Supreme Miller is out of detention for the sixth time since I knew him. And how did I get to know him? I had woken up that morning in my long white gown only to realise that I was in the gulag for contempt of court brought about by a few things I wrote in my ninth book
The cell was busy after the morning prayers, voices yapping on a general note, snapping at each other, grumbling about one error or the other, laughing out loud, singing off-key, or simply praying some more. The door to the cell was not yet open, so I had gone back to sleep under my mosquito net, as if going back to my dreams would open the door and let me out into the free world again.
When the door finally grated open at about half past eight that morning, I was too groggy to do anything. And what was there to do in detention but climb down from your six-inch bunker, say your greetings to the face nearby, endure the stench of the little room, shuffle out to see the sun, and simply mope at the horrors of the yard?
I was in that listless, disinterested mood, sitting on a white plastic chair along the corridor of my cell, when an inmate walked up to me. I had never seen him before. Even if you stayed for three months in that prison, there are some inmates you see for the first time, and you wonder whether they just got in.
There are inmates who have become so used to their cells that they don’t want to come out and see the sun, even when they get an invitation to do so. They just tell you that they saw you the day you were brought in, and all you can do is just stare at them.
This fellow was like that. I had never seen him before in the yard, but I was to learn that he had been observing me. He struck me as a restless soul. He was blacker than me, as though his dark skin had been heated by something more furious than a cauldron.
He was wearing a light blue shirt with a few blue stripes running across white patches in a descending gradient, and he had buttoned it to the hilt of his neck so that he looked in need of a tie to complete his dressing.
His half shorts were long enough to rise just above the knee, above a wide sore in the calf of his right leg. There was no bandage to see on that sore. The face of the wound was covered with a piece of paper, and the pus from the festering sore had soaked the words into its pith.
Flies danced around the pink fringes of the wound, and he swabbed at them even as he stood before me. The forefinger of his left hand was crooked and a lobe of his right ear was off. I was struck by his smile, the confidence it exuded, the brave face it showed to the world, in spite of the pain he was suffering.
‘What’s your name? I ventured.
‘Supreme Miller’, he replied in a soft, even, friendly voice. He paused. He seemed agitated, and I could only wait for what he had to say. He spoke with a fast stammer, his words spilling out in quick time. He had noticed that I had been talking to inmates, he said, but I was yet to talk to him. He wanted me to talk to him and write his story down in my exercise book. That’s why he came to me.
Until he said that, I had not quite realised that that’s what I had been doing since I got into the yard. I have since come to the conclusion that it is only normal for me to fill up the blank pages of any exercise book in my hand, no matter how fat it may be, so long as I had a pen in my grip. Everybody else in the whole wide world is at liberty to do the same. That’s why they sell pens and exercise books in the market, right?
But Supreme wanted his story in my book. He was categorical about it, so I popped a few questions, and he gave ready answers that took me completely by surprise. Sometimes, he said frankly, he just felt like taking what does not belong to him. Sometimes he just feels like filching. So, when he picks up a weapon, it doesn’t mean that he wants to hurt anybody. No. He just wants to scare them, so he could get what he wants.
I looked at him squarely and asked him why he needed anything from anybody’s house when he could work for it. Are you not aware of God’s commandment? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s property. This is not a laughing matter. Didn’t anybody tell you about that?
He was taken aback. That was the last thing he expected me to say to him. I didn’t look like a pastor so why would I talk to him about God? What could I possibly know about God? That’s what I could read on his face. But I had just started.
Here you are an able-bodied young man with a handsome temple upon your shoulders. You are fully equipped like a computer for any decent assignment you put your mind to. All you need do is decide to do good, and you will do good, and people will know you for doing good. In fact, you could become so popular for doing good that people will gladly spell your name out on their T-shirts, right across the chest, without knowing why.
Yet, with a wonderful name like Supreme, you decide to take what does not belong to you, and you stand here before me and talk as if you can’t help it. Of course, you can. Your mind belongs to you just as your body is yours. You can control both of them, simply by deciding not to take what does not belong to you, and always remember that God said so.
Supreme looked at me as if nobody had ever talked to him like that before. The story he told me in reply, his personal story, did a lot to instruct my spirit that day. He took a deep breath and told me that he had just returned from the recruitment exercise into the Nigerian Army in Zaria.
Earlier, before being sent up north, he had written the qualification exams at Ekein Barracks, Benin. Back home in Yenagoa, he had to wait for his result for all of one week. Nothing happened. On that fateful day in March when he arrived his parent’s home at Igbogene, neighbours were celebrating Chelsea’s historic win of the 2012 champions league trophy.
‘My dad told me that my good friend, Sammy Sorgwe, had threatened to beat him up in my absence, and none of my elder brothers could do anything about it. I couldn’t bear that kind of insult. I had a point to prove, and to tell the entire village that Supreme Miller was back in town’.
As far as he was concerned, Supreme had met with his Goliath, and he would have to do what every David would do in the circumstance. He would slug it out with Sammy. That’s for sure. How dare he threaten to beat up his old man?
But Supreme didn’t go in search of five pebbles from the brook. Fresh from the army training camp, he went looking for a gun instead, grabbed one in a deep corner of the underworld, and was going after Sammy when the police arrived the scene just in time.
Supreme was caught with the gun in hand and he had no reason to give as to why he held a dangerous weapon. That was how he landed behind bars, trying to defend the honour of his family name, and acting out of love for his father. He was remanded at Ahoada prison on 26 April 2012, and later transferred to Okaka prison, Yenagoa.
In March 2016, after four rugged years behind bars, Supreme Miller was ready to make peace, and be a good citizen of the world, if only he would regain freedom. At the time I met him, in fact, he was ready to confess his guilt before the court, so that the judge could let him go on grounds of gracious clemency.
I did not see Supreme again for a long time after that encounter because he was locked up in a cell that opens once a week. He could only see the sun for a few hours every Tuesday. I could afford, on the other hand, to enjoy a stroll in the yard every day because I was in a special cell, and my offence was that I wrote an unfriendly book.
Many months later, when I saw him out in the free world at Agudama, I could not help but scream his name and give him a friendly hug. What, Supreme! Is that you? When did you get out of Okaka?
Supreme went into his elemental stammer and told me the story of his dramatic release from the stronghold of prison. The wound on his leg was completely healed. I was glad to see him again, and even more so when he accepted to pose for a photo shot before my camera lens. We exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch.
I felt like helping him, but I didn’t know how. I was in that excited, hopeful state for Supreme when I heard, a few weeks later, that he was back at Okaka for touting a wooden gun on a midnight raid in the neighbourhood. The landlord of the house had noticed the rudimentary make of the gun in the hand of his assailant, and risked a dive at Supreme.
Since the fellow turned out to be bulkier than Supreme, it didn’t take long before the landlord overpowered the stalker, screaming at the top of his voice for the neighbourhood to wake up. The police van came by just then, picked up Supreme, and dumped him back in the dungeon.
But the yard was over-crowded, and Supreme had said his prayers to the supreme God of the universe. After a few months, he received pardon from the law, and a severe reprimand to go with it. The courts just had to do something about the congestion of Nigerian prisons. He came out feeling sorry for his sins, and promised himself that he would be a good boy in the days to come.
Imagine my shock, therefore, when word got to me that Supreme had been picked up by the police again, and was languishing at the SARS office for sundry nocturnal offences.
This time, he actually called me over the phone, and told me what had happened to him. I was away at the Maritime University in Kurutie, and I was in no position to bail him. I could only pray that God would take a hand in the life of Supreme Miller, and turn his fate around for good.
Born on Wednesday, 8 January 1992, in Yenagoa, Supreme still wants the world to know that he means no harm. All he wants is sympathetic counselling that would lead him in a different course of life. He stands in need of something to occupy his mind and engage his talent, something that would make meaning to him in the days ahead.
To start with, Supreme wants to sit in a classroom again. In 2011, while in his second year, he had dropped out of the Niger Delta University where he was studying Geology. Afterwards, he couldn’t make it into the army. Now he wants to learn something new. He wants the world to know that there is somebody called Supreme Miller, and that he deserves his portion of fame.
His big dream is to read Theatre Arts in a respectable university, and become an actor with a popular face on television. He is free again. Supreme is free again. Is there anyone who would be so kind as to grant him a scholarship? He would be truly happy when he gets a favourable answer to that big question.
