Mrs Aluko: ‘Madam Adebowale, you’re getting soft.’
‘Mothers are coming out to protest. We should lend our voices too and join them,’ I typed in the message bar, then deleted. It was a waste of time. Adelola was right, I was a coward.
Enitan: ‘How can we cause confusion in their midst to scatter this? Riff raffs and insurgents.’
Underneath their derisive sneers and blustering, I sensed a fear about what would become of them in a country where they no longer yielded power, where every citizen was treated as equal.
That evening, Soye came home screaming at the top of his voice. He’d watched the news at the office and spotted a familiar face in the crowd.
October 20th.
It had been about two weeks since the protests started. Soye was in a much better mood than he’d been a couple of days before. Adelola had promised to stop going to protests; some influencers had stealthily begun sowing seeds of discord amongst online protesters and an emergency meeting the night before had yielded some results and a continuation was to be held that morning.
‘Since it will all be ending soon,’ Soye boasted, ‘maybe I should approach one of their gatherings and try to talk to them. You know, build my rep amongst the youth.’
12.00pm. The state government suddenly announced a curfew for 4pm in a state known for its traffic-clogged roads.
Soye called, ‘Make sure Adelola doesn’t go out!’ I had no way of telling him she’d already left – to see her friend, she’d said, but I knew better.
I phoned her, putting on my best impression of a strict mother. ‘Make sure you start coming home now!’ By 2pm, she stalked through the front door, refusing to glance at me.
2.40pm. A video was going viral on the protest hashtags. A politician had attempted to speak at a gathering of protesters at Abule Egba. Annoyed at their refusal to listen to him – they stoned him instead with sachets of water – he’d pulled out a shotgun as he drove away and shot in the air, hitting two innocent bystanders. A journalist had caught the latter end of the event on camera. Efforts were underway to identify the Prado Jeep. I watched the video, the scenes clear and yet unclear, as my heart beat with sudden terror, remembering Soye’s words from that morning.
3.00pm. Interest in the video was overtaken when pictures surfaced of technicians taking down CCTV cameras at the Lekki toll gate. People tweeted, pleading with protesters to leave the toll they had blocked for a better part of two weeks, keeping watch at night in tents, safeguarding what they saw as a path to a future for their country.
I checked on Adelola, and although she wouldn’t speak to me, I felt relief at seeing her curled in bed.
4.00pm. Protesters were sat on the floor, waving flags and singing the national anthem. ‘We’re prepared to die,’ one posted along with a self-facing picture of the crowd behind him. Someone dug up a vague statute in the law concerning the national flag:
6.29pm. Army vehicles were spotted leaving Bonny Camp, an army camp minutes away from Lekki toll gate. Someone tweeted:
6.40pm. Toll gate floodlights and advertisement billboards were turned off, leaving only foreboding darkness. Mobile networks antennas in the area were switched off.
‘Go home,’ people pleaded. But the protesters stayed, waving and singing.
6.45pm. Another tweet:
Soon after, a video of men in military uniform at the back of three Toyota Hilux vans arriving at the toll gate was posted. Almost immediately, a rain of bullets began into the crowd of protesters. My fingers shook as they held my phone.
7.00pm.
DJ Switch a female DJ who only a few weeks before had spearheaded a party in the Big Brother house, a party I’d watched because of Hassana. I sat in our living room transfixed, my fingers moving between applications as I searched to find her page.
‘Let them shoot. Let them shoot,’ someone was saying in the dark. Protesters carried on singing even as the sound of bullets like firecrackers continued unabated, their voices cracking under the weight of their tears and fears: ‘Arise O Compatriots.’
‘They’re taking the bodies,’ someone said, raising the alarm. A man was bleeding profusely on the floor, others gathered around him, struggling to keep him alive. The DJ was calling for an ambulance and turned the camera to show her audience, that now included CNN, the fire started by the army to keep protesters from accessing help. A bullet was pulled from the bleeding man’s leg, his wound wrapped in a bloodstained flag. People were still singing the anthem.
9.30pm. Soye stumbled into our living room, sweating profusely. I was in the same spot I’d occupied since the shooting began, unable to move, incapable of any rational action. I turned to stare at him; his eyes were dilated, the collar of his kaftan open like he’d been running.
I raised the phone in my hand, slowly, almost mechanically; a picture of a bleeding protester was plastered on the screen. I tasted salt at the corner of my lips and realised I was crying. ‘Soye, did you know about this?’ I demanded, my voice a tremulous whisper. ‘Did you?!’
Something in my eyes alarmed him. He raised his hands in a calming gesture. ‘Eri, please calm down. I swear I didn’t know this was what they were going to do. The agreement was to take drastic measures.’
‘You’re killing people’s children now? Ehn Adetosoye?!’
He looked around me. ‘Where’s Adelola?’
‘Soye, answer me!’
‘Where’s my daughter?!’
‘She’s in her room,’ I answered.
He moved around me and raced up the staircase in the direction of Adelola’s room. A few seconds later, he was out and clinging to the banister with desperation. ‘She’s not there,’ he announced, the words like a death knell.
39
