THE VIRUS THAT KILLED YAKUBU

                   

The noise from the class vanished and it became like a grave's as his shadow looms ominously at the door. He was a jovial man but little things  trigger his anger and he is also good with the cane. The way he walks into the entrance of the class without anyone hearing his footstep made the students nicknamed him Spirit.

'Good m-o-o-o-o-o-r-ning sir', the pupils  stood up to greet in unison with excitement carefully trying in vain to mask their fear.

He nodded at the sea of heads standing before him, waved them to sit and strolled quietly to the board. When he turned to face them, he had written  Integrated Science with the letters  S.A.R.S wriiten on the board.

'What is SARS', he asked staring from one angle to the other.

Several hands were up but he asked the boy in front.

'Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome', the boy sang happily grining from ear to ear.

'Wrong', the teacher quipped sharply. The boy sank dejectedly back to his seat. The proud look on his face changed to something stupid. He turned back to see spiteful giggles from his classmates. Their giggles carried the verdict:  'Over sabi kee you there'. (Too much knowledge has killed you).

'Anybody else', the teacher asked. No hand was raised. No one wanted to be made to feel stupid and so the teacher began his lesson.

' S.A.R.S  is Special Anti-robbery Squad. What did I say?'

The pupils repeated after him the first, second and the third, happy to be  learning something new. Then one tiny hand went up. Before the teacher could ask him to speak, he was on his feet.

'Sir, he said, is it a new virus too'.

'Yes, it is a new virus and more than a virus. This virus carries a gun wherever it goes and can kill at sight for just any reason.

The pupils held their chest in horror. Imagining in their little minds a virus holding a gun that could shoot at sight. They imagined also that the virus has to be big and not the tiny one they saw with the aid of the microscope in the laboratory.

Someone outside was listening to the lesson through the window in shock and horror. His shock led him to the class with his Hausa stained English demanding the teacher see him in his office immediately.

'What in hell are you teaching those children', the principal demanded still in shock. The teacher was silent but a mischievous smile crept into his face without saying a word.  He was sacked afterwards because his mental problems or strange ideas were getting the better of him and that was dangerous to the school. That incident happened ten years ago.

'All of you come out', a rabid voice barked goading the terrified  twenty-something or so people in the hotel to the waiting van outside with the butt of his gun. No one could talk because the last person that did had a beating of his life and that action made them realize that the men were there for serious business.

It was past midnight when the uniformed men stormed the hotel at the tipoff  that Yahoo boys were lounging in the hotel. They were two days late because the boys had taken their party and spending spree into another bigger hotel in town. Their effort shouldn't go to waste, somebody had to pay for the stress and the litres of fuel they have used roaming the roads like hunters for games.

A man came in the following morning and they took him to one corner at the back of their station to negotiate the release of his staff.

'What! That is outrageous! The hotelier barked with angry veins showing on his neck. He would not part with a heavy four hundred thousand naira for the release of his nineteen staff who were minding their business till the hunters came for them.

'That is an unlawful arrest', the man cried some more. The image of the demanded figure dancing before his eyes like a nebulous masquerade'.

"You are guilty of harbouring the enemies of the Federal Republic of Nigeria', the leader of the uniformed men said with his gun carelessly slung to his shoulder.

' You mean people like Shekau and his boys from Sambisa', the hotelier said with mirthless laugh injected with sarcasm.

'Look, mr man. We mean business here. The earlier you cooperate with us the easier it is for you", a mean looking man who wore a bulletproof vest with the letters SARS written on it, said.

After a drift back and forth the man finally parted with two hundred and fifty thousand naira.

There was only one man left. Standing like a tired criminal about to be lynched to death.

'You say you know see them', one officer asked the man.

'I dont know what you are talking about'.

'What do you mean you don't know', the leader's voice snarled.

' Exactly what I said.

 A slap struck his face and a rude kick to his ribs that made him yelp like a dog.

 'How dare you talk to us like that'.

The leader repeated his question in case the man didn't understand him the first time. 'Wetin you dey do for the hotel at that    ungodly hour.

 'The same thing you motherfuckers came to do", he said angrily in his mind.

'You no hear bah? The one who spoke reached inside the drawer in the airless room for the whip and struck the bundle of a man croushed in between them, one, two three times.

'We dey ask you questions, you dey speak English for us. Thunder fire your ancestors and your generation'. 

The whip descened in rapid succession on the helpless man that kept dancing like a snake caught in the cross fire of soldier ants.

His body is now one of a tortured slave. Blood and mucus came from his nostrils and his tormentors were growing more stronger by the minutes.

'I say wetin you dey do for the hotel', another one asked for the umpteenth time. The man made to respond but he couldn't frame the words out of his lips. Speaking was like drawing the last breath. The whip descended and he couldn't resisted, he was too tired to defend his helpless self.

Then suddenly,  a bright light shone in the room and something from within propelled him forward. It carried him like a balloon  floating  in the the air. He looked behind but saw  only darkened shadows. He turned back to face the light that eventually wrapped him with peace.

Then realizing the man wasn't responding to their voices nor to the laceration of the inforgiving whip. He stopped, lifted the man's hand and watched it drop like a broken arm. 

A wave of fear and and a coming to self washed over him. He sat on the only chair behind where the body lay like an abandoned bundle.

'Wetin just  happen', his lieutenant also coming to terms with the crime they had just committed asked in shock. 

'The guy don die o', the third man said moving apart from the body as though it had just transformed into a ghost.

'You said your son has been missing for the past three days, the D.P.O, a heavily pouched man with a beer-like voice asked boring into the worried eyes of the aging man before him.

'Yes. 

'Did he say where he was going?'

'He only said he wanted to go and watch Barcelona match', the man said fearing the worst that could have happened to his son. A series of scenes played his mind. A roving kidnappers, a band of robbers or a ghostly motor accident with his son lying down in a trail of his own blood.

His thought was interrupted by the D.P.O.

'You have to go now. Please give us time to  conduct our investigations'.

The man was back after one week with a murderous stare on his face for anything in black that went to and from in the station. Sitted beside him was his lawyer who was calmer than the old man.

It took an unusual hour before the D.P.O emerged from his office to the counter with a sweaty face and a look that betrayed his calmness. He demanded to speak with the lawyer alone. Their discussion took quite  some time until they were told to come in two days time.

The morgue attendant pulled out the drawer where a body was lying stiff. The old man broke into tears as he recognized the body of his son that had all over it markings of severe torture. 

'Weiyo...weiyo...Yakubu. Allah, why did you do this to me?'. Yakubu...who did this to you?'  More voices behind the old man wailed loudly but the attendant carefully led them out to complete the paperwork for the corpse.

The only image that kept replaying in his mind was the lesson his former employee taught his pupil about replacing Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome for Special Anti-Robbery Squad, a new virus that took the life of his son. 

Thank you for reading this one. I guess you are aware of the dissolution of the Spacial Anti-robbery Squad of the Nigerian Police Force. But I think that is not the solution to police brutality. We need a national dialogue between stakeholders for a better and enabling society. I will see you next time.

I am yours truly,

Julius Topohozin.