Three black Toyota SUVs with blacked-out windows turned off Coker Road, tyres screeching, onto Ilaka Street in Mushin, close to Ikeja. The cars stopped in front of a single-storey house with a white fence topped with glistening barbed wire and plastered with two different posters showing the face of the same clean-shaven, gap-toothed, smiling man with a raised fist. On one of the posters he was in a white agbada and an abeti aja cap, in the other he wore a grey suit and nothing to hide his bald head. Above both portraits were the words ‘Dr. Adeniyi Hope Babalola’, and below them, ‘Hope for Lagos’, followed by details of his party. Two police officers standing in front of the black gates swung their rifles forward and held them ready as they watched the cars.
The first SUV was still moving when a tall albino man with translucent, short hair jumped out of the back and onto the road. He was dressed in a grey safari suit and brown leather shoes. On his left wrist, a gold Rolex Daytona; in his right hand, a two-way radio. It was dark, but he wore sunshades. He marched round the front of the car. The police officers opened the gates and he entered, ignoring the three Alsatian dogs that ran forward growling and barking.
He tried the handle on the front door, then he banged his fist on the bulletproof panel. Moments later it opened.
The shirtless young man in the doorway stepped aside.
The gubernatorial candidate was standing in the middle of the staircase in a purple jalabiya, his hand on the banister, body turned sideways with his legs on separate steps as if ready to retreat. ‘Yellowman, what are you doing here?’ Babalola said. He sounded as scared as he looked.
‘We have to leave now,’ Yellowman said.
The shirtless man looked at Babalola.
‘Where are we going?’ Babalola asked.
‘To Prince.’
‘OK. Let me change.’
‘There is no time. We have to leave now.’