The oil boom had turned Lagos into a city that
breathed diesel and prayer. Buildings rose
overnight, but the ground still remembered the
old spirits—those who lived beneath the tarmac,
who licked the sweat of men chasing wealth and
asked for blood in return.
Amina, daughter of Pastor Eze, wore her father’s
sermons like a second skin. Every Sunday, she
stood beside him at the pulpit, her voice steady
as the congregation chanted, “God is our bank
account.” She believed in miracles—but not the
kind that came with diesel fumes and Land
Cruisers.
Then came Tobi. Returned from Canada with a
degree in petroleum engineering and a silence
that smelled like rain on a dry roof. He worked
for Shell’s new refinery in Port Harcourt but
came home every Friday, not to church, but to
the kiosks of Surulere where she sold hymnals.
They never spoke in words. He left a mango on
her stall. She left a prayer card in his jacket
pocket.
The city changed around them. Where once men
bartered groundnuts for cloth, now men bartered
wives for Mercedes. Amina’s father started
preaching that “the devil drives a Toyota,” but
his own SUV sat outside the parsonage, newly
painted. The miracle of oil had made even
holiness a commodity.
One night, Tobi took her to the abandoned oil
pump near Iju. The ground there still bled black.
He told her—without speaking—that his father
died there, swallowed by a sinkhole after
signing a contract to let Shell drill on
ancestral land. That night, the wind carried a
whisper only she heard: You love a man who
carries death in his bones.
The next morning, Pastor Eze found her kneeling
in the compound, hands pressed to the earth,
murmuring in Yoruba—not scripture, but a plea to
the orishas. He did not scream. He locked her in
the storeroom with a Bible and a sack of
uncooked rice.
Three days later, the power went out across
Surulere. No generator could hum. No candle
would light. The city’s lights went dark as if
God had unplugged the plug.
On the fourth day, Amina walked out. No Bible.
No hymnal. She wore a white dress stained with
soil. Tobi waited by the old pump, his hands
empty. Behind them, the refinery’s smokestacks
coughed black clouds that formed the shape of a
cross—then cracked like glass.
They left Lagos that night on a bus to Benin
City, no tickets, no money. The bus driver
refused to start until Amina spat on the
dashboard and whispered, “E no be your oil.”
The city’s lights came back on by dawn.
But Pastor Eze never preached again.
And in the quiet of his empty parsonage, the
walls began to sweat salt.
