6

Horns were going off everywhere on Bourdillon Road, cars lined bumper-to-bumper remained static. Exhaust fumes hung heavy in the air. Okada drivers straddling their motorcycles used their feet to move their machines between cars, their handlebars scratching paintwork in the process. A mass of people walked down the road and the traffic police watched from the enclosure of the roundabout under the flyover.

Inspector Ibrahim and the two officers with him joined the throng of people heading towards the crash site. All around them, men with scratchy voices spoke the bastardised form of Yoruba popular amongst Lagos touts. Men shouting and waving fists bumped their shoulders into the police officers as they passed them.

A man pushed past Ibrahim and, after four steps, scratched the road with his machete. Ibrahim placed his hand on the arm of the officer to his right who had begun to raise his AK-47. In front of them, the man was now circling the machete over his head. Ibrahim looked behind. In the midst of the approaching crowd, there was a group of men holding up leafy branches and machetes. A shot went off while Ibrahim was still watching. He jolted. The crowd continued past him and the other officers, unperturbed. Ibrahim had seen where the shot came from. The barrel of the black pump-action shotgun was still pointing upwards.

‘What is going on?’ Ibrahim asked. Among the men walking towards them, one was loading cartridges into a shotgun. The man looked up at the officers and continued loading his weapon. As he passed between them, his shoulder pushed Ibrahim, who had to be stopped from falling by the officer to his side. Again, Ibrahim restrained his colleagues.

Another shot went off, this time closer. ‘Jesus,’ Ibrahim said. The sound of a helicopter made him look up. This time it was a green one. The army. Just as it circled back on itself and hovered, another one flew over the crowd, made a large arch, then hovered opposite the first.

The crowd were marching past Oyinkan Abayomi Drive. They looked like they didn’t know the geography of Ikoyi. The officers went down the drive. It was much less crowded. Two lines of immobile cars, many of them with their drivers still at the wheels, stretched back to where the lagoon began. The trees on the lagoon side partially obscured street lamps that had just come on. A third helicopter flew in.

‘What is going on?’ Ibrahim asked again.

They continued past Mekunwen Road, choosing their route by the position of the helicopters above. At Macpherson, a white Toyota LiteAce bus was parked lengthwise, blocking the road. In front of it, men in civilian clothes, brandishing AK-47s, stood guard. Opposite, civilians and police officers stood with their backs to the lagoon and watched the noisy aircraft.

‘Sergeant,’ Ibrahim called, and beckoned to police officers amidst the onlookers. They were not from Bar Beach police station. They were probably posted to stand guard outside homes in the neighbourhood, Ibrahim figured.

There were four officers in all, one woman and three men, who all saluted and stood in front of Ibrahim.

‘What is going on here?’ Ibrahim said. He read the name badge of the plump female officer he had directed the question to. Fatokun.

‘An aeroplane crashed, sir.’

‘I know that. But who are those men there and why are you standing with the civilians?’

‘They are not allowing people to pass, sir.’

‘Which agency are they with?’

‘Agency, sir?’

‘Are they DSS?’

‘No, sir. They are party loyalists.’

Ibrahim shook his head. It was a euphemism for thugs. He looked at the armed men by the bus. The men stared back. It was illegal for civilians to own assault weapons, but here he was, a police inspector, unable to do anything but watch and pretend not to see. The traffic jam had made it impossible for appropriate security agencies to get to the scene. Other police commands would have received the same signal he received, and in time they would arrive along with FAAN officials; meanwhile he appeared to be the first respondent. With two of his own officers, another five conscripted officers, and only two rifles and his service pistol between them, diplomacy was the only option.

‘Do you know which party?’

‘Sir, you haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘The plane landed on Chief Adio Douglas’s house.’

‘Crashed into,’ Ibrahim corrected.

He knew Chief Douglas. Everybody in Lagos knew Chief Douglas. He sat on numerous boards and he was chairman of Douglas Insurance – ‘the insurers to Lagos state’ as Ibrahim once read in a newspaper. His house was on Magbon Close and he was going to be the next Governor of Lagos State. His opponent, a doctor who returned from practising in America, whose name Ibrahim couldn’t even remember, lacked the money, the popularity, and the political clout to run against the ruling party. Chief Douglas on the other hand was a former central bank director and a former finance minister.

‘Was he in the house?’ Ibrahim asked. At least the plane had crashed into just one household, Ibrahim thought, then it occurred to him that Douglas was just one life; there were other lives that could have been lost: his family, his servants, his gatemen, not to talk of the passengers and crew on the plane. As a gubernatorial candidate he would have been travelling with his security detail. Officers who bade their family goodbye in the morning, not knowing they would never see each other again.

‘He was in the plane.’

‘He was in the plane that crashed into his own house?’

‘Yes, sir. They are saying the other party bombed the plane.’

Ibrahim remembered the men brandishing machetes and firing shots. They were the party loyalists, and the men armed with AK-47s, not letting people through, were waiting for them. Reinforcements. Lagos was about to explode.