then there are the bizarre stories that are so haphazard you wonder how they were even cooked up. There was Ajela in Ilorin, accused in the early 2000s of washing corpses and cooking with their bathwater. Or Alhaja Ayo Olounje, who never recovered her business after a similar rumor. My mother, I remember, often got me food from Ajela and another amala spot in Oja Iya back then because that was the only time I could eat solids and wipe my plate clean. Maybe the food I ate from those places explains why I currently have only ₦569 left in my account with three more days before my salary arrives.

There was also the era of missing penises and stolen breasts. And the sightings of mermaids that often ended with the camera of the person recording unable to capture the moment, or their screen bursting when they managed to capture one. It is no different from the people who often run into dead acquaintances in a distant city or town, only for the dead acquaintance, often called an Akudaya, to turn into sand or disappear the moment their name is called. Which makes me wonder, what if the Akudaya runs a TikTok or IG account? Will it also disappear with them? Imagine the person you have been chatting and flirting with online turns out to be an Akudaya who has been dead since 2016? It is well.

I would have loved to tell you the joyful stories about how I finally moved from stress to flex, but I am still in my waiting period. God’s time is different from mine, after all. We are nothing but pencils in the hands of the Creator.

What is your superstory?