The Man in the Middle
A comic short story on the Fulani invasion of a Benue village.
I was interjected from my quiet nap by a call from Barr. Ochre who had called to inform me that he was sending to me chief Emanaki a traditional ruler who was seeking asylum outside the country . he had carefully added that the deal involved so much and that I should handle my guest with care. I know Barr. Ochre very well , he was not one to engage in trifles and if he is involved in this one then it must be a big one.
A flash of smile spread across my face as I heard the blaring of a car horn outside the office . A huge, stout looking man of roughly forty stepped out of the Range Rover SUV Jeep and walked briskly towards my office with his umbrella. He was dressed in an ill fitted suit with a tie around his neck like a rope tied around the neck of a pig, his middle class mannerism suggested he was a Nouveau Riche who was trying to appear genteel . I wondered if he would not have been more comfortable in an Agbada or Baba-Riga. The knock on my door came earlier than I had expected.
You are welcome sir; you must be Chief, Emanaki?
Yes , and I guess you must be the person Barr. Ochre sent me to, Barr. Smith I guess
Yes I am Barr. Smith please make yourself very comfortable, trying to appear as classy as possible.
Your former principal “Barr. Ochre spoke so excellently about your lawyerly skills and seeing you I cannot but feel we have lost yet another wonderful lawyer to the corporate and beaurocratic world .
Barr. Ochre has always had a very high regard for my person and I must say I got my present job on account of his kindness and positive recommendations . I am not surprised therefore if he had fed you with a lot of high praises for me.
He said you were seeking for an asylum out of the country.
Yes, that’s true.
That is very strange it is very rare for us to get application from royal fathers, what we have is young men and women who are disillusioned by life in Nigeria who are seeking for a greener pastures in the west.
Everybody or lets say most people are disillusioned in the country, although at different levels, the country has really turned all of us into hustlers , just like you have it in the jungle, every indivual struggling for surviving.
Life appears to be very comfortable for you royal fathers , so what is making you leave your kingdom for a strange man’s land where you do not even know whether you are welcome ?
Seeking for peace … peace of mind, that is one thing that has eluded me for most of my life and as one gets older ones view of the world begins to change very radically. You see my son, I have lived a particularly rough life, like I said you remind me of myself some years back ; young ,strong and filled with hot unbridled passions. It was this passions that sent me packing out of the village. I killed a man in a drunken duel over a local bartender, the land had been desecrated. My father who had a reputation for being an impartial and fair king declared me wanted and the whole villagers especially relatives of the deceased and members of the village vigilante went about looking for me everywhere except in my mother’s bedroom. At last ,my mother had mounted enough pressure on my father to do something to save their only son, so much so that father had to devise a scheme to sneak me out to Lagos.
In Lagos I lived by the rules of the street, the streets was no man’s home and I had thirsted blood before, Nothing, mattered anymore , survival was the name of the game and I lived like an animal ; surviving from hand to mouth. And crawling from one hovel to another; today in the brothel tomorrow under the bridge, the next in the prison and right after it in a well furnished room and before you know it you are under the bridge again. All this we took with fun, the streets hustle became a part of my life and the risks became an intrinsic and inseparable aspect of existence for me. Each time you stepped into the streets you knew you may not return back home alive but you just keep coming back every morning and hoping that today will not be the last…
I had lived in total disconnection from my kinsmen back in the village during this period and I believed they too had forgotten about my existence. You can imagine how I felt therefore when mama Tolu, The local beer parlour woman told me the elders from my village where outside waiting for me . At first I wanted to runaway through the back door as I felt the long arms of the law had finally caught up with . But then Mama Tolu sensing my fears informed me that there were not with policeman.
Papa the Village head had died. His paedophile ways had finally caught up with him as he died of high blood pressure on top of his new 14 year old wife. They had come because our family cannot afford to lose the village headship. The other family were presenting an Abuja based business man and I had to come back home to save my family pride. They waved aside my complain that I had a murderous past and lacked money to prosecute the contest; just give them big promises tell them you are a general business contractor in Lagos ; importer and exporter of general merchandise. “Lagos based is Lagos based” it does not matter what you are doing in Lagos.
I had my doubt and plenty reasons to remain in Lagos, especially with the expected hit from one of my con schemes on a senator who wanted a house in Dubai , however my mind could not just abandon the life of near Eldorado that the village promised me ; Free Booze, free women, free meat Free everything all this in a cool easy and unquestionable manner devoid of all the criminal fears and anxiety of life in Lagos. So I boarded a bus back home the next morning after a few pretensions rejection of their offer and obtaining a promise that my sins have been forgotten.
The village headship election was done in a fortnight and I won with the widest margin ever in the village history, of course “ My Camp” had deliberately fabricated a story that my rival from Abuja was not a son of the soil and that his mother was originally impregnated by a Fulani man and not Ada onyala as he claimed. the trick easily worked given his fair slim complexion as opposed to his father’s dark skin. The kingmakers therefore claimed they acted in protection of the purity of the kingship line. It was better to have a prodigal son as king than an outsider whose paternity could not be ascertained.
And so it was my dear son , that I came to sit on the throne of my ancestors as village head and my ancestors did not disappoint in granting me all the desires of my heart ; obedient subjects who obeyed without complaining almost without reasoning, free booze, free women free meat. The village ensured I did not miss Lagos a bit. That was until the strange herdsmen started burning houses and slaughtering human beings like cows around us .Although the herdsmen had not struck our village, the whole village however lived in fear and only went to farm after I and the village chief priest had done some fake rituals to drive away the spirits of the herdsmen. The next day after the ritual cleansing our Market women ran from the markets after They saw herdsmen with menacing faces coming towards them shooting guns sporadically in the air.
My streets reflexes were quickly activated, I had not seen blood in a while and I yearned for those adventurous days in Lagos when the agonising cry of a dying police officer brought a smile to our face as gang men . Together with the vigilante and palace guards we gave the said raiders a swift chase and we clamped in on them at the market square while they were filling in their bags with wares of our market women, which they had left behind while running for their dear life some of the marauding herdsmen were even stupid enough to have killed some goats that were brought to the market square and were busy making barbeque. There was no time to be lost we quickly opened fire on them and killed them before they even noticed our presence. None of them could survive the assault of my automatic pump rifles, the last of my armoury that I had brought with me from Lagos. My examination of the corpses of the marauding men showed they were not real herdsmen but rogues from the neighbouring village who wanted to use the rumours of herdsmen attack that filled up the whole surrounding villages as a cover for their raids on market squares.
The defeat of the “herdsmen” quickly turned me into a war hero, villages all around came to pay allegiance and seek alliances, for it had never being heard that any king had defeated the furious herdsmen from the north. Deep inside I knew the men were not real herdsmen but hungry villagers who had disguised as herdsmen to raid the village and loot our food stocks after there had been raided by the real herdsmen. But who was I to stop the people from worshipping and exalting their king and hero, after all it had broadened and delocalised my network of free booze, women and meats.
The dust raised by our sham conquest had hardly settled before the village headmaster brought a letter from the real herdsmen informing us of their scheduled visit to cleanse our community of infidels . Being one who had lived by the rules of the street, I knew that whoever sent the letter meant business and must have been well armed and prepared. But a war hero is a war hero and will be very disgraceful to run away from my people immediately after fresh conquest, the shame will too much and I decided to take the threat with all the preparedness I could muster around from my highly obedient subjects who had come to see me as a deity to be worshiped.
For all our preparedness and alertness, we were caught off guard by the herdsmen. I was in my palace with the village chief priest burning incense to chase away the Fulani herdsmen when a bullet shattered through the chief priests skull with splinters of the bullet hitting my face. Before I realised it another bullet hit my chest and the rest was history as I went totally blank and unconscious , later to discover myself in a hospital bed in the state capital. That I survived the bullets of the herdsmen was a miracle. The fact that I survived after the death of the chief priest only added up to the myth surrounding me.
On the seventh day after my full recovery news was sent sons and daughter of the village by the elders at home that their beloved king who had saved them from numerous herdsmen attack had demanded their presence to discuss vital issues that relate to the survival of the village.
And so it was that fourteen days after the attack and seven days after my recovery that the market square was filled with sons and daughters of the kingdom both noble and ignoble, illustrious and the illiterates all of them were all seated on the mango trunks that have been made out into a chair only the king sat on his imperial throne and my demand to them was very simple “Our gods had been over powered by the strange powers of the herdsmen . the oracle had to be strengthened and updated through sacrifices and cleansing of the land if not we will not be wiped out”
They were dissenting voices but at the end of the day, each man gave into his fears as the elders appealed to their children to please to do everything possible to protect our collective heritage. Thus each man paid according to their station in life. Let me tell you the truth, where ever two or three people are gathered money is there. Who would have thought that those poor villagers and their useless Diaspora children could raise such huge amount of cash to appease the gods of the land. Anyway that is not my business , what is important is that I had their money and money is money no matter from who it comes from.
And so my dear son, I had moved from a mere war hero to be a multi-millionaire and like they say ; nothing changes a man’s thinking like money. The village became suddenly very boring. my mind raced back and front with what I could do with the money, to hell with the stool of the ancestors, who knows what the herdsmen would do the next time they came around for their usual infidel cleansing, my life was important , the people can always find themselves a new king or a new war hero when I have disappeared , yes I had existed to them as a myth, and who knows what myth they would form after my sudden disappearance; perhaps they will say I have disappeared to the land of the great beyond to protect them from their enemies.
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