It
was a hot, sunny, lazy Saturday afternoon. The type that required that most
inhabitants stayed indoors with only doors and windows opened for increased
ventilation. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sparse, white clouds that
dotted it stayed put; as if there had been a hike in transportation costs up in
the stratosphere.
The metropolis had only a few trees and the shade they
offered was easily used up by drowsing, shirtless men. Ordinarily, such a day
would mean little other than the regular to the student community in these parts.
As long as they could afford it, they’d engage themselves in the hallowed pastime
of every decent, self respecting student: drugs, alcohol (usually Alomo, or
Jack Daniels, or Grey Goose vodka), parties, and sex - a whole lot of it. But
this afternoon was different; the students - all the ones on this street - were
on hard times. Mobile phones beeped as texts messages moved to and fro with
peculiar urgency. The content was usually the same; got weed?, or varied
slightly in terms of the social vice of preference.
By
2pm, the said mass of students was visibly restless. Visits came unannounced,
perhaps in the hopes of barging in on friends suspected of telling untruths
about their reefer stash. Passive aggressive levels were high; those actually
suspected to be in possession of any such contraband consumables played smart
and quickly went AWOL. You could tell there was a need for some form of
excitement and although it wasn’t immediately obvious to anyone, they did not
have to wait long.
I was seeing off a friend after a drab, barely
tolerated game of scrabble. We had just stepped out the gate when a cry rang
out from the house just opposite. It was Austin, one of the locals. He pointed
to a fleeing figure, shouting as he did so; thief, Barawo! My friend, Lareon,
dashed towards the fleeing suspect, his bulky frame moving with astonishing
speed. Austin moved next, I followed him, albeit cautiously. I broke into a jog,
noticing as I did so how surreal this whole thing was playing out. For one, the
suspect as far as I could see, though he was almost down the street, did not
move with decent pace. He was running alright, but in a rather odd manner.
Almost as if he was wading through water or more accurately, in slow motion-
not the sort of hurry you’d expect of any criminal fleeing for dear life. This
was still Nigeria after all and, mob justice was an unwritten, reverently
observed penal code. Even when he noticed he was being pursued, he did not
break (I was to learn later that he could not) into full flight. Lareon caught
up with him, grabbed him forcefully by his neck and dragged him back. Then hell
broke loose.
The
said shirtless men under trees, friends at my apartment, the guys at Austin’s, the
Grey goose vodka girls from the adjacent apartment building, and everyone else
on the street, I presume, came trooping out. Austin, an aspiring orator no
less, soaked up the attention and broke it down quick;
‘ Na thief, I be see as im enter
house but I be no suspect because plenty guys dey enter this house. Na when im
commot the house again dey shook something for pocket na im I begin dey wonder.
As I enter see say them Mark just lie down dey sleep and all the phones wey dey
connected dey charge before before don loss, I know say na dirty rugged thief
man. Na so I shout, carry stick begin dey chase and catch am. Wahlai, ask Dary,
him be dey observe.’
Stick?
catch? I pretended not to hear the little lie he tried to make me corroborate.
It did not matter anyway. A mob action was underway and no busy mob ever liked
a lecture. The Grey goose vodka girls were in action, back hand slaps landed
across the culprit’s face whilst Mark and his roommates retrieved their
gadgets. But the girls weren’t limited to the usual screaming and clawing stereotypes;
they really went in hard, smashing at least two bottles on the suspect’s head.
By the time the guy we called “Sensei” delivered his push kick to the suspect’s
chest, (as he laboured to get on his feet) he was a bloody, dusty mess covered
in painful welts from cowhide whips and a host of assorted DIY torture
instruments.
Now, I digress to talk about Sensei and his
push kick. Sensei was the dude everyone did not mess with. Built like a pro
wrestler, you’d find him working out, slicing the early morning air in fluid,
vicious, Karate chops whilst screaming; kyaah, kyaaah. I had always stayed away
from him as he would naturally pick on weaker folks to soothe his ego. I did
not want to end up in one of his demonstrations. But, his kick; I swear, I
often think about it. When he kicked that guy, two things happened and the
physics of the former is as complex as quantum mechanics if not more. The push
kick had hurled the suspect in the air and crashed him a folded pulp a few feet
away but you heard a ripping sound as soon as Sensei’s foot met his chest. The
thief-I swear, I shit you not-tore out of his trousers, half-flipped through
the air, and, landed like a bent pin, naked from waist down save his
underpants. The mob, momentarily stunned at the vicious display of trained
human capacity (or perhaps at the range traveled by the human projectile)
burst into a great cheer then chorused;
“Sensei, sensei, sensei..!!”
I
was in a fright. To be honest, and I won’t try absolving myself, I had tried
landing him a quick slap as Lareon dragged him (pleading and struggling feebly)
back to the portion of the street that led to my apartment but he ducked and I
hit Lareon instead. Lareon retaliated by sending him quick, heavy, body blows (and
that had been way before this whole community murder-intent business started). I did not want any part of what was unfolding
anymore but a mob they say is fickle and, I suspect, a guaranteed killer of
Sensei(s) even. I rushed to the trampled, torn, trousers and rumbled through
it. In the back pocket I found a heavy
wallet. To my surprise, it had a thick wad of counterfeit five hundred Naira
bills, a half used sachet of Rohyphenol, seven more sachets of Diazaphram.
Clearly, a junkie criminal or dealer. Or both. Then it hit me! He was running
that way because he was high out of his mind on the pills and God knows what
else. Someone- a familiar face, from the crowd reached out to me. I looked up
in the direction he indicated and saw “the Boar” coming my way. The Boar,(a bumbling,
overweight police officer that lived a few houses down the street with a
particular penchant for shooting threatening stares at my friends and I), moved
into the centre of the ruckus and tried to make his presence felt with some
measure of success. I made to hand over the trousers and wallet to him but
someone (one of the girls, probably aware of my feisty status with the law man),
offered to do so instead.
A
while later, two policemen on a motorcycle came and whisked the suspect away. There
was no Hilux van even. The suspect was sandwiched between the motorcycle rider
and the second policeman. The Boar then led the convoy on his own scooter as
the crowd dispersed.
After
the excitement of the past hour there was palpable anticlimax. The unspoken
question; Is that all? I walked back to my room and tried to get busy. The scrabble
tiles littered a corner of the room and the guys exchanged tales of what they
did and had intended to do until ‘’ the boar” came and “fucked” things up. Perhaps
they had expected to be allowed to beat him to death; I got bored and walked
out. One hour later, this time at the Gray Goose Vodka girls’; a mobile phone
beeped, someone had gotten a text message. Hushed, excited, chatter followed, I
looked up from the magazine I was reading, enquiringly. Bisi gets on the bed
and rolls over to me. She pushes the mag away and shows me her phone instead. It
was a text alright and it read;
“ The counterfeits fetched, got 3k
for the 7.5k I took. Got Vodka and SK. Are you down?!’’
