Endure, said Abuja. It was his most favourite word. It was the word that came to him every morning when he woke up from sleep. It was the sentiment that went to bed with him every blessed night.
Endure, he would tell any inmate who was showing excessive signs of desperation. Mourning may last the night, but joy cometh in the morning. Endure. Just endure. When I heard that Suduwei Keni, as he called himself, had been rushed to the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, I went to see him. That was about two months after I had been released.
He lay on his bed, recuperating from a surgical opening that had cost him some pints of blood. And what marked just how important this process was could be guessed by the number of armed prison warders standing guard over him inside his hospital ward. He was under guard the way Hannibal Lecter, the notorious man-hunter of Hollywood fame, was guarded in the spooky film with the title Silence Of The Lambs.
I wondered why it was necessary to guard a man who was on hospital bed, as helpless as helpless could be, but I didn’t have to bother. That’s the way it is with warders. Their job is to keep a severe eye on anybody in their custody. As long as you walked through those iron gates, and a lawyer presented papers to the effect that you should be remanded in prison, they took prompt custody of you, and that was it. If you think you are strong enough, go ahead and break down the prison walls.
Whether you were ill or not was beside the point. You must be within the precincts of the yard, take your medication as the case may be, and follow the orders of Okaka Republic. No travelling out to the outside world. No Abuja House arrangement. You stay put in the yard and in your cell. That was the overriding ethic that informed Abuja’s doubly fortified ward at the hospital when I visited.
I sat on a white plastic chair, chatted with him for a while, did my best to encourage him and reminded him of his favourite word, the word that takes him from day to day. Endure, I said. He turned to look at me as if he had recognised a familiar word that had become another name for him.
‘Freedom will come one day’, I continued. ‘Make definite pledges to God that you have repented of your sins, that you have forsaken them altogether, and that you will be a better human citizen of the world when you come out from behind bars. Remember the pain of being chained. Remember the hardest moments of your incarceration, and desist from evil’.
Abuja thanked me for the advice, and I said a solemn prayer for his recovery before leaving. Imagine my surprise when I went to visit him again two days later, and they told me he had been moved back into the yard. What was that in aid of? Why? The man’s wound was still open. Why would they move him back into the prison yard only after three days of surgery?
That was too long, they said. Too long and too risky. The man had a following as a gangster. Anything could happen. His gang could storm the hospital, and whisk him away. If not for doctor’s advice, he would have been moved back to the yard the night after the operation. The young doctor at the yard infirmary could always watch over him.
This was callous, thought I to myself. Either they had been reading too many James Hadley Chase novels, or they had been watching too many Nigerian movies. The last time I had surgery, I stayed in hospital for the better part of two weeks, and for all of three months after that, my father wouldn’t let me lift a bucket of water.
Two weeks later, I called to find out how Suduwei Keni was doing back in the yard. I was alarmed to hear that he was well enough to be back on the field of play. I couldn’t believe it. Abuja was already playing football again, and here was I thinking he needed time to recover.
Football was the rave of the moment everyday in the yard, and Abuja played the role of Joseph Sepp Blatter. He was the principal organiser of every tournament. The balls stayed with him in his cell. He wore his blue Yokohama jersey branded with his name in white block letters at the back. ‘Olayo’ . He took charge of the entire stock of jerseys for the prison inmates the way he took charge of his private boots.
Abuja remains a fanatic of football, and he discussed the game with the encyclopaedic ambience of someone who followed with passionate involvement the careers of players, their club sides and coaches. He spoke about it all with the fluid ease of a dribbler in the mould of Maradona or Christiano Ronaldo.
To talk about soccer inside the cell was to provoke Abuja into making a lengthy speech, or starting an argument. He did not take kindly to anyone who did not admire his favourite players. Even if he meant to keep mum, he would break ice the moment the name of Ozil or Carlos or Messi was mentioned. What do you know about these players? I say, what do you know about football? My friend, don’t talk when Abuja is talking.
The nation’s prime sports paper came into his hand as a rule three times a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. What he couldn’t watch on regular television, he read up in one edition of that paper after another till they formed a modest pile on his upper bed.
Abuja was one of the few inmates who could call a warder to open the cell for him to go and watch a football match on the only television set in the yard, hanging as it was on the wall of the Chapel of Mercy. He was an elder in the prison church, and so he could have his way.
He was one of the oldest inmates in the yard. He was amongst 30 others who occupied the yard when Okaka prison facility was formally commissioned for use. Abuja was, in addition, one of the few inmates that the Assistant Controller of Prison (ACP), could invite to the White House for consultation. By the same token, Abuja could seek audience with the prison boss whenever he wanted, so long as the matter would be of benefit to the welfare of all inmates.
Night after night, Abuja was one of the last inmates to get into his cell for the final lock-up. When he came in and the huge padlock shut its rusty jaws with a final clang behind him, another day was truly over.
For four interminable years, he had been enjoying the privilege, but he needed nobody to tell him that being the last inmate to be locked up is not the same thing as locking up yourself in your own home when you want to retire for the night, out there in the free world.
He was just tired of being in prison. Abuja’s desperation reached intolerable proportions when Justice Botei, the judge attending to his case, died just a few weeks to the final hearing. The case has since been assigned to another judge with a mandate to hear it afresh. Until freedom comes, Abuja consoles himself with the numberless praise and worship songs that have since found residence in his soul.
On a day when the distress of being in prison for so long gets to him, Abuja would grip his bed with both hands, gritting his teeth. He would bow his head in fervent supplication, and speak volubly for God to please remember him in good time, and set him free.
Endure, he would say at the end of the prayer. Endure.
