We were members of the Lagos Ghetto Women’s Association, and we were at the police station demanding the release of one of us, Fatima, and her child, who had been arrested the day before. She was accused of abusing a popular businesswoman on the radio who had maltreated one of us for stealing her money.
With placards held high, we stood before the police officers, who threatened to shoot us if we crossed the line they drew and ordered us not to cross. We told them we were Nigerians and had the right to speak, as well as all the other rights and privileges Fatima had told us about.
We demanded to see their boss. They said we were nobodies. We cursed them. They threatened to arrest us and do to us what they did to prostitutes in their cells. We told them it was their mothers and wives who were prostitutes. They came for us, but a big-bellied officer, who immediately showed up and said he was the divisional police officer in charge, stopped them.
“We want Fatima out,” we shouted. “She said the truth. She shamed that shameless woman.”
“Mind your tongues or I’ll lock all of you up,” the DPO warned.
“You can’t do that,” we shouted.
He charged at us with his baton, but his ringing phone interrupted him. He answered the call amid our screaming voices and returned to his office. Three minutes later, he came out with Fatima and her child, and ordered us to leave his sight immediately, else he would order his men to shoot at us.
As we turned to leave, Fatima said to the DPO, “I’m a Nigerian, and I have the right to speak. Don’t forget that.”
The DPO shook his head and retreated with his men.
…
The number of our members, depending on some factors, could be twenty, fifty, or a hundred. At other times, we could be over five hundred. We were married, single, divorced. We were fat, slim, tall, short. We were twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty years old. Some of us were over sixty years old. Our beauty was in the eyes of our beholders. We came from all parts of the country. We had children, some didn’t.
We did all kinds of things for a living. When business wasn’t going well, we used what we had to get what we wanted, and some of our husbands and boyfriends didn’t care, as long as we put food on their tables.
But Fatima — this tall, slim woman in her early twenties, with a gold ring on her nose — wasn’t like us. Since she joined our association six months ago, we have gained more popularity, and our faces have appeared in newspapers and on television. We have even spoken on the radio. But Fatima did much of the talking — with her soft, piercing voice — since she was the most educated among us.
We envied her. We wondered how a Hausa woman like her knew how to speak big English and could look big people in the eye like they were nobodies. When politicians paid us to embarrass their opponents or rally with them during elections, Fatima wouldn’t join us. She would say politicians were the reason we lived in the ghetto, the reason things wouldn’t change. She would say we were better than the politicians, only if we believed. Yes, we believed, but still needed their money.
A year before, we didn’t know each other on a personal level. Then, some government officials came to our area and told us they wanted to demolish a part of it to construct roads. Days later, they returned with bulldozers. They bribed some of our men and they kept quiet about it. We knew they were bribed because some of them bought motorcycles, drank expensive gins, smoked foreign cigarettes, and even hired high-class prostitutes.
We got nothing. We protested. They sent the police after us. They fired tear gas and shot at us. Some of us died. Some landed in hospitals. Some landed in police cells. But we didn’t give up. Every day, for one week, we protested until the government suspended the project. A month after the protest, we formed our association.
…
It was a Saturday morning, and we were with Fatima in her small one-room apartment, sympathising with her over her arrest by the police. Our many encounters with the police and the government and their thugs were unfunny experiences that we told in funny ways.
Outside, even with some children crying nearby, we could still hear Mama Aaliyah frying the yam and akara she hawked at the motor park. A few metres away, Papa Chichi was hitting metal for his welding work. A bad smell, disturbing our stomachs, was oozing from a nearby pit latrine.
We knew almost everything about our members, but barely anything about Fatima and her child. Suddenly, Susan asked her to tell us about herself and her child. We were surprised, yet not surprised, at Susan’s question. Her gossiping mouth was the reason she wasn’t still married at thirty-two, even though she had two children.
Fatima frowned at Susan and then smiled. We smiled too. She started laughing. We started laughing too.
She told us that her father left her mother for another woman when she was a child, and she hadn’t seen him since. Her mother belonged to a rights group in Kaduna, and almost every month they protested against one injustice or the other perpetrated by the government. She first saw the inside of a police cell at the age of twelve when her mother and her comrades were arrested while protesting against the government for not effecting the increment in the minimum wage. By the time she was eighteen years old, she had been arrested twelve times for joining or organising protests.
Susan, again, asked why she left Kaduna. We rolled our eyes at Susan, leaned forward, and sat on the edges of our chairs, with our ears widely open.
Fatima said she left Kaduna because of a massive protest that women staged against insecurity and the marginalisation of minority groups. The protest was staged mainly by elderly women who bared their breasts. Fatima was among the few younger women actively engaged in the protest, and the pictures of her small breasts made headlines in newspapers and on television.
We stared at her with our mouths open. We were crazy in our own ways, but not crazy enough to go naked on the streets. We tried imagining ourselves topless on television, carrying placards and shouting at the top of our voices, but it was unthinkable.
“You were naked on TV?” Mama Kemi shouted, folding her bleached hands across her sagging breasts.
Fatima nodded with a smile. The police had come with tear gas and guns to chase them away. Some of them ran, but Fatima and a few others didn’t. A riot started, and the women burned a police car and damaged others. Some of the women sustained bullet wounds. Others died from the bullets. Since then, the Kaduna police had been looking for Fatima and the other protesters.
“What of your child?” Mama Itoro asked.
We frowned at Mama Itoro’s sharp, big mouth — no wonder her husband beat her almost every night — pretending as if we weren’t interested in the question.
We directed our eyes to the child playing with a tattered doll. She was about two-and-a-half years old. Some of us thought she could be three years old or even older. She had her mother’s searching eyes, and a nose slightly bigger than her mother’s, with a silver ring on it. We used to mock Fatima for her slimness, but her child was slimmer, and we feared a soft breeze could blow her away. We felt pity and fear for the child, not the type we felt for our own children, but the type we couldn’t place in that moment.
Fatima was frowning too, not just at Mama Itoro, but at all of us, as if we had punctured her world with our sharp mouths, as if we were busybodies deserving lashes of the cane, the cane beside her, with which she flogged her child. For a moment, it appeared her nose was slightly bigger than it used to be, and her eyes looked like they were about to pour fire on us.
Then, all of a sudden, she smiled at us, then at her child, fumbling with an amulet on her left wrist, given to her by her mother when she was younger, which she once told us was capable of bringing luck and protection.
She told us her child was fathered by a businessman she met during a fundraising event for a motherless babies’ home in Kaduna. Love happened, and they got married. Four months later, when she was pregnant, the man informed her that he had two other wives and they had children for him. They fought over the matter, and she stabbed him with a knife.
“What?!” we shouted.
“I wish I had killed that bastard,” she said.
The incident landed her in prison for two years, where she gave birth to her child. Six months after she was released from prison, the women’s protest took place.
We were still wondering about the life Fatima and her child had lived when we heard a loud noise outside. It was probably Mama Tunji and her husband’s regular public fights, or Mama Amarachi’s husband, who usually fell into gutters when drunk, or a thief who had been caught. But when the noise increased and we heard people calling Fatima’s name, we knew something serious had happened.
We were afraid to step out of Fatima’s apartment because it could be the police looking for whom to arrest. While we were thinking of what to do, Fatima stood up and headed for the door. When the shouting crowd saw her, they raised their voices even higher.
The angry crowd told us that two teenage girls were raped last night, and they were protesting because the police weren’t taking the matter seriously.
“What!” Fatima shouted.
We sighed. We wondered why anyone would report a rape in our area. Some of us, including some of our daughters, had been raped, and heaven didn’t fall. Plus, reporting a rape could get someone beaten or killed.
“Whoever did this to those girls,” Fatima said, flashing red eyes, “We’ll make sure they are castrated.”
The crowd cheered her. Apart from the protesters, nobody was interested in what Fatima was saying. Some of us had gone about our businesses. Other were just there for the fun of it. But Fatima she kept shouting and making threats.
When she entered her room and changed into better clothes, she locked her door and strapped her child on her back. We asked where she was going, but she ignored us.
An hour later, a Jeep full of female lawyers and a minibus full of NGO people landed in our area. Within seconds, everybody came out, wondering what was happening. When Fatima stepped out of the Jeep, we shouted her name, praising her.
For several minutes, the lawyers and the NGO people spoke big English. We kept quiet. When they discovered we weren’t ready to identify the rapists, they made phone calls, and within five minutes, the police arrived.
We were surprised and, at the same time, impressed by the police they called. They looked well-fed and well-dressed, unlike the type in our area, who drank and smoked every hour of the day, looking for whom to extort and women to abuse.
The police told us they came for the rapists and we wouldn’t see them again if we identified them. Suddenly, Mama Ayo told the police who the rapists were, that they had raped her niece two months ago. Before we knew it, many of us started talking, exposing boys and men who had raped us and our daughters. We took the police to their houses. Some of them were arrested. Others escaped before the police could get to them.
Days, weeks, and months after the arrests, nothing happened. Rather, we started speaking against the abuse and violence against us and our daughters.
…
It was a mid-October morning, and the rain was falling heavily, the worst rain of the year. Some of our walls and roofs leaked. The bamboo roof of Mama Ayo’s palm wine bar was blown away, and the kiosks of Mama Chidi and Mama Hana floated away. When the rain stopped, we started scooping water out of our houses, fixing our roofs, and drying our belongings.
A few hours later, government people and the police arrived, alerting us with their sirens. Some of us ran for cover, peeping from our windows. When they met those who dared to stay, they told them that some houses in our area were built on waterways and were causing serious flooding. They said they had come to serve us notice. They started distributing papers.
“What do the papers say?” we asked.
“They’re for your eyes only,” their boss answered.
“Eviction notice!” Mama Dada, who could read, shouted, flashing her big eyes at us and then at the policemen, as if to slap them with the papers.
“You people have been served,” their boss said. “We’ll be back to demolish some houses here in three days.”
“Bad people. Evil people,” we shouted at them. “It won’t work.”
As they entered their cars and drove away, we threw things at them, booing and cursing them.
Hours later, we all came out, carrying placards and banners with all kinds of inscriptions: “This heartless government should leave us alone.” “Live, let’s live.” “The poor are citizens too.”
We took the protest into the town. Television and radio people came and put their microphones in our faces. The protest continued the next day. Our numbers doubled. People from other areas joined us.
The police ordered us to leave the streets. We refused. They shot guns and tear gas in the air. Yet, we didn’t leave. More police officers came. They arrested some of us. Still, we didn’t stop.
When all this was going on, we didn’t see Fatima. We were scared. We wondered if she had been wounded or arrested. We checked all the hospitals and police stations in our area, but she wasn’t there. Some hours later, someone told us about an ongoing programme on the biggest television station in the city talking about the protest. We gathered in front of a television and it was Fatima on it being interviewed on the programme.
“So, Fatima,” the female interviewer said. “Are you sure it’s the governor’s wife who’s behind the proposed eviction of the people in your community?”
“I’m very sure,” Fatima answered. “She and her thugs want to render us homeless.”
“Why do you think it’s the governor’s wife who’s behind it?”
“I’ve got my sources, which I can’t reveal to you,” Fatima answered. “But I can prove it anywhere that that woman is behind it.”
“OK,” the interviewer said. “Why do you think she’s doing this?”
“She wants to build a mall on that land if she succeeds in evicting us,” Fatima said. “She already owns three mega malls in the city. She wants to build the fourth one by making us homeless.”
“Are you not afraid you could be sued for these accusations?”
“I’m a Nigerian,” Fatima fumed, “and I have the right to say what I know is right and true.”
When the interview ended, we went back to the streets but didn’t see the police.
…
A few days after the eviction notice and protests had passed, five scary men came to our area and went straight to Fatima’s room. They beat her and her child. We stood, watching, crying, shouting, and begging the men to stop, but they threatened to beat us too if we didn’t shut up. Some of us called the police, but they didn’t come.
The men called Fatima a busybody, an almajiri, who was challenging the way they did things.
“I’m a Nigerian. You can’t silent me,” she cried. “You people will pay for this.”
“So you still have the mouth to talk?” one of the men growled. “You’ll die a poor, miserable Nigerian today.”
They continued beating and flogging her until she collapsed.
Fatima and her child spent three days in the hospital. Some hours before they were discharged, some of the men who beat them came to warn her to keep her mouth shut about what happened and also about the politics of the city. But she had shouted and shouted, even after the men had left, until almost everybody in the hospital had gathered.
She told us this when we visited her the day she was discharged from the hospital.
“Avoid these people,” Mama Dada said. “They’re evil.”
Even though we loved Fatima’s stubbornness, we agreed with Mama Dada.
Fatima sighed. “I’ll make sure they pay for what they did to me and my child.”
“They’re government thugs,” Mama Hana pleaded. “The police can’t touch them.”
We nodded.
Fatima sighed again, this time, so loudly that it echoed in the room. “The police are thugs like them. But I’ll get justice, and soon.”
Mama Itoro opened her sharp, big mouth to speak, but we frowned at her, and she closed it.
We spoke for minutes about why she needed to slow down because of her child, but she laughed and said it was because of her child and the millions of other children that she wouldn’t give up.
On Fatima’s phone radio, an announcement was heard about a nationwide protest against the police because of their recent brutality, unlawful arrests, and bribery. We looked at ourselves, then at Fatima.
“We should join the protest,” Fatima said.
“Ah. I don’t want to get fucked in their cell again,” Viky sighed.
“What!” Fatima exclaimed.
We looked at Fatima as if she were crazy. Though we weren’t happy with Viky — with her bad mouth, for spilling the secret — it was better we used what we had to get our freedom whenever we were arrested.
The next day, we heard Fatima on the radio talking about the protest and why everyone should join. She shared her recent experience with the police and the thugs. She also narrated other people’s experiences at the hands of the police, including the ones we told her.
“The police did that to your friends?” the interviewer asked.
“Who knows how many other women they have raped in their cells?” Fatima asked.
The interview attracted many reactions and encouraged many people to join the protest, incuding many of us. The interview was widely broadcasted to the point that the police started looking for Fatima
The next day, some politicians offered us money to continue with the protest and make noise about it on the radio and television, the way Fatima did. They said we should talk about the things the police had done to us and the ones they hadn’t. They said they would release us if we were arrested.
We met Fatima at her apartment and told her about our deal with the politicians. She said we were foolish to have collected their money. She said politicians were more evil than the police. She said they were the reason the police were underpaid and understaffed. She said some other things we didn’t care about. She said we must return their money to them.
We looked at her, laughed, and asked, “How can we return the money we’ve eaten already?”
“You accuse the police of bribery all the time,” Fatima said, almost shouting. “Now, you’re the ones collecting the bribes. How’ll you have the conscience to protest against them?”
“We need money,” Viky sighed.
“You’re as bad as the policemen who fucked you,” Fatima fumed.
We shouted at her, called her bad names, and threatened to beat her. She said we wouldn’t dare it because we were cowards eager to sell our freedom and future for a penny.
We cursed her and left her apartment.
The next day, we came out carrying big placards and banners that bore: “End police brutality”. “The police are our enemy”. “We need police reform”. “Police, free the innocent in your cells”.
We matched to some police stations and abused the officers. Radio and television people came to speak with us, and later in the day, we saw our faces on television.
The following day, some politicians brought more money, and we trooped out again. The police shot tear gas, but we didn’t run. They shot guns in the air. Some of us ran. Some of us didn’t. They shot more tear gas, overpowered us, beat us, and locked some of us up. From their stations, we called the politicians, but they denied us.
Later that evening, Fatima was on television talking about our arrest and the things they were doing to us in their cells. She challenged the police and the government, stating our rights.
A few hours later, many of us were released.
…
A few days later, while we were still recovering from the beating and flogging the police gave us, the protest was building up in the city. The news on the radio was scary. Major roads and streets were blocked. Government offices were closed.
Later in the day, we heard about the destruction of shops, malls, banks, courthouses, and police stations in many parts of the city. The police station in our area was set on fire, and four policemen died in the process, with their rifles stolen.
In the evening, one of us brought to our attention a television broadcast showing hundreds of protesters gathered at a major tollgate in the city. What caught our attention wasn’t the crowd but Fatima with her child strapped to her back.
A few minutes later, we gathered to discuss whether or not to join the protest at the tollgate.
“We all can’t be crazy like Fatima,” Mama Itoro warned.
“With the burning of cars and police stations?” Susan inhaled. “I don’t want to die.”
“Something must kill a woman,” Mama Aaliyah said.
“Not a bullet,” Susan fired back.
“I’m still recovering from the last beating and flogging,” Viky protested.
“Coward,” Mama Aaliyah said. “Our mates are out there. We should be there too.”
“You go,” Viky sighed. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Because there’s no politician to give us money this time, right?” Mama Aaliyah asked.
“Pot calling kettle black,” Viky fired back.
“OK, OK,” Mama Chichi intervened. “Those who’ll join the protest, raise your hands.”
Half of us raised our hands.
…
Two hours later, under the October sky, when darkness had almost befallen the city, some of us joined the protest at the tollgate. It was as if the whole city was there. It was as if all the radio and television people were there too.
We met Fatima and her child in front of the crowd. Almost all eyes were on them. She wore a red hijab, and her child was holding a small green-white-green flag.
Amid the noise and rowdiness, she told us that the Kaduna State government had traced her to Lagos and was working with the Lagos police to arrest and take her back to Kaduna. When we asked how they knew she was in Lagos, she said it was because of her frequent television appearances. When we asked how she knew they were looking for her, she said she knew people in government who told her things. We didn’t know what to ask again.
Half a kilometre away, we started hearing sirens. Some of the protesters started running back, including some of us too.
In two minutes, soldiers arrived and took positions about thirty metres away from the crowd. Their commander spoke through a handheld public address system, ordering us to go home and never return. We ignored them, singing the national anthem. When the commander ordered us to leave the tollgate at the count of ten, and we didn’t, he ordered his men to shoot at us.
Gunshots filled the air. We all ran back, screaming and stampeding on ourselves. Mama Aaliyah was ahead of us, running with all the power and muscles in her, her huge backside bouncing and rolling, her fat legs almost touching the back of her head. Mama Hana was behind Mama Aaliyah, running as fast as her short legs could carry her, covering her ears with her hands, her head very low as if dodging direct bullets. Mama Chichi was on the ground, and people were stepping on her. Mama Kemi was crying, bleeding, and limping from a bullet that scratched her thigh.
When the shots ceased, we looked back and saw Fatima, not too far from the soldiers, struggling to stand on her knees. She took a bullet in her right hand, and her child was crying and still holding the flag.
We pleaded with her to step back. She didn’t. With her left hand, she raised a placard, and with her right fingers folded into a fist, she marched towards the soldiers.
“I’m a Nigerian,” she cried out, “and I have the right to protest against injustice.”
The next shots stopped her in her tracks, and she fell, with her child, on the tarred road. She lay in a pool of her own blood, the left side of her face pressed against the road, her nose ring glittering under the streetlights. Her mouth was slightly open as if she was saying something. In her left hand, the one with the amulet, she was still holding the placard, and her legs looked as though she was still walking towards the soldiers.
Her right fingers remained folded into a fist, and in that moment, we realised that it was the only fist we could see in the crowd. Amid the sorrow, tears, and blood, we imagined our lives and future in that fist, but all we could see was our hope fading with her last breaths and our country drowning in her blood. In her fist, soaked in her own blood, we saw us, all of us, our community, our country, suffocating and crushing in it.
We cried and cried. Mama Aaliyah was shouting and pointing at Fatima. Mama Chichi was looking up at the sky, sobbing and muttering things, as if questioning God on why such a thing should happen to Fatima, to all of us. Mama Hana was transfixed, with her hands on her head, staring at Fatima, then at the soldiers, with her mouth open and shivering. The other protesters were shouting and crying too.
A few minutes later, with our hands raised above our heads and the soldiers aiming their guns at us, we slowly walked up to Fatima and checked her pulse. She was dead. Her child was still strapped to her back, crying. When we freed the child, she looked at us with eyes that looked just like her mother’s, then walked towards the soldiers.
We were all shocked and surprised. We looked at ourselves, at the child, then at the soldiers. We shouted at the child to come back, but she didn’t. We carried Fatima on our shoulders and marched behind the child. Hundreds of other protesters joined us. Radio and television people resumed their work, their cameras focused on the child.
“Step back!” the commander shouted into the address system, “Step back now or we’ll shoot you down.”
“Kill us all,” we fired back at him.
“Step back,” the commander shouted again.
We didn’t. They started shooting again, this time, in the air. We didn’t run. We queued behind the child, singing, cursing, crying, and waving our flags. When the soldiers aimed their guns at the child, we all stopped, but the child kept moving towards them, waving the flag in her hand. We tried to pull her back, but stopped in our tracks when the soldiers aimed their guns at us.
As the child, still crying and throwing a tantrum, got closer to the soldiers, their commander fired a shot into the air. Still moving, the child raised her left fist and shouted something we didn’t understand.
We raised our fists higher, moving closer, behind the child, towards the soldiers. They shot into the air again, ordering us to step back, but we kept moving, shouting, “We’re Nigerians. We’re Nigerians. We’re Nigerians…”
Fatima’s body was getting heavier and colder on our shoulders, and her blood was wetting our clothes.
“For the last time, step back!” the commander shouted.
“We’re Nigerians,” we kept shouting, moving forward. “We’re Nigerians…”
“Fire!” the commander ordered.
Several shots filled the air. Some people ran back. Some landed flat on their stomachs. Some took cover under parked cars and behind the tollgate walls. When the shots ended and we raised our heads, we saw smoke and dust everywhere. We saw blood and dead bodies. We saw Susan, Mama Aaliyah, Mama Hana, and a few others bleeding on the ground. We couldn’t tell if they were dead or alive.
A moment later, we saw a soldier carrying the kicking, crying child, still clutching the flag, into one of their trucks. Then, they drove away. ♦
Kingsley Alumona is a geologist, writer, poet, journalist, and media consultant from Delta State, currently living in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. He holds a BSc in Geology from the University of Nigeria and an MSc in Geophysics from the University of Ibadan. He’s a Senior Reporter with the Nigerian Tribune newspaper, and the Founder and Managing Editor of Naira Stories Magazine. He’s an alumnus of the Nigerian Academy of Letters’ Creative Writing Workshop. His writings have appeared in the 2018 African Book Club Anthology, Kalahari Review, Nthanda Review, TUCK Magazine, Brittle Paper, Afritondo, Digirature, Ngiga Review, Pawners Paper, Omenana (Issue 17), Transition Magazine (Issue 131), Afrocritik, Botsotso Literary Journal, Fortunate Traveller, and Farafina Blog. You can reach him on Facebook: @kingsley.alumona.1.
