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As we approached a dubious police post, the conductor sighed.

“Should I give them, or do you prefer to do it yourself?” he asked the driver.

“Relax,” said the driver.

Something about the
word worried the conductor – enough to make him bring his head back
into the bus. He searched the driver’s face and did not seem to like
what he saw. “Look, just give them their 50 naira,” he said a little
urgently. “They will only waste our time otherwise.”

“I say leave them
to me,” said the driver, “No be everything be money.” The conductor’s
mouth opened but no words came out, so he closed it again.

The police officer
approached the conductor with a broad smile. The conductor nodded
towards the driver and the policeman stopped smiling and stopped
walking.

“How far?” asked
the driver jocularly. “See, we just start work now-now. This na our
first trip today. Make I go come back. I go see you later.”

He started to drive
away when the policeman suddenly screamed, “Stop him! Stop him!” and
another officer materialised from nowhere and placed his body in front
of our vehicle.

“Park,” he barked, gun raised. There was a collective groan in the bus.

“Just give am
money, make we go,” said a woman behind the driver. But it was too
late. The police officers had remembered their duty.

“Driver, come open your boot,” said one. The driver tried to placate him, gone was the braggadocio.

“Officer,” he said, “Come. Look. See my hand.” The police officers refused to “see”.

“My friend, will you come down?!” shouted the other one. “Who be your mate? You think say na play we come play here?”

The driver turned
off the ignition. The school boy sitting beside me who had been
listening to music on his phone and nodding to the beat, removed his
earphones. “Wazup?” he asked no one in particular and as no one paid
him any heed, he returned to his music.

“The driver was too
stubborn,” said a frail-looking man with a feathery voice. “The
conductor told him what to do but he wanted to show sense. Na God know
when we go leave here today.”

The driver glared
at him and got out of the bus, accosted by the police officers who
followed him to the boot. We could hear him pleading, but they were
adamant.

“When somebody wan
help una, una no dey know,” sneered one of the cops. Inside the bus,
the conductor shook his head, still amazed at the attitude of his
driver.

“Now they will not take anything less than N200,” he said sadly.

For a while we
continued to hear the conversation: the driver’s voice falling as the
policemen raised theirs. The boot was never opened. There was a lull
and the driver came back in, muttering about people who like to reap
where they did not sow.

“Na today you know
that one?” said one of the men sitting in front. “You should have just
given him the money as usual instead of wasting our time.”

At that point, the
driver could not take it any longer. “Was it his money?” he asked.
“‘Give him money, give him money’. You give me money to keep for him?
Nonsense.”

“Driver, I beg let’s go,” said somebody at the back. “We have already wasted enough time here.”

The driver hissed
and drove on. After a while, the conductor asked, gently in Yoruba,
“How much did they collect eventually then?”

The driver took his
time changing gears, and then replied: “Those thieves collected 200
naira. But it will never again be well with them or with their
children’s children. The bastards.”

The boy with the earphones took them out and looked at me.

“That’s 100 percent increase,” he said. Of course, I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“What is 100 percent?” I asked him.

“I heard everything,” he replied. “Instead of 50 naira, he ended up paying 200.”

I looked at him. “So you think that is 100 percent?”

He looked a bit confused and put his earphones back in. Standards have indeed gone south.