It was 3:30 a.m. in the morning. Afifekúmẹmu’s wake coincided with the first crow of the morning cock. He exuded perspiration. It was as though a masquerade pursued him from sleep. He shook his hand over his head and chanted vigorously:
“Ikú kìi pa orógbó. Ikú kíkú kan kìi pa awùsá. Tí a bá láá mú òní, ọ̀la làá mú. Death is not on my face. Now is not my death.”
He sat up against the wall, “But what does one make of this kind of dream? Me? Death? Not this time.”
He invoked the earth and death to avert any looming danger wanting to befall him, “Ilẹ̀ afọkọ́yẹrí, the eater of flesh to rot, my flesh for you has become sour to swallow. Ikú dẹ̀dẹẹ̀gbò, my blood is bitter like bile; you never should drink from it.” For a little while longer, he looked dumbfounded. He thought of so many possibilities. When he wasn’t getting the answers he sought, he shrugged his shoulders and let out a hiss, “Shio! A mere lie. A child’s play.” He lay on the bed, side down and slept off.
Later on when the day was ripe, Afifekúmẹmu would later beat his chest in the presence of his two wives and seven children he saw his deceased father in his dreams. All white, he had come telling him of an impending calamity; inputting into his subconscious mind a stern warning that he should not go on any outing that day.
“Do not attend any social function while today lasts,” Afifekúmẹmu mimicked in gruffish voice the spectral warning before his marvelling audience.
His dead mother appeared, he told them, in a sequel accompanied by an aura of darkness, her face as grave as a muddied stone. She cautioned, her head tilted—hiding the livid bores in her face—“Listen, listen, listen. The flood that carts away the mother hen can take away the chicks as well.”
“Fife,” she called out.
“Mother,” he responded.
“Fife,”
“Mother,”
“Afifekúmẹmu,”
“Mother,” thinking she would ask him how many times she had called him, he preceded in response, “Three times.”
“Obedience is better than sacrifice.” She dissolved into thin air, her overwhelming aura following her.
Now panting before his entire household, he told them how these were empty warnings, inert like the horse in Kola’s English textbook. His last son, Kola, broke into laughter at the instance of this analogy from his father, the mighty man of valour, the beginning and the end of effective juju. He watched with admiration and reverence on his face as his father went out for his early morning rite.
At the palm wine shed where he went to, he hinted his drinking mates of the premonitory dreams he had. He boasted endlessly his expertise in matters like this. He intimated them of his early morning divination on his plate of sand. How he had seen bleakness and doom, broken link and voluminous black, bare soles and seared earth, fight and tears. He was about to trivialise his readings when he was interrupted.
“Ah! Àgbà ló ń sorò bíi èwe. Don’t you know those are messages of death?” A rapt listener, still on his first calabash, alarmed.
“Listen to yourself, Awótúndé. You talk—like a non-initiate—as if I am a little child suckled by my mother’s breasts. Ìpa tí a pa ọ̀gbẹ̀ri, a kìí pa ọmọ awo bẹ́ẹ̀. The powers that be are solidly behind me. Don’t say that again.”
Awótúndé knew better than pursue the matter further. No one ever won Afifekúmẹmu in exchange of words. Besides, Afifekúmẹmu was a senior initiate and his master in divination and Yoruba spirituality.
Afifekúmẹmu ordered kegs of palm wine for himself and other early morning frequenters of the shed whom he told to drink on him. While everyone was at it, a call came in for him. He exchanged pleasantries with the person at the other end and after a few minutes of “yes”, “uhn”, and “okay”, he exploded into surprise. The now tipsy heads turned towards his direction.
“I am sorry. I have completely forgotten,” he shouted, as if by shouting, his caller would hear him and forgive his forgetfulness, “I am coming right away.” He dropped the call and turned to the convergence of heads. He fed their warped curiosities, “There is a political gathering at Osogbo. It is a must I am there.”
He thrust neatly folded naira notes into the palm of the palm wine vendor. He left the bamboo pub but not without promising to come in the evening for a grander merriment.
On their way to Osogbo in a chartered bus, he ran his mouth endlessly on how immensely prepared he was for any impending danger at where they were headed. He boasted of both physical strength and spiritual might. His co-travellers, observing in awe, had no reason to entertain any doubt of his celestial powers. Many of them, even the staunch faithful, could attest to his gifts, having consulted him under the covers of the night in their hours of need. Away from their various religious beliefs, they knew he was one to run to in times of trouble. Rumour had it that he inherited his powers from his father, and his father from his father in that line of son from father ascendancy till it was traced to Olóògùnikú, the father of his clan.
Then he stopped altogether crawling into the shell of his thoughts where saliva need not clot to ease off his drying throat; to the utter relief of his co-passengers bored by his lengthy talk but civil enough to know he was not someone to be severed off his non-stopping chatter. They were long tired of his monotonous talk but with what mouths would they tell a man of his spiritual standing what they felt? So in mute indifference, the ones with phones fiddled their phones, the ones with worries nursed them in the hospice of their minds while others simply eyeballed the many changes that had met the state capital. Afifekúmẹmu himself drifted to the warning and pleading of his junior wife, Iya Kola, before he embarked on this very important journey. First, the latter had adjured him in a typical wife to husband manner, on her knees, to heed to the warnings from his dreams: “Kìi se gbogbo àlá ló gọ̀—Not all dreams are foolish and negligible. And then, mistake has no master. . .” When the former wasn’t yielding to any of her admonishments, she resignedly pleaded: “My husband, please, do not fight with anyone wherever you go.”
The persistent honking of their driver manoeuvring his way through a submerging gridlock jolted him from his brief spell reverie. His pursed lips stretched into a faint smile: “What does a woman know?”
In Osogbo, stern cagey faces converged at One Nigeria Party’s Secretariat. Local ONP officials—from the two estranged factions there were—gathered from all corners of the state into the large compound that enclosed the one-storey secretariat building at a peering distance from the fourth estate of the realm. Standing at the mouth of the wide enclosure after being denied entry were journalists, alert and readied by the awkward atmosphere for the coverage of the intriguing slips from the reconciliatory gathering.
For the past three months, ONP in the state had been battling with serious disintegration issues, owing to the election of party officials in the state which in some quarters was believed to have been grossly misconducted. A faction in the party contested this in the High Court at Ede. The gracious court ruled in the favour of these disgruntled members of the party and pronounced the election null and void. The other faction comprising the newly elected officials refused to acknowledge the court’s ruling and went about parading themselves in their official capacities. Sensing the factiousness of the beleaguered party could be their undoing in the fast approaching gubernatorial election, stakeholders arranged for a meeting of reconciliation between the incongruous belligerent divisions. Acting on this prompt, the sitting governor appointed as the chair of the gathering, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG).
Afifekúmẹmu watched keenly as the proceeding went on and their chosen representatives presented their terms. Debates popped up on who should relinquish the posts for the other. After hours of circumambages, peacemaking and sugar-coating, it became apparent the committee was inclined to uphold the court’s ruling. Chaos surged high in the air.
“Never, kò le ṣèé ṣée—It can’t be done.”
Attempts to douse the noises and calm the upsurge of chaos were counterintuitive like extinguishing a raging inferno with a blow of egressive air. Afifekúmẹmu, without giving it further thought, hurled a sharp edged stone at the smiling face of the former state vice chairman of the party—now the leader of the favoured faction. Blood snaked out of his smashed nose. The disadvantaged members of the committee’s stance did not wait for the effect to sink, they swung things within their hand reach towards the high table. A fight broke out between the two bellicose factions. Policemen quickly walked the SSG and his entourage out of the secretariat shooting into the air while their followers and fellow ‘dignified’ democrats continued their show of shame.
They turned themselves into street urchins fighting with daggers of different sizes and knives and needled objects and several harmful juju effects. From nowhere, a man brought a sword-like object from his dirt-dragging agbada. He struck Afifekúmẹmu whose back was turned to him deep in another engagement; he proceeded to another foe holding a dagger who fell at one strike. As for Afifekúmẹmu, he sustained neither cut nor injuries; instead his shirt was only ripped at the point of the strike. The one who struck him was now as disadvantaged as he was when he was struck. In reprisal, Afifekúmẹmu undid a hitherto hidden bàntẹ́—a juju belt for offense and defense— which he rotated in the air as he neared his provocateur. Before he could lay the juju belt on him, a taller man seized it from behind and struck with it in one decisive blow. Afifekúmẹmu went down immediately in mild convulsion.
“Ah! Ẹ̀fun ń b’èdì . . . èwọ̀! Ẹ gbà mí o.” he writhed in pain. The people with whom he came heard his unmistakable voice and rushed to his rescue. Before they could rally round him, the taller man had vanished.
“Take me home . . . ah! Take me home.” he managed to say in a pained voice.
High-pitched sirens of police trucks soon overbore the place. Journalists, who from the beginning of the chaos had gained entry covering the chaos, scampered about. The fighting lot dispersed to evade police arrest. Afifekúmẹmu’s people lifted him into the bus and took off.
On their way home, he mentioned the several warnings he refused to heed to. He cried bitterly of how his strongheadedness might cost him his life. His co-passengers tried dispelling such thoughts from his mind, reassuring him he would be alright.
“Fast. Ah! Fast, driver. This thing is getting into me where it matters. Drive faster.” he frantically motioned the driver to accelerate amidst pain. He continued, muttering incantations, “No, now is not my time. Iku, I am an initiate of Orunmila. Arun, I have eaten in bowls of the ones that own the earth. When Orunmila was descending to Ikole Aye . . .”
He trailed off as the vehicle bumped into potholes. He cried hard. He kept complaining of pains all over his body. He then went into a world of his own. He saw Iku laughing at his plight; Arun licking his body like a dog a bone. He cried even more when he saw phantasms of his seven children, his senior wife and the junior wife in whose womb the eighth was ensconced.
“Who would take care of my wife and unborn child? Ah!” He wept in excruciating pain.
“You will, my friend. You will. We are almost home. You will soon be okay.” assured his ousted ward party chairman who himself was scared of the squeamish foam running down his mouth.
A stone throw to their town, Afifekúmẹmu squirmed violently and let out a loud gasp. His body went limp afterwards. Everyone cried his name and true to his name, he had drunk palm wine from the jar of death.
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