Danny grow up in a slum in the notorious mile 1 Diobu water side in Rivers State, Niger Delta Region of Southern Nigeria in the late 80s. He had 5 siblings and they live with their parents in a one room apartment, their dad is a low level civil servant whose salary is 3500 Naira while their mum is a petty trader. Now one thing about this place called Mile 1 Diobu and it is notoriously is that there are so many gang and kids as low as age 9 are members of different gang and there is not a week that someone is not killed, and police raid is a constant thorn on the law abiding and criminal alike.
Danny father is a poor man who couldn't even feed his family with a salary that couldn't even afford to pay his transport fair to work and back, but he did his best to send his kids to school, there are lot of time that his kids are the only one who hasn't paid school fees and they are mocked and made fun of just because they are poor and need same education as the well to do. So life goes on until one day Danny mum left his dad without even any explanation, but it was gather that the dad want more children even as he is broke and couldn't feed his 5 kids he still want more and she left at that time Danny was 9 years old. At that age he start hustling by selling pure water and groundnut while his mate were in school, Danny was trying his best and when the gangsters with same age notice him they start trying him to join them, but he refused and so the threat start coming but he keep his cool and at same time those kids were getting into trouble and they start sending them to prison which harden Danny heart never to had anything to do with them. Unknown to Danny there was a lady in her late 20s then who was planning him, but as a kid he was not aware of it so one particular day, she send him to get her stuff and as he return from the errand she force herself on him by raping him and that was how Danny got his first taste of the forbidden apple and that is how she constantly had sex with him for years until he got relocated.
After Danny relocate from the slum, he went to stay with his aunty who was so full of hate and jealousy, his dad was transfer to another state and his mum had no chance due to her business which made her moved from one state to another at that time she was in a village with no access to any basic amenities hence the aunty.
She claimed to be a good Christian but that is not the case she jump from different men and she do no work but live on the money both Danny parents send for the up keep of their kids, and at Sunday his aunty will be in the front row crying her heart out for her redemption but after church she will be at the back rutting with the pastor. She maltreat Danny and every slight opportunity she beat him, but Danny always had a dream so it goes on and on with such bad treatment until one day Danny dad came for a visit, mind you at that time there was no means of communication such as the phone we had now, so when Danny dad return he asked him to take him away that he can't live there.
So Danny dad take him to his state of residence and enrolled him in a new school, but his dad is a womanizer who spend more on women than his kids luckily he has start making money after his transfer but those money never reflect on his life or that of his kids because of his womanizing habit. It goes on that Danny had to trek to school everyday until he got his West African Examination Certificate and then proceed to the university to study Computer Science, it was not an easy ride but he graduated with second class upper division and got a job with one of the federal agency. Danny later got married and had a beautiful baby boy. The point is that we all face so many challenges but the way we attacked our challenge matters a lot, if Danny had join the gang he would either had been a thief or a militant because that is what so many of the gang members become in the long run and most of them are dead.
Danny grow up from a broken family but that never defined who he is or what he becomes because he set his mind on a target and what to become, these days so many kids are into cultism either by self or by pressure from peers, if only parents had set a seed in their heart on what is good and bad a tendency to differentiates the destruction the kind of life a gangsterism can caused all this trouble we face in society would have been a thing of the past.
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