Trade Station
The odds of the morning were hellishly against me. I felt more like a riffraff crucified for several count charges of rigmarole and vagrancy. Just last night in the midst of a fighting crowd a deadly elbow had fractured my tooth gum — — -a disfigure to cost one a pretty smile in the public. It was really terrible that I often last too long fumbling in front of the mirror inspecting the four affected teeth, which looked like something unwontedly carved out of chalk.
If I should say the truth, before this horrendous incident people barely referred to me as handsome yet none had ever had the nerve to call me ugly. But in this condition a blunt observer would not wait too long to call me a Dracula, that is when he catches me grin. Hence, I hardly laughed at jokes. I just smiled with my lips clinched. Well, for one like me who has many unofficial jesters as friends, it was almost impossible not to cackle out loud like a hen.
My head had boomed with speculations on what action to take. But I wouldn’t know which to squarely single out as plausible in this moment of tumult. I was just a subject entrenched in a full blown confusion. In spite of this my mind was hysterically squeaking for justice , for the person who had injured me was nothing but a fatuous moron who walked with his head instead of his legs — he was a swine. He would show no remorse even with a pistol pointing at his pintle, so I thought of an alternative, inviting a public friend — -the police.
I had never for once reported to a police station in my life. I strongly despised the sight of it, for as a bloody civilian, I saw it as an ant hill infested by chunk of paramilitary bullies. Today to them I would run for Justice. Their mastery in making arrest had morphed into a pressing need. Faced with the fact that I must be there in person to report, I felt a growing uneasiness. Well, my attacker must pay for the damage, a mild consequence for his ungodly deed. Hence, I jumped out of bird that morning and tramped through the way that led to a nearby police station.
It took me not less than twenty minutes to arrive at the entrance gate of the police station.The front of it was barricaded with a blockade constructed with tick metal plates. Just behind this blockade firmly stood a blue sign post craftily engraved with the writing — -EIGHT DIVISION. My eyes fiddled through these words as I covertly read them out to my hearings alone. I have often heard people mention it in Yenagoa, but I have never bordered a bit to know its location for once. Two men in black T-shirt sat on a wooden bench under a shade inside the yard and caressed me with an outlandish stare. Both men measured six feet but were looking too timid and malnourished to be cops. The expression on their faces obliquely carried a scowl that instantaneously crushed a civilian’s ego. It was an official expression of “call to duty” —a slogan largely used to brainwash every service men and thrust up their pride, as they begin to see themselves as imperial veterans entrusted with an unquestionable authority to perfidiously rule the world of naive civilians.
I walked into the yard with a face stricken by fright as these two cops called out to me. Reaching the shade one of them softly inquired about what had brought me there, still maintaining the official seriousness on his face.
“Wetting happen?” He bluntly asked, peeking straight into my eyeballs as though he could see the melancholic terror in me, and the monster with a bloated stomach eating deep into my emotions.
I quickly explained my ordeal in two complex sentences, in pidgin, not to incur the wrath of a daftly educated constable. He watched with suspicion as I explained, then grimaced and swiftly turned to his colleague when I opened my mouth wide for him to see the fractured gum. The severity of the injury turned them sore as they instantly bumped into rage, startled to haunt down the ghost of this attacker and give me justice. But they exaggerated things so much that one begins to think the unthinkable.
With the display of these cops, I felt a comradeship bond knitting me closely together with them as friends and smelled justice loosely hanging over the air. That was the sole reason for which I had come, therefore any one through which it is gotten invariably becomes a cosmocrat. But there were some whimsical ideas up the sleeve of these cops. Their empathy was only a bait to lure me in as a client and get a fee famously called “mobilization.”
Now the one who had watched like a statue from the beginning of the conversation began. “ See, bring five thousand Naira make we go arrest the guy.” He ended with his eyes blinking in lust for greed.
There was nothing I could do even with the obvious covetousness dangling in the Psyche of these men. I have walked too many miles to refrain. So, I deep my right hand into the pocket of my trouser and brought out the only one thousand Naira I had as both men disdainfully turned their faces away. They were grossly irritated by the trifling offer. I pleaded with them for a moment but they were overweeningly deaf to it, insisting I raise the offer.
“See just bring four thousand Naira. Na the least we go collect. You no know say we go settle the men wey go follow us and arrange case file for you. This money small sef. We just dey pity you.”
Now the handwriting was conspicuous. They were ignominious parasites camouflaging under the banner of SERVICE MEN, and the most disagreeable set of men I have come to know. Of course, I knew it was a deliberate way of pushing the constitution to a sideline, but you don’t haggle with a police man in his territory where his ego sprouts high like the tall branches of an IROKO tree. So, I surrendered to fate as one of them said rashly, “just go inside that office and make your complain. Person wey no get money no dey do police case.”
Taking a swift turn, I briskly walked towards the building where cases are administered. Getting to the entrance I was greeted with the wails of those who have been condemned by the law, bind in the cell, awaiting the law to rule its final verdict over their pending cases. The entrance was busy with both civilians and cops. It had an outlook peculiar to a trade centre where pilfering of the worst sort are carried out. At the door a stout police officer stopped me and insisted to know why I came. And when I told him exactly what has befallen me, he pointed to a chubby lady sitting on a bench adjacent to the canter where several policemen sat, facing the open door through which every one enters the building. The ones sitting behind the canter threw at me cold stare as I marched towards the woman, who happened to be the writer-two. She was munching on some fried groundnuts in a manner that unveiled her as a glutton. Her face was registered with smile, although not charming enough to seduce a man with a good taste for women. She asked me what was the problem and I repeated the same reply I had given the other two constables I met outside. This time she was the one who requested to see the injury, and when I opened it wide for her to see, she squirmed into fear and muttered loudly, “get him arrested!”
I replied with a spirited gusto, “ that is why I have come here for the police to help. I want him arrested so he can pay for damage.”
The police men and women on the canter eavesdropped on the conversation between us and murmured among themselves, pitching in frivolous opinions about the subject they knew nothing about. One man amongst them with a scorching skin had scolded me for sitting too close to the woman as the rest of them intensified it with provocative comments. Well, the woman just smiled, feeling the thrills of being safeguarded by her colleagues from the amorous appeal of a derailed civilian. All these to me were sheer ignorance reducing these set of people to unruly cranks. By an impartial rating of a civilian they were disgruntled barbarians due for gallows.
The woman told me in a very much polite tone that I would have to first of all make an entry into a notebook. She said it would cost me the sum of one thousand five hundred Naira just to write on one of the plain pages of it before proceeding to the next step.There was no time to beat about the bush, so I hinted that I had only a thousand Naira with me. She quickly retorted that what I had was not even enough to see me half way through the financial aspect of this affair — there are other charges yet to be mentioned: a medical report form of three thousand Naira, opening a file with two thousand Naira and paying a sum of three thousand Naira as mobilization fee for those who would embark on the arrest.
How can I pay one thousand five hundred Naira just to write on a page of a note book sold for just three hundred Naira in an economy diagnosed of “ recessional impairment” ? Why would they charge an outrageous fee of three thousand for mobilization just to arrest my attacker, who lives meters away —a walkable distance from the police station. This was nothing but a bureaucratic fraud festering the gaudy design of the Nigerian system of government.
“ You see, police don’t make provisions for the writing materials and stamps we use in this office. We use our personal money to buy them. So, go back and borrow additional four thousand Naira and come. I will ensure that the I.P.O helps you build a good case,”she said this and zoomed off into an office opposite were we sat, whispering words into the ears of a lanky police man, who nodded in accord like a modern zombie.
My plea remained within the bounds of my heart, for the police men and women who clustered about the canter were unmercifully cruel to sympathize with a wounded man. They were infuriated by the sight of a wretched civilian who cannot afford the ungodly fees they charge. I didn’t meet up paying the fee, therefore my franchise as a customer has technically been seized. And now that the writer-two was done with me they all spiritedly expected me to abruptly vanish from the office at once. Any more delay could get me a perilous strike, so I gallantly stood up from the bench and dashed out of the building, feeling paralyzed in the spirit that my mission had been unjustly ruled impossible by the Nigerian police force made of trade men and women.
Leaving the yard, I was stopped by three different police men, wooing me with their different prices of making the arrest. But as soon as I flashed them with the minted one thousand Naira note I had, they flinched and departed like rats when the mewing of a cat sets in from meters away. After some seconds went by something struck me. It was a song from FALZ titled THIS IS NIGERIA, as I painstakingly searched through the music playlist on my phone and found it. Connecting my earpiece to the phone, I clicked on the song and fixed the earpiece into my ears, nodding to the ramshackle system upon which the affairs of my country are finagled, as the music played on.
By Corporal Mark
