Anthills of the Savannah

ONE OF THE MANY questions Ikem had had to field in the course of his lecture, some briefly and others at some length, concerned a fairly persistent rumour that the Central Bank of Kangan was completing plans to put the President’s image on the nation’s currency. Was it true and if so what did the honourable lecturer think about such an eventuality?

“Yes I heard of it like everybody else. Whether there is such a plan or not I don’t know. All I can say is I hope the rumour is unfounded. My position is quite straightforward especially now that I don’t have to worry about being Editor of the Gazette. My view is that any serving President foolish enough to lay his head on a coin should know he is inciting people to take it off; the head I mean.”

The statement which was roundly applauded in the auditorium was to reverberate louder still throughout the country from the very next morning when the National Gazette came out brandishing in the heaviest possible type the headline: EX-EDITOR ADVOCATES REGICIDE!

One of the ifs of recent Kangan history is what the fate of Ikem might have been had he backed out of that speaking engagement at the university. Those who hold that the lecture was decisive are probably underrating the sheer indefatigability of Major Johnson (Samsonite) Ossai, Director of SRC. For he was moving and closing in relentlessly on a number of alternative fronts the most menacing coming from the direction of the controversial expatriate Director of Administration at the Bassa General Hospital, Mr. John Kent, popularly called the Mad Medico. For over a year now the perspicacious Major had had the foresight to keep Mr. Kent under very close but discreet surveillance. And what accrued to the Major from this particular exercise was of such crucial importance that it might have sufficed by itself even if the lecture had not happened. This is not by any means to underrate the new opening offered by the lecture for it did make a dramatic pincer movement and quick kill easy and inevitable.

Mr. Kent was hauled in quietly for interrogation, held secretly and incommunicado for four days at the BMSP, released under tight security and deported within forty-eight hours. A terse radio and television announcement of his deportation for activities prejudicial to state security issued by the Directorate of State Research Council when Mr. Kent was already airborne was the first and last official intimation Kangan had of this unexpected event. Few at first could have linked it clearly with the suspension of the Editor of the National Gazette announced earlier although the two announcements coming so close to each other left in many minds the impression that the uneasy calm of the past twelve months might at last be speeding to a close.

And then a few hours later there was yet another special announcement. This time it was issued by the Army Council (a body that no one could recall announcing anything in years), and it told the nation simply that, in an extraordinary meeting of the Army Council, Major Johnson Ossai, Director of the State Research Council, was promoted to the rank of full colonel. End of special announcement.

He is certainly sticking to his promise to do things constitutionally, thought Chris when he heard this latest bulletin.

It was all very well for Beatrice to make fun of his morning routine of informational alienation but no one had yet suggested to him a better way for getting to know what was going on, not in the outside world—that had always known how to wait—but right here in Kangan. So instead of the BBC at seven as usual he got up earlier the next morning and tuned in to its six o’clock news. And true enough Mr. Kent’s deportation from the West African state of Kangan, although extremely scanty in detail, had made world news!

With one ear glued to the little transistor radio he dialled Ikem’s number. He had failed to reach him last night when the news about MM first broke. The houseboy who answered the phone said he had gone out in the afternoon with dat gal… And now the telephone was ringing away and nobody was picking it up. Ikem was notorious as a late riser and positively hated to be disturbed early in the morning, but Chris thought that in present circumstances he might at least pick up his phone… No. Very well.

He tried Beatrice next. She answered sleepily at first but on hearing who and what became instantly and intensely alert.

“Try and get the BBC. They are likely to have a fuller story in the African news after the world bulletin.”

“But how does one get the BBC? You know I have never yet been able to find them. All I get is that infuriating thing in special English from the Voice of America. I think my radio must be made by CIA…”

A little later she called back, her voice utterly dejected, to report failure yet again.

“Never mind, dear. Come right over. I managed to record MM off transmission. Meanwhile I am trying to reach Ikem. His ability to sleep through storms is beginning to irritate me… See you.”

By the time Beatrice went over at about seven-forty-five, Chris had been alerted and was making frantic calls all over Bassa without any success. As soon as her car drove in he rushed out. “Ikem’s not in his flat though he went to bed there last night…”

“He may have gone out early.”

“His car is in the garage and… let’s go and see for ourselves. Can you drive us?”

“Sure.” She noticed he was trembling.

The front door was locked so they went round to the back and through the kitchen door to which the houseboy held a spare key. The flat was in a shambles. Books and papers and clothes were strewn everywhere in the living-room and in the master and spare bedrooms. An alarm clock lay among shards of its broken glass beside the bed.

The houseboy was repeating what he had already told Chris on the telephone a short while ago when there was a tap on the door and a woman came in uncertainly, and then a man. They were Ikem’s neighbours in the adjacent flat. The man, a civil servant, recognized the Commissioner for Information at once.

“Good morning, sir,” he said. Finding the Commissioner there seemed to have lifted his morale and removed some of the gloomy timidity with which he had come in. “Agnes, this is the Commissioner for Information, Mr. Oriko. Sir, this is my wife.”

“Good morning sir,” said Agnes the wife also brightening up considerably.

“Thank you. Have you seen anything of your neighbour? Since last night?”

The man looked at Beatrice questioningly and then around the room and the open doors.

“There is nobody else here. You know who I am. This is Beatrice Okoh, Senior Assistant Secretary, Finance. We are not police or security, just friends of Mr. Osodi. Did you see anything?”

“Pleased to meet you madam… I was fast asleep when Agnes woke me up and said there were two jeeps outside…”

“Army jeeps?”

“So I went to the window to look and she was right. There were two jeeps standing in the yard and by that time the people were banging on our neighbour’s front door. Then after some time we could hear the door open.”

“Did they identify themselves? Did they say who they were?”

“I think they said they were from State Research Council.”