Bloodied Flag
I took two days off work to be at the protests and everyone had told me to be careful. It infuriated me why they kept telling me that. If need be, I would die to save my country. After all, I have been a small proponent of change on WhatsApp, steadily dropping nuggets about political history. My favourite quote was the muse from Winston Churchill. “Those who fail to learn from history are bound to make the same mistakes”. My friends from work told me that the work I have done online was enough to make me a marked man, but I didn’t care.
My father didn’t raise me, Emeka Okonkwo to be a coward. I know that this is a poignant time in the history of Nigeria, and I simply had to be there physically to be part of history. I couldn’t just sit at home and expect others to do the dirty work for me. The first day, Monday, I went to Alausa, carried my placards, though heavy, I felt proud about being a Nigerian youth, doing my best to end police brutality in the country and send a clear message to those in authority that it wasn’t business as usual.
That day, I walked and walked, checking Twitter regularly to see the updates from other protest grounds. I felt proud of being part of those making their voices heard, and the voice of Jimi Disu kept ringing in my head. “A day is coming when the people will say enough is enough. That day is not far away”. While protesting, I kept getting calls from my mother, who like all mothers, kept telling me to leave the protest ground, that there was a wave of violence coming. I waved her off in clear terms, telling her that my generation didn’t inherit the fear and passiveness of our parents.
When I got home, though weary and dead tired, I recounted the events of the day to my flatmate, Femi. I even added some “jara” to it, to make it seem exciting. My friend didn’t need to know about the mad rush for food sent by the Feminist Coalition. He also didn’t need to know about the thugs that infiltrated Alausa, which made me scamper to safety, forgetting most of the placards. I decided to go to Lekki the next day. Lekki was the happening place for the protests. There was a lot of food, music, security, and even a lot of beautiful girls to talk to. Femi was still reluctant to go but I convinced him. After all, there was nothing to lose.
Femi was a cobbler, who worked from home. He had made enough shoes the previous weekend to sell throughout the week. A day away from his beloved footwear won’t hurt anybody. I lectured him on what to wear and take to the protest ground. Light and loose clothes, a duffel bag to store stuff, enough water, and snacks. By early morning, we left our house in Yaba to join the throng of people already marching towards the Lekki tollgate. Femi had called his mother to tell her, and she had even encouraged him to go and protest despite he being her only child. Exhausted, we hitched a ride at Alagomeji to the protest ground. When we got to Lekki, we became reinvigorated after seeing the mammoth crowd there.
Things were going on smoothly until around 12 when someone shouted that the Lagos State governor had imposed a curfew from 4 pm and that anyone found outside by that time would be severely dealt with. Slowly, the crowd started thinning out. Apparently, the curfew had been imposed due to pockets of unrest in many parts of Lagos, with hoodlums hijacking the protests; setting fire to police stations and other public buildings, as well as looting many private businesses.
Femi told me that we should get back home before the curfew started. I waved him off and told him that nothing could happen. After all, we were unarmed protesters. What’s the worst that could happen if we were still at the protest ground by 4? He agreed, but a part of him was uneasy. I called him a coward, and he relaxed, although he kept looking furtively behind him, as though something bad was imminent. At around 4 pm, some people came to the tollgate and started removing the cameras, saying that they were due for some routine maintenance. We should have read the signs.
We were still in high spirits, with music from the ever-impressive DJ Switch keeping us company. At around 7 pm, soldiers came to meet us, probably to tell us to find our way home. At this point, I and Femi had wrapped Nigerian flags around ourselves. I had seen on Twitter from someone that if you had the Nigerian flag with you, the soldiers couldn’t shoot at you. It would amount to treason. We all held hands together and started singing the national anthem, in loud voices, proud of what we were doing, being part of the history our children would read about; the Nigerian youth who demanded for a better country from those who had oppressed and impoverished us.
Suddenly, without warning, the soldiers started firing at us. It was shocking; why would they shoot at unarmed protesters who were exercising a democratic right to protest? I didn’t know where I ran to, but a bullet missed me by inches, but someone close to me fell down, clutching his chest. The voice sounded eerily familiar. I couldn’t wait to find out, so I ran and ran, never running straight so that the rogue soldiers couldn’t take aim at me. Sporadic shootings continued for more than 50 minutes before the soldiers went away.
When I went back, I tried looking for Femi. I called and called, but no one answered me. Many people were in a pool of their own blood, writhing away in pain, too caught up in their own misery to think about me looking for my friend. Then, I saw him, and I knew the worst had happened. His head was twisted, as though he had intentionally put himself in an uncomfortable position to prove a point. I saw it, the Nigerian flag still wrapped around him, but instead of the white in the middle, all I saw was a warm red.
The blood was still seeping slowly. It was a clean shot; straight to the heart. I wondered what Femi’s final thoughts would have been. Would it have been one happy to die for his country or one that regretted going out just earlier in the day? As I held my friend, the events of that morning looked like a lifetime away. I just kept asking myself, “Why did he die?” It should have been me. I still had 4 siblings. If I died, my family would be sad but there were other children.
Femi was an only child. What now for his parents? My tears started flowing like a river. I knew my life was over at that point. I was still holding Femi when the ambulance came early the next morning. My PTSD will never go away, of that I am sure. Nigeria and its bloodied flag wrapped around my friend will always be in my head. That would be my penance for pushing that boy to his death on that Black Tuesday.
Dedicated to all the victims of the #LekkiMassacre
NB: This is a work of fiction taken around the context of the #LekkiMassacre that happened on October 20, 2020.
May we always remember.
