Malaam Haruna picked me up in a springy metallic green limousine. As we reached the Central Mosque in a swirl of laterite dust the sight again of the towering minaret, ornamental geometric patterns and the sun-dried mud walls gave me the same goosebumps I had when I first clapped eyes on the place. Rows of dusty beggars, and emaciated men, women and children squatted in the wilting sunshine begging for alms. Many did a double take and whispered excitedly to companions when they spotted us. When the press trained their camera lenses on us a mild scuffle started to be included in the photos but except for a brief pause to oblige them Malaam Haruna kept the intrusions to a minimum. He led me into the cool and vaulted domed halls, where the rustle of knees on mats, the jostle for the taps to carry out wudu, the aroma of piled up leather footwear wafted through the damp air.
Ali the Peerless was back. The mosque was so packed there was hardly room to move. I was rusty after such a long lay off but but overcame a brief attack of mild stage fright by reciting a short sura. I followed prayers with a homily on neighbourliness. From the nods of silent approval exchanged between the elders in the front row the talk succeeded way beyond my most modest expectations, which were to get in and out without a major faux pas.
Outside in the sweltering heat, I tried to share the coins Haruna gave me fairly between the many hands, plastic bowls and trays thrust desperately at me, avoiding the pushy more able bodied ones who didn’t care whom they crushed to get what they wanted. When I ran out of coins, Malaam Haruna hustled me into the calm cool ambience of a long room for lunch. We had pounded yam with a spicy vegetable stew, packed with seafood. My tongue was still flicking unsuccessfully at the sliver of grapefruit caught between my teeth when Haruna said he had something to show me. Up newly laid concrete stairs we climbed to a balconied section of flat roof overlooking a rowdy crowd of many thousands, mostly men hollering, waving sticks, machetes or bleached animal bones. Some wore stringed singlets smeared with blood. I wished I’d put a vest on because sweat marks began to darken the grey riga Haruna lent me.
One man with massive biceps ringed by amulets broke off to heave at an advertising board featuring a family dressed in western attire at breakfast. To loud cheers back and forward he swayed the billboard by the ramparts until it crashed to the ground. Huge sheets of dust flared into the air and my nose and eyes began to itch. I wished I was back home but Haruna had disappeared once again.
The crowd began to chant for Haruna. He reappeared beside me as if out of nowhere. I was not to worry. The wild chanting was no more than an expression of youthful exuberance but it could be channelled so that the genuine concerns of the real sons of the soil are met. He winked at me to wait a while. We’ll go soon but surely I will understand that he couldn’t let his people down. A little boy with an ear missing handed Haruna a megaphone. Haruna raised a hand draped in a mother of pearl tesibar. The crowd fell silent. “Assalam alaikum,” shouted Haruna. “One north, araba araba.” He dug into his white riga and produced a sample of the photos mocking Sardauna. I couldn’t bear to look and at first turned away but as mum advised – describe before you commend or condemn – forced myself to look. The crowd roared in anger. Even the beggars wept for our late Sardauna. Haruna raised the loudhailer again. How much more could or should we take? How can we remain in a country in which they cut off the PM’s penis and fed it to him with kolanut then shot him as he turned round to pray? Haruna segued from Hausa into pidgin English. “Who ask dem do coup? Who? Wetin Sardauna do dem? Dem plan am well, well,” he said, pointing this way and that to indicate Lagos and Enugu. If the coup was not planned where was the garrulous Zik, doctor of stitching long English words together? Nowhere to be found. Some say he is on a cruise. Others say he is sick. His cousin, Ifeajuna, tipped him off, did he not? Loud boos.
Haruna waved the crowd silent and dropped his tone to a conversational timbre. Did they want to know why araba, secession, was the way forward? He paused for the cheers to subside. It is a secret. They shouldn’t tell anyone. Complicit laughter rippled around. His sigh through the loudhailer sounded like the sough of an approaching storm. The other day he was at the market waiting for his wife and “one useless yanmiri woman” said he should carry her bags to her car. “Like her boy boy. Kaba. Turanci.” What they cannot get with a gun they want to get with the stroke of the pen. Ironsi and his boys give the impression that in their considered self reflection in the mirror known to the world as Nigeria, that the sun does indeed shine from their backpassages. He’d heard that Ironsi was thinking of abolishing the northern region and ruling us from Lagos. Why else were they planning to carry civil servants to the north instead of training or promoting our own people? What next? Igbo imams in this mosque? Jumaat service in Igbo? Haruna’s voice crackled with passion. If they didn’t believe him they should look at Palestine. Was that going to be our fate too? First the oyinbo come small small, then the oyinbo made themselves at home inside your house, then they killed you and took your home, then they say it was never yours, then they start to tell you who you are, then they kill your children and build on top of your house and say do your worst, we will kill you so well even your Allah will not know that it is the same you. As oyinbo planned it everywhere so they are planning it here. It was bad enough under the oyinbo colonials. But to live under the boot of their Igbo proxies too? Never. We, the heirs of Uthman dan Fodio would not allow it. That struck me as odd because had he forgotten that the Fulani too were invaders? Haruna’s eyes bulged. Sweat lined a fine crease in his forehead. Veins stood out on the front of his slender neck. Cheers went up. He bathed in the adulation for several minutes before waving them down with grand deliberate gestures.
Why were oyinbo people in Britain propping up our one government on one leg? If an Irish man killed Harold Wilson and a policeman took over the government saying the Cabinet gave him permission to do so would they accept it?
“No,” the crowd screamed.
“… Then he takes the killers and puts them in hotels?”
“No, barawo, a’a,” they cried.
“Na burn burn dem go burn am,” said someone behind me.
They should heed the warnings. Insha Allah we will be ready. If the senior officers were too fat to lead us they should “commot for road” because junior officers were straining for a “return match,” to redress the balance. And protect themselves from a repeat.
I saw Haruna’s point and out of tribal loyalty wanted, even needed, revenge. What form this would take I was not sure but I wanted the men who killed our Sardauna dead too. How dare they? Yet I suspected that the return match to which Haruna referred demanded far more than that. From the reaction of the crowd it seemed that many had been waiting for an excuse to drive the strangers out. As mum said in one of her ping pong word moods, you know what people think of you and how far they are prepared to go to punish you when you make a mistake, or they think you made a mistake or they are convinced by others that you made a mistake. She went on for longer than this, but I digress.
The cheers died down again and a man wearing large rimless glasses, orange shirt and cap clambered over a low wall to the right and through a clump of beggars. His megaphone, black, was larger than Haruna’s. Several men in blood soaked singlets eyed Fantu with ill intent but four giant bodyguards stood behind him, chewing tobacco, kolanuts, betel nuts and a stringy material I had never seen.
“It’s Fantu,” whispered Haruna into my ear and he raised his loudhailer again. “Araba, araba,” he shouted and peering over the balcony rails down at Fantu said, “Why listen to those who would rather talk grammar and betray?” Loud boos went up but Fantu’s began to speak and his thunderous deep voice forced Haruna to give way.
Fantu sent an ironic smile up at Haruna. “Assalam alaikum,” he greeted the crowd. He heard all that had been said and what he was going to say was not going to go down well with everyone. But to him the cost of food on the table was more important than the fate of any politician. He looked to the sky as if to project to the House of Representatives 600 miles away in Lagos. If politicians wanted to kill one another they should go ahead but leave us alone and let us know when they were finished. If any of them died for a politician nobody except their family would miss or mourn them. He patted his stomach. Would a return match put food on their tables? “No.” He shook his head. Anyone could have made up those pictures of Sardauna’s severed head. If those who carried out the coup were from Zaria would we be talking and jumping up and down like this? Were these people who are now sharpening machetes not the very people who were cheering and singing hallelujah when they first heard of the coup? People should not allow themselves to be manipulated. It was the oldest trick in the book. Had Ironsi not bent over backwards to placate northern sensibilities by promoting men like Sule Katagum, Malam Howeidy and others? Many of the Igbos promoted had been overdue their position. Ironsi arrested politicians in the West whilst those here went free, not so? Ironsi appointed the son of the Emir of Katsina a military Governor. That is the truth and rabblerousers know it. And people like Haruna did not love the north more than he did. What if we were not in Nigeria and a landlocked people having to beg the same people we so despise for access to the ocean? Oyinbo even cut the some of the south and gave to Cameroon. Araba? We should be careful what we wish for. He lowered his loudhailer to wipe his face.
In the relative quiet Haruna shouted out a question about the lopsided ethnic outcome of the murder of officers and the subsequent government. What did Fantu think of that, eh?
“Enhen.” He knew that would come up. But had Haruna and his ilk given any consideration to the possibility that this was a tragic accident? An accident is like a gatecrasher. It always wants brings a friend and if you are not careful that friend brings another friend. What if the other coup leaders simply developed cold feet or when it came down to it they couldn’t bring themselves to kill their “countrymen” like chicken. It does not mean they planned the outcome from the beginning. “Cockup not conspiracy” as they say abroad. If you forget the key to your house when you go out is it a plan? Yet you leave your house everyday. You make mistakes when you cook food, talk less of a once in a life time plan such as a coup. Only today he stopped in his car to price peppers from one nice woman who gave him special price and a paper bag. He was thinking, if our eminent cleric Haruna here had his way he would kill this woman. For what? “Wetin she do you?”
I found myself conflicted, angry with the murderers and with the Dr. Nwokoyes of this world for their disrespect but I found myself in reluctant and guilty agreement with Fantu too that you can’t go about killing people as collective punishment for the sins of a few hotheads. Where would it end? I tugged on Haruna’s jabaliya to get his attention because I wanted to leave. He lifted a hand to say he would soon be ready. A little boy wriggled through the crowd carrying what to my cursory glance looked like a section of a smashed billboard. Haruna gestured for me to pass it over. I raised the board high above my head and the loudest cheers of the day blasted from thousands of throats. Cries of araba araba interspersed with my name troubled my eardrums. Cameras clicked. Curious, I turned the placard and was horrified by what it said.
