You Must Set Forth at Dawn (15 page)

We drove to Ibadan. I had to decide on a place where I would spend my last night of freedom, my own home being out of the question. I had been briefed regularly about the police inquiries, interrogations, and so forth, information supplied even by some of the police who had been sent after me. I knew in detail who had volunteered information, even unasked, and who (especially two expatriate colleagues) had been terrorized into collaborating, revealing some of my movements that could invalidate an alibi. Others, however, Femi Johnson among them, had refused to oblige the police in any particular.

All I knew of Femi's politics was his outrage at the electoral fraud. He was not a member of CWIL; I had never subjected him to any test of solidarity or asked him to participate, even marginally, in our activities. Yet Femi had taken extra pains to frustrate the police every way. Indeed, so eager was he to confuse the investigators that he deliberately distorted the time and content of our telephone conversation, little realizing that the distortions would prove useful to the prosecution! That very gaffe, its touching motivation, contributed to my choice of his home for my last evening at liberty. It was an intuitive feeling; I knew I could feel as safe and secure with him as I did in the professional hideout of my Marxist colleague Dapo Fatogun, with its elaborate network of communication and warning systems.

THE DRAMA NOW SHIFTED to the court. My lawyers—all, with the exception of the senior counsel, volunteers who never asked a penny—joined me in secret later that night. They were Tayo Onalaja, Kayode Somolu, Jide Olatawura, and Dele Ige; the first three would become High Court judges years later, while Dele turned to business. Dele's brother Bola Ige, also a lawyer, stayed on the sidelines, contributing legal advice from his chambers. As he was a noted politician in opposition, it was not considered advisable that he participate openly in my defense. Together we worked out the strategy for my surrender.

By morning, the papers would be filled with the news that I had resurfaced and would submit myself for arrest sometime that same day. My lawyers would contact the police, laying a false trail by inviting them to come to my own house in Felele at ten in the morning to pick me up. I would, however, remain in Femi's house and report directly to the Iyaganku police station at the same hour. That would prevent any act of bad faith on their part, such as storming my house and pretending that they had found me in hiding and had conducted a difficult arrest. Such moments were bread and meat to Femi. His eyes shone with the sheer enjoyment of scheming and counterplotting. That light dimmed only when the terms of my indictment were announced, framed to ensure the maximum penalty possible, short of capital forfeit: robbery with violence, carrying a life sentence. The stolen item: one magnetic tape. Cost: two pounds, seven shillings.

We had indeed underestimated the regime in that one respect: its choice of the charges under which I would be tried. We were more than prepared for a political trial; indeed, I looked forward to it. But not armed robbery! The possibility of such a vindictive interpretation of a purely political act had escaped both my little band and the lawyers altogether; if it had occurred to me, I would most certainly have dug deeper underground, burrowing away from both East and West as far as possible!

It was, when all is fairly considered, a most uncharitable way to respond to what, in essence, amounted to no more than borrowing some airtime on a public facility. True, I had made away with the tape of the premier of the Western Region—and there was the unavoidable introduction of a firearm in the process—but I did leave my own tape in its place. And if it was a question of content, well, the comparative value of both messages was something that could have been settled amicably in a court of arbitration. I would be the first to admit that, in wit, wordplay, and verbal resonance, my humorless message— and in the strident accents of the English language to boot—was no match for Ladoke Akintola's adroit Yoruba. Still, the cost of both tapes was the same, and the labor I had put into ours certainly equaled that of the premier, who had had all the resources of the state at his disposal for recording in his living room. Such basic principles of equity notwithstanding, forgetting our people's own wisdom that is expressed in the sentiment “Exchange is no robbery,” Akintola's government still insisted that I be charged with robbery, and of the armed variety.

THAT CONTEXT OF CRIMINALITY was the only sinister element in what would otherwise have proved a period of welcome rest, enforced immobility. I could catch up on neglected reading and calmly observe the world of petty criminals and their hunters, accomplices, and relations as they milled around the police yard and passed by my makeshift cell. Despair, desperation, a world of deceits and opportunism, and the occasional impulsive act of kindness. Interrogations sometimes took place in my presence, or else I would have to sit in the corridor within earshot of threats, cajolery, whining, denials, and the most odious lies, delivered with a stolid, inflexible countenance. Most memorable, perhaps, of the many revelations of this world of crime and detection was an encounter between a known kingpin of the underworld and his interrogator, the latter clearly terrified of a prisoner who openly relished his reputation as a most violent specimen. That underworld figure was short, jet-black in complexion, and had a square-set face but was built like the concrete cylinder that serves as the wheel of a primitive tarmac compressor. He gave off a thick air of menace that percolated through even to me.

The poor “E” branch officer to whom fell the work of interrogating him tried to carry out his preliminary task, which was to physically secure his charge. In the most diffident manner, virtually plaintive, he asked permission to clamp him with leg cuffs. The lord of the underworld gave him such a look of dare and disdain that the officer fell to whining and pleading. The cuffs were left alone, and a dialogue—supposedly an interrogation—ensued between cat and mouse, with the prescribed roles reversed. Another officer happened to walk by— maybe on a casual inspection—and quickly demonstrated that confident authority often achieves what physical force cannot. It was then the turn of the gangster to fall to whining, swearing that he had never at any time objected to being restrained with the cuffs. The officer said nothing further, merely fixed him with a telling look and pointed to the abandoned cuffs. King Kong took the cuffs in his own hands and aided his earlier captive of terror in securing his ankles. It was easily the most abrupt, most dramatic change of attitude that I had ever witnessed in any human being.

The formal security around me grew quite slack as the case wore on. For instance, a famous picture—it appeared also in foreign newspapers—showed me being escorted across the road from my police cell by one policeman only, unarmed. Before then, pictures had shown me apparently with no escort; in reality, I was constantly under the far more efficient guard of three plainclothes officers. Infuriated that the prisoner was photographed walking—to all appearances—without guards, the government ordered that I must never again be seen without the visible company of a uniformed officer.
He's a common criminal, accused of a serious crime, and should be presented as such!
So the plainclothes detail was removed, and only the somewhat tubby uniformed police remained to ensure my security. During any of those walks across the road to the court and back, I could have been rescued by any single member of our group if I so wished and rushed into a car conveniently parked or cruising along the road before that solitary officer could raise an alarm.

The NNDP government, finding unexpected and growing international interest in the prisoner, was unsure how to respond and yet continue to depict itself as a legitimately elected democratic body, deeply wronged by the disruptive act of one individual. Questions were raised in the British House of Commons. Was the writer being unjustly persecuted? Was a fair trial possible in a situation of political chaos? Was the prisoner being kept in humane conditions? Had democracy failed in its largest ex-colony? And so on. In its desperation to respond to these and other hue and cry from outside, the government fell into one self-contradiction after another. Its predicament was not helped by an untoward incident that resulted from a noncooperation campaign I had embarked upon, a quite unscripted event that no one, certainly not I, could have foreseen.

Fed up with delays over bringing me to trial, I went on a hunger strike and demanded to be moved from my makeshift detention place in the police office to a proper cell with other criminals. An interlude of tranquillity had been welcome at the beginning—I had, after all, prepared for it when I agreed to the decision over my return—but after two, now approaching three months of “ongoing investigation,” the wait was becoming oppressive. My outward composure and resignation were fast becoming lies, increasingly difficult to sustain. I became convinced that the government was deliberately stalling my trial. The longer I could be shown off to the world as being accorded VIP treatment— detained not in prison, not in a cell, but in a police office—the longer the government could afford to delay my trial and thus place me out of circulation indefinitely. The West was boiling, and, frankly, I felt deprived of my rightful share of action. My demand was granted, and I was taken to the regular police station cells and locked up.

I made one immediate discovery: those cells were far filthier from the inside than the griminess that was evident when one merely looked in from the outside! The smears against the wall established a definition—it could only be human excrement!—that made the body shrink from touching them. Still, I had asked for it, and all that was left was to look forward to a clean bath when this was all over.

That same night I received unexpected visitors, a development that, considering my yet-unpublicized transfer to a new residence, could not have come about as the result of a chance visit, as later claimed in court by my police assailant. A deputy commissioner of police, Loremikan, escorted by a detachment, stormed the station and demanded access to my cell. The duty officer had no choice but to comply. My door creaked open. Before me stood a stranger, staring at me with indescribable venom. He was dripping with tear-gas canisters, grenades, sidearms, and drunken saliva. Before I could begin to assess the nature of the invasion—beyond the clue that his slobbering face offered as it accused me of causing problems for the government—this apparition had baton-charged me repeatedly at the base of my rib cage and I was left gasping for breath.

When I was taken to the hospital the following day, the X-rays revealed contusions but, luckily, no broken ribs. My lawyers took a complaint to the judge a few days later. The judge—Justice Kayode Eso—was infuriated, summoned Loremikan to court, turned him into a mop, and scrubbed the floor with him, leaving him dribbling yet again, this time in sheer terror. The courts, at that time, did command authority! Justice Eso sent for the police inspector in charge of the station, ordered him to take me back to my former place of detention— his office—and charged him personally with responsibility for my body. The inspector was to consider himself answerable to the court for my safety.

The press, both local and international, covered the episode with vengeful glee. From then on, the atmosphere around me changed completely. The police insisted that I return periodically for treatment to the University Teaching Hospital, where, as the gods who oversee these matters had evidently decreed, a nurse with whom I was having an affair also resided. Since orders had been given that I was to have minimal contact with the public outside the police station, I was given appointments at odd hours—again at the insistence of the police—mostly in the evenings, outside the regular outpatient hours. It became routine. After examination and treatment, my obliging police escort— now back to mufti—would take the route to a particular block of apartments in the hospital complex. He would stay downstairs, nursing a cold beer, while I went up to be nursed. A baton charge by a drunken police officer was something that I—and most prisoners, I am certain—would consider a small price to pay for such conditions of restraint.

Such reliefs, to tell the truth, were relished far more for their context of defiance, as a statement of some personal control over my environment, than out of necessity or desperation. Of far greater value to me was an event of touching revelation, one that occurred on the night before the verdict. This was when I first experienced, with sheer wonder, the potential depths of human friendship. First, Femi Johnson had hardly missed one day of visiting during my detention and trial, turning up sometimes even twice or thrice—on his way to the office, returning home from the office, or setting out from home for no other purpose than to keep me company, remaining as late as the police would permit him. Only one other person came close in the consistency of his visits: the poet Christopher Okigbo, then representing Cambridge University Press in Nigeria and an informal member of CWIL. He would bring his latest verses in typescript, scribbled over in his neat, tiny handwriting, and read them aloud to me, sometimes with Femi as his only other audience. Armed with a hamper of food and drinks, we might even have lunch or dinner together in that office turned residence. A young German journalist, Gerd Meuer, then married to an Indonesian, would also drop by occasionally, with an Indonesian spread prepared by his wife. On this night, however, the last before my sentencing, it was Femi who appeared with his now-familiar basket.

I was reading. I looked up suddenly with that feeling that someone was watching me. There he was at the window, just looking in.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Ages!” he sighed. He shook his head in a gesture of disbelief, his shoulders unusually slouched as he came around to the door. My guards were chuckling— he had signaled them to keep silent, not reveal his presence, while he simply waited until I looked up or he got tired of waiting. His entire manner was uncharacteristically down at the mouth. I waited for him to throw off the mask, to detonate the joke behind it. But there was no hidden mirth lurking in Femi's throat.