Who Is Matigari?

By Abubakar Sulaiman Muhd

(@bubakarsulai13)

Title: Matigari

Author: Ngugi wa Thiango

Pages: 175

Date: 1986

Publisher: African Writers Series

ISBN: 978-043505-46-0

Certain names remind us of certain people. Maryam is my course-mate and her name makes me remember my sister at home. Maryam is wonderful, always in control. She is the person who obliged me to write this. I want to be like her when I grow up.

  
If you read this and you enjoy it, do not thank me, thank Maryam. I will give you her number. She is in Lang, that’s how they say it, and I would be in Rome while in Rome. But Keep reminding me as we go along so that I should not forget. Here we go, enjoy.

So who is Matigari? A patriot, Angel Gabriel, Jesus Christ? Or human or a spirit, a prophet or lunatic, a man or a woman or simply an idea or image in people’s mind?

These are the questions people ask when a stranger emerges from the forest after he lays down his arms, buries his AK-47 and sword beneath a tree and girds himself with the belt of peace and comes into town in search of his family to rebuild his home. He fought for independence and defeated Howard Williams the White settler and John Boy his African accomplice. However, things do not turn out well as he expects. Corruption and injustices, poverty and dilapidation, are everywhere in the society.

The first shock comes when he sees a drove of children running after a truck of rubbish and each child has to pay to get to the garbageyard to fight out his share with vultures, dogs, rats and other sort of vermin. He stands there in shock. My children? 

One of the boys finds a scrape of radio from the garbage. The bigger one knocks him down. Matigari moves towards the children. The bigger one sees him and runs away. The smaller one also runs when he sees that the man is carrying a stick. However, Matigari remembers the belt of peace round his waist and throws away the stick.  He follows the children and along the way he sees the driver of the garbage truck and the police share the money they collected from the children. These are the injustices that drove him to the forest.

He follows the smaller boy to show him the way to his home. Conversation springs up between them where he learns that the boys have no home, no food and no shelter. They carve a space for themselves in the street and sleep in the disused and dented cars which they call homes. These are the children for which he, fought for, and now, sets out to save from the unjust, wicked society. As he stands there, they begin flying stones at him, mistaking him for one of those adults who usurp them some of the articles they find on the garbage.

He goes to the bar along with another person he just met. People are grumbling about the poor working condition and are planning strike. Matigari is still shocked to discover that after killing Howard Williams and John Boy, the oppressors, the living condition remains still atrocious. 

Outside the bar, on the street, Guthera peeps through the window, glimpses police men coming and takes to her heels. She has an intense hatred for them. They killed her father when she refused to have sex with them in exchange for his release. Guthera as a prostitute resolves that no amount of money will make her open her legs for any police officer. This would be her Eleventh Commandments.

The police run after her, catch her and make her kneel on the ground. They set growling dogs at her, barking and snarling menacingly close to her face.  The scene is peopled with cheerful crowd. Nobody could challenge the police for their harassment of a defenseless woman. Matigari comes forward and secures her dignity. He could not watch the beauty of the land being trampled upon. 

Matigari goes on searching for his people, telling everyone he meets that he could not surrender the home he built with his own hands to the oppressors. Guthera, the woman he helped outside the bar, tells him that he should try going to plantations to see if he can find his family but should not bother about people like her who have lost their souls to the bar.  However, she decides to assist him. They set westward. The day is closing in, yet they haven’t found Matigari’s home. When they reach a plantation, near the hill, Matigari identifies a huge mansion and a plantation as his own possessions. He believes, in his mind, that the land is the birthright of the poor.

He moves on to enter the house and the guards stop him and show him the Boys’ Quarters. But Matigari asks them is that where the keys are kept. The house that the White and the rich live belong to the poor since they were built from the sweat and labor of the poor. Robert Williams and John Boy Jr. come to the scene and query Matigari how he comes about claiming the house. Roberts Williams goes away to call policemen.

Matigari meets other people in the cell, they engage in conversation. There is a drunkard who is detained for drunkenness. There is a peasant farmer who is arrested for selling milk without a license. Another is arrested for stealing food from a restaurant. He is hungry. Another is charged of murder of a wealthy landowner who had failed to pay him his wages and there are children and a wife waiting at home. The fourth detainee is arrested for vagrancy, demanding him to obtain a permit before he can walk the streets of his own country. There is also a student who is detained for breaking the notorious Chief Act that prevents children from yelling at adults.  Another is a teacher who has been arrested for teaching Marxist ideologies, which is a grave violation of the state law. The seventh is detained because he almost snatched a bag from a bourgeoisie woman. He defends his action by saying that he only wanted to help her spend the money, she is rich.  They all mysteriously escaped and the police officers are commanded to arrest and return them back to the cell.

The Minister of Truth and Justice calls a conference to settle the dispute between workers and the factory owners. He sets up a committee of jury to discuss the punishment for the offenders of the Presidential decree that bans strike and revolutionary actions in the state. Matigari and his fellow detainees are brought forward from the room where they are locked after they were once gain arrested. The man in hood is the state witness who specialized in telling the truth. His main assignment is to testify against a party when involved in a lawsuit with the state. They Minister decides to remand them until the court gets a ‘chance’ to listen to their case but later decides that Matigari, Garuri wa Kiriro  and other political prisoners are mentally ill and should be taken to the psychiatric hospital for examination. Only a madman will preach the kind of ideology they hold. The vagrant feels grateful with the ruling since he could find food and shelter in prison. 

News came from the Voice of Truth that a group of patients has escaped from the mental hospital. The authority orders the shooting of any madman in sight. The town is thrown into chaos. Roadblocks are erected everywhere, and according to the instruction from the Voice of  Truth, “people are requested to report to the nearest police station anybody found” speaking, dressing, acting and doing things only madman would do like asking awkward questions or keeping unkempt beard.

Matigari determines to kill Robert William the son of Settler Williams and  John Boy Jr. the son of John Boy. The house they are hiding is heavily guarded to prevent Matigari from making his way in. Other security operatives are planted at strategic places. Some vehicles are sent out to hunt down Matigari. Cheerful crowd gathers to watch the spectacle, expecting a miracle to happen that day.  Matigari will force his way into the house heavily guarded.

On their way to the forest, before crossing deep down where Matigari buried his weapon, they find a man and a woman inside a Mercedes Benz one on top the other doing something (I won’t tell you what they are doing because I’m doing fasting). They coward them into accepting a deal to allow them use the car in exchange of keeping their secret. The lovers accepted the deal to preserve their image.

Matigari sits behind the wheel and starts the engine. They drive through the town, the car so expensive, beautiful and posh, giving them absolute privilege and cover, passing every roadblocks without hitches, the police having not recognizing them, sometimes “assisting them by opening more passage so that the car  can pass easily without slowing down.”  Maruiki is excited by the sumptuousness of the car and feels that the car is like a ticket to heaven. He giggles at the ignorance of the police and feels like peeping out to tell the police “it is us you are looking.” The car they are riding belongs to the wife of the Minister of Truth and Justice and thus, the police treat them with immense respect.

Matigari drops Muruiki and Guthera and rides the car to the John Boy’s whereabouts. Huge crowd gathers around every street leading to, and in the vicinity of, the house. Matigar is driving, two police cars are chasing after him. He suspects the person he met at the filling station must have been a police informer. They nearly caught him but Matigari managed to escape. He quickly makes a u-turn, and to the delight of the police, he is perusing a dead-end road. The police drive leisurely behind him, pleased with themselves.

Every inch of the road is stuffed with security guards. The police want to catch him dead or alive but they want to do it in full view of the public to dispel the rumor about the miracles of an angel and Jesus Christ’s second coming that springs around him. The public must see.

The crowd and the security men at the William’s compound have no clue about how Matigari will arrive.  They then just spot a breathtakingly black Mercedes with two-police-car escort. Who is that dignitary? There is no mistake that the government and its business allies are worried about Matigari. Even VIP people are coming to watch the end of Matigari, the security men and the crowd are amazed.

Matigari drives straight into the house, nobody stops him. The police realize their blunder and begin begging Matigari to come out and surrender. If he does that, they promise, nobody will touch him. The public cheer in merriment at the police gaffe and the police warn them that whoever dares to cheer again would be shot. An explosion is heard, Matigari burns the house. Unfortunately, Robert William and John Boy Jr. are not in the compound. Matigari slips through the window to escape to the bush from where his family of freedom fighters would continue launching resistant attack against the oppressors.

Analysis

The novel is historical written originally in Gikuyu and translated into English Language by Wangu wa Guriri, set in an unnamed country, but we can detect the nation, and not a direct attack on colonialism, but on political disillusionment after independence, corporate corruption and global capitalism, taking the reader back to the history of liberation struggle in Kenya, with oppression, corruption, injustices, exploitation, land usurpation, passiveness, and ideational war as recurring themes featuring throughout the novel.

Masses are used and exploited in building the coffee factories and processing industries, tilling the crop and the plantation and building the houses that the White-settlers and their Black accomplice own. But what about the reward? For your salary, the factory owners will fling a shilling at you and a tax collector from the Revenue Department is waiting at the door.  They till the land and the harvests go to the Whiteman. They build the house and they beg to sleep on the verandah. Now the consciousness that Matigari is raising among his people is to stop the unjust distribution of wealth.  This sets the stage for the story.

First, the expectations were initially that paradise will come when the colonial masters have gone. But ironically, the situation exacerbates, oppressively harsh and cruel after independence. 

Second, the search for a better society is a heavy burden on Matigari as the only person concerned about the situation, not talk of people who lost their souls to the bar. Yet, despite hunger and thirst, Matigari is determined in his quest for a better society.

To begin with, Guthera tells him that they should start their search by visiting plantations. Now which plantations, where would he begin? He realizes of course that there are many problems. Guthera feels duty-bound to assist him to show her gratitude for saving her from police brutality.

Events in Part One unfold through question-and-answer technique which is skillfully handled to present a picture of a terrible society. What transpires in his encounter with Robert William and John Boys Jr. is revealed using this technique. This is deliberate; Ngugu allows the character to tell us their own story without dominating their thoughts. Matigari who stands as a representative of the poor resolves that the builder will refuse to beg for a place to squeeze his head, the tiller refuses to starve and the tailor refuses to go about naked. 

Times elapsed and the society has changed between the intervals Matigari spent in the forest. Matigari is stunned when he is asked by John Boy Jr., now the owner of the house after purchasing it from Robert Williams, a kind of continuation of the system, to produce evidence that he owns the house and had signed a contract with his father to sponsor John Boy Jr. abroad for his education as he claims. Matigari is not familiar with this sort of intricacies and complexities of modern society. He says that his hands are the title-deeds since he is the laborer who built the house. Matigari also believes that such well-known fact as contributing the child’s education by the society isn’t a point of contention. You don’t need any written document before you do an act of kindness.

We see a sharp contrast between the worlds of African and European societies. The initial hope was that such people who had been sponsored to study abroad would come back to pay the society in kind. While Matigari is calling for the collective ownership of values and benefits in the society, John Boy Jr. is lecturing him that there has always been difference between individual and community, yours is yours, mine is mine. Ko ba haka ba?

The children who stoned Matigari should be exonerated. They, like Guthera, are forced to live a life they do not choose. They live in a wicked world and their life is a typical example of street culture and urban violence, resulting from either the death of a guardian or vices such as poverty, dysfunctional homes and broken societies. And government is unable to integrate them and make them useful.

In the cell we meet detainees who present a perspective of unjust society with criminal justice system stacked up against the poor.  All the detainees are members of the lower class who are detained, they believe, for no reason at all. The cell has no toilet facilities, and each has to contribute what little he has to sustain themselves. Although there are some far-fetched incidents, here Ngugi uses the merit of probability to present real life characters and condition that can be found in many African states.

Part Two largely centers around  Matigari’s fervent quest for the truth and justice. It is not like Matigari does not know the situation, but a kind of investigation, a survey to show the reader the real issue in the society and to justify his decision of resorting to violence in the later part of the book.

The idea of crisis between labor and capital dominates, with the masses working under harsh condition. Ngugi raises an argument that capitalism and Western imperialism are bad to Africans and only serve as means of protecting European political and economic interests.  The society is divided on ideological lines: the patriots and the sellouts, those who defend the people and those who attack them. Capitalism versus socialism, individualism versus communism, truth versus injustice and liberation versus oppression in which injustices is shaken to its foundation when Matigari feels that too much fear breeds misery and stands up to put out questions to the Minister of Truth and Justice in a meeting. People admire him; it has been so long such display of courage. Because he is on the wrong side, the Police Commissioner frets in fear suspecting that Matigari is carrying a dangerous weapon.  He is not. Matigari’s courage comes from his moral stand to side with the truth. Victory is always with the people.

Then the reader is taken into the mind of the capitalists to tell their reason for oppressing the poor. In his opinion during the conference, The Minister announces that industries cannot run if workers are to decide their wages, which day they would work and how many hours they are going to spend. He tells them categorically that their agitation would not produce good results. The country, any country in the world, is governed by few individuals. This vividly shows the hypocrisy of democracy where truth and justice are ever elusive.

In attendance during the conference are representatives of the Western countries, the Provincial Commissioner, the Police, the Army, the Priest and the man in judicial robes. The Minister for Truth and Justice speaks about the virtue of loyalism to the Crown and rebukes disobedience to the authority.

Ngugi has successfully conveyed his message, satirizing the notion how notorious African leaders have become in parroting what their foreign masters tell them on how they should rule their own people. To reinforce this notion, there are the Editor of the Daily Parrot, professor of History of Parratology and another university lecturer B. Ed, MA and PhD., Philosophy of Parratology who hold hymn-book of parrot and ready to give evidence to show that “historically, philosophically and journalistically speaking, [that] those who teach Marxism” are the bad elements spoiling the country. 

Under Presidential Decree, the government bans revolutionary politics, socialism and foreign ideologies, riddle, joke, story, proverbs, fiction and the mention of Matigari ma Njiruungi, anything that would arouse consciousness. In this case, Ngugi sees the state as an instrument of oppression. As Ngaruro wa Kiriro rightly observes “in the past before the Whites brought imperialism here, did we ever have police and soldiers? Never was there any prison…” The army, the court and the prison are there always to keep down civil unrest.

The issue of racism thinly sneaks in when Matigari and his comrades break from madhouse. The government orders the arrest of anybody with unkempt hair. However, it is the same government that will later apologize to foreign governments when white people with unkempt hair are accosted, saying that all the criminals are Black people other than one Asian. Here in lies the gradation of race, the most superior, the superior and the inferior.

The Voice of Truth should not be ignored. It comes often to ridicule and satirize the Minister of Truth and Justice, His Excellency and other government officials.  The irony is that the officials telling people to be obedient are notorious law breakers. If somebody tells you not to do a thing such are the very people doing it more than you. If they tell you not break a law, it is the one they break the most and only do not want you to match their offense. Those who steal a big cut from the national cake are those who take the meat from the table to teach contentment. Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry of the wonderful times to come.

Religion does not go unscathed. The peeing and farting of the drunkard in the cell is a mild satire and comic relief, a device of making light what is serious and still being what it is.  The feeling while reading the text is entertaining and instructive. When the other detainees pinch the drunkard from his sleep, he says humorously that he is helping God with his peeing by letting three drops. Now they seem to believe that a drunkard person has an insight to look at things differently. There is widespread drought; weeds, grass and trees have dried.

When Guthera narrates a story of a girl whose father was killed, the Priest only says thou shall not kill, thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s things, thou shall not commit adultery; all the crimes that the leaders commits against the citizens. What of hunger? What of food, shelter and nakedness of the hungry child in the street?  Other than mere worshiping, religion, any religion, should have something to offer to its followers when they are in hard condition. Not that, the same religion fails to punish those who commit the most atrocious crimes in what the writer refers to as imperial Christianity where the criminals are becoming the dispensers of justice.

The wife of the Minister of Truth and Justice usually appears on the radio to extol virtues. She had once issued a public statement that all barmaids and prostitutes should be put in prison. But see her, naked in wilderness being eaten up by another man. Thou shall not commit adultery. Here in lies the discrimination against the poor. For breaking her eleventh Commandments to save the comrades, the Priest says Guthera should kneel before God to ask for forgiveness. But Matigari disagrees. Who should kneel for forgiveness between one who is vulnerable and one who created the world so upside-down and throws the weak to live in it?

Part Three is about the new strategy. Matigari realizes that, despite his peace mission, reason and sound argument could not appeal to the oppressors. That kind of thinking first landed him in prison and now in madhouse. He discovers that the employment of words without gun, gun without words, could not drive the enemy away. He pilots a new way to combine the two, one to appeal to the poor, the other to strike the power structure, with truth and justice working on the same side. This way, he believes, he could defeat the enemy.   

Matigari has won the war at long last when found his home and children who join the course of liberation movement shouting “we are the children of Matigari ma Njiruungi…We are the children of the patriots who survived the war and their wives.” This is to show the degree of fierceness and resilience of the undying spirit of freedom struggle hence the sun, we are told, continues to peep behind the cloud, and from there sends “out darts of fire to every direction.” That says falsehood will walk a distant mile before truth triumphs over it in one leap.

Matigari is a human like everyone and unlike everyone. What differentiates him from others is that he conquers fears and resists oppression. People’s agony becomes his agony, their suffering his suffering and is determined that wealth produced by the masses would not continue to remain in the hands of those who reap where they’ve never sowed. We obviously see the difference between do-something and do-nothing.

The ending is a strong message to the oppressors. When  Matigari says “…whether they imprison, detain or kill us, they will never stop [us] we who toil from struggling against those who only feed on our toil” and has sworn that John Boy Jr., who the author uses to stand as the symbolism of domination and oppression, would never sleep in that house. In other words, in as much as injustices exists, there will never be peace in the society.

Postscript

Shit, you see ba,  the effect of forgetfulness! I have forgotten to write down Maryam’s contact till I dropped my pen. It’s your fault that you refuse to keep reminding me. But don’t worry, we'll meet next time.

Wardrobe Love

(The Benefits of Marrying a Governor’s Daughter)

(C)asm 2015

It was me inside bathroom, naked before a bucketful of water, preoccupied with the thought of the attire I was going to use. The wardrobe was in bad shape.

I came out and bungled into my wardrobe to find some nice clothes to wear. My hands up in the armholes, head buried midway in the kaftan when my phone rang. Wishing it was a governor’s daughter, I sang “one nation under Lords,” feeling excited.  I was going to cease to be one of those one-eighty million serfs whose lives and struggle were meant to enrich the lives of the select few.   

I prayed hard to find a new girl, rich and supportive, to carry me up under her wing. I met this girl who did not give me her number but collected mine and promised to call me later. She had never called. I grew anxious, waking up each day expecting her call and with every ring from someone else, my heart hoped it was the girl. I didn’t know who she was, but the car she was driving seemed to betray her status.

When I looked at the screen, I was disappointed by the caller’s ID. I was under enormous pressure from my sister in love these past times, asking for money day in day out, left right and centre. She called yesterday to ask for what she was used to asking. I refused to pick Hanna’s call because I didn’t know the next lie to tell her.

“Tomorrow,” I promised all the time. Every today was tomorrow and she got tired. 

I was dumb when I picked the phone at last. All my tricks had been exhausted and to tell her what I had been telling her for months now would clearly let down my shallowness. My brain made an emergency whir that had planted an idea into my head. I told her what the President said, “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” hoping she could get the message.

What was very awesome was the quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. I heard the book was selling massively; copies were soon to be finished on the market.  I checked the play again and after reading it, I felt the need to translate it to Hausa Language so that our kids would be aware what the president was saying. I didn’t want to mislead anybody by wrong translation. So, I had to rehearse over and again to make sure I could do a good job.

I started practicing with “I called Hanna and she did not pick.”

Then I tried translating it to Hausa as “Hanna ta bani haushi, na kirata bata dauka ba.”

You know women, they were sly and deceptive.  A lot of manufacturing and pretentions. Lovers could have serious quarrel and may even break away in the end. But they could not withstand to live apart. Hanna went to her room and fell ill after we exchanged bitter words. I was also ill. She was taken to the hospital and all the medications and prescriptions were ineffective to cure her ailment. Doctors were treating her on wrong diagnosis administered on false information. She and I alone knew the truth. When I heard what was happening and visited her, the illness miraculously disappeared. We wanted to pick from where our relation left off, but propriety required we should wait for a while. Such is the magic of love!

Hanna was a good girl. It was only my fault that, I lied to her by omission, allowed her to believe in something false. I met her in Eleganty Park, paid her bill and went back home and wept.

Outside, on the street, was a girl waiting for a rickshaw. We called it Adai-daita-Sahu in kano.  Her name Chi-Bodo, her smile inviting. When I looked her in the face, she was dazzling like a star. I moved closer intent to declare my love. But instead of baring my mind, the purpose that made me go to her, confusion and fear consumed me and I flung into babbling incoherent phatic words. “How are things? How is school?  Are you waiting for a vehicle?”

She must have seen through me by now. She cast contemptuous sideways glance at me, sizing me up with her judgmental eyes. “Coward,” the look said.

Why couldn’t I just say I love her?

I felt like Kano girls her size were too big for me. Their large breasts, fleshy body, big hip and curvy waist intimidated me. They would swallow me up on bed.  Also, their plump appearance made me often thought that they were smarter or older than me.

On the other hand, I had feeling for skinny girls. I pity them. I always thought that they would suffer in bed. I won’t like it to be scraping bones in bed.

Hanna was at the middle, slim, attractive, and when I saw her, I was spontaneously obeying the law of gravity.

Kamal came to me the other time, saying that we should, at least, let one girl  know that we had been in love with her to relieve the burden that was tormenting our hearts for long. She was getting married next month and there was no point continuing hiding our love. The seven of us, if Ahmad and Sani did not back down after our last meeting, would go to see her when we were in college and only to get intimidated by her charisma, ending up just greeting her like that. She would roll her eyes and pretended that she did not understand the reason we visited her.  She refused to acknowledge the fact that even if mere greeting; there were other girls we did not stop to greet.

Everyone seemed to love her in some way. They said she was perfect person for marriage. She was the only girl who was not part of the shokoro community and did not attend parties. Among the circle of men, there was a notion of categorization, at least two which I could now recall: those who were for shokoro and those who were for marriage. I did not know if ladies also had their own categorization for men.

I told Kamal to remove me from their group of cowards. He thought I was also going to see her with the same feeling as their own.  He should use ‘they’ not ‘we’ to let her know they had been in love with her. My relation with her was kindness and mutual respect and he mistook that for love. One of them even pestered me behind the scene to give him her cellphone number. When I asked him what was the matter, he said that nothing.

It‘s no easy living with poor folks. I advised myself to marry a governor’s daughter. Someone said I was too materialistic.  But I knew what I knew and I saw what I saw. I lived with my reality and really needed a girl who would have me rest by giving me some wardrobe allowances to make me feel like a Nigerian senator.

I met a girl.

Her father was a one-time governor in my state. Considering that politicians were important, it would be unwise to approach your future in-law directly especially a governor.  I quickly put out public announcements everywhere to get someone who knew somebody who knew someone who had contact with her father to ask for me the marriage of his daughter. 

But actually, the fact was that I feared his eyes, they scared me. They were swollen, red and charged from something which I did not know exactly its name. I saw Kaura on our way to school sell it to the thugs in an uncompleted building when we were young. They put it in white sheet, rolled it to a cone, and held it between their fingers like a cigarette. It turned their eyes red when they used it. Some of them used a bottle like the medicine we bought from a pharmacy shop when our youngest brother was ill with coughing.  But red eyes meant nothing unless if one was originally hovering mischief.  Lack of sleeping could cause that.

My future in-law’s only one problem was that he usually turned aggressive, mean and cruel, and with this, had gone his fragile respect. He had allowed his personal grudge to stand in his way of reasoning abilities. He replaced the original candidate for State Assembly with his boy Babangida to reward his unalloyed loyalty. Babangida was a good boy. He licked the governor’s ass and said that it was sweeter than sugar and abused anybody who doubted his claim.

Her father became a senator, they moved to Abuja after election. I had been carefully observing every step of an elder brother in Buachi for years.  I wanted to be like him when I grew up and started developing my own political capital from the grassroots.

Like every politician sensing an impending danger, I rejigged, reshaped and then took a giant leap to another destination. In case something untoward would happen to my love, I  switched half of my love to a new governor’s daughter as a backup like my elder brother in Bauchi who’s now advancing for the daughter of the new president. 

Chambers

Distinguished senators and members of the House of Representative were exchanging pleasantries and were about to begin discussion on how to run the 8^th National Assembly. The excitement was clear, new members were smiling from ear to ear. Old members congratulated themselves for returning to the House and commiserated with their colleagues behind their back who were defeated at the poll. The small man in the House of Representative did not return after heading a panel to investigate fuel subsidy scam and was dragged to the gutter – where most of the politicians have had home advantage. It could not have possibly happened to a leader of the Integrity Group. His colleagues conspired against him.

The sun was not yet up. It was midnight in Abuja but Whitemen said we Africans were foolish – we didn’t really know how this world was working. It’s morning already if a clock showed 12:00 am, and distinguished senators and members of the House of Representatives understood that.  The darkest hour was a perfect choice. Things were best organized at night while those jobless people were sleeping before they woke up to make noise on twitter.

 It’s very dangerous to get into such meeting without having adequate measures, you just started a meeting and before you finished opening prayer someone has leaked that you’re in a meeting, and before you knew it, it had gone viral on social media. We, the legislatures found a secret venue, deep inside the building of the State Assembly, to hold the joint session.

I was a new member from Kano, and was still nursing a huge wound the election caused to my pocket. Although I could read and write, but was not up-to-date in arithmetic and book-keeping aspect of my campaign funds. Politicians worked for me a great deal.

I was looking ways to recover my money. I felt grateful by the way to be a politician in this country. Like other politicians, I feared I had to quickly find a deal, now that the new president was deliberately raising high stake to make things difficult for us. How would he possibly cut his salary simply because he was old? Anybody who did not follow his example would have a struggle with the masses. There were various ways and ways and I knew which way to follow. 

I spent a lot of money to get my candidacy, visiting party leaders, chieftain, Imams and traditional rulers. But I knew what guaranteed my candidacy was not my qualification and the amount of money I spent. I couldn’t get the ticket if I wasn’t a commissioner in the immediate past regime headed by the father of the woman I was marrying.  When my father in-law went to contest for the presidential nomination at the party primary, I was assigned to stand in as a candidate for Senator Kano Central on the governor’s behalf. The governor lost the ticket, returned home and reclaimed his senatorial seat. He then sent me to contest as member House of Representative in my constituency.

Honourable Chief Dr. Mr. Sunday felt that I should be grateful, my case was nothing compared to the huddle he overcame for his re-election.  Apart from seeing party leaders, party thugs and Pastors, he had delivered a pot of fresh blood of the newborn baby to the witch doctor in his village. He was nearly arrested that night when his car was stopped at a check point.

No security man would have stopped him if he was using his official car and did not color his face. His face was darkened a bit. He used a wig, beard, goatee and a hoaxed twisted moustache at either end round his mouth. He looked funny, like Santa Clause. 

The police man began circling the car, crept his head inside the window and was about to ask the driver to open the trunk. The chilly midnight air was blowing. Hon Sunday broke into profuse sweating.

A politician issued public statement the following morning condemning the ‘heinous and dastardly act’ and warmly sympathized with the grieving mother. Knowing full well that nobody could win, he offered a reward worth millions Naira to anybody who gave information that would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators who stole a two-day-old baby last night in a hospital.

The legislator, Mr Sunday, was compassionate, people said. He shed tears in full view of the public in a live interview he granted to the state television station shortly after the sad news broke. The community felt touched, and the mother, her eyes sullen and red from weeping, thanked him and promised her vote to him for his compassionate feeling.

“I will personally handle the matter in my capacity to make sure those evils are brought to book and just get their dessert,” he promised.

Hon Sunday lost peace of mind since that day.  The scene of that night kept haunting him. He became restless and nervous, glancing over his shoulder at the slightest hearing of movement despite the peaceful mood of the place and the number of security men scattered all over the meeting room.  Why are you so restless, be calm, he reassured himself. Nothing would happen to you, you’re in one of the prestigious and most secure places in Nigeria. You can abuse Boko Haram and live without fear.

************

“The glossy life history of the men and women who were heading to the chambers to make laws is horrible. Bank robbers, money launderers, drug pushers, killers; people who failed in many respects. They could not stand on their feet and have to suck the blood of others. People who supposed to be in jail have become emboldened to head to legislative chambers to make laws for the land instead.

“With bank robbers as team leaders to head our National Assemblies, Presidency and MDAs became lesser evils. It is dangerous putting criminals in one place. Amateur criminals are going to meet professional ones to drill and perfect their skills.”  

Those were the feelings of some folks I was reading from an online paper from my gadget.

Anyway, I couldn’t trust someone who has no sense of humor. People took everything too seriously. Take for example this oil business, there’s a lot of money to make but start doing something and the fools would start shouting slogan at you.

Why would they start shouting and calling us thieves for wardrobe allowance? Life isn’t always serious.  We’re the most prestigious people on earth. Life’s extremely hard outside the chamber and we must do everything to retain our position. Everything’s paid for you, a lot of benefits, you and your children. We felt it’s time now people we served had to pay us back in cash and in kind. The allowances we received were part of the debt the society owed us and the public acceptance was a way of showing gratitude.

Wardrobe allowance, phone allowance, newspaper allowance, sitting allowance, standing allowance, idleness allowance, laziness allowance, sleeping allowance, stealing allowance, allowance allowance,  wives allowance, sex allowance and above all the allowance for doing the society a great favour to be the law makers of the land.

To say the least, people were ungrateful. It’s only in this country a person would serve his people and they would hate him and complain. People should learn one thing now when one of us granted interview and thanked his people for giving him opportunity to serve this country. 

Members were still coming in, to the chamber, taking their seats and some began forming groups. Politicians were always at work, strategizing. The whole life was evolving around one thing: politics.

Hush whispers were emanating, senators speaking to their colleagues in a low polished tone. The slow humming of the air-conditioners, dim lightening, soft carpet, lush and luxuriant lifestyle of people exuding power and wealth created a kind of exceptionally relaxed atmosphere. Some of us have plump body, necks disappearing into the layer of flesh. Me? I kept fit deliberately because of the occasional fights that would break in the chambers. I took caution from the past experiences I watched on tv screen.

A new excitement broke, entourage of fellow legislatures and a team of security operatives were surging behind the Speaker. He came in, sat and ordered one of us to open the session with prayer. The member opened his hands, stretched it forth, palms upward and began intoning Muslim prayer.

The house instantly fell into rancor, divided, one faction arguing for Christian prayer also to be observed and the other faction was saying it didn’t matter what prayer was recited in as much as the meeting remained focused on the agenda. Chaos ensued, mixture of angry voices filled the atmosphere, people shouting down each other to make one’s opinion supreme. Row nearly broke out, rowdy people everywhere.

You see my fears, how could I survive if I were fat or too thin, especially in matters of scaling the fence of the Assembly building whenever there was fracas. Dialogue? – no. Here it was the norm; we picked out guns, rods and machetes to resolve our issues.

“Distinguished senators and members of the House of Representative,” one senator tried to intervene, 

“it is disgraceful we are shouting and yelling at each other.”

Nobody cared, yelling, barracking and the exchange of abuses continued.   He strained hard to make himself heard above the din.

“We shouldn’t be behaving like poor folks out there,” his voice louder, “dividing on religious and ethnic lines. We are here on one purpose and we should be more concerned with that.”

One Honorable member suggested both Muslim and Christian prayers be considered since it was both Muslims and Christians that were the major  electorates, and the national anthem would be recited for those who were neither Christians nor Muslims to show their appreciation for the country.

“Remember we are people united by common interest.” He concluded and that settled the matter once and for all.

The senate President and the Speaker announced to the House that they decided to budget nine billion Naira as the law makers annual allowances. Some new members were shocked and protested against it. Some of us argued that the amount was too high and should be cut. A middle-height senator with light skin vowed that he won’t collect the money for the first year and promised to donate his share to one of those states that were nearly six months unable to pay workers salaries. He said that he cared for the suffering civil servants. And how would we curve 25% of the nation’s annual budget to ourselves as a tiny clique of only 469 people at the expanse of 180 million citizens?  It’s scandalous, the protesting senator argued! But I have my fears, I did not agree with him entirely.

The Speaker of the House assigned one of his veteran members to educate the house more clearly.

“We know our people” he began. “We have a bargaining power strategy”.

Overshooting.

The entire room was swallowed in silence; the swish of air-conditioners was audible.  I could feel the cold in my hand from the air-conditioners, my clothes also had the effect. The House was suspended and the man took his time before he spoke again.

And what did that mean, the question hung in my mind. I was restless to know how I could recover my money.

“We know it is outrageous to bargain for nine billion. But we still have to insist. We need to drag the issue even if we would make concession. You can’t treat people with consideration. They would think you’re afraid. If we ask for something like five billion Naira, they will still make noise and insist we should cut it.  Concede to them so quickly and you will see everybody staging protest tomorrow the next time you want to do something. If we allow them they will continue pushing and pushing until we are dispossessed of any allowance.” He adjusted the edges of his flowing gown slipping off his shoulders from demonstration.

I was there, sitting, in silence.

He continued.

“How can you retain party leaders and all those people that will be coming to see you like they are seeing God?”  He asked rhetorically and the idea began making sense to us, including the protesting senator.

By now Honorable Benjamin, another new member, realized that he really needed the money.  And I too.

“What do you think would happen  if we told people the other time straightforward that now some portion of fuel subsidy would go and the new price would be, say, 98 naira? They would still scream and shout and kick against it to insist the price should remain 65 Naira.  So you see, if we do not raise a high stake, the little we demand would be snatched away. The same will apply to this scenario and instead of fighting strongly for the abolishment of the allowances entirely, people will now begin to beg and lobby us to reduce the money. They will feel grateful in the end when we reduce the money after a hard bargain.”  Members nodded approval, we were seeing reason and sense.

I had only one problem, that I was a novice and didn’t know how to deal with people in my constituency. My eyes were filled with concern, I wanted to ask question. I was only impatient, my father in-law would educate me about everything, he was also a senator.

The speaker’s voice interrupted me as if he was reading my thoughts process. He must have done so, the way he was looking me.

 “I hope you were in the country the other time.” The man said, like he was singling me out, training his gaze particularly at me.  “Smart people kept low and made like we were not part of the deal.  We even threatened to remove the president.”

But you still did not mention any meaningful strategy. Benjamin, Sunday, myself and many other members became anxious and were eager to hear what the speaker had to say. 

Members sipping  juice from  glass cups; there was a muffled thud when the many  cups were put back on the table.

“It is simple, keep low and silent about the issue. If the pressure persists, gauge the situation and strike quickly in the media against such figures as wardrobe allowance.” I was dumbstruck. I knew some other ways at my local level but this has introduced me into the new realm.

“These people,” I said in an extreme joy, shook my head, smiled and pictured myself speaking to my constituency.