The rock stood in
the heart of our land, a gift from the gods. One benighted afternoon we
found a madman atop the rock, and he was pointing a gun on us.
“Behold the rock I built with petro-dollars!” screamed the madman, prancing hither and thither.
“How do we get this knave down from that height?” queried one of us down below.
“That statement is
undue radicalism, very extremist!” cried the madman. He took aim at the
man amongst us who made the utterance, and the poor fellow was dead in
short seconds.
Shouts of horror swept through the landscape.
“Hail me as your president or I will shoot again!” The madman was in his elements, caressing his baleful gun.
“A raving madman cannot a president make!” shouted another deviant fellow in our midst.
The madman unleashed another crack shot, and death followed suit.
“Am I the president or am I not?” The madman was not joking.
“You are!” we all hollered as one.
“Actually it is my
duty to decree myself president,” said the madman, pulling ill-assorted
military gear over his white gown. “Your business is just to say yes to
my decree.”
“All hail Mr. President!” we were shouting.
“Don’t Mister me!” bellowed the madman. “I am a five-star general!”
“Field-marshal President!” cooed a section of the gathered crowd.
The somewhat diminutive madman showed his teeth in a hearty smile. He was gap-toothed.
“I know this man,”
said one of us with a press tag on the lapel of his coat. “I know him
from way back. He used to write me love letters.”
Before our very
eyes, the man dispatched a letter from high up to the man below which
instantly exploded like a bomb, blowing the hapless fellow to
smithereens.
There was a stampede but the madman dared anyone to leave the square.
“I feel good.” The madman was nodding. “In fact I feel cool.”
“Please come down, our dear president, and rule among us,” a voice in the square pleaded.
“Why should I come down among you plebeians?” the madman replied, frowning. “I prefer to rule from the rock.”
“But the president is supposed to be among the people, a man of the people…”
“Don’t tell me what
a president is supposed to be,” snapped the madman. “How can you know
where or what the president is supposed to be when none of you has ever
been a president? You don’t even have a gun.”
“A real president of the people does not need a gun.”
“Who said that?” The madman was livid.
Nobody raised a voice.
The madman unleashed a staccato of shots, killing five or so luckless fellows.
“Ordain me your life-president and I’ll come down to be with you,” said the madman.
“When you didn’t come down as a president how is it possible for you to come as a life-president?”
“I don’t like that question,” the madman bawled. “It smells like a pressman.”
“How can a question smell like a journalist?” asked one of us.
“No more questions or I’ll bomb you with my letter!”
He panned his gun wickedly across the mammoth crowd, and cries of dread swept through the square.
“Behold our darling life-president!”
“Prince of the Atlantic!”
“King of the Sahara!”
“I am not deceived by your praise-songs,” the madman said, fiddling with his trigger. “You people praise to kill.”
“You are our grand commander till kingdom come!” The roar reached the sky.
“That’s more like it.” The madman adjusted his epaulettes. “I feel like transforming to civvies.”
“Will you now come down to be with us?” asked the lady at my back.
“Not until you make my wife your empress,” said the madman.
Something we had
thought was merely an outgrowth of the rock suddenly came alive. It
stood like a masquerade. Then the clothes came off, revealing the
woman. Her madness was extraordinary, putting her husband in the shade.
Despite the peacock feathers all about her she was naked and dancing
extravagantly.
“First Lady!” We were all screaming. “Eku! First Lady!”
“I decree her as your empress,” the madman intoned, admiring his wild missus.
“Empress of the
Niger!” We could not run short of praise-songs in her name. “Mother of
wealth! Better life bringer! Queen of beauty!”
The naked woman
cavorted in a frenzy of dancing. We egged her on with oohs and aahs.
She was indeed an empress to behold, a loose cannon baring and dangling
all the unmentionables.
“Not even death shall do us part,” the empress sang, blowing her husband a kiss.
“So my wife is the empress,” the madman boomed, cavorting with his wife, “and I am the emperor. What a fantastic combination!”
“As fantastic as Fanta!” the wife cooed.
“And as cocastic as Coke!” said the madman, sniffing the palm of his hand like a junkie.
“Now we are ready for the Great Couple to come down to be with us,” said the very tall man to my right.
“You people think
you can fool me,” the madman said, eyeing us wickedly. “I know it. If I
make the mistake of coming down among you I am a goner! You think I’ll
let you quarantine me? I still want to be here!”
“Please go away, madman!” shouted a defiant voice.
“Go to hell, you yammering mad cap!” followed another strong voice.
“Only divine intervention can save us from this miscreant.”
The madman pulled
the trigger, terminating another handful of lives. He affected the pose
of a cowboy and flashed his trademark gap-toothed grin.
“Paradise is here,” the madman’s wife sang, shaking her naked buttocks at us.
Cemetery silence descended on us. We could only stare and wonder and wait.
“I am tired of staying here!” the madman suddenly ejaculated. “Make me the Alpha and Omega and I’ll go.”
“Pronto, you are our Alpha and Omega!”
“You are our all-in-all!”
“Generalissimo!”
The madman pranced about, cuddling his gun.
“Kleptomaniac!” shouted one fellow.
“I like that word!” screamed the madman. “I like that title. Make me klepto-!”
“Maniac!” we chorused.
“Now I have
achieved everything on earth and upon the rock,” the madman said,
feeling good. “But you are yet to give me something…”
“What again do you want from us?”
The madman pasted
his ears to the winds as though hearing voices from beyond, then he
hooted. “Margaret Thatcher is my godmother. If she tells me to jump, I
jump.”
“Then jump!” I muttered under my breath.
“You must all structurally adjust yourselves!” ordered the madman, waving at all of us.
“How do we go about that now?” asked one voice at the edge of the square.
“I hereby devalue all of you!” the madman bleated, jumping on the bosom of his wife.
We all looked at one another, finding no words.
“Since you want me
to go I feel it’s time for me to go,” said the madman after we could
not say anything for moments on end. “But before I go there must be a
period of transition for you to choose the fellow to replace me here.”
“We don’t need another madman on the rock!” said a voice in compelling vehemence.
“What is that you said?” The madman was furious. “That is the voice of the poet, and poetry simply means coup-plotting!”
The madman insisted
on fishing out the owner of the dissenting voice. The identified
dissident stared back at the madman with a certitude that bore the
stamp of familiarity.
“Coup-plotting poet!” the madman cursed, shooting to death the poet alongside his comrades.
“But that’s your brother you just killed,” wailed a lady, who took the wedding band of the shot man.
“Tell them the coup-plotter and his comrades have been shot about an hour ago!” the madman said, pointing.
“Nothing is beyond this madman…” I was thinking.
“Call me Democratic Emperor!” the madman shouted.
“Democratic Emperor!” we shouted back.
“Cool.” The madman scanned the gathering. “That’s the kind of thing I like to read in the Times.”
He paused. We looked on.
“I’ll teach you democracy,” said the madman. “I’ll give you democracy.”
“God bless our life-president, teacher of democracy,” sang the singer in the midst. “God save the emperor, giver of democracy.”
Just then a very
surprising thing happened. Some angry young men appeared like
paratroopers on the rock and tackled the madman and his wife to the
ground.
“Khalifa! Khalifa! Khalifa!” the madman wept.
A short and squat
soldier wearing very dark goggles appeared on the rock as though from
nowhere and shot to death the squad that had all but captured the
madman. We all stared from Khalifa to the madman, wondering. Khalifa
did not offer a word before disappearing. The madman was visibly
shaken, crying on the shoulder of his wife like a stricken suckling. It
took an age for the madman to find his voice.
“Not today,” the
madman said when he found his voice. “What a Dodan nightmare! It was
the attack of those Obalende rascals that pursued me to this rock!” He
paused to gather his breath. “But I dealt with them. I wiped them out!
No tears for the terrorists!”
“Don’t mind the
extremists who do not want you to give us democracy,” said a woman by
the corner. “Forget them and keep up with your promised transition.”
“Yes, let the
transition happen,” the madman ordered, assuming a new seriousness.
“You have to build a ladder for me to come down with and for the new
man to get up here.”
“But you didn’t need a ladder to get up there in the first place?” shouted a very angry voice.
“Build the ladder or I’ll shoot!” commanded the madman.
The incomparably
long ladder took billions of Naira to build. Then the ladder was placed
against the rock. The madman asked us to choose a handful of persons to
climb the ladder. We did the choosing as ordered by the madman. When we
presented our chosen ones the madman took one look at them and screamed:
“I don’t want old greed. New breed is what I need!”
He promptly ordered
our chosen ones away from the foot of the ladder, threatening to shoot
them into tiny slivers. Then the madman chose two of his friends in our
midst to make the climb up the ladder. One of his chosen two was a fast
climber and was soon on the last rung of the ladder, in short, with a
foot on the rock. With the butt of his gun the madman sent his friend
crashing down from the great height.
“This rock cannot
contain two of us!” shouted the madman, holding aloft his gun. “I would
have shot you if you were not my friend.”
“I dare you!” the humiliated friend cried, alive only because the people helped break his fall.
“Make me Go-!” the madman yelled, incensed.
“Did he say Go or God?” We did not know.
“I am not afraid
of this madman!” the felled friend hollered. “I’ll fight him to a
finish with all the proverbs on earth. His firing squad cannot make me
lose my manhood!”
Dread stood in the
air. Blood was boiling to flow. Some angry youths arranged to climb the
rock to bring down the madman. The madman fired some shots but death
was not in the dictionary of the angry ones coming after the madman on
the rock. There was commotion all over the place. The madman ran from
one end of the rock to the other as though looking for a place to hide.
“General Khalifa!” cried the leader of the human rats. “History beckons on you to take over!”
“Cover me! Cover me!” the madman said to an old ghost whom he had unburied from one of the crannies of the rock.
The madman covered
the old ghost in interim fatigues, asking him to pose as a madman in
his place. Then General Khalifa, wearing his very dark goggles,
appeared on the scene, borne along by the apple-laden beauties of India.
Confusion shot up
as people marched on the rock and the old ghost struggled with his
interim fatigues and the madman looked upon Khalifa for a measure of
solution.
“Save the day!” the madman pleaded, staring plaintively at General Khalifa.
“They are coming
from everywhere!” screamed General Khalifa, pushing the old ghost in
interim fatigues from off the rock and then turning to speak directly
to the convulsing madman. “Jump before they get you! They are coming
fast! Spirits! Soldiers! Students! They are coming for your jugular!
Jump!”
“I will only step
aside,” snorted the madman; then he clung to his First Lady and they
jumped from the rock, falling hard to earth with such force that they
instantly turned into the small rock called Stone!
As General Khalifa
settled on the rock, playing God with military abandon, the human rats
started crying: “Another madman is back on the rock! We don’t want
another madman on the rock!”
The goggled madman, a dead shot with an AK47, took aim and, rat-a-tat, his beginning was the end.
