Every Nigerian knows that an owambe has three sacred pillars: the aso ebi, the live band, and the cooler of party jollof. You can manage if the band arrives late. You can manage if your aso ebi tailor sews your sleeve like a parachute. But if the jollof cooler goes missing? Wahala don land.
That is exactly what happened last Saturday at Aunty Bisi’s 60th birthday party, and I was there to witness the whole drama with my two eyes and my one plastic plate.
The Disappearance
It was 3:47 p.m. The MC had just finished praying for the celebrant for twenty minutes, and the band was warming up. The serving girls marched out with five coolers of jollof, lined up like soldiers on parade. Everybody counted them. Nigerians at a party can count coolers faster than a bank cashier counts naira.
Then the MC called everybody to dance the celebrant in. We danced. We sprayed money. Uncle Tunde did his famous “leg work” that looks like he is stepping on an invisible cockroach. When we returned to our seats, there were only four coolers.
The silence that fell on that hall was louder than the speakers. Even the baby on Mama Ronke’s back stopped crying, as if he knew this was serious.
The Investigation Begins
Aunty Bisi’s younger brother, Uncle Femi, appointed himself Chief Investigating Officer. Nobody voted for him. He simply removed his cap, folded his agbada sleeves, and said, “Nobody is leaving this hall until we find that cooler.”
He started questioning people like a detective in a Nollywood film. “Where were you at 3:47?” he asked the DJ.
The DJ looked insulted. “Sir, I was playing music. You heard me. Everybody heard me.”
Next suspect: the serving girls. They swore by every grain of rice in Nigeria that they had brought out only five coolers and returned none. One of them pointed at the gate man. The gate man pointed at the photographer. The photographer pointed his camera at Uncle Femi and took a picture, which did not help the investigation at all.
The Prime Suspects
- Cousin Dayo: Arrived with a backpack. Who brings a backpack to an owambe? A man with a plan, that is who.
- Mama Caro from the next street: Nobody invited her, yet she was sitting at the high table.
- The rented generator boy: Kept disappearing behind the hall “to check the gen”. For forty minutes.
Searching the Evidence
Uncle Femi demanded to search Cousin Dayo’s backpack. Dayo opened it slowly, like a magician revealing a trick. Inside: a phone charger, a power bank, another power bank, and a small extension box. The man was not stealing jollof. He was running a mobile charging business at the party! He had already charged eleven phones at fifty naira per bar.
Mama Caro was cleared too. She had simply wandered into the wrong owambe because there were three parties on the same street, and she decided she liked our small chops better. Honestly, we respected her judgement.
Then everyone turned to look at the generator boy. He raised his two hands. “I no touch anything o! I just dey sleep small behind the gen.” Na so he confessed to sleeping on duty, but not to stealing rice.
The Shocking Twist
Just as Uncle Femi was about to call a family meeting to decide the punishment for an unknown criminal, Aunty Bisi herself walked in from the back room. She was holding the missing cooler.
“Why is everybody looking at me like that?” she asked.
It turned out the celebrant had kept that cooler aside for her church members, who were coming later. She did not want them to arrive and meet empty coolers like last year, when the choir sang three extra songs because they were too hungry to stop.
The whole hall burst out laughing. Uncle Femi quietly put his cap back on and went to sit down, as if he had never been the Chief Investigating Officer. The band started playing again. Cousin Dayo charged two more phones.
Lessons From the Jollof Investigation
- Always count the coolers before you start dancing.
- Never appoint yourself detective at a party you did not pay for.
- If you see a cousin with a backpack, he might just be an entrepreneur.
- When in doubt, ask the celebrant first. She knows where the rice is.
By the end of the night, everybody got food, the church members were happy, and Aunty Bisi danced until 9 p.m. in her second outfit of the day. All is well that ends with jollof.
Has anything ever gone “missing” at an owambe you attended? Share this story with your party people and drop your own owambe gist in the comments!
Featured image: Photo: "Party Nigerian jollof rice" by Halima Waziri, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Openverse — source
