Harassment as High Art
“Sleeping in the company of others at the dungeon, bathing with four cups of water … picking at food without cutlery were nothing strange to the editor, he grew up sharing one room and parlour with six siblings, mother and father; he hardly slept on a bed until 1963 when his father managed to get him a small vono, three feet wide, and a mattress of jute beg filled with dry grass.”
By now, the method had become an art. Even to the police, it soon became clear enough that a whole contingent of armed policemen was not necessary to arrest this hapless reporter whose arsanals comprise only his typewriter and his nose for sniffing other people’s secrets. Visiting the editor at home had become a perfunctory business to the police, and the journalist and the police had established a medium of communication in which words were not spoken, one in which grimaces and grins and shrugs said all like in those silent movies. The only problem was that the journalist would rather these men come during the day, have breakfast or coffee or tea, talk about the weather, and then take out the warrants. It’s funny, the warrants. Who really cares whether they are produced or not. If the editor says no that you can’t search, he is probably going to be pushed aside while his domain and office are ransacked. It’s all getting to be tiresome, and a poor reporter can’t understand why the police search rituals have to go on, moreso when they have never been able to find anything in the possession of the journalist. In any case, who will be so stupid as to keep anything in his house or office when he expects the police to pay him unannounced nocturnal visits? It does appear though that the police are voyeurs who like to peruse love letters and inspect receipts, when not taking an inventory of one’s video film collection.
Midnight Friday, February 4, only after two nights in the house, having spent the preceding night in the police detention at Alagbon, the police came again. Godwin, the reporter’s man Friday, tried in vain to tell the police that his boss was not home. The police told him that if he didn’t go straight on to inform his boss to their presence they would kick down the door. Of course the boy believed them, and so he came to wake up the reporter. The mallams at the gate and few of the neighbours already knew of the game of cat-and-mouse between the police and the reporter. The police would come, plainclothes and armed mobile men, and the reporter would emerge in casual wears and follow the police into their Kombi bus or the ever present 504 station wagon. The atmosphere of the very last was almost decorous. Three plainclothes men, two of whom were graduates, and three armed mobile men who were around hidden around the house, perhaps ready to gun down the suspect if he tried to sneak out through the back of the house, carried out the arrest: No searches were conducted on the residence or the office of the reporter this time, as the searches in connection with the particular case had taken place in the early hours of the previous Tuesday, February 1, when the police originally took in the editor. It was in connection with the exchange of letters between the I-G and A-G.
A mild and unspoken drama took place on the drive that night to Alagbon. At Western Avenue, one of the three armed policemen fell asleep, his sub-machine gun on his lap. The editor was sandwiched between two armed mobile men, while the third one sat at his back in the Kombi bus. The editor’s dilemma was palpable. He was afraid that the policeman’s machine gun might drop while he was asleep, and the damned thing might just pump holes all over him. On the other hand, he was afraid of waking the sleeping policeman, in case he reacted by grabbing his machine gun and shooting the reporter, thinking that he was trying to escape. That’s what brought up the question in the mind of the reporter on why the police always choose to come at night, and on a Friday at that. It must be because the police knew that, as in that particular instance, the question of police bail would not be entertained on Saturday or Sunday; and the police knew that even if finally the suspect was found not guilty by the court on the charges, the ordeal of spending three nights in detention would have assuaged the sadistic streak in the police, and satisfy the particular sadism of the police boss himself.
Truly enough on Monday when the editor was taken before Mr. Justice Anyaegbunam, the first thing that Nwazojei, the federal DPP, told the court was that the accused had been produced at the first available date when the court was sitting. The judge said, seriously or in a joke, that the court could have been willing to sit on Saturday. All that did not stop the judge from remanding the journalist in the prison custody, a decision that visibly shook Gani Fawehinmi, the journalist’s lawyer, and one which he had since appealed. That weekend at Alagbon posed no challenge to the editor who somehow concluded after his night in the dungeon, the night of Tuesday, February 1, that he would most likely return to the hell, and he might just learn to love it. His friends in the dungeon were surprised to see him return; a part of them grieved that he had come back, and a part of them rejoiced that he was back in that they had found in the ebullience that he showed on the first night that the jocularity of the journalist was a welcome relief to the tedium of incarceration.
Sleeping in the company of others, bathing with four cups of water, defecating on top of other people’s defecation and picking at food without cutlery were nothing especially strange to the editor. That was how he grew up, sharing one room and parlour with six siblings, mother and father until he went on his own at the end of 1966. He hardly slept on a bed until 1963 when his father managed to get him a small vono, three feet wide, and a mattress of jute bag filled with dry grass. Being locked up at Alagbon was even an improvement on the penury of his youth through his adolescence when he didn’t get to live in a house that had running water and electricity. Though the water at Alagbon didn’t run, at least the naked bulb, as brown as it had become, show all night long. Chief Abiola was said to have come over on Saturday, but he was not allowed to see his editor. According to Sule Abiola, the Concord’s Finance Director who accompanied his brother to the Alagbon Force CID, an armed policeman even threatened to shoot the Concord publisher that Saturday morning, and his request to use the police phone was reportedly rejected out of hand. Dele Cole, too, later said that he had come to the station that morning to see the detainee. But he was not allowed to see him. After three hors of playing him up and down, Dr. Cole was told gruffly that “if people like you would stay away Dele Giwa will get his release more quickly.” Dr. Cole knew Muhammed Gambo, the AIG in-charge of Alagbon Force CID, and his efforts to reach the AIG failed. Gambo made himself scarce. The detainee and Gambo knew each other well. The latter once attended a party in the residence of the accused, and the accused once visited Gambo at the National Institute of Strategic Studies at Jos, but throughout the time that the detainee was locked up in his custody, Gambo avoided seeing his “friend” even once. And this was the same man, Gambo, who became Mr. Adewusi’s hatchet man in the most infamous harassment of the journalist. But the good that the police did not realize they were doing the reporter was that they were reminding him of the depression of his youth.
©Sunday Concord, March 13, 1983
(Pp.200-203)
