Locked Up and Let Down
Locked Up and Let Down
Ike rests his head against the prison bars and sighs. The air is humid, heavy with the stinky mashup of sweat, urine and faeces. Most people would pass out on catching a whiff of that stench, but Ike is not most people. None of them in there are.
Ike is particularly peculiar. With ten years in and twenty years to go, he has made no alliances in the prison and has no intention of making any. He is to spend the greater part of his life separated from the rest of the world and he has no intention of alleviating his suffering by mingling with the other inmates. He is not in league with them. He is a pariah. A martyr suffering for a worthy cause.
Nigerians are fools. All of them. He had saved them from more hardship. And this was how he had been repaid. Trumped up charges, false allegations and public outrage. A man or two got caught in the crossfire. So what? What are the lives of one or two men compared to the prosperity of the whole nation? It was a necessary sacrifice.
Ike wished those bullets could have hit Senator Jibril Garba instead. The country could do with one less gold digger hiding under the blanket of politics. The two policemen who died were innocent, at least regarding Garba’s project. Policemen are seldom innocent in general. They are usually complicit in one form of corruption or the other. This is Nigeria for you.
Senator Garba was ready to destroy several residential areas, just to build his chain of luxury malls and a five-star hotel in the heart of Lagos. Ike didn’t get it. His salary as a senator was fat enough. Was there any extra appeal to getting money soaked in the tears of other people?
It didn’t matter. Not anymore. The Garba project had been shut down. His mission had been a success. He just didn’t foresee Garba going all out to bring him down in retaliation.
It all started with the hunt for the killer of the two policemen “who died protecting the Garba home from invasion by armed robbers”. Then it was a story about a company that had received money for a government contract and never executed it. There had been a company paid to demolish all those houses and shops, Ike just didn’t understand how Garba made him take the fall for that. Then he was linked to some other murder and rape cases. A worthy adversary, that Garba.
Like the gullible fools they are, the Nigerian public ate the stories up hook, line and sinker.
People were staging protests for his arrest. They called him all sorts of unprintable names. People were being mistaken for him and were being attacked as a result.
Ike became Public Enemy Number 1 and Garba was the noble politician who tried to do right by his people but kept getting blocked by “the opposition”.
When he was finally arrested, swarms of people gathered at the scene to jeer at him. The headlines read things like “Serial killer, armed robber and rapist finally apprehended by law enforcement”. Garba was the thief!
He did not plan for Garba’s revenge and so he could not fight it. Unfortunately, he had never been one to think up elaborate plans in the heat of the moment. When the policemen found him, he resigned himself to fate. The Nigerian people may not see it, but he was a hero. And he would continue to carry himself like one.
These thoughts keep Ike preoccupied every day. And in reliving the moments that led to the success of the plan he tends to smile and look into space.
This once prompted another inmate to pick on him.
“Ess! You dia! Wetin dey make you smile dey look wall like person wey don loose im sense?” (Hey! You there! Why are you smiling and staring at the wall like a crazy person?)
Ike barely heard him. He was too submerged in his memories, reliving the sweet taste of victory. And then the inmate slapped him out of his reverie.
You see, this inmate was called Agu, the Igbo word for lion. He was very tall and very big. It was clear that he spent a lot of time in some gym before coming here. On coming into the cell, he had established himself as the chairman. It irked him that Ike barely took notice of him and his self-imposed authority. He had decided on that day to show him who was boss.
Ike, on the other hand, is wiry with deep-set eyes that made him look older than his years. It was very easy for Agu and the other inmates to think he was going to be easy pickings for the Chairman.
“You no dey hear me talk? You dey craze? I say wetin do you?” (Can’t you hear me talking to you? Are you crazy? I said what is wrong with you?)
Ike looked up at Agu and sprung up with a burst of energy that no one saw coming. In one sweeping motion, he gave Agu an uppercut and hit him down on his head. Agu still had a lot of fight in him, but he was no match for Ike and his years of combat training. The whole thing was over in a few minutes. Ike would have returned to his corner of the cell quietly, but the wardens had heard the noise and had come to see what was going on.
They put him in solitary confinement. ‘Perfect.’, he thought. Just what he needed. He did not look forward to spending the night with the rats though, but he soon got used to those. Now and then, he would stir up some trouble in the hope that he would be sent there.
Sometimes it worked, other times it didn’t. After a while, it didn’t matter. After using Agu as a shining example, the other inmates left him well alone. So he had his peace whether he was in solitary confinement or not.
Because he was so quiet, Ike often caught snippets of the conversations other people had — the prisoners and the wardens. The wardens have been talking about a disease that is spreading around the whole world. They are saying it has not come to Nigeria and that black people are immune or at least are recovering quickly from it. They also say that even if it comes, everyone is safe because the virus dies quickly in hot climates.
Ike hopes they are right for their sake. If what they are saying is true, countries as mighty as the United States of America have not managed to control the disease. There is no hope for Nigeria. If this new disease comes into the country, it would be a massacre. Ike yawns. He hopes the people in power know this.
A few weeks later, Ike hears the wardens say that a man has come into the country with the virus. He knows what it’s called now, the Corona Virus. They say the person is in a hospital somewhere in Lagos under compulsory quarantine. The wardens are still very confident. They are all black. Nigeria is very hot and it’s only one person after all. The government will get rid of this virus in no time.
‘The government? Idiots.’, Ike thinks. This saga is going to be very interesting to hear about.
In no time at all, one confirmed case becomes ten. Then ten confirmed cases become one hundred. Soon, a hundred cases become three hundred cases.
The wardens are starting to lose their confidence and are becoming a bit warier. They don’t shake hands anymore and he sees many of them with bulges in their pockets. He is still wondering what those are when one of them whips one out in front of him. It is a bottle of hand sanitizer. A few of them even start wearing masks.
Soon, the President announces that the whole nation is to be put on lockdown. Everybody is to stay at home, except the people who need to go to work like medics, police officers and well, prison wardens. When Ike hears this, he bursts into a peal of deep, throaty laughter. He cannot believe it. Those ungrateful people are going to be stuck in one place. He knows there are little liberties like going to buy food, but still. He is elated. The foolish Nigerian people are going to be on lockdown. Just like he has been on lockdown for the past ten years! For the first time, since he got into prison, he wishes he was free. He wants to know how they would take it. Now they would know how it feels, even if it’s just a little bit, to be locked up!
The wardens hear Ike laugh and stop talking. The inmates also stop in their tracks and stare at him.
“Be like say that man wey dey too mellow don dey craze o”, one of the wardens said. “How person go just dey laugh when nobody dey talk to am?” (It’s like that silent man is going crazy. How can someone suddenly start laughing when no one is talking to him?)
The second warden said, “Na true o. Wetin we go do am now?” (It’s true. What shall we do to him now?)
“We go take am go that solitary confinement. Be like say im like the place sef. Then we go tell Oga, make them take am go Yaba Left. Here na prison, no be psychia.” (We will take him to solitary confinement. He seems to like the place. Then we will tell our boss about him, so he can be taken to the psychiatric hospital in Yaba. This is a prison, not a psychiatric hospital.)
And so Ike is taken to solitary confinement again, this time for laughing.
I thought I had written a revolutionary story. I submitted it to a publication and it did not make it. I have put it up here for all of you to critique it. What could I have done better? Let me know in the comments.
