03082019 - Worsening Insecurity: Suspected herdsmen kill Catholic priest in Enugu

42—SATURDAY Vanguard, AUGUST 3, 2019
poet friend, Mr Okujere. I
exhaled in exasperation,
knowing it was going to be
another lengthy session in
the house with visitors.
************************************************
Two months had passed
since the meeting at the party
secretariat, and there had
been no move by the
governor to call for a followup
meeting as promised. The
state’s political landscape had
become steeped in the
looming confrontation with
Abuja. The splinter group in
the state chapter of our party
suddenly became the
anointed voice of the national
powers. Its arrowhead, Chief
Jeremiah Adiotomre, was
the governor’s long-standing
political opponent. Against
all pleas he had gone ahead
to form a parallel state party
structure beyond the
legitimate party congresses
held three months earlier. In
every small gathering of
opposition politics. ‘O boy, I
no wan suffer,’ became the
common refrain.
It was in the midst of this
whirlwind that we were
summoned to a caucus
meeting by Chief Gabriel
Ogbodo, the state chairman
of our faction of Blue Party.
And, being a gathering for a
select few, he chose his
country home in Abraka as
the venue. I knew the place
well as I had been there twice;
it was about an hour’s
journey from Asaba. The
meeting had been slated for
noon, but I arrived at the
light-brown mansion twenty
minutes earlier and tucked
my car in the innermost
section of the L- Shaped
parking space which ran
around the building. I did not
disembark from the vehicle
when I switched it off.
Instead, I waited out the last
strains of Bob Marley’s
Natural Mystic filtering from
the stereo. The song had run
its course before I stepped
out of my Camry.
Other invited guests stood
about in front of the onestory
edifice, wrapped in the
warm rays of the sun. When I
looked around, I couldn’t
help but marvel at the
scenery. Between the zebrastriped
pavements hedging
the borders of the parking
space and the house sat a
manicured piece of
vegetation. A fountain
gurgled happily in the middle
of the greenery while two
elegantly feathered birds
chirped around the water
point. The chairman had
obviously given his house a
facelift as that part of the
house had previously been
filled with sand and pebbles.
A smile broke out when I
turned my focus to the
cigarette haze lingering near
the entrance to the house.
Ijele. When Ijele finally
reached us, we responded to
his hello in muted tones.
“Mr Benjamin, good to see
you again,” he said, his
voice dipping into its calm
and measured tenor. “I
knew I was going to meet
you here.” He dug in his
crumpled agbada and
fished out a pen.
Brandishing it like it was a
gold bar, he proudly
announced that he had
helped me retrieve the
plastic biro I left at our party
secretariat during the last
meeting with the governor.
I tried my best to avoid
Odum and Clifford’s stares,
especially as I knew Odum
was trying to catch my
attention. I didn’t want to
make Ijele uncomfortable.
When Clifford forced an
awkward cough, excused
himself, and began to walk
away, I turned to Ijele,
thanked him for his
thoughtfulness and took the
pen from him. He stomped
away just as swiftly as he
had arrived, leaving behind
that decaying mango smell.
“What have you just
done?” Odum asked with a
stern frown.
“How? You mean I
shouldn’t have taken it from
him?” I said and turned the
pen to get a closer look.
Odum cautiously stretched
out his neck to take a
glimpse, keeping a safe
distance between us. “O
boy, life is not the way you
look at it. It’s only your mind
you know. You can’t tell
about others,” he said.
“How do you mean?” I
asked.
He sighed, knocked off the
ash on his cigarette and
looked straight at me, his
cheekbones more evident
than ever. “Benjy, you don’t
know anything. Of course
He nodded then
whistled when we
pulled up to my
house. “Fantastic. The entire
place don change o. If I
remember correctly, this
sky-blue wasn’t the color of
your house.”
“Sure. The whole building
was so covered with dust
after the road was done that
I had to repaint the entire
house.”
He began to pick his nose. I
doubt that he knew it was a
very disgusting thing to do.
He whistled again and said,
“O boy, you guys are not
doing badly at all. Repainting
the whole premises in this
period of recession …
hmmm.”
I quickly pulled up by the
entrance to the mechanic’s
workshop and told him the
mechanic’s name. He
expressed his gratitude, and,
as he got off the car, he asked
if he could get my phone
number. When he dug his
hands into the pockets of his
Blue Party ankara to search
for his smartphone, he
yelped like he’d been burnt.
Apparently, he had left his
phone in his car. Ijele pulled
out a little sheet of paper
from his trouser pocket. “I
can take the number here,”
he said, smiling
mischievously.
I reached for my jacket to
offer him my pen, but the
pockets were empty. That
was when I realized that I
had left my pen at the
secretariat. Odum had failed
to retrieve it from the people
that had used it after him.
Thank God it wasn’t my
award pen. Losing the
ballpoint pen did not really
faze me because it was
cheap. When I told Ijele that
I did not have a pen, he
asked that I call out the
number so he could
memorize it. I quickly did
that while hoping that he
would not notice the relief
etched on my face when he
finally lumbered toward the
mechanic shop. The smell of
rotten mangoes slowly
dissipated, and I let out a
sigh.
As I drove into my
compound, the governor’s
faded campaign poster that
had been on my gate since
the elections three years ago
drew my mind to the very
troubling issues he raised at
our party meeting. How do
we stand the onslaught of the
powers at the federal capital?
Could this be the beginning
of the end of our group? I was
still pondering these odds
when my wife and son, Jude,
walked out of the door. She
pointed to the four vehicles
parked in the compound,
and when I looked, the only
car I could recognize was the
old Volkswagen Passat of my
politicians, Chief
Adiotomre’s unholy activities
were the topic of discussion.
I should state though that
while those of us on the
governor’s side saw Chief
Adiotomre’s challenge as
unholy, his followers, who
were clearly minorities in the
Blue Party, rejoiced over
what they believed was a
godsend opportunity to
overturn the dominance of
the governor’s mainstream
team. As developments at the
national capital trickled into
the streets, Chief
Adiotomre’s followers
became the cynosure of all
eyes. You could easily
identify them at drinking
joints and other public
squares as their expressions
rang the loudest.
Things grew worse when
word seeped out that the
new-found zest in
Adiotomre’s camp was
fueled by the number of
people from the governor’s
group who sneaked around at
night to court their
friendship. They were
political characters of easy
virtues who did not hesitate
to place one leg at
Adiotomre’s camp while
retaining the second in the
governor’s camp. It was
certain they believed that
hedging their bets both ways
would ensure they were not
caught in the lurch of
Things grew worse when word seeped
out that the new-found zest in
Adiotomre’s camp was fueled by the
number of people from the governor’s
group who sneaked around at night to
court their friendship
Odum, who had equally
been anxious about the next
move of our political group,
was already chatting with
two other party members. As
I strolled towards the group,
the shorter of the two men
left and walked briskly
towards the lodge.
Two minutes had barely
passed when I noticed a man
dressed in a white agbada
and red cap walking into the
compound. His black walking
stick hardly touched the
ground as he hastened his
steps. The gait was familiar,
but he had almost reached us
before I realized it was Ijele
Agaza. He never called even
though he had taken my
phone number, and I had not
bothered to reach out. As he
approached us, I concluded
he must have parked his
vehicle outside the
compound or had come via
public transport.
I turned to Odum and his
friend, Clifford. They too
were focused on the fairskinned
party officer–my
initial gaze had obviously
drawn their attention to
we were all at that last
meeting; but why should the
man be carrying around an
ordinary fifty-naira biro and
looking for you for more than
two months?”
At this point, I began to feel
uneasy. I unzipped my
purse, wrenched out a sheet
from my little jotter, and
scribbled some lines on the
white paper. “It’s the same
blue pen,” I mumbled, not
sure if I intended to make a
statement or ask a question.
“So?”
I glared at Odum with
increasing mindfulness. “I
actually gave him a lift in my
car after the meeting,” I said.
“Hmmmm,” he mumbled.
“That was how he knew we
had misplaced the pen. I’m
sure he later picked it at the
secretariat,” I said.
Odum stared at me. “My
brother, there are situations
in which you must apply
wisdom or people will just
destroy you. Spiritual
wickedness is all over the
place.”
Continues next week