The confession ended, and the survivors in the room sighed as one. ‘Is this not terrible?’ asked Mr. President, looking around, his face a study in betrayal. ‘I am surrounded by crooks!’
They nodded gravely, scandalised by the Disgraced Six; then they returned to national security discussions.
* * *
‘WAIT,’ SAID the president, as a TV report caught his eye. President Bush was in his garden, addressing a press conference with the prime minister of Tuvalu.
‘Look at that!’ roared an apoplectic Chief Eleshin. ‘Mister President has a reception in the White House with George Bush and nothing! Now, look at that! Prime minister of Tuvalu! Where is Tuvalu?’
The president looked at Eleshin irritably. He did not say anything, but Chief Eleshin fell silent. The key to a long, sycophantic career was never to sound sycophantic. Striking the right balance was always a problem, and he had clearly fallen overboard. Another invitation to dine was now most unlikely.
‘Let’s see,’ said the president modestly, to a silent room. ‘Maybe he will mention our conversation.’
President Bush declared, ‘The challenge facing the free nations of the world today was captured in these words of the American poet Robert Frost:
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.”
‘The challenge before today’s summit of island nations is to fashion a solution that can accommodate progress while avoiding the destruction of our precious planet . . .’
‘Take off the volume,’ commanded the president, bored, and the hubbub of security consultations returned to the room. The war briefings were hindered, however, by the absence of a critical brigade commander on an extended toilet break. Moments later, the president frowned. ‘Ofo, am I missing something?’ His military assistant was still gaping at the television.
Ofo started, ‘No, Your Excellency, I was just . . . it was nothing.’ The volume on the TV set rose a notch with the return of presidential attention. ‘I like Robert Frost myself, that’s all’ he explained. ‘That quotation was the beginning of the poem “Fire and Ice,” that’s all.’
‘Another soldier-poet like my old friend Mamman Vatsa,’ joked the president. ‘I hope you’re not a coup plotter like him,’ The room broke up in explosive laughter at the very idea of another Nigerian coup plotter after Sani Abacha. It was just the icebreaker required after the tension of the second Badu video. As he wiped his tears, the president asked, riding the crest of the successful joke, ‘I liked that poem, too; how does it end?’
Ofo took a deep breath. His voice was hoarse.
‘But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.’
‘It’s not as sweet as George Bush’s own,’ sniffed the party chief, who detested all military men with a passion.
‘Yes,’ agreed Eleshin, ‘American poems need American voices to sound sweet.’
* * *
DR. IDOWU took advantage of a senior national security adviser’s toilet break and attained his objective. ‘Your Excellency, about that award list . . .’
‘Award list? At a time like this? Didn’t you hear of the secession?’
Idowu ignored the warning burr; he was sure of his material. ‘There’s still time to drop the Humphrey Chow man, Your Excellency, to prevent a national embarrassment. He’s not Chinese, he’s very, very Nigerian.’ Idowu opened his file. The information was graphic, with a minimum of writing: two large photographs and an Interpol poster. It was laid out to be grasped at a glance. He dropped his bomb: ‘In fact, his real name is Badu!’
‘What?’ The press around the president became moderately rude as the aides strained to see the pictures.
‘This is the publicity picture sent by his agency in London,’ said Dr. Idowu, jabbing, ‘and this is the police picture of Badu.’
‘It’s the same person!’
‘Exactly, Your Excellency. Should I drop his name—’
‘And he said he’s Humphrey Chow?’
‘It is not a matter of “he said,” Your Excellency. In fact, he was travelling with a Humphrey Chow passport! No wonder he was writing about Menai people in Balding Wolf. He is Badu!’
‘But who identified this person as Badu?’
‘Charles Pitani, the IGP,’ said Idowu, hardly seeing the relevance. ‘He is the only person who has seen Badu and lived to—’
‘—the former inspector general?’ sighed the president. ‘How can you trust an ID by that criminal? I am surrounded by morons!’ There were no assenting nods this time. ‘Get me the attorney general!—And don’t touch my awards list!’
UCHE OFO
Abuja | 22nd April, 2005
‘This is not a good time,’ said the voice on the phone.
‘I know, sir. I have a watch myself. I just have a message for you: Do not engage.’
The reply came loud and angry. Ofo held the phone away from his ear until the worst of the tirade was past. Then he spoke again, quietly. ‘I don’t care if you are going to have five hundred flat tyres in your brigade, all I’m saying is: do not engage, sir.’
He cut the connection and pushed himself deeper into the sofa. He looked around the deserted anteroom and closed his eyes. What he had just done was tantamount to treason, but for the first time he had to admit to himself that he was a whore for power. There was no other way to explain the thrill he had felt when the American president, the most powerful man in the world, opened his mouth and parroted words that he, Uchechukwu Ofo, had instructed. He knew how difficult it was to get his own president even to stick to a script, and he was doubly in awe of Penaka Lee.
His job as a presidential assistant had given Ofo new insights into the asymmetries of power. He relished his ability to issue orders to a brigade commander who outranked him formally, just because he had the ears of the president. But he knew that if he lost his current job he would not only lose that power, he would slide down the power pole with a velocity greased by the vengeful superiors he had slighted. Working with Penaka was an investment in new centres of power.
And revenge for his boss’s thing with his wife.
He hesitated, looked around once more, and called Belinja.
ZANDA ATTURK
Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005
The selection meeting of the kingmakers was under way at the Great Court. There was rioting on the streets and federal government cars were burning, but the federal troops scheduled to arrive since dawn were nowhere in sight. The secessionists had the streets.
Around the Royal Palace, a more quiescent crowd milled, awaiting the announcement of the decision of the kingmakers. The cool reception of Amana’s convoy, despite Nanga Saul’s blessings, was a sobering reminder for me that Amana was only recognised within the Nanga’s Residence. She was still very much the dark horse. The battle for the position of Nanga had coincided with the popular secession movement, and Elder Rantan was riding the wave of the movement for all it was worth.
In the Great Court, the thirty-strong Kingmakers Committee had gathered. In addition to Elder Rantan and his fellow elders of the council, chiefs from the fifteen Sontik wards were in attendance. Amana Udama Bentiy joined them silently, looking at that moment very much like a short-lived women’s emancipation and sensitisation project by a deluded Justin Bentiy & Clique, and I slipped into the rear of the gallery with her courtiers.
It was a short selection process, all the horse trading having been done in earlier private meetings. Governor Obu, the president-in-waiting of the Sontik Republic, had tagged his endorsement of Elder Rantan onto that morning’s TV denunciations against the murderers in Abuja who had killed his wife. The continuity announcer on Sontik Republic TV used the titles Elder and Nanga interchangeably for Rantan. The speeches commenced. The back-
to-back endorsements of all the elders in the council also contributed a sense of inevitability to Elder Rantan’s candidacy. From the rear of the room, I watched Justin Bentiy’s frown deepen. It was going to be a rout.
I looked at my watch. The speeches were going much faster than I had expected. Finally, the expected text came through from Adevo, and I hurried out into one of the deserted reception rooms. I flicked through the channels. With some alarm I realised that Sontik State TV, which had quickly rebranded itself as the Sontik Republic TV station, was jamming the Nigerian Network programming. I knew then that they were not going to hook up to the Pitani video, and I returned to the Great Court as Amana rose to speak.
She spoke confidently, but in contention with rude hecklers, she sounded more plucky than regal. By the time she finished, a note of frustration had crept into her voice. It was not a speech that could dam a flood. Elder Rantan’s was a cross between a secession and an acceptance speech, and he sat down to loud applause.
It was time to vote.
And yet, the applause for Elder Rantan seemed dutiful to me rather than enthusiastic—the din sounded requisitioned, like a bully’s due. It was that feeling that prompted me, sometime Menai shoeshine boy, to intrude upon the most sensitive of proceedings in the life of the Sontik nation.
As I stepped forward, I felt again that intoxicating charge of blood that had gone to my head when I addressed the Parliamentary Subcommittee on the Pharmaceutical Industry in London. I climbed onto the raised dais and plucked the microphone from a startled protocol officer. From the kingmakers’ ranks, a shout went up: ‘The candidates have spoken—no one else may speak!’
‘Unless he is Badu,’ I said, quietly, recognising—as soon as the unplanned and suicidal words were out—the entire rationale behind the written address.
A hush fell on the audience. ‘Who are you?’ demanded Elder Rantan.
I ignored him, thinking quickly how to rephrase myself. ‘The real question is who the Sontik nation selects as Nanga.’ I raised my voice. ‘Badu’s second video has just been released, and this council’s vote will decide whether the new Nanga will rule from palace or prison . . .’
Someone switched on a television in an alcove by the Great Court. My bluff had been called and I was about to be exposed. I stepped down from the dais as the kingmakers surged, as one body, into the alcove, hunting channels anxiously. I tried to leave the room but was headed off by security men.
* * *
EYONO
Sontik Republic TV, Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005
10:00 a.m.
The tape had finished playing, but the mind of the general manager of the TV station was still in turmoil. Eyono pressed the replay button, with the air of someone who had missed something important. He needed time to think! He had been a member of the ‘X’ Committee. The new TV logos, the jamming strategies, everything had been carefully planned months in advance. Like most other Sontiks, he was pro-secession, and he was not so naive as to imagine that Governor Obu was a saint.
Yet the order and magnitude of the corruption revealed by Pitani was nauseating in the extreme. And with both Obu and Rantan in cohorts with the disgraced IGP, it was clear that the new country would be far worse than the old, for the small citizen. Already four countries had recognised Sontik Republic. The US was still hedging, but they had not repudiated the secession either. The State Department statement had merely called for ‘peaceful means to resolve the crisis.’
It was a critical time in the secession. Obu was already more corrupt than Sese Seko. Once he was entrenched in power and with an army at his behest, he could be as murderous as King Leopold and no one would be able to do a thing about it.
The general manager had lately been dreaming about Obiang and Equatorial Guinea. Perhaps this was the meaning of the dreams: Sontik was to become a petrorepublic small enough to fit into Obu’s hip pocket like Equatorial Guinea had fit into the swag bag of the Obiang family since their independence.
The video still had several minutes to run, but the general manager’s mind was made up. He rose. Ugly mutters of thief, barawo, jibiti rippled through his office, which was packed with workers—from messengers right up to deputy directors—who had filed in spontaneously to see the long-awaited video. He already knew the mood, but he asked anyway: ‘Fine! This is a democracy! To broadcast or not to broadcast?’
The room exploded, ‘Broadcast!’
His head swelled. Downstairs, the governor’s mercenaries held the gates of the broadcasting house against the feared onslaught of the Nigerian Army. Yet a new front manned by a citizen’s army had opened up right in his office. He knew he was setting his head securely on the block. They all supported him now, but if the gamble failed and they all ended up in Sontik Republic, it was still going to be his head. He thought about his young family, his innocent wife . . . then he thought about Sonia, the only good thing in the State House, who had clearly been killed by her own husband to stoke pro-secession fervour . . . and he stopped thinking and nodded to his producer.
Without fanfare, the graphics of the television station morphed from Sontik Republic TV back to Sontik State TV, and the second Badu video went live in the breakaway republic.
His telephone shrilled immediately, with a call from the office of the president of Sontik Republic. ‘He has gone to piss,’ snapped his angry secretary, not bothering to pass the call through.
TOBIN RANI
The Oasis at Gozoa | 22nd April, 2005
As soon as I stopped, David woke up, roused by the change in the rhythm of the truck. He rubbed his eyes sleepily and looked at his watch. It was 3:00 a.m. ‘Why are we stopping? Still many travelling hours before dawn.’
‘I’m not sure. There are, like . . . sleeping camels ahead.’
He peered at the map, then at the satellite screen. ‘There’s nothing there. Probably a Bedouin camp. Just skirt around it.’
I gestured behind me. He glanced back and sighed: the Mata was awake.
David sank back into his seat resignedly and shut his eyes. His six-hour driving shift had ended only two hours earlier. The long month on the road had made him a testy travel companion.
We travelled at the Mata’s pace. He spent most of his time either asleep or in a trance, but when we travelled, his eyes were trained on the horizon and the stars. I stroked the fingers clenched into my shoulders until they relaxed; then I took his thin digits in mine and turned around. Usually the Mata would be stretched out on his back. The truck was modified with a huge moonroof. I had thought we would have lost him by now, but he was still there, confounding the roadmap I had worked out with David with his directions, menya, menyi or more usually ese, every hour or two. When the crop of camels had materialised in the wash of my headlights, I had tried to detour, but his hand had pinned me down.
‘Enie Mata?’ I tried again, to be met by silence.
I sighed and, turning off the headlights, killed the engine.
* * *
I WAS woken up by the slamming of David’s door. It was first light but too early for me so I let him go, although I did not get to sleep again. Presently, he came over to my side of the truck. ‘It’s just a Tuareg camp. Ten, twenty tents. We should have gone around. That’s four to five hours travelling wasted.’
‘There’s more where that came from.’
We made camp that morning and made friends that afternoon. It was an oasis, of sorts. The well was good for two to three months of the year. It was mostly mud just now, and the clan was moving on in another day or so. That evening we shared a goat roast with our hosts, a six-family Tuareg clan. The Mata ate his smoked fish in the silence of the tent I shared with him. He had not said a word all day, but I was not concerned, for I knew he was also spending time with ancestorsMenai. Sometimes he would spend a day in silence and then answer a question I had asked the night before. He was the Mata.
As night fell we said our goodbyes to the Tuareg, who had entertained themselves with David’s phrasebook-assi
sted ‘Arabic,’ and broke camp. We usually left the Mata for last. He was in a trance, but my gentle attempt to lift him snapped him right out of it, animating him again: ‘Ajia! Ajia!’ I had to stop. All my remonstrations came to nothing. After fifteen minutes of this I rose, heart pounding, and turned to David. ‘I’m sorry. We have to spend another night.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ he said angrily, and we had our first real quarrel.
I got him well away from the Mata and tried to get his voice down. ‘Listen, David, I don’t know if I told you this before: the Mata can speak English. He just won’t.’
‘Yeah, pull the other one.’
‘Just keep your comments civil, in his presence. He understands every word.’
‘Just damn well put him in the truck, and my comments will get civil again! This is the Sahara desert, Tobin. I didn’t sign up to sit and die in the desert with a senile old man!’
‘He’s not a corpse yet. I can’t put him in against his will!’
‘What will? He’s dying! He’s senile. It’s called dementia! It is a natural fact of life, not an abuse against your holy clanfather! And I’m hanging around the desert on his instructions?’
We didn’t exchange another word all through that long night.
ZANDA ATTURK
Ubesia | 22nd April, 2005
After only a few minutes of the video, Elder Rantan’s more thuggish supporters had switched off and borne away the television set, wresting the meeting back to its original agenda. The selection conference of kingmakers quickly degenerated into protracted bickering as Elder Drosa manoeuvred desperately to supplant Rantan as a compromise candidate of the elders’ council.
Elder Drosa’s secret ambition took me by surprise. I had counted on some shame, had anticipated that Rantan’s own ambition would shrivel up and die, leaving the coast clear for Amana. Unfortunately, Elder Rantan had defaulted into bully mode, possibly figuring that the nangaship was his best chance of escaping prosecution from any Pitani revelations. It was a life office, and although it did not give him constitutional immunity from prosecution in Nigeria, once selected he would be in a position to ensure that it did in the nascent Sontik Republic. So he dug in. Amana’s star seemed to fade as the din in the hall grew. When the ballot was finally cast, Elder Drosa’s name was also in contention, and Amana only managed a distant third place behind him. As Elder Rantan rose to his feet in victory, Justin Bentiy swept out of the Great Court without a word.
The Extinction of Menai Page 39
