BN Prose: Audacity of Hope

Based on a true story

“Jerry! I don dey drive be that oh! Thank you!” She smiled, her appreciation lighting up her deep brown eyes.

He chuckled, “Na my pleasure but your driving remain small oh” He leaned over as he tried to kiss her full on her lips.

The car jerked forward as a reaction. “Jerry! Wetin naa? You wan kill us? I never master this thing well-well oh!” She snapped jokingly, swatting him on his thigh as she stabilized the car.

“We don wan turn corner oh, make I slow down?” She asked tentatively.

“Rita, Na slow you go slow down oh” Jerry said

“Ehn I dey press the brake now, e no dey brake. Abi which one I go press?” She said, starting to sound agitated.

“CHEI! Rita, slow down the car na!” Jerry said, sounding flustered. She slowed down only just a bit and neogitated the turn, her movements a bit haphazard.

“Oya straight your hand oh! see that man wey dey by the gutter! You wan kill am?”

***

Holding Cell,

Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad [FSARS] Annex

Police Command

Adeniji Adele,

Lagos

11.00 am

I looked at the angry young boy hunkered over in the middle of the room. He was no more than 16 by my estimations but he had already begun his journey here in The Republic, as we call this place. I shook my head in sadness, because like me, he should not have been here. The newswire in this place were pretty effective so I knew why exactly he was here. He’d been arrested for armed robbery, he was the only one in the gang that had been caught but he had refused to say anything. Knowing the system we have, he’d be here a very long time.

I walked over and rested my arm on his shoulder, in my own little way of showing camaraderie. He whipped his head from its downward facing position and looked at me with so much venom that even I flinched quite a bit. He stormed off angrily. I smiled, sad. Seconds after, a resounding slap rang out. I looked up to find the Chief Whip  just behind the young boy, his hand raised, ready to deliver another slap to the back of his head again.

“Mayana! Fade!” I shouted across the room.

“Professor, leave me” Mayana shouted back across the room. A big fan of theatrics he held on to the boy while still answering me. “Leave me, make I handle the boy! Who him papa be? Him no sabi Professor for here?!”

“E don do, Mayana oh!” I walked quickly over and released the boy from Mayana’s grasp. I led him to my corner of the room. He was still hunkered angrily over but I motioned for him to sit right next to me and he surprisingly did.

We both said nothing for a few minutes. I wondered why I even bothered, could it have been because in a few hours I was due to be out of there after 3 years of unlawful incarceration? Or that the same anger he felt, I once felt it too? These thoughts swirled in my head while I finally settled on something to say.

“See, even though they call me Professor, my name really is Nnamdi. And I’m here for petty theft even though I really didn’t do it” I said, staring out into space hoping I would somehow connect with him. He burst out laughing, and the words that came out of his mouth stunned me for a few seconds.

“And so is every hapless mortal trapped in this place!” He said, still laughing. I was glad the ice had broken finally, but still surprised that he had such a good command of English. You see, most people in this place never went beyond primary school. So finding someone who could string ‘hapless’ and ‘mortal’ properly in the same sentence was definitely a surprise.

“Why then are you here, boy?”

“I am here because in this country called Nigeria, we have a system that doesn’t work.” He said, the anger again returning to his face. His singular sentence brought sadness upon my soul. Because truer words have not been said. Why else would a boy of no more than 16 be remanded along with the most hardened of criminals? Why would there be innocent men incarcerated along with the guilty?

“Young man–“

He cut in “Can you stop calling me young man and being condescending already? I’m 17 years old dammit!”

“Okay, okay. Sorry sir. I didn’t mean to offend you. My question is, how bad could your story possibly be?”

“When I was 10, my dad was killed by armed robbers even though they had taken all that they wanted to. But they killed him! For the hell of it!” He said, raising his voice a bit. As if he remembered where he was, he lowered his voice to a whisper.

“And I grew up to be this man, my mother could get no job because she was no longer young anymore. My mates!” His temper flaring again.

“My mates were making millions off internet scams. Let’s not talk about the potbellied fools in Abuja, plundering this country to smithereens. I couldn’t take it anymore, I found likeminded friends and started the armed robbery gang.” He said, dropping into silence.

I sighed, shaking my head sadly. The boy told the truth. How do you give hope to someone  so jaded at such a young age? What happened to innocence and carefree attitude of youth? He, the Future of Nigeria had been failed by its Present.

“What’s your name?”

“Akin”

“Akin, I’ll tell you a very short story. After the story I’ll ask you a question”

Adekunle Street, Mushin

Lagos.

He laid his day’s wages on makeshift coffee table. All N1,500 of it. He literally dragged himself to the only bed in his one room apartment. He sighed, inwardly asking The Divine how much longer a university graduate would continue as a site laborer. He pulled off his day clothes while still seated on the bed.

She walked in – the light of his life. His wife was the only ray of hope in the gloomy times, and her smile like the one she had beaming at him at that moment always chased the dark clouds in his heart away.

“How was your day, Di m?” She smiled, as she walked into the small room with both her hands behind her back, her soft brown eyes tinkling with mischief.

“The usual” He sighed. “But what are you hiding, you this woman?”

As if making a last minute the decision, she whipped her arms from behind her back revealing two letters in each hand. He moved to grab both, but she stepped back.

“Ah-ah! Why so greedy ehn?” She chuckled, still smiling.

“Give this thing to me, woman!” He was laughing at this point.

“I should give it you, huh?” She replied, raising an eyebrow and laughing along with him.

“Chioma!” He chided her.

“Oya you have to pick one first, in fact let me give you the one to read first.” Both envelopes were brown, so she handed him the one in her left hand first.

In his eagerness, he tore the envelope and read its contents in a haste. “Nwunye m! You are pregnant!” He jumped off the bed and picked her up in his arms. He turned her round and round in a circle as tight as the space in their little room could offer.

“Hey-hey, Nnamdi small-small on the baby now. You want him to have a small head like you abi?” She joked, with her arms tight around his neck. He laughed hard, and hugged her tight. But his happiness was tinged with sadness when his eyes alighted upon his day’s wages on the table. N1,500 per day -when you could find a place to work. How could you pay rent and raise a child with such measly money. His wife broke his train of thought as she pulled herself from his tight embrace.

“Oya, it’s time to open the second envelope oh” She said to him, her own happiness still untainted much unlike his own. He was slower to open the second envelope, even though he found it odd that the envelope had the logo of Shell Nigeria Gas Limited on it.

He screamed at reading the heading of letter, “WHAT???!!! Jesus!” He sank to the ground.

“Jesus Bu Eze” He kept repeating almost hysterically with tears in his eyes. Chioma joined her husband on the ground and held on to him from behind, tears welling up in her eyes as well. When he had regained his composure, he stood up pulling his wife along with him. He kissed her lips and held her close.

“We must celebrate Oh!  This is good news!” He said

She laughed “We’re celebrating now.  I made Egusi with Okporoko”

“Oh very good” He said, picking N500 out of the money on the table “Let me go and buy malt so we can use to wash it down”

“Don’t go joo. You’d have to go all the way up the street for malt when we can just buy Seven-Up from Mama Joy three doors down” She said, with a little concern in her eyes.

“It’s ok, O? I am energized by this news. I will run there and back quickly”

***

And so Nnamdi, rushed out of his house at the end of the street to go and buy malt for himself and his wife. His happiness could be felt right down to his toes. He was almost skipping along the road like a little boy. A short ways from his house, he saw across the road a small crowd gathered in front of the supermarket.

With his nose in the air, he whistled his favorite song off tune in the evening breeze. He bought the drinks, without incident and had to drop his change as deposit. In his happy mood, he told them they could keep the change and he happily walked out on his way back home again.

He was almost at home when he saw that the crowd gathered in front of the supermarket had moved out on the street. There was a bit of noise and shouting but he sincerely could not care less. Heck, he would be moving out of this dingy area soon anyway.

“That’s HIM! He’s one of them! Don’t let him run away!” He heard someone shout from behind him. Looking back in curiosity at the new turn of events at the supermarket, he saw two strong men and a Policeman run toward him. Thinking nothing of it, he just kept walking on his way merrily. Soon three men caught up with him and apprehended him.

Like a dream, he was dragged in the middle of the throng. He was so stunned that he could not even struggle with anyone.

“That is him! Yes! he’s the one! He’s one of the hoodlums that came to rob my supermarket!” Shouted the dark and rotund old Alhaja that owned the shop. Nnamdi stared around in confusion as three men held him in place.

“Is this woman mad?” He said finally. His world exploded in a shock blue, black and stars as one of the Policemen’s nightsticks connect with the back of his head.

“Sharrap there! You’re going with us to the station!” The unseen Policeman shouted at him.

***

“That was three years ago…” Said Nnamdi to the now softened up teenager.

“I spent 3 months here before I was taken to court. And they kept making adjournment after adjournment with intervals as long as 6 months sometimes. I was angry, deeply hurt and broken. And this woman, stuck to her guns that I was one of the thieves that robbed her shop.

The case against me was circumstantial, since the only witness to the robbery was the Alhaja herself. But I didn’t have proper legal representation to argue my case.” Nnamdi said.

“What about the Office of the Public Defender?” Akin asked.

It was Nnamdi’s turn to laugh. “Let me tell you what happened with the so called Public Defender”

***

Visitor’s Room

Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad [FSARS] Compound

Police Command

Adeniji Adele,

Lagos

With his cuffed hands on the table and his face already marked with the severe conditions of the Prison — the torture and starvation. His face and whole demeanor were the exact picture of pain. For the umpteenth time, he made his case.

“Mr. Defender, Please help me. Please. I am innocent” Nnamdi said through his already shaggy beard after two months of his unlawful stay.

The Public Defender, Barrister Duduyemi Smart could sense that there was something very different about the accused young man seated before him. It was not that he did not want to help him out of this position. But he had 30 pending cases just like Nnamdi’s in the past one week, who were all “innocent.” And for the pay that he was getting, he could barely make a halfhearted effort on his job. Duduyemi had graduated from the Law School with his certificate in hand and lofty dreams and ideals of upholding justice. Those dreams and ideals had been smashed on the rock of reality

Ending up as the Public Defender was a last resort for him. It was either that or become a ‘Charge-and-bail-Lawyer.’ He sighed as he reared to say his part of the unwritten script. “See, Mr. Obianefo. You can make this easier for us both. We both know you are guilty, so why don’t you just plead guilty and then I can plead with the judge on your behalf to lighten your sentence. Just sign here” he said as he motioned to the already prepared forms.

“NO!” Nnamdi screamed. “I will never plead guilty to a crime I did not commit. I will not!”

The PD, already too jaded to respond, just stared bored as Nnamdi threw up his tantrum. Two of the Policemen came over and subdued him with the butts of their guns.

“Don’t shout here, you bloody criminal!” One of them shouted as they assaulted him.

***

“He eventually agreed that I plead not-guilty but let’s just say that was as far as he went for me. He filed no motions on my behalf nor did anything to uphold my innocence and the case has as you can see, dragged for the past three years” Nnamdi said, with sorrow etched deeply into his features.

Akin’s face mirrored the sadness in Nnamdi “What about your wife…and the baby?”

“She bled to death”

” When she’d delivered the baby, the local midwives that birthed our baby were not properly equipped to handle a severe vaginal tear like my wife had. You need not ask why she did not go to a hospital.”

“God” Akin muttered.

“Yeah. Remember, when I began I told you I was going to ask you a question” Nnamdi said as he looked over at the teenager.

“Yes”

“Now who should be more angry at the system more in you and I? Who should be more angry at society. Spending 3 years of one meal a day and only a bowl to groom myself for a crime I knew absolutely nothing about.”

“You”

“Good, but you see. I am not angry anymore. The reason is this: no matter how hungry we were, or how bleak things  were, my wife never stopped smiling. She had a firm belief in the audacity of hope. She also believed that we had to be motivated by our adversities to make a positive change.

Change, first in our own little corners of the world and then in our society at large. Being angry everyone and contributing yours to the decadence will not do anything to change things. It will only make you one of ‘them’ – The people you so hate”

“Professor!” A Corporal called out from the door to the prison cell.

“Sah!” Nnamdi called back.

“Your court order don come oh! Na to comot this place be that!”

“Ok sah! I dey come. I wan sharply complete something for here!” Nnamdi replied.

“How come? How come you’re now free to go?” Akin asked.

“The Alhaja had a stroke 2 months ago and is now bed ridden. Seeing as she’s the only witness in the case and she cannot testify anymore, the new Judge on the case said I’m free to go. My Court order just arrived this morning.”

“And the baby?”

“She’s my last ray of hope. I’ve not seen her before, but I’m told she’s the spitting image of her mother” Nnamdi said, with a smile creasing his features.

“Professor! You no wan commot here?!” The Corporal snapped from the entrance. And Nnamdi finally stood up to take his leave.

“Hope.” I said with a finality. “Hope and a passion for change.” I said again as I walked to my freedom.

***

Just Outside Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad [FSARS] Compound

Police Command

Adeniji Adele,

Lagos

1.05PM

Nnamdi walked out of the compound with a spring in his step for the first time in 3 years. He would see his daughter, possibly even go over to his wife’s grave. He had his head down thinking of all the possibilities that his new freedom had given him.

Nearby

Adeniji Adele,

Lagos

1.03PM

“Jerry! I don dey drive be that oh! Thank you!” She smiled, her appreciation lighting up her deep brown eyes.

He chuckled, “Na my pleasure but your driving remain small oh” He leaned over as he tried to kiss her full on her lips.

The car jerked forward as a reaction. “Jerry! Wetin naa? You wan kill us? I never master this thing well-well oh!” She snapped jokingly, swatting him on his thigh as she stabilized the car.

“We don wan turn corner oh, make I slow down?” She asked tentatively.

“Rita, Na slow you go slow down oh” Jerry said

“Ehn I dey press the brake now, e no dey brake. Abi which one I go press?” She said, starting to sound agitated.

“CHEI! Rita, slow down the car na!” Jerry said, sounding flustered. She slowed down only just a bit and neogitated the turn, her movements a bit haphazard.

“Oya straight your hand oh! see that man wey dey by the gutter! You wan kill am? Hit the brake oh!”

Whether it was Jerry’s shouts that made her jittery or her inexperience at driving or a little of both, Rita slammed her foot on the gas instead of the brakes. Hitting Nnamdi a few feet in the air, the last thought on his mind was his Chioma before his head made contact with the asphault.

***

Nnamdi was rushed to the hospital. Maybe, just maybe he would have survived his head injuries and the severe bleeding, if we had a public health care system that worked.

*The End*

This writer has had the odd opportunity [by proxy] to meet individuals at the FSARS, who have been there up to three years for crimes they did not commit because they could not afford proper legal representation.

On a very regular day, ‘Jibola L’ is the Music Editor of bellanaija.com. But on odd days like this, bolts and nuts turn in his head, making him think he can really write.

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‘Jibola Lawal is a budding writer and the Bella Naija Music Editor. You can read his other short stories published on Bella Naija here, and you can follow him on twitter here.