I was the happiest man on the face of the earth the day my new book came into my hand right inside Okaka penitentiary. My father’s face was on the cover, and my name was spelt boldly upon his chest. I laughed so loud that everyone in the cell thought something extraordinary, something truly majestic had happened to me. I practically went gaga on the morning of Wednesday 3 February 2016, overcome by the joy of holding one more baby in my hand, notwithstanding the fact that I was behind bars.
I had taken the precaution of sending the manuscript to my printer on the morning of my arrest, Monday. 14 December 2015 still bothering about errors that might surface in the body of the work, in spite of the rigorous proof-reading I had undertaken in the last two weeks, just before I was taken by surprise and stampeded straight to the police station.
Anything could happen to me, I thought, and nobody would take the trouble to gather all the disparate scripts I had been posting on my Facebook wall in the intervening period, and make sense of them. By the time of the arrest, I was deep in remembrance of my father. I had written 24 random pieces on him within a relatively short space of time without knowing that I had written that much.
They just might add up to an interesting little pamphlet, I thought to myself, something that would not be overlooked by research students who might take interest in the legacy of Pope Pen at some distant future date. I didn’t want to leave the assignment to chance. I wanted to do the selection myself. So, I had taken one quick final look at all 24 chapters, and dispatched the mail to my printer.
Biodun had been following my travails from the beginning, but he didn’t believe it would come to the point when I would actually be thrown behind bars for contempt of court. I told him in simple terms that silver and gold had I none, but what I had I was giving to him. Would he be kind enough to print this small book for me, just a few hundred copies, while I faced my ordeal at Okaka? Biodun told me not to bother. He would scout around for some cash, and get the job done. And he did.
I woke up that February morning with a heavy frown on my face, doing my best to remember the dream I had last night, when Dabadaba came banging on the cell door. He was the master of the yard, the warder who kept the closest watch on all inmates. To hear that Dabadaba had entered the yard was to be caught by apoplexy. His name brought order and sanity to the yard. His report to higher quarters could always be depended upon as authentic
Dabadaba knew the case history of every inmate who stepped through the inner gate of Okaka prison and became a member of the yard. He knew the details of every murder case, every kidnap case, every rape case, every drug case, every robbery case, every political case, every accidental case, and every unfair case. He knew which inmate was in which cell, and could tell how long they might stay under his charge.
Dabadaba surprised me the first day he walked up to my cell, and pointedly asked to speak with me in private. I did not know this fellow from Adam, and I was beginning to wonder what was coming up next in this unfolding drama.
‘Are you a brother to the engineer who was locked up for rumour mongering’?
The question took me completely by surprise. Sometimes I wonder if my younger brother, Emmanuel, and I have some physical looks that connect us in anyway obvious to a stranger, and I was often ignorant of these traits as I was that morning.
‘Yes, I am’.
‘You look alike’.
‘How’?
‘I don’t know. You just look alike’.
‘Really’?
‘It’s just there. Blood is thicker than water’.
Dabadaba was just about my height, or perhaps he was slightly taller than me. He was a light-skinned gentleman with a peculiar Indian point prominently dipped on his forehead. With a little disguise, he could pass for a credible female impostor in an Asian movie. As if conscious of his feminine looks, Dabadaba asserted his masculine character in the belligerent manner he addressed erring inmates.
He could boast of a parade ground voice, a fierce change of expression distorting his handsome looks under provocation. He wielded a ready cane in hand to flog any inmate who could be so silly as to challenge his authority in this yard under his command. Dabadaba was talking to me, and I had to listen.
‘I took charge of your younger brother when he was brought into this yard until Tonye Okio came in to join him’.
‘O, really’?
‘He was a nice man. Very generous. Every inmate in this yard knew him. Almost every inmate got something from him at one time or the other, while he was here. He was the only inmate who stayed alone in a whole cell because he wanted it that way, and he paid for it.
‘He was also the only inmate in the entire yard who walked boldly from his cell to the White House, still holding his phone in full view of the warders. He insisted that he would use his phone. He was a man in authority over a wide range of staff in his own construction company, and he needed to stay in touch with his office, he said. Nobody should begrudge him that’.
He only admitted Tonye Okio into his cell because he needed company, someone to chat with, and they were case mates anyway. The Dickson government had pronounced them as rumour mongers who needed to be used as an example of how not to confront the government of the day. That same cell, D2, came to be occupied by 14 Indians remanded for lifting crude oil from Nigerian territorial waters.
I thanked Dabadaba for the exclusive tit-bit, and felt an urgent need to visit the cell again the way I did on the morning after I was locked up. I resolved to visit the cell with a new eye for the bed space occupied by my own younger brother in this same dungeon. For three turbulent weeks, I had taken open exception to his incarceration by the famous Restoration Government, and practically called the Governor a bully on the front page of my newspaper, with the tacit endorsement of Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.
I desperately wanted to see the six-spring bed upon which my brother slept all that time I was driving around the high walls of Okaka prison night after night, wondering how he was coping inside. I wondered what he did to pass the time, and I was glad to hear that he supervised the construction of the Chapel of Mercy while in there.
After that first encounter, Dabadaba and I became good friends. He would remind me when to have a haircut and when to pare my nails. He would check on me every morning, just to cheer me up and let me know that I would not stay for too long in this guardroom. ‘One day’, he would say to me, ‘you will leave this place just the way your brother left. Nobody really stays here forever, except perhaps those sentenced to life imprisonment’.
I was grateful for the kind optimism behind his words and acknowledged that, yes, it would be different for me. My case was different. No doubt about it, and Dabadaba could not wait to read the book that took me into his yard. I said I didn’t have a spare copy for him, but I had other books of mine he might want to look at. That would be great, he said, and was actually astonished when I gave him a copy of my book-length epistle to Queen Elizabeth of England. He couldn’t stop staring at the mayoral portrait of my gentle self on the back of the book. His admiration was clear when he turned to look at me.
Dabadaba was all too happy, therefore, to know that I had written a new book and a copy of it was coming to me right inside my cell. He felt honoured to be the one who took delivery of this new book from my son, Rembi. When at last he placed a copy of Big Daddy in my hand, all my anxiety about the evasive dream of last night faded away. I couldn’t stop flipping through the book right under my nose, the pages fanning the fresh mint of print into my nostrils. I savoured the experience with closed eyes, like a perfect chef inhaling the sweet aroma of a new recipe floating about in ghostly wisps of steam.
My father’s face stayed with me throughout the rest of my stay at Okaka, and brought me a great deal of comfort. The very fact that I could look on him, and have him look back at me from the cover of my own book, was enough to dispel any threat of depression. I gained hope from day to day, merely taking a cursory peep at the snippets I had fleshed out into a wholesome read with credible characters and real life situations recounted from the deep wells of remembrance.
The more I read my father’s story, the more fascinated I became with the man from whose loins I sprang. More doors opened into new corridors of memory that I had thought closed forever, and I found myself taking frantic notes afresh, the proverbial boredom of each day in detention wearing off on me with every passing minute.
