Tag: Okon

AS the longest running election in the history of the nation finally ran its ponderous course, the much-storied Clifford Police Station had become a bee-hive of activities. Baba Lekki was up and about running rings around the bewildered desk sergeant as he argued vigorously for Okon’s unconditional release from police custody failing which he would trigger a hitherto unknown clause in the Amalgamation which would send the entire country on a tailspin.

“Sergeant, I put it to you that you are a bloody fool”, the old man suddenly screamed and stormed out before the stunned sergeant could respond.

The place was teeming with electoral offenders without the benefit of an Electoral Tribunal. Ex-detainees easily outnumbered current detainees they are hoping to bail out. The main cells having rapidly filled up with electoral scoundrels, the vast courtyard had been converted to an open cell bristling with wayward humanity.

One fellow who had been accused of impersonating a famous presidential candidate and extorting money on his behalf was protesting his innocence to the high heavens and insisting that he would talk only if a certain Mahmood presented himself for cross examination.

“And who is this Memudu this jibiti man is talking about?” a fellow detainee growled in exasperation.

“Mahmood Yakubu, the Fedeco man. This is the last election the Zamfara bandit will be allowed to conduct in this country!” the irate man screamed.

“But he is not from Zamfara. He is from Bauchi”, a detainee with a strange girl-like voice whined.

“If he likes let him come from Ngwar Banawa”, the short man fumed. It was at this point that a man who claimed that he was originally apprehended for cow rustling but that the charge had been amended to vote-rustling began protesting.

“Ranka shi dede, dualla, helf we ask dem Gobment yalla dem cow dey vote or yalla Babamangoro fit become baba maigoro?” the man noted in a cheerful murder of both English and Hausa languages.

But the most hilarious was a Yoruba Christian medium who was arrested for swindling the wife of a former vice president and leading presidential candidate on the pretext of burying live cows to procure electoral triumph for her husband.

“I went to Yola to collect my balance”, the man announced to no one in a fake Lagosian accent.

“What work did you do?” somebody demanded.

“I asked for five hundred cows and she gave money for only fifty. Ten of them died on the road. Six died of hunger. Five died of human hunger. Thirteen perished as stomach infrastructure. Eleven were confiscated by police for wandering and the rest were captured by Boko Haram”, the old rogue whined without any sense of irony.

“So, why were you arrested—or is it the cows that arrested you?” one detainee asked.

“Thank you my brother. The Yoruba say if trap fails to catch, you must release bait. So I went to ask for balance. The maiguard ask me for the name of the woman I am looking for and I tell dem it is Titilowonina and they pounced on me and beat me well well. Then the police came”.

“Oleeee!!! Oleee!!! Oleee!!!” The entire compound erupted. Amidst the din and chaos, the rampaging mob seized hold of the station emptying all the cells of their criminal contents. As the decrepit generator powering the station spluttered and expired in terminal gasps, everybody, including the policemen, fled in different directions.

To the Pemberton police station off Ilubirin jetty where Okon is being held on the double-barrelled suspicion of ritual killing and trading in human flesh. Mad men often see farther than most men. It was not long ago when a distraught lunatic known as Clifford was caught under a bridge cooking human flesh for dinner. His infamous retort was that since everybody was eating everybody, he could not fathom what he had done wrong.

Since then, ritual killing and trading in human parts have become part of the nation’s grisly folklore. More famously, Field Marshal Idi Amin Dada, the rogue former cannibal ruler of Uganda, had been known to observe that the only difference between human flesh and venison was that human flesh is saltier. Something new always comes out of Africa indeed.

Despite his bluff and bluster and occasional lunacy, it would be a bit of a stretch to imagine a punitively carnivorous yokel like Okon taking a dig at human flesh.  Apparently the mad boy had gone for a tryst in a local hovel with a well-endowed woman of easy virtues. Unknown to Okon, the lady was an ancient hag wearing a wig, false eyelashes and false teeth to the bargain.

So incensed was Okon when he discovered this racket that he decided to teach the woman a lesson by making away with her enabling falsetties in the dead of the night after she had fallen asleep. But he ran out of luck when he was accosted by a police patrol team. According to the mad boy: “Dem police jump out. Naim man come pick race, Naim dem tackle man. Naim dem woman head and him teeth come scatter for ground. Naim dem police beat man sotey and dem say I be Badoo boy from Ikorodu. But Okon na common cook. Naim dem come throw man inside dem police cell”.

At the Pemberton Station that morning, Baba Lekki was already valiantly on his feet running rings around the duty officers with his legal barbs and witty innuendoes.

“What is the difference between a wigless body and a body less wig?” the old contrarian demanded. The desk sergeant was taken aback by the old man’s temerity.

“Baba, dem difference na your yam head. When I put you in the cell with Yanga, you go sabi dem difference,” the crazed scoundrel replied with a menacing scowl.

“Officer, I put it to you that you are a blockhead”, Baba Lekki pressed. The desk sergeant completely lost his cool and patience.

“Foolish old man. Na your papa be blokos head, I will charge you with speaking battery of a police officer on legal duty bordering on arson and artillery”, the desk sergeant screamed. At this point, the intelligent-looking duty corporal waded in.

“Baba, se you be mad man impersonating lawyer or you be lawyer impersonating mad man?” he demanded from Baba Lekki. The old man ignored him.

“Na dat one dem Fela man dey call impersonate come impersonate impersonation”, a detainee whimpered from one of the cells.

“Corporal, prepare Cell four and charge this useless old man with double impersonation,” the desk sergeant railed.

“Oga, Cell Four na ready ready cell. Yanga no dey carry last. Him beat dem Okon man dis morning and shit dey all over dem floor”, the wolfish corporal noted and saluted briskly.

“Not on your life. I demand Habeas Corpus for the detained”, the old man screamed.

“Wereee!! habibu kupus ko, sunkunmus suranmus ni ,” the mad sergeant snorted with savage  relish. It was at this point that a superior officer in mufti who had been watching the drama with keen interest briskly walked to the desk and ordered that Okon be released forthwith.

The Rise and Fall of Rochas’ Rogue Reich, the longest running dynastic soap in the modern history of a fiercely republican people appears to be winging its way to its inglorious finale. The knives are already out on the Imo Capitol, glistening with plebeian malice. The autumn of the premature patriarch is here with us. The woods of Dunsinane have finally arrived at the veld of Emekuku. To wax poetic, the hurly-burly is set to consume the burly bully.

Unconfirmed reports indicate some uncontrollable and inconsolable wailing and gnashing of teeth emanating from the royal quarters of the penal colony of Imo with hired mourners from Aguleri going into overdrive gear with their sonorous dirges about the tragic ironies of life and the fact that a king among slaves remains a slave among kings. It was added that thereafter a naked man carrying a flaming pot could be seen mumbling some occult mumbo-jumbo, while beseeching Amadiora to break the neck of his traducers.

But while it lasted, it was adjudged to be the greatest political road show in the history of the nation, full of gaudy pomp and empty pomposity. Never one to do things by half measures, it was rumoured that even the royal palm wine tapper was his royal majesty’s distant cousin once briefly lost to gully erosion.

This is in addition to about eighteen choice posts of the realm held down by immediate family including the yeoman of a royal wardrobe bristling with gaudy sash and surreal sartorial sorties. How any sane person ever thought he could get away with this royal monstrosity among a people famous for their competitive zeal beggars belief. But then scalding embers of flame have been known to beget cold impotent ash.

You can trust Okon the crazy one and Baba Lekki, his senile accomplice, to cotton in on the act. On Friday morning, the delinquent duo duly arrived in the house carrying a mock coffin and a huge pouch bursting with incendiary devices. Even so early in the morning, illicit alcohol had already kicked in, and the two were on social rampage, babbling insensate and subversive nonsense. Snooper was having none of that.

“What is all this nonsense so early in the morning?” snooper growled with the distemper of the sleep-deprived.

“Ha oga as market don close for Owerri, we wan quickly reach dem Douglas Road”. The mad boy sniggered.

“To do what?” snooper snapped.

“As dem don roga dem Rochas man, we wan go remove him erection for Owerri. When opposition don beat man so tey and him no dey stand erect again, him erection must to fall. Na dem Zuma erection I go remove first, make dem Yoruba people use dat one for dem sigidi. I hear say even Zuma sef go kaput for jail as dem South Africa no dey play with wayo people”, the crazy boy crowed.

“You mean Rochas Okorocha?” snooper quipped.

“Kai, kai Oko-ro- nsa himself”, the crazy old man intoned. He had pronounced the name with such a lewd and lurid Yoruba inflection that could only have come from a deranged prankster.

“Oga, some of dem erection don dey fall gradually by gradually, na wetin baba wan say be dat,” Okon lamented.

“In Building Science, na dat one dem dey call erectum interruptus”, the mad old man sneered.

“But dem still dey talk. Na inside dem dem Rochas man keep him juju. He get time like dat for Owerri when I been dey check out dem Egbu girl call Charity and I pass dem erection and he come dey talk Ibo. Him say Bia, Nwoke ebe ki ne je?” Naim I come pick real race and I come hide for Okigwe Road for inside dem abandoned trailer.” The mad boy chanted breathlessly.

“And what is inside this bag?” snooper finally ventured.

“Na  ljebu gbetu-gbetu for controlled demolition of fake erections”, the old man screamed and got up as if to charge snooper even as Okon scrambled to restrain him. It was at this point that snooper ordered the pair to leave the house or face forcible eviction.

just when you thought you have had enough of politics, the old monster rears up its freckled and pock-marked visage in the most unlikely of places, like a famished crocodile completely buried in sand. However much you choose to ignore politics, politics, in all its alienating necessities, will not ignore you.

And so to an abandoned Cinema House at Ikotun Egbe this last Friday where Okon, as the newly anointed presidential flag bearer of the Domestic Auxiliaries Salvation Movement of Nigeria, DASMN, has been hectoring and hollering at everybody in sight with Baba Lekki serving as professorial adjunct. It was a bone chilling message of hell and brimstone.

The primary that produced Okon was direct and point-device in its revolutionary mayhem and anarchy. It was a model of party discipline and prudent politics. As soon as equal opportunity thugs, social misfits, recuperating cut-throats and assorted weirdoes filed primarily and directly behind Okon, his competitors fled through the adjoining thickets. It was an armada of madness. When he was asked about this development, a jubilant Okon retorted that “primary no be for secondary school boys. Politics no be Owambe party.”

This morning, Okon was carried shoulder-high by kindred hoodlums chanting war-songs and subversive ranting. It was at this point that a heedless and hapless journalist walked directly into Okon’s barbed wire.

“Mr Okon, congratulations. But the primary seems to have been marred by irregularities and voter intimidation”, the journalist observed his face glowering with an hyena-like sneer.

“Stupid Yoruba boy, make eregularity become regulariti now. Abi dem bribe you take from dem PDP confection no do you?” Okon snarled.

“For dat one even dem cleaner dey pick dollar from dem floor”, one man observed from the floor.

“No be dem reason why dem American say dem one see dem man?” somebody crowed.

“Haba, dat one na below dem belt blow”, one man shouted.

“Let me tell una. Na only Okon sabi dem blow below belt. Na dem thin wey dey make dem woman happy happy be dat. Hammer dey under and below dem belt and Sikira sabi well well”, the mad boy drooled.

“Sir, how will you go about restructuring?” a serious-looking journalist demanded.

“Ah you see. Dat one easy. You pound yam and he come back as pounded yam, dat one na restructuring. But if you no pound yam and Okon come whack yam dat one na yam devolution, so restructuring be when you come pound something sotey he come become another something”, Okon explained and burst into a prolonged giggle of self-congratulation.

“No wonder, dem Daura man say him no want restructuring”, one man exclaimed.

“You see am ? Make you dey think say de man no sabi anything. Dem Buhari man know say if dem restructure and pound him cows well well, him go become meat and dem Ibo man go whack am.” Okon snorted.

“He do!! I say he do!! Wait make I restructure and pound your epiya mouth for you”, one Arogbo-Ijaw man screamed as a pro-restructuring group led by a hefty ruffian suddenly materialized from the nearby creeks and put the rowdy assemblage to rout.

Barely recovered from food poisoning and gastro-intestinal disorder, Okon has been up in arms against the entire system once again. When the old Calabar rogue is not complaining about the perpetual and perennial darkness, he is busy railing about the numerous crises in the land wondering how much longer it would take for the president to appoint a minister of crisis management or a secretary for crisis consolidation.

“Oga, make them appoint Basil Nwokenta make him help them panel beat all dem crisis. Na him dey help dem with dem accident vehicles for Tin Can Island. Nigeria come get accident so tey even accident tire for Nigeria. He be like if say na madman dey drive dem vehicle sef”, the mad boy moaned to no one in particular.

“Okon, what do you think about this amnesty and amnesia business?” snooper taunted the mad boy.

“Oga I sabi Milk of Magnesium. I no sabi amnesty or amnesia. Armels na bus we dey take reach Agbanikaka for dem better days. If Soyinka wan chop bushmeat make him tell us, I fit cook dat one, but I hear say na Aparo him like well well”, the mad boy crowed.

But the father of all troubles was just around the corner. Two days after Alapansanpa, the famed Ibadan masquerade, was arrested for affray, stealing, inflicting bodily harm and for conduct prejudicial to public order, Okon appeared in the sitting room dressed like a semi-masquerade so to speak.

“Chief Okon, I presume” snooper cooed, trying to humour the dyspeptic clown.

“Oga, I wan reach Ibadan, make man Iiberrate dem Alapansanpa”

“I see”, snooper mumbled in quiet alarm.

“Dem yeye magistrate go suffer. Dem no fit catch dem thieves who dey show dem face and who come dey live for dis world. Na dem ara orun dem fit catch”.

“Okon, please what is your locus standi in this matter?” I shouted in alarm.

“Ah oga, I don tell you say locusts no dey stand. Dem dey bite”, Okon retorted.

“They say Alapansanpa broke some windscreen”, snooper noted in disapproval.

“Na dem screen dem go blame for dat one. If him screen well well he no fit break”, the mad boy retorted again.

“What about the mobile he stole?” snooper screamed at the mad boy.

“Oga, you don answer your own question. Mobile is supposed to be mobile, abi no be so?” Okon taunted with malicious relish.

“So, what is the address of the person you are defending?” snooper asked.

“Oga, now you don see why dem magistrate no get common sense at all? Egungun no get address for obodo, na ara orun. The man dem come detain na Lamidi of Alekuwodo and him be barber for Agbeni. Alapansanpan don return to heaven and if dem want collect dem money make dem go meet am for heaven”, Okon replied with a devilish smile as he walked way.

• First published in 2008