SILENCE IS GOLDEN

The intriguing African e-mails continue apace. Here’s one from Ogechi Nerimandu, who is a highly placed official of the Nigerial National Petroleum Association (NNPA) in Lagos. Ogechi and his three partners are in need of a ‘silent, foreign partner’ (they’ve heard about my natural tendency towards taciturnity, then) whose bank account they can use to stash away nearly twenty million pounds. The funds accrued to them ‘legitimately, but discreetly,’ from a job they did in Lagos. Must have been some job – The Italian Job, perhaps? Why they need me is apparent when they declare that, under the Civil Service Code of Conduct, they cannot have overseas bank accounts. It seems odd when you’re so blatant a crook that you’re concerned about a trivial thing like code of conduct. My share of the spoils is 20%, which is again described by Ogechi as ‘legitimate, but discreet.’ The discretion extends as far as third parties, for he pleads with me not to expose this information to anyone else. I have to say I have broken that condition by writing about it in 'The Unpublished Humorist', so, regrettably, I have disqualified myself from the whole process. Then there is a missive from Richard R Ndlovu, whom I’m sure I recall from several years ago trundling up and down the wing, to no great effect, for Sheffield Wednesday, if it wasn't indeed Sheffield United. Anyway, Mr Ndlovu informs me that the President of Nigeria, no less, has ‘stepped into the payment’ of what he describes as my ‘contract fund.’ Richard and El Presidente are obviously under the impression that I am a contractor of some sort. It appears that certain buyers in Nigeria are deliberately withholding payments to suppliers, using the flimsiest possible excuses (no different to here, then) and the president has stepped in to order immediate reparations to those wronged contractors, of which I am one. Richard says that a meeting took place recently at which my ‘contract file’ was examined. After the representatives of the concerned government bodies had gone through my file, they found a lot of ‘official irregularities, impending stop orders and complexities surrounding the payment.’ I bet they did, as anyone would if they went through any of my files. As a result, even though I haven’t done a stroke of work for anybody east of King’s Lynn in my life, I am to receive a part-payment of $15 million. Mr Ndlovu should stick to football – it’s a grubby business these days and there should be any number of contractors willing to share in his good fortune.