Eyin oremi (My friends)
I know you noticed I was missing last Saturday, well my brother Tobi got married last week, and if you were not there, you missed one of the most talked about receptions this year. It was not because of the fight between two aso ebi girls, and it was not because of the small mixup with the caterer that almost turned into a whole different story but because of one man and the way he sprayed money like the currency itself owed him something.
It was one of those weddings where everyone was genuinely happy, the dance floor stayed full, the food kept flowing, and every five minutes somebody was shouting, “Money! Money! Money!”
I did not even know his name properly at first. Somebody just said “that’s Tobi’s guy from work” and everybody moved on with their lives, because at a Nigerian wedding, a stranger spraying generously is not something you interrogate, you simply join the crowd and hail him, and hail him we did.
He came out during the couple’s dance, nicely dressed and smelling like Dior Sauvage and good upbringing, took off his jacket like a man about to do something serious, and started spraying ₦1,000 notes so freely that the DJ had to shout his name into the mic just to keep up.
“Ah ah, who be this one,” Aunty Bisi leaned over and whispered to me, fanning herself with her aso-ebi gele like the excitement itself was giving her heat. “See as this man dey spray money.”
I laughed and said nothing, because honestly, I was hailing him too inside my mind. There is a certain kind of respect a heavy spray commands in this culture, and it does not matter how educated or exposed you claim to be, once someone starts throwing serious money, something in your chest sits up straight and pays attention.
Tobi’s cousin Ada was on money picking duty that night, weaving between legs with her bag wide open, scooping up everything he threw without pausing to check a single note, and honestly, who would have stopped to check in the middle of all that excitement.
It was later that night, after the last guest had gone and it was just family back at the house, counting the spray money into piles on the centre table, that things changed.
“Wait,” my cousin Chidinma said, holding a note up to the light bulb like she was checking a passport photo, and everybody paused. “This one no correct.”
She rubbed it between her fingers, turned it over, held it up again. “The texture no be like normal money. Feel am.”
The note went round the table until it reached my brother’s new wife, still in her going away dress with her feet swollen from the day. She picked it up and rubbed her thumb across it slowly.
“This is fake,” she said quietly.
Then we started checking properly, and that was when the counting began, not of naira but of how many fake notes had somehow found their way into piles, it was not one or two, and the strange part was that the fake ones were mostly the higher denominations, as if whoever printed them decided to go all out (lol).
For a second I wanted to blame uncle Central Bank himself, because he was the only person who sprayed a lot of money but nobody said his name at first. Everybody was just quiet, doing that thing where the accusation sits in the room without anybody picking it up, because picking it up means you have to hold it, and holding it means trouble.
It was Aunty Bisi who finally said something, not as an accusation, just as a thought she could not keep to herself. “Na only one person spray reach this kain amount that night o. I no dey point finger, I dey only talk wetin I see.”
Nobody agreed with her out loudob and noody disagreed either. The silence just sat there, thick, while everybody’s mind quietly did the same maths.
I sat back on the arm of the sofa and thought about it properly for the first time, because here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud. At a Nigerian wedding, the amount you spray is not just money, it is a statement. Spray small and people will smile with their mouth but their eyes will be doing calculations.
Spray big and the whole hall turns to look at you like a chief has entered the room. Nobody taught us this rule, we just absorbed it, the same way we absorbed how to greet elders without being told twice.
We never confronted him, because nobody actually had proof, just a man who sprayed more than anybody else that night and a pile of fake notes that had to come from somewhere. It could have been him. It could have been someone else entirely, someone quieter, someone nobody thought to suspect.
See you next Saturday.
Xoxo, Dara
