You Must Set Forth at Dawn (54 page)

Almost in concert, their gazes fell away, some to the ground, others to overhead wires or distant spaces above my head. Their feet scuffed the dust, and a few shoulders drooped. These were fervent admirers who, in different circumstances, would have fought one another for the delight of dropping me off wherever I chose. This was different. Finally one said, simply:

“Oga
Wole,
eko o da o.”
⁵⁰

Yes, I already accepted that Lagos had gone sour. And I understood that it was simple logic not to wish to venture into Lagos. The taxis were their sole livelihoods, and it made no sense to drive them into an inferno. And even risk their lives in the process. The only problem was that I needed to get into Lagos. Surely somebody had to understand that!

Another proposed that I wait another day, and then we would see how the situation developed. One came forward, pointed needlessly to his bandaged head with a bandaged hand. He proceeded to narrate the hot reception he had encountered, the bloodthirsty gang that pursued him even as he drove his car in reverse gear at full speed until he found a safe place to turn around. He nodded his head in the direction of his clutch of stranded passengers, seated in the shade some distance away.

“Oga,
dose na my passengers. You fit go ask dem if you like. Dose rioters break my windshield even as I dey already reversing back. Na God save me self. Hn-hn. Eko ti daru.”
⁵¹

“Babangida done spoil everything. Afi ki e ba wa le lo! ”
⁵²

Heatedly I replied, “And how do you expect us to chase him out if you won't even take me into Lagos?”

One of them spoke decisively. “Prof, you won't be able to do much if you run into one of those gangs of wild ruffians and get killed.”

SSS interjected at this point, “What are you talking about? Nobody is going to touch Prof, you all know that.”

“Aah, you haven't seen these ones. Won o m'oju.
⁵³
; Many of them are high on drugs. They'd have done their damage before they even recognize who it is.”

“No, they won't touch Prof,” someone else conceded.

I quickly pressed the advantage. “I tell you what—each time we approach a roadblock, I shall come out of the car so they'll see me clearly. I guarantee they'll let us through. If I fail, we'll simply turn back.”

“Prof, there is something else you haven't thought of,” offered yet another. “Let's say we get you into Lagos. How do
we
get back?”

They all looked up in anticipation—
Let's see how he deals with that.
I had no response, of course. I tried to lighten the atmosphere. “I could provide you with a laissez-passer. Special passport. We'll have it signed on the way in, by the leader of each roadblock.” Only the SSS man joined me in a brief chuckle. The general mood remained somber; the silence was thick with fear.

“Come with me, Prof,” said SSS abruptly.

He led the way to where a solitary driver had remained in his taxi, doors wide open and the seat flattened out as far as it would go, fast asleep. “Hey, wake up!” The driver sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I have a passenger for you,” said SSS.

“Where to?” the man demanded.

“Where to? Where you dey take your taxi go? Lagos, of course.”

The driver giggled and began to sink back into sleep. “Oga, I beg. Make you let man sleep.” Just then his eyes caught sight of me, and he snapped fully awake. “Hey, na Prof! Prof, na you wanting to go Lagos?”

I nodded.

“The road is ba-a-ad. Very bad. This
oga
no tell you?”

“I know. But we'll get there, don't you worry. I'm in the car with you, don't forget.”

Have need, will travel.
As we approached that lone driver, I just
knew.
Right from the preliminaries, I had deposited my bag on the backseat of the vehicle— this was one fish that would not get away. The same arguments ensued.
Yes,
maybe they know you, but the first rock that is hurled at the taxi won't know who
you are. And even if we make it, how will I get back?
But by now I had thought up a solution to that one. Abeokuta was my ultimate destination, I told him, but if passage to Abeokuta proved truly impossible, I would remain in Lagos. He would stay at my place, no matter what, and leave only when the rioting was over. Someone else would drive me into Abeokuta. He thought deeply about this as I stood over him, vulnerably crouched in the space of the front seat, and mentally bullied him. It was not clear if the SSS man had some hold on him that he subtly exerted or if the man was anxious to rejoin his family, who, he told us, were all based in Ota, halfway between Lagos and Abeokuta. There was the factor also—I felt this instinctively as we made our way toward him—that he had unwittingly rendered himself susceptible by isolating himself from the others. This placed him outside the protection of the collective rationality. No matter why, he finally agreed, comic in his dolefulness, with an air of one who felt he was being led to a place of no return. And thus began the most nightmarish journey of my existence—well, one of the most nightmarish.

THE ROADBLOCKS WERE made up of empty petroleum barrels, discarded tires and wheel hubs, vending kiosks, blocks of wood and tree trunks, huge stones . . . anything at all that could form a barrier for any moving vehicle. The strategy for that day was “Stay home. No movement on the roads,” its purpose being to shut down the cities in a national campaign of civil disobedience. This was where all semblance of uniformity ended. The methods of enforcing the strategy varied from roadblock to roadblock, as did the levels of interpretation.

The freelance hoodlums had taken over, or else they had been conceded place, through plain force majeure, by the authorized monitors of the stay-at-home campaign. At some roadblocks there was a going fee; you paid it and were allowed to pass—but that safe conduct lasted only until the next barrier. Sometimes the fee was a gallon or more of fuel siphoned from your car, and then you were permitted to proceed—until the next barrier. The rows of parked vehicles at various roadblocks, with disconsolate passengers taking shelter in the shade of trees, milling aimlessly about, told the stories of those who had managed to navigate a few roadblocks, only to meet their Waterloo at the next. Some vehicles had clearly run a gauntlet of missiles, cudgels, and even fists; others could have arrived directly from the film set of
Jurassic Park
—one could have sworn there were abnormal teeth marks in the bodywork. The stories had only slight variations: some drivers had been obstinate, tried to force their way through the vigilantes, or had attempted to point out—logically, they thought— that they had paid “tolls” at earlier roadblocks, and were they not part of the same army fighting for the same cause?

Hadn't I been here before? I seemed doomed to find myself in a replay, with even the violent faces taking on familiar features. It was 1965 all over again, after the rigging of the elections in the “wild, wild West.” There we were, driving to Lagos in my friend Bola Ige's car, on the old Ikorodu road, heading for Lagos. The same crowds, the same passion or desperation, the same opportunism, all wrapped in violence, so often gratuitous. Between Sagamu and Lagos, a distance of some forty kilometers, we had encountered no fewer than three dozen roadblocks. Several were within clear view of one another, and the guardians of each barrier clearly saw a vehicle being “cleared” just a few yards away, yet the new set stopped the same vehicle and extorted what money they could before letting it through. The occasional dead body lay on the verge of the road, usually burned to death, some unfortunate political figure who had been recognized and whose crimes, in that mindless moment, were considered to merit instant justice. Faces are either passports or death warrants, depending on circumstances. Fortunately, ours were the former and constantly validated. Again and again we were let through to shouts of solidarity. Some ran ahead and cleared our passage.

Inevitably, however, there would be the totally unimpressionable stalwart who did not give a damn whether it was Bola Ige, Wole Soyinka, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, or even Obafemi Awolowo in person. . . . Who cares who the hell
it is? We are su fering.
The face becomes one extended snarl, its bloodshot eyes incinerate the air. . . . Who cares? They're all the same. None of them knows what
su fering is. If they want to pass here, they must pay something.
Others to the rescue:
Are you mad? Don't you know who these are?
But the leveler is unmoved; if anything, he becomes more truculent, interposes his body between the car and the barrier. . . . To hell with all of them! They have to pay, otherwise no way! And the sudden, brittle sound of a bottle smashing against the car and its neck miraculously in the hand of this implacable toll collector, its jagged end pushed virtually into Bola's face since his was the nearer, mere inches away.
You
want I put this for your face? Put your hand for pocket and pull out money, my
friend!
I am frightened for Bola, but inside? Mad, raging mad! But there is nothing to do except play for time, play for those extra seconds until the others can leap on him from behind, pin his arms behind him, and yank him away. The scene repeats itself, with variations. Mostly any such extortionist holdup is apologetic, even ingratiating. . . . Oga,
we never chop since morning, leave us
something make we put for mouth.
We do not have to wonder what it must be like for other motorists, since we are sometimes obliged to go to their rescue, vouch for their political bona fides. Finally someone with overriding authority plonks himself down on the hood of the car and we drive steadily through until we have cleared all the barriers around Ikorodu. Our last sight of this sergeant major of the vigilantes is of him commandeering another vehicle going in the opposite direction to take him back to his post; that vehicle is the envy of other motorists.

THIRTY YEARS LATER, and here I am undergoing the identical rites of passage. As we approach each barrier, I poke out my head, and most of the time, this is more than sufficient to clear the way. In between such blissful passages I spend my time trying to guess how soon we will come upon the drug-crazed exception with the burning eyes, one who will refuse to countenance any passage. Before long, we encounter the barracks lawyer. . . . You people gave the orders that
everyone should stay at home, now you're breaking your own rules.
I wonder how much more gleeful he would have been if he had known that I myself had initiated the stay-home strategy, selling it to the campaign as a variant on continuous street demonstrations, with their often numbing fatalities—a few days on the streets, the next few within doors. That way, the army and police would not know exactly what to expect from day to day.
Stock up on food and
drink, close down the towns and cities, turn the streets into ghost spaces, and let
Babangida rule over emptiness!

I turn on my interlocutor in mock aggression:
And is this your home? I don't
see your kitchen. Where is your shithouse? He gives a half-ashamed smile while others laugh at his discomfiture. The barrier is lifted. But finally the inevitable occurs, and we encounter the no-exemptions type, albeit somewhat diffident and uncertain. At the very least, he insists, we must supply a bottle of petrol— the forces of resistance must be sustained by taxation of the rich, in cash or kind. Thin and wispy, he is probably still in school but has already established himself as the ideological guru of the barricade. I tell him to get lost and engage the obvious leaders in a discussion on the prospects of the resistance. Then, through the corner of my eye, I observe a suspicious movement. The sly revolutionary has only pretended to slink away; he is actually engaged in prying open the cover of the petrol tank and now, obviously well practiced at the task, has a rubber tube already snaking down into the tank. I dash out of the car and snatch the tube away, warning him that if he tries it again I will make him drink the petrol, then throw a lighted match down his throat.

Profiting from the 1965 experience, I take to picking up a guard at one barrier, dropping him at the next, and picking up a new one. One or two ask for money to get back to their station—never more than half a mile distant—but I remind them that taxis are not running. Then the impudent grin.
Oh,
oga,
you
self, you know say na for take buy something for chop!
That's better, I grin back, just come clean with me and we'll get along. A handful of small-denomination naira changes hands—at least they did earn their pay. The backup plan remained the same: if we encountered a truly unbreachable roadblock, we would simply remain there until a more influential stalwart came along. It never did happen, but progress remained excruciatingly slow. I started out from Cotonou at about eight in the morning. Normally the journey into the heart of Lagos would take two hours. Now it was already five hours later, and we had covered only some fifty kilometers. I became increasingly anxious.

The taxi driver was beginning to enjoy himself. Even the faint smallpox dents in his jet-black, fleshy face appeared to glow with delight at our progress. From a timorous beginning, his palms sweaty, his lips mumbling prayers, as we approached the early roadblocks, he had gradually convinced himself that I exercised absolute control over even the most dangerous ruffian or situation. . . .
Ah,
oga,
na you alone, for all of Nigeria, unless for say someone like Gani Fawehinmi or Doctor Beko, or say Femi Falana fit pass this road as we dey pass through
today.
I watched him grow more and more confident, then bold and aggressive. The very back of his neck was quite expressive; if I were dissolving roadblocks as if by magic, then he too had become the ultimate miracle worker. He began to ignore our rule: Slow down, wait for me to be recognized and let me do the talk
ing. Above all, do not open your mouth.
Not anymore.