Once Upon a Time in Lagos: Episode 9

 

I saw that the main roads in Ijebu-Ode were no place for me. Looking for a way to the rural part of the town, I turned into a nearby dirt road. It wasn’t an easy attempt, for I did not know where I was going. I began to see that stealing the car was a stupid mistake. The damn thing will be the easiest way to identify, locate and capture me especially in this area. Not only that, if I left it and took to my feet, the police or my enemies will discover it in an hour or two and that won’t give me enough time to disappear from their sight.

        I figured that the best thing to do at this point was to get to the loneliest roads. These I soon found when I struck up a tributary of River Ibu, and got into a narrow valley with steep hills all about me, and a winding dirt road at the end which climbed over a pass. Here I met nobody, but it was taking me to a scary place, so I turned right into another dirt road and finally struck a railway line. Away below me I saw another valley, and it occurred to me that if I crossed it I might find some remote village and probably a guest house like the Village Breeze Guest House to pass the night. By now it is getting dark and I was starving, for I had eaten nothing since breakfast except the meal I ate at the Village Breeze Guest House. Just then I heard a noise in the sky, and when I looked up I saw the same Supermarine Spitfire airplane that I had seen before, flying low, about a dozen miles away from where I was and rapidly coming towards me.

        I told myself that on an open space like this I would be at the mercy of the airplane, and that my only chance was to get to the thick rainforest cover of the valley. Moving with lightening speed I drove down the hill, turning my head round whenever I can, to watch the damn airplane. Soon I reached a dirt road between hedges, that went down the narrow valley toward a stream. As I approached the cover of the thick rainforest I slackened speed.

        I suddenly heard the sound of another car on my left, and realized to my greatest surprise that I was almost up a couple of yards away from a compound through which a private dirt road joined the one I was travelling on. I pressed hard on the car’s horn and it gave a high-pitched roar, but it was too late. I pressed my foot hard on my brakes, and  my front tires screeched but the car is not stopping quick enough.  I could see the other car moving towards me. In a second there would have been a very fatal accident. I did the only thing that came to my mind, and turned my car into the hedge, hoping to have a soft landing beyond. That was a bad mistake on my part. My car cut through the hedge the way a hot knife slides through butter, and then gave a scary plunge forward. Seeing what was coming, I leapt on the seat and would have jumped down but for a branch of a tree which lifted me up and held me. I watched with amazement as the car slipped below me, bucked and pitched, and then dropped with a loud splash about sixty feet to the bed of a stream.

        Slowly, I climbed down from the branch of the tree and gently dropped on the dirt road just beside the hedge. As I scrambled to my feet, a hand took me by the arm and my heart skipped a beat. I thought my enemies had finally caught me. But I was wrong, for I heard a gentle voice ask me if I were hurt. On looking up I saw a tall man wearing eye-glasses, who kept apologizing and thanking God that I wasn’t dead. I was glad to be alive too and, once I got my wind back I told myself that this can be one way of getting rid of the car.

“No worries, sir,” I  answered him. “It’s not entirely your fault. I’m guilty too. That’s the end of my Sagamu motor tour though, but it’s better than being dead.”

He looked at me again and said, “You are not from this place, correct? I can see that from your accent.”

“Yes,” I replied. “I am an American but my father is an Ibo man. And I live in Lagos.”

“I like your positive attitude and courage, given that you almost lost your life a few minutes ago,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Look, I can spare about half an hour, and my house is just around the corner. Come on, let me take you there so you can eat, bath and take a nap?”

“That will be a good idea,” I said.

“I guess your stuffs are in the car that just fell?” he said.

“Yes, but I have a few things in my pocket,” I replied. “I’m a writer and I normally travel light.”

“A writer?” he said. “My God! I’ve been praying to meet someone like you for a long time now.”

I  smiled, and then said, “See how lucky you are.”

“Do you believe in free education?” he asked. “In my view, free education is the best policy for Nigeria, especially now a lot of Nigerians were illiterates.”

“I love free education too,” I said.

He shook my hand and then hurried me into his car. A few minutes later we pulled up before a nice-looking bungalow  surrounded by Gmelina trees and other flowers, and he ushered me indoors. He took me first to a bedroom and showed me a wardrobe filled with suits, for my own clothes have been pretty well reduced to rags. I selected a grey suit and borrowed a black tie. Then he took me to his dinning room, where the remnants of a meal that consisted of yam porridge cooked with vegetables and mackerel stood on the table. He told me that he will give me twenty minutes to eat. “I also have some bread and orange juice in the refrigerator. You can take some of it and we’ll have supper when we get back. I’ve got to be at the town’s Civic Center at eight o’clock, or my campaign manager will go ballistic.”

I ate the yam porridge and drank some orange juice, while he yawned away on a nearby sofa.

“I’m in a mess right now, Mr. – , by the way you haven’t told me your name,” he said.

“My name is Jideofor Okorie,” I replied. “How about yours?”

“I am Tunde,” he said. “So, you are Ibo, then? Oh, never mind. I forgot you just told me a few minutes ago”

“Yeah,” I replied. “My father is an Ibo, but my mother is a black American, and I was born in America.”

“That’s even better,” he said. “No alliance to any region. Anyway, we will talk about you latter. Well, you see, I’m one of the  candidates for local government Chairman, and I had a meeting tonight at the Civic Center. The towns in my local government area are strongholds for the Action Group – one of the three most popular  political parties in Nigeria. I had got my journalist friend, Gbenga, who is also my speech writer coming to speak for me tonight and had all the programs planned to go very smooth and easy. This afternoon, I received a telegram from the punk saying he had got malaria at Lagos, and here I am left to do the whole thing myself. My plan was to speak for only ten minutes but now I must go on for about an hour. I have been brainstorming for three hours but couldn’t think of the good things to talk about for an hour. You must rescue me from this problem. You believe in free education and you are a writer. So my people will be convinced when a writer like you tells them how free education can benefit them and help them politically. Even my potential voters will definitely like your speech if you explain how I will make sure that their children gets free education at primary and secondary school level. All you writers have the gift of eloquence  – I wish I had it. Anyway, if you can bail me out of this, I will owe you forever.”

“But I’m not that fluent in Yoruba language,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “You can speak in English. The people coming there are mostly educated politicians and professionals anyway. So, you have nothing to worry about.”

I was surprised that, unlike America, public education was not free in Nigeria at the time. In any case, I saw his request as my chance to get what I wanted. Meanwhile, Mr. Tunde was far too absorbed in his own problems to think how odd it was to ask a stranger who had missed death by an inch and had lost an expensive car to address a meeting for him on the spur of the moment. But I’m in a jam and I need a way out so I will go with the flow.

“I must warn you though,” I said. “I’m not that good at public speaking. But I will try my best.”

When I said this, he became very excited and he started to tell me the story of his life. He was an orphan, he says, and his uncle who he called Chief Adedibu, had brought him up. His uncle, who  was also a politician, has many of his speeches published in the Daily Times. His uncle made sure that he was well educated. He had gone round the world after graduating from the University of Ibadan, and then, being short of a job, his uncle had advised him to join politics. And, as a Yoruba, it’s very natural that he joined the Action Group, since it was a very popular political party in Western Nigeria which is the ancestral home of the Yoruba tribe. “Good people in all the country’s parties,” he said cheerfully, “and plenty of bad eggs too. I’m a nationalist, because my family have always been nationalists.” But if he was a liberal and is lukewarm politically, he had strong views on other things. He found out that I know a lot about the malaria crisis in Nigeria at the time, and jawed away about the mistakes the politicians are making by not being serious with dealing with the crisis; and he was full of plans for eradicating malaria in the Western region. Altogether, Tunde was a very clean, decent, and ambitious young man.

END OF EPISODE 9

P.S. Stay tuned for Episode 10, which  will be published here next Sunday.