The rule that refuses you when you are right

A scene from a story. Illustration, not evidence. Nothing in it is a finding. What it stands in for, and what it does not establish, is set out below.

NOP: I hear am. I go talk true with you, and the true no go help him: I no fit do anything for this one.

NOP: The work no happen for here. Nobody watch am. No code, no video, no escrow — so I no get anything to stand on. If I punish that client, I dey punish person based on wetin somebody tell me. Na exactly the thing wey I no dey do, even when the person wey talk am dey right.

NOP: Wetin I fit do: if he register here, from that day forward everything he do go get witness. That na small thing to offer man wey lose 840. I sabi.

She sat with the phone in her hand and read it three times and something in her went very cold and very clear at the same time, because she had spent five months being quietly angry at this machine for being slow — and here it was, refusing to help a man she was sitting in front of, for exactly the reason it had once come back for her on a Thursday morning at 9:04.

It was the same rule. It was the same rule pointed the other way, and it did not bend for her, and if it had bent for her it would have been worth nothing on the Thursday.

She wrote, in English, because she wanted the words exact:

so you can't help him

NOP: No.

NOP: I no fit help wetin I no see. Na that one make the thing I see mean something.