16 CHAPTER SIXTEEN NOW A CELEBRITY ON NATIONWIDE TV

Of course, Sir Boripe was known a as diamond merchant, but his weight in the nation is in his media group, he owned the largest radio and television network in the whole of Africa; when he sneeze and he want the whole world to hear it the whole world will hear it before he even finish sneezing!

As the Mayor was staging his huge campaign, the city saw the most prominent show host in the history of the nation and the whole continent of Africa announced that Tolu will be hosted on his show.

The show is called MTC show, meaning most trending celebrity show. To get on this show you must be a very prominent celebrity and you must have a trending issue.

It is a show that can lift a person to the high heaven in a minute, or bring a person down to the dust in the same minute, the moment a person appears on this show the person is in the eyes of the world already, all that person needs to do to go up is to appear for the right reason. And if a person is unfortunate to be invited for a thing done wrong, if such person fail to show up he or she will not be able to walk in the country because of the people booing!

The mysterious thing however about this programme is that you don't just get invited to this programme, the populace vote that you should be invited.

How do they do this? A citizen can nominate the trending issue in a celebrity's life as something that is worth airing, once the nomination gets to the presenter he will analyze it for a week under the incoming segments of the programme, and people who have interests in the story will begin to vote for the person to be invited. However, at every given time there are always many people been voted for, once the reigning story comes to an end, the celebrity currently having the highest vote of the populace will get invited.

Another strange thing about this show is that, once a person appears on the show and his or her story will extend beyond a day the people will vote overnight for it to continue the next night, if the story cannot attract ten million votes in a night then it will be dropped as not worth hearing because it means the people will not follow it.

So it is a show that had chewed up many celebrities, yet every who is who in the nation can do anything to appear on this show, because it let them know how much people loves or hates them. Since the programme has started, all the politicians in the country always desire to appear on it, especially those who are gunning for national office. You cannot be a president of the nation either incumbent or the incoming one without appearing on this show.

To this programme Tolu was invited after fifty thousands women sent in nominations that they wanted to hear her story which the withdrawal of Tolu did not allowed them to hear. Of course, Sir Boripe influenced some women in his employment to start the campaign for his nomination. But when those women started to clamour for her appearance, many men joined the campaign, at the end over ten thousand men sent in their nominations too.

So, when she appear on the set, the presenter warmly welcome her as the month most trending celebrity.

This is the way she introduced her. Tonight, I have with me a person that is well known to this nation and at the same time a stranger to the whole nation. Some few months ago she was totally unknown, but her refusal to appear for a wedding that could have been the wedding programme of the decade lifted her up to this celebrity status.

Today, she is here on popular demand because over sixty thousand people sent in request that she should be invited to come and tell us her side of the story that we did not hear in the court.

After this she turned to Tolu and said, "I hope you don't mind, here we keep strictly to the first name, no Mrs or mr" Tolu said, "Not at all"

"So, Tolu is the name right?" the presenter asked. Tolu answered and said, "Well a lot of people in this city knows me as Tolu, but my real name is Funmibi, however for the sake of what I know we will talk mostly about you can call me Tolu on this show"

"You are welcome" The presenter said and he continued, "I will surely get back to the issue of your name later because I will want the whole nation to know you with your real name" Tolu cuts into his speech, "Sir, if you want to get into my real name you will go beyond Funmibi because originally I was called Ewanimi but events that led to that failed wedding forced me to change to Funmibi and later to Tolu"

The show host said, It look like you are a complicated person, but don't worry I like complications, by the end of this programme people will know who you really are. For now I want you to tell us who you are without what brought you here"

Tolu said, "Well, I am privileged to start school early because my parents loved education so much but they missed the opportunity to attend school, so been their first born child they threw me into school so early; and as a gifted child i coped well and finished my university education at a very tender age,. For my first degree I study Computer science and intricate programming, and later when I went for my master I study business analysis. This formed the basis of who I am before that event and what I am now." I represent big business conglomerates from overseas in this country and to the rest of Africa.

The presenter asked, "Is that so? You look too young for that, how old are you?" Tolu said, "I told you I finished school early, I finished my Master degree at the age of eighteen and I am twenty six years old now, though the unusual events that you invited me to talk about today helped me to climb up to the stage that I am now"

"We will get to that events later, but for now let us dig around the recent happenings around your life" The presenter said and further asked, "I heard that you picked a form to contest for the office of the Mayor in this city, which all men and even most women sees as a taboos for women don't seek an elective office in this city, is it true and if it is true why do you do it and do you think you can win?

Tolu answered, " The first answer is yes I took the form. You asked why I am doing this, look, to me it makes no difference, I have been in so many business boardrooms and helped to shaped so many businesses, groomed, nursed back to life some ailing businesses, I relate well with men while doing all these and I know it won't be a different thing from this if I become a mayor.

The presenter now ask, "But will you not marry, how do you think you can cope with the burden of carrying the society and still manage your home as a woman is expected to do?

Tolu Answered, "Sir you see, I always believed a strong woman should be like a skillful ball juggler, in the circuses, they keep four or five balls floating rhythmically in the air without those balls bumping on each other and falling off, and most or our women are already like that, they just do not know it.

Go out there and you will see that a lot of women do so many things and managed themselves between so many tasks simultaneously and still keep their homes. So if it comes into our minds to go into politics it is like adding one more of those difficult things we do to our survival list.

Now coming to issue of winning, I will leave that to the electorates, let them put the two contestants on the scale, weigh our CVS, weigh our manifestoes and the way we propose to achieve our aims and vote for who they want. But I know I am opening the eyes of not just women, even men are been challenged to believe in themselves that they can rise up and do the unthinkable, as many of such in this city will surely vote for me and I will win."

With this, the presenter turned to the issue of Richie and asked, "It is well, the people have heard you and they will decide, now let us go to the reason the people demanded for your appearance on this show, tell us first how you came across Richie,"

Tolu smiled, looked at her wristwatch and said, "Do we have time for that story, because it is an unusually long story that will take us days, and it remains few minutes for the time of this show to run out"

The presenter looked at his wristwatch too and said, "You are right, but people want to hear your story and we have not even touch it, I believe they will vote for you to come again tomorrow" He turned to the cameral and added, "Fellow citizens of our great country, you have heard the most trending celebrity of today, she says her story is long and it will take us days to finish. The ball is now in your court, you have between this night to vote for her return, if not we will drop her and move to the next trending celebrity, the voting starts now, goodnight."