Review: Pay Up
In Pay Up, we follow the daring decision of Anu, son of a late police officer who was killed in action while protecting a politician, Senator Kayode Ishola. Ishola ad the police force had abandoned his family after many pleas for assistance. Anu had big dreams of being a journalist, holding people in power to account and bringing fair and balanced news to the people. But once tragedy struck their family, all that went into flames. Now, bitter and desperate, a golden opportunity opens up to make Ishola pay and he won't let it slip away.
Review by Philo O’fuose
Author: Osagie Onolunose
Rating: 3 STARS
As the author already let on in the title, Pay Up is all about Anu's eagerness or even desperation to make Ishola and the system Pay his family what it owed them. The author went straight to action, no killing time. From the first page, we already see Anu in his lowest of lows habitat which is the busy high way traffic of Lagos. He works as what is called, agbero, a public transport ticket salesman for the NURTW. This is some sort of mafia-style tax collection system for the state government and the foot soldier chase bus drivers in daredevil fashion for their daily levies. This is where we are introduced to Anu.
Anu has a younger brother, Dare who just turned 22 and already joined the police force as an academy recruit. Anu strongly disapproved of this decision mostly because of their strong dislike for the force after what it did to their late father. Dare didn’t think he was left with choices. Hate it or love it, the force was what their family knew. And it was better than chasing danfo buses down Lagos traffic under the sun. They have a younger sister, Ife, who finished secondary school not long ago and already decided higher education wasn't for her and had fallen into the orbit of a prominent cyber scammer whom she was dating and spent most night with. The brothers hated that she was in that place, but have no answer to it.
This established setting of their dire situation set the tone for the next phase of the book. A former colleague of their father and now a senior officer, Sunday Olumiti presents Anu with an inside information about a van full of hard currency cash in the compound of Senator Ishola. The cash belonged to the political party, to be used for campaign in the coming general election. As a top officer whose unit are tasked with ensuring the movement of the cash from Ishola's compound to the party's headquarters where it will be shared to politicians, Olumiti will provide all the necessary information and advice on the attack. However, the job cannot be done by anyone in Olumiti's unit. This makes Anu the perfect man for the job. He's an outsider and has enough anger directed at Ishola.
The suspense of the plot is captivating. Page after page, we are drawn closer to the heat as Anu struggles with his internal conflicts. Should he tell Dare about it? How could he hide it from him? What would happen to his siblings if things go sideways? How would he find a right partner to do this with?
Pay Up is a striking expose into the dark underbelly of Lagos crime world, the corruption in the police force and the many faces of its victims. Osagie, who is fast becoming a name in Nigeria literature scene did a beautiful job on this one. The prose it quick and punchy. Characters are natural and erratic. And just like in the real Lagos world where you never know what to expect, Pay Up delivers a plot where the next scene takes you by suprise.
If there's anything that could have been better, it will be the lenght. It feels like in a big to keep the pace fast, the author had sacrificed word lenght. Pay Up is a heist story that offers more thrill in the build up to the heist than most heist stories' actual heist scene.