Chapter 1; fire burns within
"Nna ehh" a young man sighed while walking down the heat inducing road, the Enugu morning shimmered with heat, the Coal City's Okpara Avenue pulsing with life. He navigated the crowded pavement, his worn loafers sidestepping hawkers shouting, "Buy your akara! Ọkpa dị ọkụ!" The Harmattan's faint dust mingled with the aroma of roasted corn and coal-tinged air, a nod to Enugu's faded mining past. At twenty-three, Emeka was a hustler in a city of hustlers, a computer science dropout running a small phone repair kiosk near Holy Ghost Cathedral, his dreams of innovation buried under Nigeria's endless "no light" and bureaucracy.
He clutched a dog-eared notebook, its pages scrawled with app ideas: a platform to connect farmers to markets, a solar-powered payment system for traders. Emeka had sketched them in stolen moments, fueled by stories of Nigeria's tech boom in Lagos. But his cousin, Obinna, had believed in big dreams too. He'd built a startup to digitize village schools, only to be crushed by corrupt officials demanding bribes and a power grid that failed his servers. Now, Obinna sold second-hand laptops at Nsukka market, his spark gone.
Emeka paused by a keke stand, the driver blasting Afrobeat, and gazed across the street to the Enugu Tech Hub, a sleek building dwarfed by the Government House's shadow. A crowd gathered outside, buzzing around a young woman giving a pitch. "My app cuts food waste!" she declared, her tablet glowing with charts. Her name was Ada, a known face in Enugu's tech scene. "We can change Nigeria, one solution at a time!" The crowd clapped, but Emeka noticed a suited man nearby, whispering to a security guard, his eyes cold. Whispers of "taxes" and "permits" floated through the air, code for the bribes that killed dreams.
Then, it hit him. Obinna's broken servers, the blackouts choking his kiosk, the farmers losing crops for lack of markets, it wasn't just bad luck. Nigeria's system was rigged to keep the small man down. Emeka's chest tightened, his mind flashing to his village in Nkanu, where elders spoke of onye kwe, Chi ya ekwe—if you agree, your spirit agrees. He saw a different path, not protests or placards, but code and cash. If he could build a tech business, scale it, and gain wealth, he could fund real change—schools, clinics, markets, lifting Enugu from the grassroots up.
He opened his notebook, scribbling: App to bypass middlemen. Solar servers. No bribes. His hands shook with purpose and resolve. Emeka wasn't Ada, shouting to crowds. He'd be the quiet storm, building an empire to break the system's chains. As he stepped toward the Tech Hub, a man in a suit blocked his path, smirking. "You want in? Nye m ego." Emeka's jaw clenched. He's been here countless times but still can't get used to this extortion.
As the sun dipped behind Ngwo's hills, Emeka's resolve burned like Enugu's ancient coal. He'd build, earn, and change Nigeria or die trying.