A Visit to the Freedom House Onatola Abiodun   © Copyright 2018 by Onatola Abiodun

We are many from our mothers womb, we grew up to becoming a woman than the man we are.

Many a time we tried petrifying our faces with powder, any powder and there were numbless time we had robbed Dusting powder on our faces that is just learning the beautifulness of our mother beauty well written all over us.

I can drew a fine curved for my hairy eye lashes, for this course mother had been summon by our admirers to a court of no bar or the bench, demanding the secret that made her have a house of woman full of boys.

We don’t danced in church again for the pastor had said we had thrifted into a bundled thrift that had no contributor. Our dances was western like, we bent as we held unto our kneels for coordinated movement that made our buttocks rolled sensually.

We are the home of Five boys and two girls.

I was the third born of the family. A male and astute like, like the truth that never bent for untruthfulness.

The first two child of our family were boys.

The firstborn a civil engineer by training, Obafemi Awolowo University Alumnus and the Second a builder of world repute. He could not bribed his way so well into the University. The man who had promised to help him “runs” his admission was no mean man. He lacked the will to wit and greased hands too just like our father. But Mother was well refined in her thoughts and taught. She hated any arguments ensued. Everything worth doing is worth doing right.

And I have an arrays of Siblings and Younger one too that were more that the English count. For in Africa every children of both maternal and paternal family are my blood. There were most night that we had our food rationed in other to fed all of those who came to our house for visits and the could not leaves haven smell the aroma emanating from my mother pots.

I knew I made my O’ level results in my first attempt. Because most of the questions that was set were the very one I had mastered by heart. Except from that I had done a comparison of my answer with the very answer that were provided for the examiner. The teacher that was promoted to the position of the Vice-principal academics was a chief examiner in all of the region and continental exams. Been the very person he had chosen to be cleaning his offices, I have had the rare privileges of looking into the exams making guide.

I made my result in the third attempt. Though I knew what to wrote for every questions nevertheless, I paid for special center to proof read of my answers to questions asked were right this time. Answers that were majorly provided for every subjects I sat for. My answers booklets were taken to a woman whose computer works offices was overlooking our exams center for every one to copy.

I made a straight A in my WAEC GCE.

My graduation as an hairstylist apprentice was two month after secondary education. Mother opened a shop overflowing with Barbing accessories and many a customer that had their haircut for free or should I said customer who were always people I cannot charged a price. I did this for almost a year before I went with a friend to Lagos for his aunty birthday. That day he should have came for his haircut earlier. We left home for Lagos unprepared. We knew if we should stayed back a little longer we will be the prey in the hands of good unarmed robber that threw tyres at oncoming vehicles and dispossessed travelers of their valuables.

I saw that as a good avenue to made money for the JAMB I had in mind to seat. In the shop there was good customers and many a bad one who are the one that if in my own view they should be the nicest. They was the ‘have it all’ people of the society. They are the people that at every corrections were insulting words as though one does not exit.

The very one that made me craved a better Shop for my hairstylist was a man whose garages were full of the most exotic of automobiles. He had came for his haircut with the highest of our country denominations. I told him that I would need get the money changed of which he obliged. When I returned he was out of sight. I planned to hand him his change when next he came for haircuts.

I was unaware that he had taken a clipper and showed the shop owner. He told the shop owner that I was too careless a person to be in charge of the man big Saloon. The man came in the night of that very day and started with all the abusively outrageous words you could think of. He collected the Salon key from me and he never paid me the six month salary he owes me as an hairstylist in his salon.

I was waiting for him at a Bar he had ordered the bartender to served me whatsoever I will like to eat on his long listed bill. The bartender a girl very beautiful demanded if I could do her a favor of given her my cousin contact. She promised to be given me a percentage from any outing they went together.

A minibus parked at the Bar entrance and lanky men wielding guns told all of us to hand our hands up.

They worked us to the bus and carried us to their station in Charlie Boy Lagos. They said we should gives them the contacts of anyone we are sure could paid them well. I called my cousins phone hundred of time, he never answers. I am sure he was told the Police came to arrest us.

Some of us were bailed by their family who could paid the huge money demanded,

#200,000 per bail.

There was a guy whom before we was arrested we became friend over bottles of beers. I ordered every bottles he drank. He paid for the #600 pepper soup we drank.

I had expected him to convinced his older sister who came to facilitated his bail to bail me too. When I called his name as an officer gave him what was collected from him he yelled that never in my life should I called him. I was a criminal after all and him a free citizen.

The first police officer he saw gestured him into the force officer.

All men on black, alcohol fumed from their unsmiling faces.

“Good Morning Oga. I am here to see…”. He was not allowed to talked before they told him.

“Where is your phone”. He brought out his phone.

The Police officers haven saw that his phone should be expensive retorted that,” How can we be sure you are not a criminal like your arrested brother.

Anyways, you will pay us the sum of fifty thousand naira for registration to see your brother. After which you will gives all those officers at the counter five thousand naira each for soft drinks”.

He handed them the fifty thousand cash he had on him for bail. He was about to transfer thirty thousand to the account of one of the six officers at the counter when he saw me handcuffed with other arrested and we was pushed into a bus of which they forced the bus owner to either take them to the court or had his bus seized and there is nothing he can do about it even if any of his family member was the President of the country.

I called the attention of the Investigative Police Officer in charge of Our arrest that that’s my brother and he was here to facilitates my bail. The Investigative Police Officer refuted with by banging the bottom of the gun on my head.

Ever since the night we was drove to their Charlie boy police station he had been a nice man.

He made sure we slept in a conducive environment. He bought and lighten mosquito repellant in their mosquito infected cells.

He got us a bag of cold pure water and ten pieces of Gala. He promised to resumed the next morning earlier than his scheduled duty.

He said I and other arrested needs no panicking that if not because of the gridlock on his way to the police station that very morning. He would have stopped us from writing our names on the booklet that was passed to us. The booklet of which we thought was just for mere record purposes we never knew there was a hidden secrets to it. A list of criminal to be tried was it.

The officer told my brother in an assuring voice that he should take a bike and meet us now at the Magistrate court in Berger.

And the floor perforated, dried human excreta filled the hole.

I had turned my white wool jeans and the top too had sagged on my head due to the dragged of me by the Investigative Police Officer.

My brother arrived the court in no later time. He asks if I was okay, I replied him in the affirmative.

“I am very okay Egbon Just that we needed food”. He bought beans and bread which he knew would be enough for us”.

My brother saw myself and other arrested dragged the food with one another. He almost wept while I assured him to be a man.

Not long enough the court seated. The first case been that a rich woman and her driver.

The Woman argued the man stole gold and her car too.

The counsel of the accused called the woman cook as witness

The cook said,” I think Madam like Oga Jonah. I had saw her many time she seduced the driver. The Driver never gives in to madam demands.

And Our madam planned to implicated him.

Our Madam didn’t loosed any gold or ‘motor’. The gold is in her wardrobes and the car she dey talk about na the car wey dey outside”.

The Judge from her actions was not surprised. The female judge told the woman to published a written apology in every newspaper and offers the accused driver a monetary damages that his equivalent to his hundred years salary.

The Magistrate was a woman of books faces and i had expected a stiffer punishment because I had watched mostly a movie where people were roped and the judge never gave them the privilege of defense.

The Judge asked, “Appearances please”.

There was no bar member who could stands for our course. My brother who came had told me beforehand that all the lawyer he spoke with said they would collect an amount not lesser than fourth thousand naira and that ours was a criminal case. If nothing was done we may be convicted. He told me he would need sold his phone and the hands he dipped into his pocket came out with nothing. He had loosed his phone and I suspect it was the last woman who stood beside him that took his phone. His girlfriend I supposed she was. He offered to sold his shoe or better still the wristwatches in his hands. Every buyer feared they might be stolen items.

I and other arrested were given opportunities of self defense. We informed the magistrate that we was not a criminal. “Ma. I am but a surgeon for hair. I came to people rescue whom most people taught was mad and I bring alive their fine looks by my good styling act”.

The magistrate retorted that,” while its not possible to tell the extent of one culpability for a crime. Criminals are never known by mere looking at faces.

I know and very sure that you should had better made more meaning out of life if you could go to School.

While I would want the investigation of this matter to be committed into the hand of another officer other than the one who arrested them. I give everyone of them the opportunity of bail and they should be coming to answer to their cases from home.

And if peradventure some of them might be defaulted in bail,they should be remanded in the prison pending the completion and fulfilment of their bail condition. I rise.

Next case please”.

The street children had gathered round him to throw tyre on his neck before he was able to summoned courage and outrun the people that congregated around him.

I did not know the outcome of the case. I read it from the news that the person whose head fell off was one of the dead that wandered the streets of Lagos in the afternoon. Lagos is too much a populace, inward of it the living keeps living and the dead too came for reliving.

I and other arrested was whisk into a waiting van which was built in form of a mini waiting room for the yet to be convicted. There was many booing and jeering from everyone who was in the court room and the court environment. Hauling courses on the I.P.O who arrested us. I could heard plainly from many speaking mouth that that was the way the I.P.O who arrested us works. He was found of arresting people who were not criminal and labelled them one. They added that there was a time he arrested one of the Executive of The National Union of Road Transport Worker, the Nigerian transport worker union. The I.P.O put an AK 47 rifle in front of him and maintained he was an armed robber who was dreaded for robbery attack on the travelers in the Lagos Ibadan expressway. The man was lucky enough to have gotten a competent lawyer who proved his innocence and he was discharged and acquitted after the twenty time hearing of his case.

One of the people who knew the I.P.O so well said he implicated the man on purpose because of a day he boarded the man taxi and the man demanded a fare from him.

Another of the witness added that the I.P.O dastardly continued that the man too had one time walked up to a rich man whose son was arrested for stabbing an hotel attendance because the attendant refused every of the Love advances he made towards her. The rich man son never saw the four wall of the court room fro trial nor did he saw the fences of a Police Station. On the scene of the crime the I.P.O called a court magistrate for an acquittal certificate and it was rapidly provided on the spot.

When the driver ignited the engine of the van that was conveying us to Ikoyi Prison,the engine did not came up at instant ad some of us seized the opportunity to urinate and got some money from their family. I was made to understand that we shall need to bribed the warder to get us food that’s better the nourishing beans weevils-filled. To get ourselves sponge and soap for bathing. To recharge the phone of the warder before we could be able to put a call through our relatives and received calls from them and that we can also paid for an allocation into cells that was a bit conducive. The very single window cells that housed an hundred inmates. And that if we was lucky enough we might escaped the welcome beating of inmates who had been in the cells for a longer time and there fore were the very one that made themselves the cell master or capon.

He alighted from the Van to separated other warder who locked hands on one another necks.

I thought of overpowering him with an heavy punches and then ran so fast to the expressway that linked the court where we was been ordered to be remanded and the Ikoyi prison way.

A man who called their truce to a peaceful accord was a passerby who showed them his phone that he would put a call through to the controller general of the prison service. The dabbles amidst a bold front that was a shared fear and tried to cowered the man boldness. One of them brought out an handcuffed while he threatened to locked the man with us and verry him to the prison.

The Van halted at the garages where van of numerous sizes and different compartments. Someone said the heights of one crime determined the van that would be taken out of the garage to transport the criminal to and fro the prison. There were some sick prisoners who were never administered in the cell clinic. They were taken to some high van built with the heaviest of metal. The medical officers who attended to them stood outside of the van while they gave them drugs and injections on them.

We stripped ourselves naked in the very eyes of the female warder who took the register of us. Naked for hours before we was ordered into a room which was stockpiled with warders wears many of the wears was a tattered rags unfit for the neck of a long time mad man.

An aged man whose looks was more healthy than the other prisoners was the one who saved my life for more days. He had the most honorable treatment. A mater size bed with duvet and blanket that was as thick as a log of timber. He had a nice changes of fine clothes brought to him by his wife every week. His food was ordered from a reputable meal ventures. He had his bathes first at the head of the prison apartment. Whenever he felt like haven a nice time the warder head brought call girl to his apartment on the behalf of the man and he had his freezer stock with the choicest of wine.

I was saddled with the responsibilities of carrying his urination every morning and emptied it in the semi-dug pits in front of our cells then I laid his beds.

He begged other prisoner that was with us to gave me the freedom of sleeping besides him on the bed. He would gave me spoon to eat the other portion of the food he ordered, two portion each day when he knew that all of the prisoner were deep asleep.

The water used by all of us were emptied from the pits that holds the water by the youngest prisoner among us or in very rear cases any prisoners whom the warfare found uncontrollable.

On Friday the next day after which I was brought to the prison. An Imam came for prayers alongside the Muslim faithful. He came in full entourages of Alfa who accompanied on either sideways. Two Alfas held the helms of his clothes at the back. Other had their hands filled with Quran and long Tesba.

The sermon for the Friday was a soul touching one. The Imam with self pity, he gave the sad eyes of all of us prisoners joy. I wished I could be chanced to have some words with him and compliments him.

Every Muslim faithful who attended the prayer were of a pity countenances. Remorseful and repentant too.

I was excluded from warders routine work too by the cheer privilege of been the favorite of the aged prisoner . The aged prisoner was a man, a good man of valor. He owes the edges of swords to killed anyone against his political party to which he was personally inclined. He had any fitful punches hurled on a fellow party man, once a die hard. The party man got a broader view of political of all political party in the State. And the very gripped of one political party of the seats of power. The party man wishes other political party could be more bold and broader in their visions of capturing the seat of power from hid very party.

The attention of the Divisional Police Officer of the station nearest to the party secretariat, the avenue of the political meeting. The Divisional Police Officer was confused of the actions to be taken after he had rang the phone of the Local Government Chairman phone and no reply at the Chairman end.

One of the Police officer who just graduated from the Police college and was deployed to the Lagos Island division of the Police force was the person who went to the party secretariat and arrested the aged prisoner unheeding to the Divisional Police Officer directives that no Police Officer should ever attended to the case. The Officer in conjunction with a secondary school mates who was now an Human Right just called to the Bar. The officer got the aged prisoner arrested and together with his Lawyer friend worked hands in hands and make sure that Justice was served the man.

We was given a good ration of food. Our Beans was no longer weevil filled. Rice served was well cooked and the stew tasted so nice like the very once atop the rice the aged prisoner once ordered. We were addressed with respect and the warder became unimaginably nice to us.

The evening of that Saturday we was taken outside of the now correctional center and some uniform officers came to disinfect our cells. Every of the building was repainted. For the first time, the correctional center came alive, a dwelling place that the good sense of a sane man would rejected.

Many a prisoners was repentant, some sworn that they shall became a self appointed Evangelist who shall preached the gospel of peaceful existence to anyone they was privileged to meet. Some lamented about the huge amount they would had made should they not had got caught in their illicit drug dealing. Most importantly, the high crime convicts were never repentant, rather they had became more sophisticated and made a very good contact with criminal gangs that were more dangerous to them. Mayhem was an understatement, war was what they planned to unleash on the Society upon the served of their jailed terms.

The Saturday of visitation, the Minister of Interior came in Motorcades. That time the Sun saw through its unmerciful eyes. The head of the warder was instructed by the Minister of Interior to left us all in our cells. The planned of many who had made up their mind to told the Minister of Interior about the deteriorated conditions of the correctional centers. The strange humane treatment meted on us in the eleventh hour of his visit was just a good dream one wished and never became a reality.

The Interior Minister we was informed has the President directives that all inmates remanded should be let go with immediate effect. Should I had an opportunity to bribed a prisoner with money and I was learned a phone to called, My brother would came for me that very Saturday. I spent an additional two days in the prison. A Prisoner who had his family came visiting to facilitated his released summarily changed his mind because he heard the prison cook told him that the prison had gotten a new roster of food which was more nutritious. That at night we would be served a cup of tea and a thin of milk with sandwiches.

“ Never find it too hard to forgive anyone. Not minding how grievous or cruel the wrong dine to you. Never take revenge. Revenged is of God only Him can served the very person who wronged you right”.

The Minister led us in closing prayer and when he told us to pray for our enemy and the very enemy of the country we all went silence as the graveyard. He shared us all into the saving hands of God.

While was leaving the cathedral the Minister son stepped on his toe which had a bruise and he promised to meted on him his well deserved punishment when they shall arrived their home.

I left the correctional center immediately he was done signing my released document. The World outside the wall of the correctional center had changed. I feared the sight of every Police officer which manned the various check point on our way home. I lowered my eyes at every gazed at them.

When I arrived home I took my mother phone and logged on to my 2go account. All users were offline, I wondered what went wrong. My Brother said,” The World had revolved away from 2go and now static on the new found social media which everyone luxuriate”.

Facebook was the new Social media. I created account and when I uploaded my pictures I had many comments even the earth asked where have I been.

Onatola Abiodun is a Nigerian.  He lives and writes from Lagos, Nigeria.