A fictional representation of Leadership Crisis in Nigeria
When they finally got to the venue, a local musician was playing. The music was loud. The ground was shaking. Ekoyata tightened his stomach and his muscles taut like someone expecting a blow and was preparing to take it. He wondered what had happened to the law.
Another civil war almost started in the country when the government tried to stop loud music in public places some years before. Churches fought against it. Mosques did the same thing. They had big horn speakers on their building tops that played gospel music or call to worship, their volumes always turned full. Some residents in the country had full musical system in their apartments enough to run a disco hall. They also played them in the apartment with their full volumes turned up. So, there was a coalition of forces at that time and the government had to concede to a cheap defeat in the end without a fight. There was no report of a single person prosecuted under the Sound Nuisance Act.
Ekoyata's tissues and organs were trembling inside his body because of the loudness of the music, boom, boom, boom. Why would music to be played so loudly not take place in a hall? He wondered when his country would wake up and take its place among the organised societies in the world.
The bandleader was a man, tall and slender. Ekoyata saw that his hair had already grayed, matted and just one reason away from dreadlocks. His grown beard had grayed too and was unkempt. The white sheen of florescent light was loose upon the party crowd. And like a grasshopper carrying a guitar, the old musician bent over and was jumping on the spot. Ekoyata found that only men were others on the band, except for two girls who danced in front of them. That wasn't hard to discover. Like the old man who seemed to be the bandleader, each of them had a red string of clothe tied round their grown hair. And the girls in peculiarly long sweeping gowns striped blue, black and red, were dancing and mostly shaking their buttocks.
'Jesus!' Ekoyata didn't shout it, but he heard his voice.
'You know this band?' Jayjay asked.
Ekoyata didn't answer. He needed a moment to process his thought. Jayjay must have thought that it was the noise that didn't let him hear. He raised his voice and made it louder as he spoke on.
'He is very popular,' he said. 'Do you know what the band is called, sir?'
'What is it called?' Ekoyata asked. He thought that he had to say something now. Otherwise, he would spoil the night. Yes, he must start to act now.
'This is The Show Promoters Dance Band,' Jayjay said with glowing admiration.
'Yes, yes,' Ekoyata said, his voice rising almost to a scream. 'And you said he is popular?'
'Yes, people know him everywhere in the world,' Obas corroborated.
'Does he have some albums?'
'I don't know,' Jayjay said after a moment of hesitation.
Ekoyata wondered about the world they were talking about. In which world was that kind of musician known? Well maybe he was popular in the world they knew and not in the general world of mankind. He didn't even have an album. But Ekoyata would not let them see what he was thinking. The band was to him a tragedy though an object of adoration to the Baneke kind. But if he acted in that way the beauty of the show would die over his friends. So, he had to act and do the things they expected of him, while he did with them in his mind, what he wanted. Why did they not bring cultural? The few times that he saw it, cultural sprang from his blood as a fine blend with his very soul.
As they walked, his head was turning like any animal that suddenly found itself in the midst of humans and his eyes were moving too. He saw the rest of the crowd swaying their bodies, dancing. He saw the buttocks of the ladies moving in many vibrations and some strong hardy lads hopping as if the ground was hot.
‘Where should we go and sit,' Jayjay asked the others. He shouted the question for them to hear him in the loud music. 'Or should we join the dance right away?'
Jayjay was getting drunk by the music that Ekoyata was still trying to acquire a taste for. Ekoyata shook his head.
‘No, I don’t want to dance.’ Watching the bodies of people moving in calculated circles was enough. ‘Jayjay, join them and dance if you want. It is good and I like it. But I haven't make up my mind.’
‘You are crazy, Jayjay,' Obas rebuked. 'You want him to begin to dance here?’
Ekoyata wondered what Obas saw in him that made him talked that way. Was his acting not right? Was there something in his voice that made him suspect that he didn't like the party? He had to be more careful.
‘Guy, Obas. You see, I can dance here. What is it? Is anything wrong if I dance? So, what is the point that you started cursing?'
'I didn't know that you want to dance, sir,' Obas was apologetic. 'You were setting like you didn't want to.'
'Don't I have the right to make up my mind?'
‘Oh, don't you fight over that,' Isibor said. 'Let us look for our seat. Look at those ones in front over there. They are vacant there.' He pointed a finger at some benches.
For the moment, they stood silent, undecided. Ekoyata played along trying to make them feel that he was enjoying the music flow and the dance. The night was colder now. The harmattan was blowing the cover of the large shed and the fronds were waving their fingers. Slowly, Isibor was moving his head, and his body followed in a gentle sway.
‘You have no sense too, Isibor,' Obas said. 'Can't you see that they are for important people?'
Isibor paused, turned and looked at Obas as though he wanted to challenge him. But he didn't. Instead, he slipped back to the dance that had already stuck to his legs.
‘If you say the back seat, it is all right,' Ekoyata tried to pacify them. 'I want to see this dance.
'
Jayjay led the way and they circled in a file through the large shed of bamboo and palm fronds. Rows of plank benches were set under the shed except for the front where there were a number of executive chairs. The white sheen of florescent light showed a small mud house at the back of the shed, in a cuboid form save for the gable roof. Loud speakers and other music machines lay in a heap on the floor, on one side of the house.
'I want to see this dance,' Ekoyata repeated.
His friends didn't say anything as they tried to choose a seat for them. Ekoyata saw the sticker message on the last bench and got interested: “No Condition is Permanent.” His friends saw it too and they took it and sat down. He saw other messages on some of the other benches near them on that side. He read one: "Prepare to Meet the Lord of the Heaven." Another said: "Sorry Baby, no Time for Love." Still another said: "Talk Your Own."
Cymbals clashed, small bells were ringing out, and trumpets blared. It didn't seem as bad now as Ekoyata had thought. The guitar sound, the throbbing of the drums, the whistle of the flutes and everything started to form a pleasant consonance. The dance response seemed to Ekoyata, was making the drums to thunder louder. And the energetic dance as he saw it, could prevent obesity and any eating disorder. He saw people who were not dancing too, hovering around. Others were moving intermittently, endlessly, and a few others pacing up and down with some urgency.
Ekoyata saw that everyone was trying to use his wick of life to catch some of the burning sparks of the flinty night. He turned his head and looked outside. In the dimly lit corners he saw some ladies and gentlemen tangled up and canoodling themselves. Dark things in the dark, he thought. There were others who just stood there, talking, arguing, laughing and smoking cigarettes. They were present but didn't seem to be part of what was going on. When he looked at the dance again, he saw a man in rags that were shredded. Ekoyata tried to make certain that he was not one of the farmers he saw in rags everyday going to or coming from the farm. No, he was a madman searching for anything he could eat or lick. In the parties he had seen before, every normal person dressed in their best. It was only in daytime that he had difficulty separating the mad from the farmers.
The crowd split up as the madman walked through until he was standing in front of the musician with his arms folded over his breast. Ekoyata tightened the muscles of his stomach. He didn't know whether the madman was violent. But he thought that his standing there in front of the musician like that was a bad signal. Then, Ekoyata saw that someone went to meet him and gave him something in a plate. But Ekoyata didn't know what the thing in the plate was. It was brown inside the white plate. He observed the madman taking it with his left hand. Then he walked away placidly enough without causing as much as a stir.
Ekoyata heard the music went up some higher beats. Then, it grounded to a stop. There was confusion a moment, as the crowd weaved everywhere for a seat.
When they started serving food to the people, the confusion became even more heated. Ekoyata turned his head towards Jayjay.
'What is the food?'
'You know yam, don't you, sir?' Jayjay asked.
'I am not talking about the yam,' he said indignantly. 'I saw the yam. I am talking about that brown one they are laying the yam slices on.'
'Pigeon pea, I think,' Jayjay said simply. 'You aren't familiar with that?'
'No, I am not. But I heard the name before.'
'Oh, they plant all of them here, you see,' Obas said.
Ekoyata watched the people who now rushed to get food. The level of confusion began to heat up. Some of them virtually begged to be served. He saw some others who started introducing themselves as friends of the servers to get preference. A few almost started to cry. He saw shoving and pushing. He heard screaming. And a keen feeling started to give him shame. He had not seen people before behaving like this in front of food. The mad rush and the struggle to get food in the presence of others was to him a shameful manner. Ekoyata didn't know that all his body was tight. His eyes opened and were not blinking. His head was held stiffly in an attitude of rapt imagination.
‘Do you want to test pigeon pea and yam, sir?’ Jayjay asked.
‘No, I don't want to eat now,’ Ekoyata snapped.
‘You never think, Jayjay, before you talk.’ Obas challeged once again.
‘What I said is it a bad thing?’ Jayjay retorted. ‘Ekoyata said that he didn't know pigeon pea. I didn't know that he would not like to see how it tastes like.'
'You never wait for somebody to tell you something with his own accord. You can't wait for somebody to say do something, then you start to do it.’
‘Guys, you fight over everything?' Ekoyata said. 'I can eat if I want to. I said no, I don't want to eat because I am not hungry. But if I am hungry, I would eat.’
In a short time Ekoyata saw that a lot of people were eating and the crowd around the source of the food had gone down abruptly. They served the drinks too, following the food. Isibor had told him that the drink was a local gin called kaikai, very high in alcohol content. The music noise had died over the night. Only occasionally did a string piano sound came to interfere with the dull sound of eating and drinking that filled the shed and the night. And he could not see those who hung out in the dim corners before. Isibor stepped forward and requested some food for himself. Then, Ekoyata saw that Obas was restless too.
'Don't you and Jayjay want to eat,' Ekoyata asked, looking to the side of Obas. But his tone of voice was addressed to the two of them.
'I am coming, sir,' Obas said.
Ekoyata knew that Obas was hungry, but was feeling ashamed. His shame was not because he didn't like to eat in public. He knew that Obas was ashamed of him. He watched his head turning and his eyes looking at those who were eating. His brows drooped on his face. Ekoyata had told them many times to get used to him. Was it going to take them years to forget the pity and the shame of how they lived in the town?
'Go and ask for food,' Ekoyata said, addressing himself to Obas this time by the tone of his voice. 'I will ask for my own when I start to feel hungry.'
Obas rose reluctantly, his eyes searching the faces of his friends in a muted appeal for permission. Isibor was devouring his own without care. Sweat broke over his face in spite of the cold in the night. Ekoyata looked away. Jayjay got up and went into the crowd.
When Jayjay came back, he brought water for him and Ekoyata in a rubber bowl. He also had two rubber cups with him. Obas returned too, with his food and sat a little away from the rest of them on the bench.
None of the rest of the people he was looking at under the shed cared about their behaviour or the way they ate. They were at home in their land. He didn't know why Obas was so conscious of his presence and was ashamed. He knew that even Jayjay would eat if he saw him eating. They should know that he understood them. They should have been free like the rest of the people, live without thinking and be happy. They had no need of being conscious of his presence. Food made the rest of their kind happy. That was the way they were conditioned by the forces ruling their lives. They were made to hope for little and when they got the little, they were satisfied and happy. That would make them fight themselves rather than rebel against the forces. And he had seen that everything they did was powered by a fierce struggle to get this little, without regard for any behavioural code.
Two boys were eating and talking in front of Ekoyata. When they changed subject, they said something that caught Ekoyata's interest.
‘Things have tired me out to sit down like this,’ said one of them. He wore oversized velvet trousers and an equally oversized T-Shirt even though the white florescent lights tried to enhance their appearance.
‘What did you say?’ the second boy asked and continued to eat his food after asking the question. He stamped his tongue as if he was eating palm nut. ‘What did you say is bad?’ he added after swallowing some of the food in his mouth.
‘This darkness,' the first boy said, bending over and examining his foot. 'I hit this foot against a big stone over there when I got outside there to get a cigar.'
'Did it cut you?'
'Yes, my big toe.'
‘Sorry of that,' his friend said, with his voice showing no much feeling. He bowed again and faced his food.
The first boy left his foot he was checking and filled his mouth with a large amount of food. When he started to talk, the food muffled his voice.
'Which time are we going to get out of this darkness?' he said. Then, he straightened up and swallowed the food he had masticated.
'You talk like you just finding this out, Odalo,' the second boy said. 'Stop thinking. It is no use thinking like that. Kill it. Just kill it with drink. If you have plenty of drink, it will die.'
Ekoyata's nerves tinged with fright. God, what were they talking about? Then, he heard the boys continued.
'Do I have to live like this?' The first boy whom his colleague called Odalo, complained. 'If there was light, I wouldn't cut my toe. Didn't I pay for light? I donated to the union. BADU didn't buy the transformer they promised. They didn't meet NEPA to bring electricity for us.'
'Oh, it is no use. Stop thinking.'
'What should I do now, Izehi?' Odalo said.
'I have told you to drink it away,' Izehi said. 'Just drink alcohol.'
'No, I want my money back from BADU.'
'What do you want to do now?'
'I will... I amm going to...' He looked suddenly confused. He didn't really know what he wanted to do. He raised his head and looked at his friend, his lips parted and he started to laugh hysterically. 'I will go to Lagos,' he finally said.
'Sure, that is cool, Odalo.'
'Yes cool. They have electricity there. They have television.'
'You seen a television before?'
'Oh no. They said it is like a radio, but is bigger and you see people inside.'
'How you want to go to Lagos?'
'I don't know, Izehi. When I was small, my uncle said that he would take me to Lagos. Now he doesn't come home no more. This is eighteen years.'
'Them there aren't thinking of you here.'
'I know.'
'When God in heaven give you your money, you go to Lagos.'
'Yes, I can even go abroad,' Odalo said.
They looked at each other and then, bent over, laughing again.
'You go abroad?' Izehi said. 'They will put you in a zoo because they would think you is ape that wandered from the forest into town.'
They bent over once again and started laughing at themselves. Tears was streaming down their eyes. Ekoyata couldn't hold himself as the laughter also swelled in him like a supper heated lava inside a volcano. He didn't want them to see him. They might stop talking if they hear him laughing at them. So, he closed his mouth and clung hard to himself. When the eruption came out, it didn't sound to cause a stir.
Ekoyata however thought that what he heard was more than a laughing matter. When he told Obehi of his own donation to BADU, she complained that the union didn't have any water project in Baneke. That was why they went to the burrow pit to get water. When Eguabor came, he learned from him that their chapter in Lagos would persude the union during their coming Easter conference to build a fence on the cemetery. Now, he was hearing from those boys that BADU was used to collecting money for no set purpose. What they did with the money after collection was what he didn't know.
Ekoyata waited for the boys to continue when they stopped laughing. They made him think without effort. He looked at the boys and saw that they concentrated on eating their food now, which they lifted in large amount to their mouth. He saw Odalo finished first and pushed his plate under the bench. Izehi did the same thing when he finished. And the two of them were in a waiting attitude as if for another round.
Isibor too had finished his own food. Obas was still eating, lifting the food in small bits. It could be because of the shame that had had hold of him or he was afraid that the food would give out too soon.
Ekoyata was surprised to see some other guests turning in their seats and facing the boys. He didn't know that a lot of people were listening to them too. Most of them sat and had their backs turned against the dance floor.
Ekoyata sat still, looking to see what was going to happen. If they talked more about the union, he might learn something new from them. Maybe, they knew other things. But the musician had started to test the microphone. Ekoyata was frightened. If the dance started, the boys would go and dance and he would not be able to listen to them. But one young man stood up among them and started to speak.
'You are angry at the union,' he said. 'No. You will go crazy. You don't talk about the union no more.' He paused and shoved a hand deep into his pocket after saying that.
There was a dead silence as the others waited for him to make his point. Ekoyata was looking at the man. Although his eyes were bright, his appearance was flat without sharp edges, like the truck pushers he knew in Lagos. The hand in his pocket fished for something for a moment. His eyes were vacant and defenseless. The hand came out of the pocket with a packet of cigarette. He drew out a stick and lit it.
'Can I get one?' one of the other boys in the crowd asked.
'Oh, its just one stick inside,' he turned to the man and said. 'But don't worry, I will pass you.' Then, he tossed the empty package up and he didn't care where it landed. 'As I was saying, BADU is a bad subject,' he continued. 'You see, you want to go abroad.' He raised his cigarette and it slanted white across his black chin.
The others started to laugh. Odalo also laughed and then stopped abruptly when he thought that it was a joke on him.
'You cowards,' Odalo cursed. 'You animals. Bush animals. Goats. You don't think of nothing higher, so you laugh because I said that I want to go abroad. I will go there and won't come back.'
Everybody doubled over laughing at Odalo all the more.
'I will fix one of you some day,' Odalo threatened.
'Say that again,' a boy rose and stepped forward. 'And I will load this sand in your mouth.'
Odalo stood up too. 'I will kill you. I will slice you.' His hand shoved deep into his trousers and rushed out with a knife. The blade sparkled in the white light as he flipped it open and held it up menacingly. 'I will slit your throat if you try me.'
'Hey, cut that racket there boys,' a voice said.
They immediately obeyed the unseen voice in the crowd and the two of them sat back to their seats. Ekoyata thought it should be a policeman's voice.
Comments
Post a Comment