Two questions a source may ask a researcher

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.

"Before I play am. Two questions."

"Go on."

"Who dey pay you."

"A university in Cape Town, badly, and a foundation in Nairobi, slightly less badly. Neither of them is either platform. I'll show you the grant letters, and you should ask to see them, and you should notice that I offered."

Chika considered this. "Second one. Wetin you go do with the man?"

"I don't understand the question."

"He no be example." Chika's voice did not rise. "You go put am for paper. 'The case of a 58-year-old electrician.' Then person go read am for London and say ah, interesting. Then wetin? He still no get 840. His wife still dey look am." She tapped the table once, flat. "So before I play am. Wetin you go do with the man."

Adaeze sat back.

It was, she would say later, the single best question anyone asked her that year, and it was asked in a suya place by someone with no institutional standing whatsoever, and she had no good answer to it, and she said so.

"Nothing that gets him his money," she said. "I want to be honest with you, because if I dress that up you'll hear it. I cannot get him his money. What I can do is make it so that the next four thousand of him don't happen, and I can only do that if I can show why it happened in a way that a regulator can't argue with. That's the entire offer. It's a bad offer. It's the only one I have."