When Ogedengbe and
the other protesters passed by Oliho Forest, he asked them not to pluck
any leaf or tree branch from the virgin expanse of land in the middle
of town inhabited by huge Iroko trees. “This is the forest dedicated to
Oliho, the town’s deity,” he said. “Oliho is the deity that blesses our
land, increases our crop yields, protects us and fights our battles for
us. Since government has failed us we have taken recourse to our gods.”
The crowd cheered. At the Y-junction linking IDC Road and Emore road,
the protesters surrounded the Delta State Library and wanted to set it
ablaze. But Ogedengbe remembered the encyclopedia he always read there
and the several altercations he had had with Obi. He remembered the
librarian, a short man who walked hesitantly as though unsure of what
step to take, threatening to ban him from using the library after Obi
had falsely accused him of tearing one of the pages of an encyclopedia.
He remembered the abusive manner with which Obi threatened to ban young
girls who refused his advances. Still, the mathematics teacher believed
the library was inviolable. “Please don’t torch the library!” he
pleaded. “The library is the storehouse of knowledge. If it’s
destroyed, our memory’s gone; and once our memory’s gone we are gone,
our country’s gone. So, please don’t destroy the library.”
The mob moved over
to Unity Bank, a green and white square-shaped building whose walls
were peeling off like Harmattan-beaten skin. It’s only protection
against robbery attacks was a burglary proof that served as the
entrance and a smallish policeman who, when not sitting on a raised
pavement in front of the bank, his rusty AK-47 rifle beside him, was in
a palm wine shop across the road, discussing people’s marital problems.
“Set it ablaze!” a voice rang out. What’s united about Nigeria?”
“There is so much
corruption here!” another said. “The bank manager not only gives out
loans without collateral, he issues loans to himself, family members
and wealthy people who never pay back. There is no difference between
when it was called New Nigeria Bank and now. Torch it!”
Ogedengbe’s
silence meant approval. And immediately one of the protesters splashed
some petrol at the entrance, the windows and rusty zinc of the
building. He lit a match and the building was engulfed in flames. The
fire sizzled as it raged, licking every part of the building. Ogedengbe
could hear the sound, in spite of the loud noise all about him. It was
now pitch dark. He could only see silhouettes and shadows that the
light being emitted by the flames allowed. Across the road, some goats
that had taken over the palm-wine seller’s makeshift shop, made of
tarpaulin, were bleating uncontrollably, as they jumped from one bench
to the other.
Suddenly,
Ogedengbe became conscious of the huge responsibility chance had placed
on his shoulders. Where were Baba and Obidi? he wondered. They should
be with their families now. Many of his fellow teachers often asked
Ogedengbe when he would marry; and he always told them that he would
marry when the time was ripe. The mathematics teacher was not averse to
being in a relationship; rather he was too preoccupied with figures to
give quality time to women. When he was a student at the University of
Ibadan, he had a girlfriend called Tolulope. The relationship was
short-lived.Starved of attention and love, Tolulope later fell for
another student, Ganja, who, though smoked weewee, spent enough time
with her. Since he graduated, Ogedengbe had not been in a relationship,
yet he always admired the way Baba’s wife, a petite lady with a long,
narrow face, always brought food to him at the pools office. He also
admired the way Obidi often spoke glowingly about his family, how he
had just bought one ornament or other for his wife, how he had just
paid his children’s school fees. Still, for him, it was not yet time
for marriage. Obidi always told him that he was not a responsible man
and was not man enough, because he was not married. “I am a man in
spite of what he thinks I am. And my manhood is bigger than his,”
Ogedengbe said to himself.
OHis face
brightened. He looked about him. The protesters’ chants were deafening.
No one else walked the road, apart from the mob. A bus, its headlight
dazzling, was approaching in the direction they had come from.
Ogedengbe shielded his eyes with his right hand. He gazed at the
vehicle and realised that it was a Coaster bus. He smiled, thinking
that the students’ union government of the university had sent it to
take them to their homes. Immediately the mob moved to the road and
blocked it. The inscription on both sides of the bus read, God’s Case,
No Appeal.
“Hey, let’s move
to the courts!” one of the protesters bellowed. “Let’s move to the
courts and set them ablaze. They not only pervert justice, they delay
it. The judges are corrupt!”
Ogedengbe shook
his head from one side to the other disapprovingly. “The judiciary is
the bastion of justice, our last hope. Once the judiciary is destroyed,
we are finished,” he said.
The bus stopped
and the crowd milled around it; some of them standing on their toes,
stretched their necks to see what was inside; while others walked
around it, hitting the bus with their palms. A blue line ran around its
middle as though it was wearing a necklace. At the front and back of
the bus were fresh green leaves the driver had stuck on the windshield
to show solidarity.
“Where are you
coming from? And where are you going?” Ogedengbe asked the driver who
wore a faded, perforated t-shirt. He was drowsy; and still was chewing
a kolanut noisily, making a crunching sound.
“I’ve closed for
the day. I am going home,” the driver, hunched over the steering, said.
His face, which was as flat as a deflated tyre, was uninspiring.
“No, you can’t close now,” Ogedengbe said. “It’s not over yet. There is still a lot of work to do.”
“Eh! What are you saying? Are you saying I can’t go home now?”
Ogedengbe did not
say a word. Silence could mean anything. It could mean oppression,
suppression, negation, affirmation or passivity. But this time, it
meant affirmation, affirmative action, the power to decide the course
of action. It was already past midnight. The town seemed asleep but the
bleating of goats intermingled with the mob’s agitation. Unity Bank was
still in flames. And in the middle of the road, ten metres away from
the bonnet of the bus, there was a bonfire; the flames spluttering.
Ogedengbe opened the front passenger door and entered. The mob slid the
other door open and entered one after the other, singing solidarity
songs.
“Eh! Where are we going?” the driver asked, thick lines crisscrossing his brow.
“Take us to our homes,” Ogedengbe said.
The driver
hesitated for some minutes before turning on the ignition. As they
started up Emore Road, the passengers singing, the inscription on the
bus flashed in Ogedengbe’s mind. There are gods and there are gods; big
ones and small ones, he thought. He disagreed vehemently with Louis
XIV’s famous statement, ‘L’ Etat c’ est moi, I am the state’; and
Hegel’s quote, ‘The state is God marching through the world’. To him,
those two statements were the heights of absolutism. “The rights of the
individual are not just inalienable, they are invaluable… my rights…
your rights,” he said aloud. The driver looked askance at him.
The driver dropped
the passengers whose homes were beside the road in front of their
houses. He dropped others on the spots adjoining where they lived.
Ogedengbe was the last to alight. As the bus stopped slowly at the
entrance of Emore Grammar School, opposite the Oleh Campus of Delta
State University, Ogedengbe hopped out, determined not just to take his
job seriously but also to cater for others’ welfare and fight for
people’s rights, no matter their colour, creed or station. As he walked
to his one-room apartment, which was beside one of the dilapidated and
abandoned hostels, he looked back and waved desultorily at the driver
who was revving the bus, having taken a U-Turn. “Go and marry!” the
driver shouted, his head popping out of the window, and zoomed off.
Ogedengbe walked
on sluggishly. When he got to his room, he brought out a key from his
trousers pocket, opened the door and entered the darkness. No light as
usual, he thought. There was no furniture inside his room and so there
was no danger of hitting his legs on them. He removed his shirt and
hung it lazily on a nail in the wall. He hit his right leg on the
sooty, green kerosene stove, blackened pots and aluminium plates on the
floor. The clanging sound the pots made meant there were empty. He
removed his shoes and slumped on the eight-spring mattress on the
floor. All around him were seven Mathematics textbooks, an improvised
rusty telescope and a stethoscope that cluttered up the room. He
stretched his hand and felt an open New General Mathematics (Book
Three) that he had read the night before and closed it. As he lay down
he looked at the darkness and the events of the day came tugging at his
mind. I have found a niche in life, he
thought again. But
where could Baba and Obidi be now? Certainly with their families. He
was brooding on his being alone and did not know when he fell asleep.
The next morning
Ogedengbe woke up, had his bath, put on his clothes and hurriedly
scampered to the assembly ground, which was in front of the school’s
administrative block. Suddenly, he heard some students who were also
walking briskly, calling out his aliases. Alpha Beta! Archimedes!
Calculus! they hailed. Ogedengbe, occupied with the thought of how he
was going to face Mr Mgbunwe, only waved his hand and continued
scampering. On the assembly ground, Ogedengbe stood with the other
teachers, facing the students, as they waited for the arrival of the
school’s principal. What was he going to tell him? he thought,
agitated. Would the principal reprimand him or deduct from his salary,
as he had once threatened? Was he going to give him a query or write to
the Delta State Ministry of education, recommending his sack? Ogedengbe
could not imagine being relieved of his job. There were no jobs
anywhere. Where would he get another job? Graduates, with better
qualifications, roamed the streets in search of jobs that were not
there. At best, he would get a teaching appointment in a private school
and receive a monthly salary that could not take him home. As Ogedengbe
stood facing the students, he was enmeshed in his thoughts, oblivious
of what was going on around him. The assembly was now noisy as the
students, already impatient, were talking with one another; and
giggling. And intermittently, some of them wiped beads of sweat off
their faces with their hands. An unusual day, thought Ogedengbe. Were
he in a good mood, he would have hushed them, would have searched for
those students with torn shirts, slippers or black sandals instead of
brown. He would have asked them to stand facing the assembly,
reprimanded them and sent them back home. But now he was too
crestfallen to do so.
“Congratulations,
Ogedengbe!” Mr Mgbunwe’s voice rang out, as he walked briskly to the
mathematics teacher; with a copy of The Guardian in his hand. His red
and black striped tie was resting on his pot belly; and his black baggy
trousers clasped the lower part of his stomach.
Ogedengbe heard
the principal mention his name with a jolt. “What, sir? What have I
done?” he asked. The other teachers were also taken aback.
“Congratulations! I
am proud of you. Our school is proud of you!” Mr Mgbunwe enthused and
thrust the newspaper in his face. “How did you do it? Look at your
picture there. You are now a celebrity!”
Ogedengbe took the
newspaper, and the bold headline which read, ‘School Teacher Leads
Protest’, caught his attention. On the front page also was a snapshot
of him setting the police building ablaze. The mathematics teacher was
too dumbfounded to speak. A smile played on his lips. He hadn’t
realised that journalists were covering the event of the day before.
“How did you do it?” the principal asked again, looking upward at Ogedengbe’s face, as he adjusted his trousers.
Minutes passed, and
there was a silence. Ogedengbe was engrossed in reading the story. So
my life has now become a story, he thought. My life has now become a
metaphor for the struggle to improve the lot of our people.
“How did you do it?” Mr Mgbunwe asked for the umpteenth time; furrows were already etched on his brow.
“I only took a calculated step and seized upon a chance, “Ogedengbe said, smiling, as he gazed at the principal.
“Calculated step.
Chance,” Mr Mgbunwe said, ruminating on the key words. “Life is indeed
a game of chance.” And, immediately, the principal took the newspaper
from Ogedengbe and raised it up, making sure the front page was facing
the students. “Students, I have good news for you,” he said. “Can you
see the headline? Mr Ogedengbe has made us proud. He is now the hero of
our times. That is why I am a strong advocate of Education For
Relevance, a bridging of the gap between town and gown. Education
without positive impact on the society is useless…”
The principal had
not finished speaking when the students started chanting, Archimedes!
Alpha Beta! Calculus! “Calm down, students! Calm down! I have not
finished my speech!” pleaded Mr Mgbunwe. But the students increased
their chants. Suddenly, Mr Opio the school’s gate-keeper, a dark
diminutive man who always caught students and punished them for coming
late to school walked up the principal and told him that some
journalists who wanted to speak with Ogedengbe were at the gate.
“Did they say they want to speak with our hero? Let them come inside,” the principal said loudly.
A smile played on Ogedengbe’s lips. This is just the beginning of my story, he thought.
