A black Tuesday in October; Why I shouldn't be alive
A Black Tuesday in October
The day was the second day of the week and I was already getting late to work. I had woken up a little late, and in trying to beat my deadline for resumption, I had completely wiped out the idea of having a bath.
I brushed my teeth instead, hurriedly dressed up in my casuals, and dashed out my dorm room.
The only thought on my mind that morning was getting to the office before my boss did.
I took a quick glance at my watch. “Darn it!”, I yelled loudly. I had less than 15 minutes to hurdle my way to work.
I tried to do the math in my head, calculating the fastest route to my office, situated at Abak road. It was a near impossible feat, a big ask.
After much calculations, I resolved on the route to take through to the plaza. I would go through Itu road. ETA was 12 minutes. Although it wasn’t going to get me to work early, it was the fastest possible take. The lesser of all evils.
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Luckily enough for me, finding my ride wasn’t a hard task. I quickly flagged down the keke driver, ”You dey go plaza?”
He nodded.
“You get 500 naira change?”
Another nod.
I got in.
He nodded so nonchalantly and in a way that made me sigh. How much I missed Lagos and their active transporters. They always made you feel wanted. Always held you by the hand till you were seated in their bus. Such great customer service.
But no, my rider had to just be so casual about everything. He just didn’t seem to care and it bothered me, it made no sense.
I thought to myself, “See me see issue o. No be you dey find money. You go dey do like say dem use cane pursue you and your keke comot for house”.
The reason for his attitude, I would come to understand sooner than I thought.
We approached the traffic light and we met a long line of cars and kekes who were jammed in one Iong, straight line.
Another hiccup in my plan- Traffic.
I stretched my eyes as far as I could see. Everywhere I looked was just another car with another angry driver yelling at the car in front of him. It was a marketplace.
Naah, today was a good day to get fired. But I wasn’t having it. I knew that another second staying in that keke would be another inch closer to me losing my Job. 2020 was just not being my year.
I decided to take the initiative to walk to the plaza. I got down from the keke and
began to walk away when I heard a voice behind me,
“Ah ahn bros, you no gimme me money?”
I turned. It was the keke rider. He had a frown on his face that I had seen on the face of Lagos tax collectors when they shouted at the bus drivers,
“Owo mi da, Alaye”.
Oh! So he could speak after all and he was playing mute
I dipped a 50 naira note into his outstretched palms. He looked at the money, looked back at me and gave me a clearly unsatisfied look that said, “Your money no reach”.
Nope, not this time, I was done with his sign languages. I ignored his expressions and turned away.
“If he wan talk, him for talk. If e been no wan talk, e for no dey use eyes dey look me.” I said in disgust.
I continued moving.
On getting closer to the plaza, I noticed a cluster of people gathered, holding placards and banners. Some were holding sticks and others were chanting what sounded like songs of war.
These guys were the ones causing the traffic that was going to definitely make me lose my job.
I didn’t understand what was going on. I looked to find where the gathering started out from.
And then, looking forward, I saw them.
They were, no doubt to me, the front liners. They looked serious. The lyrics of the songs they sang made no sense to me. There were about 20 of them, all dressed in black overalls and red berets. Each of them wielding high caliber guns, each with a more sinister expression than the next.
I took a step back, overwhelmed with fear.
A thousand and one questions raced through my mind.
Were they terrorists? Who were they going to war with?
I had become so curious and afraid at the same time, that I forgot I was actually late for work. Matter of fact, I forgot I even had a job. Fear made me almost pee in my pants.
I managed to ask someone in the crowd,
“Sorry, excuse me, please, what’s going on, why are there guns everywhere?”
“Ah ahn, you no dey hear news? The president don declare country as him own now. He wan carry all the power give the resistance. He say make nobody try oppose am. He talk say make police and army dem arrest or kill anybody wey dem catch outside dey protest. But you know na, we Nigerians no go gree na.”
“Ask am why dem been no gree give Biafra for Ojukwu their time. Imagine oh, since 1967 wey we…”
She kept on talking but I had stopped listening.
I was so shocked to my bones at the initial news that I zoned out; why would a democratically elected president declare himself head of state?
It was total anarchy.
No sooner had I heard this information that I got a call that jittered me back to reality
It was my boss.
“Oh shit, I’m dead”
I reluctantly answered my phone. I was about to dish out a random excuse as to why I had not yet gotten to the office
“Hello sir, good morning Sir. Errm, sorry I’m late but I….”
I was cut short by the urgency in his voice.
“Aniekan, where are you right now?
”Errm, I’m at, errrm…”
Cut short again.
“I asked you a simple question, Damn it! Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at the plaza roundabout Sir. There’s a crowd here and they’re blocki…”
“In fact, I don’t give two shits about where you are right now but wherever the hell you are, turn around and head home. NOW!!”
Now I was really worried. My boss was asking me to go home? Didn’t feel right.
“Sir, what’s going on?”
“What? You didn’t hear the news? The president has declared war on the protesters.
The military is heading out to all states now. The country is at war. Go home now or you’d be sorry.”
Beep. The phone dropped dead.
Now, I was more terrified than ever. I had no idea what to do. Right now, Udoette, the street my house was located, was the farthest place to get to on foot at that moment.
My mind was racing back and forth for the best place to seek shelter.
At this point, many shop owners were locking their shops with an immediate alacrity. Mothers dragged their children by the hand and whisked them away in a direction that looked like it led home.
All shops were undergoing simultaneous lockdown.
The certainty of a political crisis brewing was just to imminent too ignore. I tried to comb through my memories of the country's history to see if I could predict the outcome of the series of events that were to follow.
I had nothing coming forth except that we were about to experience total anarchy.
My thoughts were disrupted by a loud whirring and a solid gush of strong wind. I raised my head up to see helicopters as they glided by, hovering above the hundreds of people gathered there. They were dark green in color and had some black patches all over.
It dawned on me faster than I could say Jellybean -- The military was already here.
So suddenly, the frenzy in the crowd increased. They started to hurl things at the choppers, for reasons that made no sense to me.
Was this some kind of Disney movie to them? What were these people trying to do, bring down a state of the art chopper with what, sticks and stones?
Those only break bones and not choppers made out of many layers of Fiber impregnated resins. It was beginning to feel like these guys were just not afraid of death.
I was pretty sure the military would never have opened fire if one of the gun wielding guys had just kept his trigger fingers to himself. But no, there’s always that one person.
And then, all in matter of seconds, it went from stones, to bullets flying to and fro both sides of the plaza, to a full blown war. All I could hear was gunfire everywhere.
It went from a protest to a war zone in the twinkle of an eye, an eye that was definitely not mine.
I immediately reached for the ground.
In my state of being glued to the ground, I saw one of the protesters throw a spearlike stick to the one of the officers.
He was immediately greeted with a gunshot. He fell to the ground instantly, blood everywhere. It was a clean headshot that had spread out the contents of his head all over the tarmac. I almost choked on my own vomit at the sight of so much blood and gore.
These guys were well trained.
Turning my head to the right, I saw an open kiosk on the other side of the road. Its constructions were purely metal and it was inside the University of Uyo.
I figured it would save me from any stray bullets. I just had the craziest idea.
Impulsively, I got up to make a run for it.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed that three soldiers were on the ground, motionless. They had been shot.
Simultaneously, the leader of the soldiers had the same thought. I saw his expressions; he was fed up, he’d had enough.
Almost immediately, he reached for his vest and immediately pulled out two grenades. It was like our eyes met before I figured out what he was going to do.
Without thinking twice, he pulled the pins and threw the two grenades into the crowd, one immediately after the other. The explosions were deafening.
I was caught up in crosshairs. I lost balance, crashed to the ground and bashed my head against the railing. I went dark. All I could hear was a high pitched ringing. For what seemed like the next 10 minutes, I lost my hearing function.
I looked up and saw the effect of the blast. Bodies were spattered all over. A great percentage of the crowd had been dispersed.
People were dead.
What seemed like another normal Tuesday morning in October had turned out to be a day I would solely regret having left my house. But of course, that regret could only happen, being that I survived the effects of the blast. I was still on the ground.
Having noticed the effects of the blasts wearing off, I tried to get up. But I couldn’t. All I needed to do was get into the kiosk just a few meters away and I was sure I would survive this nightmare.I felt a cold liquid trickling down my forehead.
I swiped my hand across my head and stared at my hand- blood. I had been bleeding all along. As if on cue, I began to feel dizzy and sleepy. I knew for sure that I had lost a lot of blood.
I fell to the floor again, this time without struggling.
I just let the waves of dizziness take me away gently. In my moments of sleepiness, all I could think of was how everything changed in such a short time.
My grandfather had always said; History will always repeat itself for those who don’t learn from history”
It was then I finally understood. I smiled as I went to sleep.
History was actually repeating itself.
It was 1967 all over again.
Augustine Aniekan
February, 2021
Disclaimer; All characters and scenarios in this story is PURE FICTION; nothing here is real. Everything and everyone in this piece is just a narrative and not an actual occurrence.