ACHEBE

Controversy Brews over Achebe’s There was a Country

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Oct072012

 

[Achebe] is a professor of English, a writer of repute and runs regular commentary on socio-political development in Nigeria. He has been nominated two times to receive national honors, but turned down the offer both times. Achebe’s latest work, now available in the UK, is his personal memoir of the Nigerian/Biafran civil war. In the PR the book is decribed as “the towering reckoning with one of the modern Africa’s most fateful experience, both as he lived it and he has now come to understand it.”

Achebe, in an article for the guardian UK stated

But if the diabolical disregard for human life seen during the war was not due to the northern military elite’s jihadist or genocidal obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than during the entire second world war? Why were there 100,000 casualties on the much larger Nigerian side compared with more than 2 million – mainly children – Biafrans killed?

It is important to point out that most Nigerians were against the war and abhorred the senseless violence that ensued. The wartime cabinet of General Gowon, the military ruler, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Chief Obafemi Awolowo among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: all is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.

It is my impression that Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself and for his Yoruba people. There is, on the surface at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbos at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria-Biafra war – his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation — eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

The federal government’s actions soon after the war could be seen not as conciliatory but as outright hostile. After the conflict ended, the same hardliners in the Nigerian government cast Igbos in the role of treasonable felons and wreckers of the nation – and got the regime to adopt a banking policy that nullified any bank account operated during the war by the Biafrans. A flat sum of 20 Nigerian pounds was approved for each Igbo depositor, regardless of the amount of deposit. If there was ever a measure put in place to stunt, or even obliterate, the economy of a people, this was it.

Since the article and some reviews of the book were published, controversy has been brewing in the Nigerian literary and political space, with long threads of commentary on social media platforms and message boards. Newspapers are not left out as politicians and parties air their views. Read the statements below and share your own views in the comment section. Biggest question is, should Achebe as a writer need to publish a memoir on the civil war, and will it affect the country for the good or worse?

A political activist and convener of the Coalition of Democrats for Electoral Reforms (CODER), Mr. Ayo Opadokun, took umbrage at the position of Achebe in the new book. He said: “The new write-up is another rehash of the perverted intellectual laziness which he had exhibited in the past in matters relating to Awo when Achebe described Awo as a Yoruba irredentist. What he expected was that Awo should fold his arms to allow the Igbo race led by Zik to preside over the affairs of the Yoruba nation. The fact that the Yoruba people in their wisdom, having found out that the NCNC through Zik and Okpara had established a government of their choice and then wanted to follow up with the appropriation of the Yorubaland as their catchment area. It is a demonstration of the contempt of Achebe and his ilk for the Yoruba nation.

Chairman of the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), Wale Oshun wondered why some Igbo, especially Chinua Achebe “find it convenient to pick Awolowo as a scapegoat of all that happened to them during the war.” He asked, “did awo start the war? He was just the Federal Commissioner for Finance with responsibility for coming up with appropriate fiscal and monetary policies. He was not at the battle field and could not therefore be fairly charged with genocide..” The former Chief Whip of the House of Representatives also challenged anyone to come up with any publication where Awo said starvation should be regarded as a legitimate weapon of war. “Neither in any of the books written by him nor on him was any such thing said. It is the work of those who hated his guts. It is not factual. It must be remembered that even when he was not in the cabinet, he tried to prevent the war, but as soon as it broke out, it was between Nigeria and Biafra. He had to come up with policies that would end the war quickly. Those who are peddling this line have forgotten that Awo was in prison when the crisis started.”

Awo’s official biographer, Prof Moses Makinde, who heads Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance, Osogbo, is the author of ‘Awo: The Last Conversation’. The other two are: ‘Awo as a Philosopher’ and ‘A Memoir of the Jewel’. He disagreed with Achebe, maintaining that the Ikenne-born statesman was a full-blooded nationalist. His words: “I do not agree with Prof Achebe on the statement. It is not true that Awo’s civil war role smacked of even an iota of selfish political aggrandisement. I was his biographer and I can state authoritatively that, though he did not penetrate the North, he had a firm belief in the unity of Nigeria and that was why he wanted to govern the country as an indivisible entity. All the governors and other close associates of his would attest to the fact that he was a believer in the oneness of Nigeria which was why he wanted to govern the entire country for the overall benefit of her entire citizenry.

Dr Awolowo-Dosunmu told Sunday Vanguard, yesterday, while responding to the Achebe claim: “One is still trying to come to terms with the sense of disappointment about the person who wrote what is now a brewing controversy in the country. “While a formal statement responding to the offensive comments of the writer is being prepared by the family all I can say for now is that I feel so disappointed”.

But, Mbadinuju, defending Achebe, said: “I have not read the book. I don’t want to speculate. During the civil war, I was studying in the United States of America. However, I have absolute confidence in Prof Chinua Achebe. He is an acclaimed international scholar and figure; whatever he says about the civil war should be taken seriously.”

Adam'spen: BECOMING A WOMAN

Adam'spen: BECOMING A WOMAN: Nwanne stood in front of their new home at 50 Abam street Aba. She couldn’t see Onu and Otisi again to play with. “They must be big boys n...

BECOMING A WOMAN

Nwanne stood in front of their new home at 50 Abam street Aba. She couldn’t see Onu and Otisi again to play with. “They must be big boys now like these ash boys here”, she thought. She watched some boys playing football in the rain. She had marked this set of boys for their always being dusty. She called them ash boys because their bodies were always ash with the patches of dust on them. Even while it rained the dust on their bodies seemed not to be washing off. She stood at the window holding the burglary proof and watching the ash boys from the hole of missing louvers as they played naked in the rain. She felt like jumping into the rain to play with them but her mother had warned her against playing with boys. She would have liked to be born a boy if it were to be her choice to make. One of the boys shot the ball towards the stone goal post and the ball rolled close to the goal post and stopped locked in a murky water log. The goal keeper dashed towards the ball to kick it off but the ball drifted a little to the left as the water moved it and he missed it, kicked the air in a rapid swoosh and landed with his back on the dirty muddy ground. The other boys laughed out freely and threw themselves on the ground. Nwanne joined with laud laughter from the window and clapped too. One of the boys turned and made a face at her, sticking out his tongue and she opened her fingers at the boy still laughing.

“Shege JB”, she cursed playfully. If it were to be some years before now, she would have pulled off her cloth and ran into the rain to play football. She was sure she could play better than some of the boys but she wouldn’t play now that some little balls were growing on her chest; the kind of balls she couldn’t see on the chest of the boys of her age. She had thought they were boils because of the little pains she felt in them. Her mother said they were not boils when she complained and said they were called breasts; that they would soon grow bigger like those on her own chest; and that they would be producing milk and that her babies would have to suck and feed on them. She had felt so embarrassed the day she tried playing with boys of her age and some of them left the football and focused on watching the balls on her chest. Some of them tried to touch the balls but she didn’t allow them. She would have allowed them, if not for the pains she would feel at the touch.

Now she felt bad. She wanted to feel free and play naked in the rain. Even if she ran into the rain with her dress on, the football might hit her chest and the balls would start ache her. She couldn’t risk increasing the pains of the balls now. She drew up the upper part of her cloth and looked down into it to her chest. The area of the balls looked lighter than every other part of her abdomen. The balls were still there growing and softening by the day, just as her mother had said. She felt them with her left hand and sighed. She wondered what might be inside the balls. They felt strong like unripe tomato balls. As her fingers shoved across the edge of the tender breasts, she felt some pains and sighed again, and looked up straight into the rain. She was looking at nothing in particular. With her eyes on the droplets of the fading rain as they trickled down from the roof she could see the serenity in them. She felt like going into the world in the droplets to know how it felt in there. Then the voice came.

“Nwanne!” It was her mother calling and she jumped out of her imagination and scurried to the kitchen where Igbeneche was wrapping asusu with plantain leaves. She knew why she was being called. “Mma, let me get the trey pan ready” she said as she walked in and out of the kitchen. Igbeneche looked up watching her back as she sauntered bouncingly with her shoulders up like a tomboy towards the wall on which the tray leaned. She could notice the increase in the size of her back side and the curvy sides of her hips and her dark skin that shined oilier by the day. Her daughter was gradually developing into womanhood. She thought something about telling her to walk like a woman but just saying it had not worked. Igbeneche was worried that her daughter was acting masculine. She recalled her own days as a growing teenage girl in the village. She tried to compare herself with her daughter yet she couldn’t fix any similarity but the knock knees and the shrill voice they shared. She was just a picture of her late father. Igbeneche was still watching Nwanne till she picked the tray and turned. She could now see that her breasts are getting bigger despite the many cloths Nwanne wore to hide them. When would she get to terms with the fact that she was different from the boys?

Adam'spen: DON'T PING ME YET

Adam'spen: DON'T PING ME YET: Please don’t ping me yet! My BB had not been working for some time. Glo network had been so so erratic; but mine was a special case. I r...

WHAT A WAY TO DIE!

Ntinti paced up and down Mama Chinyere’s stall like one of the customers buzzing around, waiting for their turns to buy Akara. He looked around at intervals and scanned the environment. No one noticed him. Nobody hailed him and called him “ntinti na obi Aba” the way they used to. He didn’t want that either. Everybody wanted to buy akara and leave.  Like a kite would a straying chicken, he intently spied the black nylon bag that Mama Chinyere kept under the kitchen stool she sat on. When he felt nobody looked, Ntinti napped the nylon bag like a cat and zoomed off through the back of the stall through the bush part that led to the main road of eastern avenue.

 “hol’am! Hol’am! Onye-oshi hol’am!” little Chiamaka that was playing under the akara table screamed and the crowd of hungry customers re-echoed and chased after Ntinti. He was so nimble. None among the hungry chaser could get close to him. He tried to turn into the bush by the left but unfortunately a man coming out from there with his trousers on hand, kicked him on the chest to the ground. The nylon fell aside and the crowd pounced on Ntinti with various objects. He didn’t scream. He didn’t fight back. All he needed was an escape route. While he struggled to stand up from the ground, somebody threw a motor tyre on him and another emptied a cup of fuel on his head and yet another threw in embers of firewood and set him ablaze.

Danga the road side vulcanizer picked up the nylon and opened it. An awful smell oozed out; and he threw it away. Behold! It was a fold of children’s napkin that was white before, drenched in a pool of urine and brownish watery stool. The crowd dispersed with sighing. Faces bent. Feet dragged. There was silence everywhere in the world but the “mtchwww mtchwww sighs of puckered lips. Then came the cry of the raven from the almond tree in front of mama chinyere’s stall: “nkankankakwaraka!” what a way to die!

DON'T PING ME YET

Please don’t ping me yet!

My BB had not been working for some time. Glo network had been so so erratic; but mine was a special case. I recharged my phone on Monday. I didn’t know that Glo BB network had been down since the Sunday night before. I subscribed for BIS and the silly thing cut my hard earned N1,400. I tried to ping my friend Poka; it bounced, hung and returned with a red X. I tried again and the same thing continued. I dialed 555 but the link did not connect. When I got to the office the next day, Chinwe the managers secretary told me it was a general problem with all Glo subscribers at the moment. I shrugged with frustration.

“Why has Glo chosen to be falling hands like this?” I hissed and turned on the scrabble game on the phone; that was all I used the phone for since most of my people didn’t know my Glo number to call me with. When the Glo BB network finally came up, mine did not work still. I went to a Glo customer service center at Ogui road Enugu. 

I alighted from the bus at stadium bus stop and gave the bus conductor two wads of N20 note. He inspected them like there were some infectious diseases on them and handed me one back.

“oga change this one” he winced.

“whats wrong with it” I asked as I collected the money.

“ you no dey see the tape and the tear tear for the side?” he barked and waved his hand like he wanted to shove the money down from my hand. The expression on my face didn’t change. I didn’t show any emotion.

“so what do I do then? Do I look like Sanusi?” I asked and looked away.

“oga change this thing now mek I comot here” he barked again.

“nnna you can go and complain to CBN not me. As for me I aint changing nothing for you” I said matter-of-factly and looked away again. I was ready to unleash the anger that I have built for Glo on him. Now the passengers in the bus started complaining. I didn’t look at them. I just held the money out for the conductor the way we held banana for monkeys at my school zoo.

“Ok, if you wan chop chop now!” he said resigningly and hopped back on the door of the bus like a monkey. I gently placed the money into my front pocket and was meant to cross the road; when the driver called me back with outstretched hand. I placed the money into his palms and hissed a long sigh.  I would have cursed: “your father! You for dey there dey wait make I change am”, but the words couldn’t form on my puckered lips. I crossed the road without looking back.

The Glo office was a one storey building. The former ETB which had now become Sterling Bank was on the ground floor. The security man at the gate upstairs motioned me to a green plastic seat beside the door. I sat gently and exchanged greetings with the girl sitting opposite. I was never the type that always greeted girls before they started thinking I was interested in them. But this one was different. I didn’t care what she might have thought. She was my spec; a little tall, dark, beautiful and slim but not skinny. Behind her was the Glo wi-fi promo flyers pasted on the wall and the round red Sterling Bank logo beside it. I wondered why Glo had refused to separate from ETB; even into Sterling bank.  I was trying to read the instruction on the wall besides me when the security boy in green T-shirt and face cap called me to move over to a customer service personnel.

The customer service guy I met was a little taller than me. He was dark with some short strands of hair on his jaw. I took a furtive look at the name plate on his table. It said Chukwu and a first name that started with either an “m” or a “w” – I just can’t recall anymore; maybe because his name was not worth being stored in my creative head.

“Ok how can I help you? He said with brows arched upwards as if he met a foe. His lips moved quirkily up and down as he chewed some gum like a cheap back yard akwuna. I couldn’t trace any smile on his face. I was nearly infuriated by such an unconscionable question. I was sure he wasn’t to help me but to do the job for which he was employed. I held myself and tried to suppress the anger boiling inside of me already. After a little silence and fixed gaze at his oily face, I tossed my phone to him and said:

“I subscribed on Tuesday and it’s not been working “

He picked the phone, looked at it and pushed it back;

“Your battery is drained, so there is nothing we can do”. I didn’t touch the phone. I was still, just watching him and holding down my emotions. After some seconds he picked the phone again and plugged a charger to it. I breathed out loudly. After some minutes he checked the phone and said:

“You have to switch off the phone and…”

“I’ve done that over and over”, I cut him short.

He pressed some buttons again and said: “you have to recharge your account. You have only N19 here and…”

“I know that, and I had over N700 there before now and it didn’t work”; I cut him short again

“Maybe I will have to transfer you to another person to attend to you. I’ve even closed for the day”, he sighed and kept a straight face. I just gave out a dried wry smile and said nothing. What he didn’t know was that I was ready for trouble; I was ready to hold him down in the office till my phone started working. I wanted to tell him that he must be the one to attend to me. I wanted to tell him that my phone must work before he would go home for the day. I wanted to tell him that there was no way he would close for the day while I was still in his office. I wanted to bang on his table and shout: “are you stupid?” those words didn’t form. I held myself and gave out another wry smile and sighed. I tossed a wad of N200 on his table and he recharged my account. There was dead silence in the hall as I watched him press some things on my phone and then on his computer like a bad work man that quarreled with his tools. He sighed severally. Only the shwap shwap sound of the cleaners mop behind me and the clattering of the key boards and the snail sound of chukwu’s hisses could be heard in the entire world.

“Everything is okay here, so why is this phone not browsing?” he grunted. I looked away since he asked himself.

“let me see” the lady beside him said and collected the phone. He breathed out and stood up.

“ehe, please have it; I don’t want to lose my temper” the guy said. I felt like slamming a clenched fist on his keyboard and saying: “I don’t care if you have a temper to lose or not! All I know is that this phone must work tonight.” I held myself back with great struggle. My legs quaked with anger. I gave out the dried wry smile again and sighed and said nothing. The lady looked at me and sighed. I wondered if these people ever heard that “customer is king”.

“Please sir, we have tried all available remedies here. Can you come tomorrow let me send a mail to Lagos now about this issue? Maybe we will have to do a SIM swap for you. I believe the problem is with your SIM. You see our SIMs are no longer here and it’s already past 5pm”. Her voice was apologetic. It was then that I saw the marriage ring on her finger. She was fair with so many freckles on her face.

“Can I get back my N1400 for the BIS and use it for calls? I don’t think I would want Glo BB services again”, I said as I snatched my phone from her; I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I worked out. I only wondered if she thought I was jobless so as to have the time to always come to her office to look at their ugly misfortune inducing face.

On the 14^th being the Saturday I missed the assembly, I sneaked out from the training hall after a lunch of fried rice and chicken. Outside our office at presidential road Enugu, I flagged down a cab. It was one of the state government facilitated cabs. The driver was a young man of about my age. He didn’t argue anything about price. He accepted N200. I got to the Glo office at Ogui road at 1:22pm. The security boy at the gate motioned me to a green seat besides the door. From there I watched Chukwu the customer service guy explaining the use of a modem to a pretty girl in front of him. He had seen me and perhaps was trying to buy more time with the girl so that his colleague would attend to me. Then the girl stood up and dusted her ass. She didn’t smile and she didn’t say “thank you” the way a satisfied customer would. Her face was blank; no expressions. She worked passed me, looking straight. The security boy motioned me to the seat in front of Chukwu. I sat there for some 5mins. Chukwu didn’t look up. He was keying some data from a piece of paper into his system. He looked up at intervals chewing at his gum like regurgitating goat without looking at me.

“Excuse me bro, will u attend to me? I have things to do; I just sneaked out of a seminar.” I said in a low voice, to call his attention.

“I… I am sending a report to Lagos. I have closed for the day. You know this is Saturday. I am supposed to have left here since 12noon.” Chukwu stuttered without looking up. I got annoyed.

“Is that why you ignored me? Do you think I’ve come here to watch your ugly face? Is this how you treat your customers?” I behaved as if I did not understand what he had said and pushed my phone to him. Then the lady that attended to me on the first day appeared from behind me.

“Ok, she is here. She was the one handling your issue before.” chukwu said and I didn’t say a word to him. I had decided to ensure that nobody left the office until my phone worked.

Now I could see the lady in full; the fair lady with pinkish freckles all over her face. She collected the phone from Chukwu. The skin of his arm looked smooth and healthy. She walked over to a table by my left and I followed her, backing the customer saucy Chukwu. She had so many black spots on her legs that looked like souvenir of childhood chicken pox. She gave me a form to fill and switched off my phone and removed the SIM and tore a new SIM pack and slide the new SIM into my phone.

“Give me N200”, she said keeping a straight face ,looking at her system like she gave me some money to keep for her.

“Why?” I said calmly.

“Ok you don’t want a SIM swap?” she said and hurriedly opened my phone removed the new SIM and togged the form I have filled under her table. She continued “you will have to wait until I get a response from the head office about your issue they’ve not responded to the mail I sent them.” Irritation crept into her voice. I looked at Chukwu at the other side of the table behind me. He was standing now scratching his crotch and watching.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you here?”I yelled and smacked her table and continued; “look here freckle face, if this phone doesn’t work today, nobody will leave this stinking office. Look at you trying to get angry at me, are you supposed to be angrier than me in this case? Your network is bad, I subscribed and you collected my money without providing the services. What nonsense do you think you are employed to do here if not to solve my problem? And you have the guts to tell me rubbish. If you must know it know; I don’t know any head office; all I know is Glo and you two here are the GLo I know. My phone must work today. Your Father!” my eyes were red now. The veins on my fore head stood out like the roots of a stubborn tree. I stepped back a little with arms akimbo and the dead silence returned. She pressed some buttons on her key board and then on my phone. Chukwu was sitting now. He too didn’t say a word.

“Try the phone now’’, she said and pushed the phone to me. I pinged Nitty and it went through. I didn’t tell freckle face that the phone was working now.  I fondled out some wads of money from my front pocket and tossed a N100 note on her table for the new SIM and worked away.

After 3hrs the phone stopped working again till now.

I’ve not had chance to go back there.

This time, I will go in my karate pants and snickers.

I might have to break someone’s jaw if the phone doesn’t work.

So if you have this pin “22D93802”, don’t ping me yet!

That Xmas Day!

                                                                  That Xmas Day!

Christmas was the celebration I had grown up to dislike. I always wished December never came. It was the time other kids in my street dressed in their December new wears and romped pea-cockishly up and down the road and I watched them enchanted. The high pavement in front of our house was my favourite sitting position; where I and my elder brother Johnson watched the other kids on Christmas parade throwing their fireworks in the air and they filled the air with smokes and the awful smells that caused some sicknesses for fowls in January. The 25^th of December, 1997 was very significant. I was barely nine years old. Johnson and I sat on the pavement watching families move their luggage up the street in a bid to travel to the country side for Christmas celebration. Daddy had warned us severally, to stop milling at the pavement while he was alive; but it was the order we never obeyed. We sat there and kept watch; to run back into the house at any sight of him. Now Daddy was no more, we sat freely. We had helped our neighbours get their bags into the brown Mitsubishi L300 saloon bus that took them to Ohaofia as they travelled a day before. They gave us some money and waved us bye and called us “ala wu otu” as the bus joined the traffic. We never joined in the Christmas frenzy. We never travelled during Christmas. Daddy never bought us new clothes during Xmas; he never bought us toys; and neither did he allow us to use fireworks nor partake in the street’s Christmas Carol. It wasn’t that he did not love us like other fathers liked their kids. It wasn’t that he didn’t want us to be happy. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses. We didn’t celebrate Christmas because daddy said Jesus Christ was not born on the 25^th of December. He said Christmas celebration was borrowed from Roman pagan celebration of the birth day of the Sun god and that Jehovah’s people should not allow themselves to get contaminated with disguised satanic celebration of any sort.

In the morning of 25^th December 1997, the weather was cold and dried with the harmattan breeze rocking the leafless tree branches and blowing dust in the air. The breeze was making a whirling pool of dusts and cellophanes and dried leaves in the air when Ojee came to our house. The breeze swept passed him in a gust and he covered his face with both arms and ran into the shelter of the veranda where I sat with Johnson.

 “Ghosts are heading for the market”, He said and smiled at us as he crossed over to the pavement where we sat. We laughed and greeted him; “Otete good morning”.

“Ehe… good morning,” he responded and said “this kind of dust will cause Apollo if it gets into one’s eyes”. My elder brother looked at him and said it was not Apollo season and smiled shyly. I did not smile. I never liked Ojee as much as my mother disliked him. I turned to look at him as he brought out a handkerchief and scrubbed his face. His eyes were red like he had Apollo already. The strands of hair in his nostrils were brown with dust. He must have come from afar. Ojee was one of my father’s apprentices. He was the one Mama rejected the first day he came to ask for a job with my father.

“Sam, we can’t take this boy” Mama had said to my daddy.

“Why?” daddy asked

“There is something in me that doesn’t want this man here”

“Do you know him before?”

“No but can’t you see the scars on his head? He can’t be a good person to have such big scars. We can’t risk bringing in a thief here”, mama warned sternly. Daddy had turned Ojee back the first day till he came again with his aged father. Though daddy later accepted Ojee, mama continued complaining that there was something sinister about him. That it was only robbers, pickpockets and motor park boy that were known to have such scars in Aba. After eavesdropping into my parents discussions about ojee, I came to dislike him too. I liked everything my mum liked and hated everything she hated because I loved her.

As he stood there behind us at the pavement cleaning his dusty face and the brown nostrils, I didn’t want to turn and look at him again. He wore a fluffy dark brown jacket that reeked of a mixture of cigarette and beer and some other unidentifiable pugnacious smells that upset my stomach. After cleaning his face he walked into the yard and my elder brother followed him to unlock the shop. We never expected that anybody would be coming to work on a Christmas day. There was no other person at home. Mama had gone out for preaching. I was still on the pavement when Johnson came out and asked me to join him, that Ojee had sent him to buy five bottles of water so that I would help him carry them. All the shops in our street were closed. Many of them had travelled to the village for Xmas celebration. Mama Adaobi the grocery woman opposite our house didn’t open. She went to church though she was a Seventh Day Adventist. So we had to go as far as Etchie road to get the bottles of water.

25^th December 1997 was a Thursday; the kind of Thursday that looked like weekend because it was a public holiday. We half ran and half walked and played along the lonely Street of Okezie as we headed towards Etchie Road. At the cross road that led to Abam Street was a black heap with strings of burnt tyres on it and white smokes ascending sky high like the kind of smoke I saw in the kitchen the day mama’s oil burnt. The smell from the heap was like that of a roasted goat meat; the kind of smell that made me run away from Musa, the Hausa boy that roasted suya beside our house. I disliked the smell because it upset my stomach. I blocked my nose with my palms as we ran passed it. There, I saw what was like a burnt human head and the roasted hand jutting out under the heap. Johnson blocked his nose too and said it must be a thief that was killed the night before. People crossed freely without looking at the direction of the burnt thief. Nobody cared. It was not a strange sight. At Ndoki Street another corpse was still burning with smoke ascending sky high. Mama Obi’s shop at Ndoki besides our primary school was closed. It was the shop where we bought kpof kpof at break times in school. So we crossed over to Etche road near the primary school field and bought the bottles of water. Johnson suggested that we shouldn’t pass through Okezie again so as not to see the burnt corpses again. We followed Abam Street opposite Riverside primary school. At No1. Abam was the big lorry that had a monkey jumping around in it. Johnson threw a small stone at the monkey, it ducked and charged after us. We ran from there till we got home.

We came home breathing like lizards that had fallen from the top of an iroko tree. We expected to meet Ojee waiting for us at the entrance. We expected to hear him say “well done boys” and laugh throatily like he did whenever we bought him his lunch, but he was not there. The workshop door was ajar with the harmattan breeze rocking it back and forth. The back yard gate was also widely open and making some creaky sound as it obeyed the dried wind. Johnson searched for him at the back yard but he was not there too. There was no sign of life towards the toilets. We dropped the bottles of water on top of his sewing machine in the workshop and went back to our position at the pavement.

We sat there watching people pass by and waiting for Ojee to return till the afternoon when Johnson caught sight of Mama turning into the street with her preaching bag strapped to her left shoulder. Immediately, we ran back into the house. As we heard her foot step in the passage, we ran out gaily and greeted her. I collected her weighty bag containing bibles and many other publications of Watchtower Bible and tract Society and slung it over my shoulder like a hunter’s gun and ambled behind mama as she led tiredly.

‘Did anybody come here?” she asked with jammed brow as she struggled with the padlock of the door to our sitting room. The padlock gave way and fell on the floor and separated into two pieces.

“mmm…,” I replied affirmatively with locked lips and nodded.

“Yes ma, Ojee came and…”

“Where is he?” mama jerked interrupting Johnson.

“He sent us to buy pure water for him and when we returned he was nowhere to be found. The water is in the workshop.”

Mama didn’t seem to be listening as Johnson reeled out the story. She turned the knob of the door gingerly and worked into the room. There the drawer of the room divider was pulled out and its content over turned on the center table. The video player that used to be on the room divider was now on top one of the single sitter sofa. Mama dashed towards the opened drawer and shuffled the papers in there frantically. She looked up with wide eyes and let out a loud cry like she was stung by a bee.

“ojee e gbuo m’!” she screamed and turned and jabbed Johnson's cheek with the left hand. Johnson screamed and held his cheek and fell backwards on the red three sitter sofa besides the standing fan. He didn’t cry. She stood up calmly and worked towards the door where I was. I held my cheeks and bent my face so as not to look at her face that now looked scary. Her eye balls were near red and glassy with tears. Her lips quaked the way they did the day she threw an empty milk bottle at me and smashed the wall mirror in her room. She quietly walked past me and tied her hair scarf around her waist just the way Mama Kalu our neighbour did whenever she fought her husband. I looked at Johnson. He was seating now on the sofa. There was no drop of tears in his eye. He was looking at Ojee’s dirty slippers that lay on the red and black flowered rug and they disgusted me. Then we heard the sound of the front gate and ran out to see who was there. The gate returned and hit the frame again and again and again and stopped ajar. There was nobody in the entire yard of six rooms facing each other in threes. Mama had just left angrily. Johnson went searching the back yard again and the toilet and the bathroom. I sat in front of the seating room waiting aimlessly.

Mama returned with two men in black. On their breasts were the lapels tags that said NPF and their names. The fair one had what was like a cap attached to his shoulder. He picked up the broken padlock pieces and put them in black cellophane. The dark one pushed open the door and went straight to the room divider drawer.

“How come you put that kine money inside a drawer, you no get bank account?” the police man asked and mama looked away without saying a word. I leaned on the wall and watched as the police men wrote something on a piece of paper and the two of them left and Mama followed them out of the gate. They didn’t come back again. Mama didn’t say a word to me and Johnson. She didn’t cook any food. The night was cold and quiet as we slept on empty stomach.

It was a calm night till mid-night when we heard a big bang in the neighbourhood followed by a horrid scream; “ewo! Ewo! Isi m’ o!” the scream tore through the cold wind of the night and died out as abrupt as it came. I froze with cold mingle with fears. I was lying on the floor in the sitting room and Johnson was snoring heavily on the red long three sitter sofa. “Boom!” came another deafening sound; the sound I could not tell if it was a gunshot or the sound of Christmas fireworks; those long fireworks that came with a picture of boxing glove on their packets. The bang came again for the third time. This time it was louder and nearer; louder than any banger I ever heard. I felt cold run through my spine and I covered my ear with the small pillow that was on the single sitter sofa behind me. Then the door between the sitting room and mama’s room creaked and I peeked from under the pillow. Mama’s hand slide in through the door to the wall switch and turned off the light. And the door creaked again and shot. I felt like jumping up to follow mama to her bed because I was afraid, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I felt mama was still mad at us. Sleep did not come to my eyes till the light came up again and I heard mama’s voice;

“James, you are not sleeping?” she said and shook me up. I jerked up and threw off the pillow rubbing my two eyes limply. Mama took me to her bed and covered me with the new blanket she bought the week before.

To be continued….