‘Do you know the meaning?’
I shook my head no.
‘It means “Precious daughter”,’ she said. ‘Over time I’ve tried not to meddle in your affairs because I know how painful it was to lose your mother. In fact, most times I don’t want to remember she’s gone. But I’ll tell you something I wish our mothers had told us, something I’m sure your mother would tell you if she were here with us. Akwaugo, you need to stop living your life solely for others, even those you love very much.’
An unlikely pandemic pulled all plans to a standstill. Soye was to travel to a remote part of the US to receive an honorary doctorate award from a remote college. He’d grown pensive since the magazine cover release, and I understood that a marked tilt had occurred in our relationship. The cover line had said: ‘Dr Eriife Adebowale: The Political Wife Quietly Changing Lives.’ And several people had approached me to say they’d been unaware I was a medical doctor, in a way that suggested that had they known, it would have affected their interactions with me.
Otunba Bankole, who’d resumed his relationship with Soye after much pleading, now addressed me as, ‘My Very Own Doctor,’ even though he’d been aware of my training and the clinic. But I’d begun to notice the discomfort in Soye’s countenance whenever we were introduced as Mr Adetosoye and Dr Eriife Adebowale. An unexpected light had cast me out of his shadow, and he was unhappy about it.
At first, no one took it seriously, this strange novel virus that had forced a nation like China into lockdown. Theories flew around as to its origin and Soye forwarded conspiracy theories over WhatsApp until I threatened to block him.
As always, the elite class continued its regular activity. A party was thrown in London to celebrate a birthday and several flew out to attend. Soye only happened to miss the party because his interview at the American embassy was scheduled for that week and he lamented endlessly about the missed opportunity. Then everyone started to fall ill.
Further information continued to be released about the virus and within weeks, the world had gone into lockdown, including Nigeria. Just before the airspaces closed for an interminably long period of time, Adelola returned to continue her classes online from home. ‘It’s too lonely over there,’ she said. I realised I’d never asked her about her friends in the US: if she had any and, if she did, what sort of people they were.
‘It’s good you no longer run the clinic. Imagine the kind of danger we would all have been in with you going there every day,’ Soye said, settling into life at home as the number of cases in the city surged and isolation centres were flooded with the sick.
A lone skeletal figure lay in the middle of a dirty street. Flies gathered, feasting on the remains of a carcass. Children hovered from a distance, unsure of whether to approach. A news reporter announced that the person had starved to death as the ongoing lockdown put a stop to business.
‘When bread is no longer available, the people will eventually revolt,’ Yunusa was telling Soye. They were in the living room, seated at the separate extreme ends and sharing wine and stories. ‘Happened with the French in the 1700s, happened during the Arab Spring. We must try to avoid it here.’
At first, many had celebrated the virus as retributive karma against the ruling class in the country. The global borders had shut and they were trapped like the rest of the populace, forced to reckon with their own refusal to equip local healthcare facilities. Now they would die just like the average man: surrounded by underpaid and overworked physicians in buildings that had long seen better days.
But then the virus had spread beyond the exalted social stratosphere and lockdown began to affect businesses and household incomes. The people now feared hunger more than they feared the virus, a nigh alarming situation. The country had gone into lockdown because other countries had gone into lockdown, not because it had a plan.
‘Our people are not given to revolts,’ Soye told Yunusa. After Yunusa had called him that afternoon about his intention to visit, Soye had said the man missed seeing my face – ‘No more events to meet you at – he’s carried his toasting to my house.’ But they were seated like friends, eating snacks and drinking wine. ‘They’re docile to a fault,’ Soye continued. ‘If you push them to a wall, they would rather break through the wall than fight back. The military broke something fundamental in us. Whatever it was, they squashed it under their heels.’
‘Don’t be so sure, Soye,’ Yunusa said. ‘Look at the rest of the world – protests everywhere. This is unprecedented; people are frustrated.’
Hong Kong had opened the year with protests, a spillover of demonstrations from the preceding year, women had taken to streets in March across the globe, demanding for their rights. But it was George Floyd’s death that lit a match that would cause a global eruption and discussion of race. Soye and I had watched the gruesome video in muted silence, tears obstructing my vision as he called for his mother. ‘What is happening over there is terrible,’ Soye espoused.
‘Have you been to a police cell in this country?’ I retorted.
Doctors went on strike not too long after Yunusa’s visit, to protest their working conditions in the country even as other countries openly made calls for medical professionals looking to migrate to greener pastures. A Middle Eastern country set up office at a hotel to recruit, and queues stretched across their lawns. News stations broadcast videos of medical practitioners on the lines arranging copies of their credentials in brown envelopes and school bags as they waited. Mysterious armed government men materialised the following day, shooting bullets in the air, dispersing the crowd and driving recruitment underground.
Adelola referred to me as ‘old school’. Lockdown had brought us closer; we watched movies together to fill the idle hours, and in the quiet of evening we listened to music and chatted about boys.
‘Was he always this serious?’ she asked me of her father once.
Adelola danced one afternoon during lockdown, a strange movement of arms and feet that appeared far too strenuous to be enjoyable, and I stopped at her door, stared for a moment and asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘It’s this new trend on TikTok,’ she responded, sounding out of breath. ‘Don’t come too close or you’ll get into my video.’
I blinked. ‘What’s TikTok?’ I knew about Facebook, and Nwakaego had introduced me to Twitter and Instagram. Soye only ever seemed to complain about the content on there: the extremities of opinions and their hatred for people like him, and invariably, me, and so I’d taken to using them only to spy on my friends. But this was new to me.
Adelola guffawed, a sound I didn’t hear from her often, then said, ‘You’re really old school’, a phrase we’d used against my mother whenever she played Kool and the Gang and called it ‘better music’ than our ’90s RnB.
‘I’m not old school. How old do you think I am?’ I protested. Had so much time passed that such a statement could apply to me? I pulled my phone from the pocket of my house gown and handed it to her. ‘Help me download it. Let me see what’s happening. Update the other ones too.’
The barrage of nonstop information that existed in this new cyberspace was staggering and overwhelming, yet a fleeting happiness bubbled within me as I scrolled, tickled with anticipation of the next post, and I understood why Adelola was addicted.
I wondered why a young man would have ‘Kaduna Nzeogwu’ as his Twitter name given its history, and what it meant to be ‘dragged’. Soye peeped in my direction often, questioning the cause of my constant laughter.
It was on Twitter that I first read the news of the collapse of Kamsi’s investment initiative. He invested regularly in his members’ businesses, doling out inordinate sums to their ventures and interests in exchange for profit and fealty. But at the start of the year, he’d floated his own investment vehicle, a venture whose activities were cloaked in dim shadowiness.
Onomavwe shelled out over a hundred million naira to show support, an encouragement to his associates to follow suit. Soye opted out, claiming to be temporarily illiquid, but at home, he told me he would not put even the change lying around the house in such nonsense.
‘My money! My money!’ Onomavwe screamed over the phone when the venture collapsed, sounding more like a character in a Nollywood picture than a real person. ‘This fellow has stolen my money!’
Kamsi’s arrest was televised in a manner that left me viewing the whole scenario as a theatrical performance.
The police commandant in charge of the case gave an interview as Kamsi was led away. ‘Criminals will always face the consequences of their actions in this country no matter who they are,’ he said.
On Twitter, Zina posted a vague tweet about criminals and comeuppance. Ego’s Twitter remained silent.
38
Uprising
If anyone had asked me what would light the match that would set it all ablaze, leaving me engorged in the embers, I never would have thought it would be an internet video of a young man rolling out of a moving vehicle.
October 1st 2020. Independence Day. Sixty years since our country’s independence from British colonial rule. The pandemic had moderated plans for an all-out celebratory festival to be replaced by a watered-down parade at the Eagle Square. Hoisted flags fluttered from salient poles; sirens rang on the streets of the capital as preparations were underway. At seven in the morning, the president was plastered on our screens. ‘Sixty years of nationhood provides an opportunity to ask ourselves questions on the extent to which we have sustained the aspirations of our founding fathers. Where did we do the right things? Are we on course? If not, where did we stray, and how can we remedy and retrace our steps?’
‘Iyawo mi, hope you didn’t forget our invites,’ Soye told me in our hotel suite. He was seated in front of the television, his neck stretched out like he couldn’t afford to miss a word.
‘Yes, they’re with me,’ I said. Mrs Aluko had made sure we were included on the reduced guest list for the celebratory parade.
Later, from our vaunted seats in the stadium, the atmosphere effete with perfume and jubilee, attired in matching green and white outfits: God bless Nigeria.
