Dauda

EPISODES 1,2&3

“And on the Sports Scene’’, the newscaster’s rich feminine voice billowed through the bus radio into Dauda’s tingly ears. “Nigerian National League surprise package, Yenegoa United defeated Ibadan giants, Oluyole Rangers 2 nil on home soil to seal their promotion to the Nigerian Professional Football League and go level on points with log leaders, Berger FC. This takes the battle for the NNL championship title to the final day of the season.’’

Dauda let his heart bathe in the joy of his players’ cheers. It felt as though they all needed to hear about their just-concluded feat in the news to be sure they weren’t dreaming. It all felt like a dream. A dream too good to be true. But by some stroke of a miracle, it was true. Pundits had predicted that they didn’t even have the quality to finish in the top half of the table. But here they were, promoted to the Nigeria Professional Football League and in with a shout for the NNL title. It was a truly surreal moment. Their surreal moment. And they weren’t going to let anyone live in it for them.

Even Effiong, the team’s chauffeur, who seemed to have been cursed with an immovable stone-face, complemented the players’ cheers with slight rhythmic honk sounds as he drove the team’s bus along MKO Abiola Way. The newscaster was still speaking, but no one cared. There was just one bit of news that mattered at that moment. And they already heard it.

Several congratulatory text messages had been flooding in for the past half-hour, but the one that just popped unto Dauda’s smartphone screen was particularly heartwarming. It was nothing special. It simply read, “Congratulations, Bros D. You deserve this!’’. But it was special. It was from Sadiq; the one man who was there for him when his wife took their child and absconded without warning; the one man who was there for him in his recently won battle against alcohol addiction; the man who enrolled him in his first professional coaching course.

He would reply, but just not yet. He was still busy soaking in the joy of his latest victory.

He remembered how the media had turned on him mercilessly, how he had wondered what devil possessed him to pursue a career as a football coach after the crushing 6–0 defeat his team suffered on the opening day of the season. It was all the more satisfying to think they had just defeated the same opponent.

“And this is where we wrap up the Mid-day News on Splash 105.5 FM. Thanks for joining us. I am Ronke Giwa Onafuwa. Don’t touch that dial!”

The news broadcast’s customary soundtrack played to signal the end of the news. But the air got filled with the players’ excited chants instead;

Who be Black Panther?

E no reach Coach Dauda!

Opobo get Jaja!

We get Coach Dauda!

Dauda Miracle!

Na dia papa oh!!!

Dauda loved his players. And he loved the chant. Particularly because the fans first chanted it to show their support after a hard-fought draw with hot favorites, Kanuri Wolves. But for some reason, it felt more personal hearing his players chant it. All the same, he could only muster a mild fist pump and a delighted “Thank you!” to acknowledge his players’ support. He was still too busy soaking at the moment to care about the gathering clouds in the sky or the swearing motorist threatening to invoke Sango against them for constituting a nuisance in traffic.

He looked outside his seat window. Office buildings, churches, a mall, eateries, supermarkets, a mini-market, filling stations. But no brown roofs.

Where did they all go? He eventually didn’t go to school as much he wanted. But he was a lover of the steady civilization and development he saw around. Despite that fact though, there were some things about the Ibadan he used to know as a boy and as a younger man that he still missed.

The fields where he and his friends used to cultivate dreams of emulating Rashidi Yekini’s exploits now housed parking lots to corporate buildings and church cathedrals. Iya Saamu’s Ewa agoyin and ice water joint, his dependable escape from his father and mother’s constant fighting — more like his father’s constant pounding of his mother’s body and soul — was now nowhere to be found. Neither was Teacher Mustapha’s after-school Kunu tent or the Guava tree where he had passed out after his SS3 classmate, Victor had forced him to try out Ganjah for the first time.

He never became a professional footballer, talk less of even scratching the surface of Yekini’s exploits. He never reached the height he was once poised to reach as a businessman either. Just two years ago, he was an alcohol addict who had almost lost his kidneys to Ogogoro. No one besides Sadiq gave him a chance to beat his inner demons. Not even he had given himself a chance before Sadiq did. But here he was living a new dream. A dream that happened to find him.

Eventually, something besides the thrill of the day’s victory would get his attention. It wasn’t the heavy downpour that now threatened to drill wells in on the road’s asphalt though. It was the simple thought that flashed through his being, that there truly is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler. He just needed to give himself a chance to find it.

Just before that thought could settle, Effiong found himself struggling to halt the bus’s strained grind against the slippery highway asphalt. Time stopped. Hearts flew out of the bus window.

Dauda’s mind finally got forced back into his present reality. His present gruesome reality.

***

Tayo Alfred gave a broad smile.

“Bye-bye, my dear. Make sure say you chop oh” one of Omotayo’s favorite voices greeted back as she took her medications across the pharmacy counter. The voice had come into her life out of curative necessity; he was the hospital’s chief pharmacist. It was husky and soaked in an Anambra-bred Igbo accent, but for Tayo, Baba Ibo’s voice had become the sound of fatherly love.

She never managed to shake off the fact that this man deferred his retirement by a year, just to buy himself a little more time to continue bullying her to comply with her doctor’s prescriptions. Even though he would never admit it.

That smile would vanish quickly, though. The sight of several injured people being rushed into the hospital sucked out the cool, hopeful air in the reception. The hospital’s stretchers wouldn’t be enough to carry the battalion of injured victims to the hospital’s Emergency Ward. Those less wounded were rolled into treatment rooms on wheelchairs. A group of sports athletes and a gorgeous middle-aged man carried most of the victims to the stretchers and wheelchairs. The middle-aged man even carried one victim directly to a treatment room to augment the hospital’s strained facilities. Nurses seemed to fly in and out of every corner. Doctors swarmed out of their offices. About four of them.

Tayo looked on, knowing she couldn’t possibly be one of the Messiahs on this rescue mission. All that blood. All that horror. All that running and gasping. Not for her. Not for her heart. If at all her heart needed any adventures, a gym treadmill and her job were enough, she thought. Besides, one can only do so much with a borrowed heart.

Okay, maybe not ‘borrowed’; the heart was hers now. It had even made itself at home in her within the two years it had lived in her chest, but anxiety won’t let her trust and just breathe. She’d stick with the gym. It was how come she looked twenty-eight even though she was already approaching her thirty-eighth birthday, anyways.

Groans of hurting patients rasped through the reception. Patient-carrying stretchers screech-wheeled past the tilled reception floor, destined for the Emergency Ward lobby. Doctors and nurses spoke in Medical Jargon. Treatment room doors squeaked open and shut. But somehow, the quixotic sight of the man that blurted “Road accident. Their brake failed… Is he still breathing?” stood out to her. It was the man who led the group of athletes that carried the victims to stretchers and wheelchairs. It was Dauda.

A female doctor came over to thank him for rushing the victims down to the hospital. “Only God knows what would’ve happened if you weren’t so kind,” she said. “Please send our regards to your players.” “They’ll hear. All the best with the patients” Dauda managed, his face pale with fatigue.

“Thank you. Would you mind waiting here at the reception for a few minutes?” The doctor continued. “I have a few questions for you, but my patients need me at the moment.”

Dauda watched as Effiong approached from afar with a ragamuffin trudge and a smile that looked like a pinch of awe. “Like how many minutes?” He replied, scanning the reception for a comfy chair to snug in.

“Thirty minutes?”

A whole thirty minutes! He thought. “Sure. I’ll be here,” he responded nonetheless. It just wasn’t his style to refuse a lady. And that was why he didn’t refuse Tayo either when she requested that he adjust to make room for her on the bench. They both knew she could have easily moved to the other bench. But Dauda had lived long enough to know that trying to out-drama-queen a woman was an extreme sport. So, Tayo sat there, curious as to what caused the accident, and quite frankly, how fascinating the man beside her might be.

Relief washed through Dauda’s soul. He had feared the worst when Affiong seemed to lose control of the wheels.

Eventually, the breaks and the wheels listened to Effiong and the accident stopped with three vehicles in front of their bus. A motorist’s brakes failed while his car was at a fair speed and collided with another car transporting a group of five friends entering the highway from the mall. A third motorist didn’t get a quick enough grip on his wheels and sped into the collided pair. It was later learned that the third motorist had been texting on his smartphone leading up to the accident.

Goosebumps clasped Dauda’s skin as the scenes flashed through his mind. Thankfully, Effiong arrived just in time to bail him out of the horror.

“Oga, if we no commot now, we fit miss our flight oh,” he advised.

“I know jare, but Doctor say she wan see me. Make una dey go hotel. I go join una for airport. And please thank the boys for me. We wouldn’t have been able to save these people if not for them”

“Okay, sir. Dem go hear.”

Tayo glanced across Dauda’s slouched body at Effiong as he made his way out of the hospital. Was this a good time to start a conversation? She was going to find out. “The man admires you,” she started. “Maybe he just feels good. Doing good does that to you,” Dauda giggled, his eyes slowly shutting.

“Ah, I see… Well-done.’’

“Hunhun”

“I guess you’re the team’s coach; the team that rushed the victims here.”

Dauda didn’t respond. Tayo glanced at him. His eyes were shut, but he didn’t look asleep. Is he ignoring me? She thought. The nerve of him!

“I’m sorry. I was praying” Dauda reverted. “Oh… Okay. Hope you prayed for me?”

“Ah, no. I charge when I pray for strangers”, he laughed.

Tayo laughed back, fondling with the impression that he just might be fun too. However, she felt a slight disappointment now: How come he doesn’t know me? Anyways, she’d just keep talking.

He had been passable so far. He was probably funny. And he prays!

“So, you mean you don’t know me?” Tayo continued.

“Should I?”

“You don’t watch movies, do you?”

“Hardly”

“I see. And never Nollywood?”

“Maybe once or twice in a year”, Dauda answered, embarrassed. “Wow!” Tayo giggled. I should seize your Nigerian passport.”

“You really should! So…you’re an actress?”

“I like to call myself a baby girl, but yeah, that’s what people call me.”

“I see why almost everyone has been stealing glances at us now”

“Yeah, cos I’m a star girl”

“Of course, Star baby girl… Or maybe star baby lady. I guess that fits better… I’m Dauda, by the way”, Dauda offered, extending a handshake.

“I’m Tayo. And no, I’m a baby girl for life. I’m just sixteen!”

“I guess I’m a baby boy too then. I’m just eighteen!”

“Exactly,” she giggled, watching as his side-beard embellished his curved cheek and shone under the reception bulb.

Time flew by. Their conversation felt as rhythmic as their heartbeats. It was proving to be as relaxing for Dauda as the nap he had in mind and more exciting for Tayo than she had earlier guessed. It took an interruption from Tayo’s driver to get them to pause their chatter.

***

Dauda watched with a smile as Tayo waved him goodbye from her car. He felt a little sad that their conversation didn’t last any longer. But the business card in his right tracksuit pocket would offer some comfort. He wondered if this was the start of something new; the start of something that would change his life forever, again.

He had learned that all things work together for good, but politics in Nigeria had also taught him that change wasn’t always a good thing.

Anyways, there’s no need thinking too far; it was just talk. Ordinary talk, he thought.

He waved back, warning her to himself; Stop smiling, lady or I just might fall in love!

Just then, the doctor found Dauda in the hospital compound. “Oh, there you are!”, she said. Dauda turned and saw the doctor approaching with a young astute-looking woman behind her.

“How are they now, Doctor?” Dauda asked. “In stable condition,” she replied. “By the way, the police would like to get a brief statement from you on the accident. I hope you don’t mind?”

“I’m behind on my team’s schedule already. Can they ask someone else…or — ”

“We would make sure you don’t miss your flight sir, but you are in the best position to answer my questions,” the woman behind the doctor flew in, flashing her police ID card. “I’m Inspector Nadia Uwaifo.”

Dauda’s skin touted with anxiety. “Why me?”

***

Twenty-eight years back, sixteen-year-old Dauda Olaitan boogied through King Sunny Ade’s Motimo. He found an extra voice whenever “Iwaju loloko yi nwa mi lo, eyin ko l’oloko yi nwa mi lo…” filled the air.

Maybe because it spoke of progress. Progress. Exactly what he was making. His WAEC result had just been released, and it was a stock of distinctions. His head was complete after all, as his mother would often tell him in Yoruba whenever he made her feel proud of her ovaries.

He wasn’t planning to become a professor or anything. He would rather be a dean of soccer, like Rashidi Yekini. But he had seen enough of the woes of illiteracy to convince him that education was a basic requirement for existence. He had seen his father surrender his five acres of land to swindlers who had posed as bankers. They conned him into sign a transfer ownership agreement on the land in place of the five hundred thousand Naira loan contract he thought he signed, using the land as collateral. He would do all he could to avoid such “e don happen” stories.

He would further his education. The sheen on marbles; he would attend night classes at the University of Ibadan while trying out at Oluyole Warriors. Their coach had seen him play and had loved him already. His life was set!

He dropped the news off with his mother at Oke-Ado market on his way from school before heading home. He was expecting the ‘special-day usual’ once she returned from the market. Amala and Abula. Just the thought of its taste sent delight through his insides. Thinking about it now, he marveled at how oblivious he was to his mother’s plight at the time. It suddenly struck him how nerve-racking it must have been for his mother to go from a busy day at the market to concocting such strenuous meals.

He remembered that day so vividly because it was the day his once imperfect but steady-paced life started becoming irregular. That was the day his parents’ turbulent marriage finally gave in to father’s darker tendencies. That was the day his father came home with his mistress and sent him and his mother packing. His father had been convinced that a woman who would rather keep her landed property, hoping to finance her son’s university education with it, rather than sell it to finance her husband’s ward councilor ambition didn’t deserve the husband. His mother tried to appeal to her husband, but her only reward was the usual bout of poundings. Body and soul.

Looking just in front of him now at the woman being detained for beating her husband to a pulp, he could only wonder what a wonder-full world it was. As he strung the police station lobby with Inspector Nadia, he thought to himself near disbelief: This life… It is what it is!

“Thanks for letting me trouble you to this, Mr. Olaitan.”

Dauda noticed her British accent. It was the best type. Not the one some Nigerians used to announce their residence in, or even visit the UK. She looked too Asian to be British though. And then there was her Nigerian surname, Uwaifo. One sharp Edo man must’ve played his cards like a pro to have ended up with the mother of this Asian piece of beauty. He must have settled in the UK, he thought. The thought brought back fonder memories of his once-upon-a-time Asian beauty. His ex-wife, Aliyah.

“It’s nothing” he would eventually reply. “Where do I write the statement?”

“Oh, that. We have all we need on that already. My questions are about John Sonekan.”

Dauda could hardly believe his ears. “Inspector, I only followed you here out of respect for your uniform. My team’s flight leaves in 50 minutes. Please pick some other day to waste my time.”

He stood up from where he sat, poised for the door. But the Inspector wasn’t done yet.

“His wallet was found on your bus. If you walk out of the door, I would take it to mean either you or one of your players, at least, was an accompanist to murder.”

“What?!” Dauda sat. His legs felt too light to support his body.

“His car was the third car in the accident. He had called to report the death of his wife in a hotel room, but wasn’t there when we arrived.”

“Wait, which John Sonekan are you talking about? The writer?”

“Yes. That one.”

“Inspector, I don’t know him. And I don’t think any of my players do. I only hear about him when he releases a book or when he shades the government. There must have been a mistake somewhere”

Inspector Nadia put on a disposable glove, picked the wallet out of the bag it was kept and showed it to Dauda. John Sonekan’s Identity card and debit cards were there, glimmering. She also showed him a picture of the same wallet lying on his team’s bus floor. There was no mistake. The wallet belonged to John Sonekan. And it was found in his team’s bus.

Dauda’s eyes grew dim whilst wide open. How on earth did he get himself involved in this? He should have just asked Effiong to proceed to the hotel after the accident happened. And why didn’t Effiong mention all these to him anyway? Why would he think something serious enough for police cameras wasn’t serious enough to tell him about? Or maybe he didn’t know she was a policewoman. Maybe he too had been too engrossed in saving the victims to care about whatever else might have been happening at the hospital.

“Well, sir, if it would be any help, I know you had nothing to do with it. He must have dropped it while you tried to get him to the hospital and escaped from there.”

Dauda’s legs started to feel alive again. He had feared that the police were trying to frame him, being the easy target, for a crime he knew nothing about just so they could skip the hard work of investigation. But he was wrong. And gladly so.

“Ah, thank you. Can I go now?”

“Not so soon sir. I still haven’t asked my question…”

“Ehn, ask your question nau…” he grunted, frustrated at the back and forth.

“John Sonekan left his copy of the contract he signed with the publishers for his new book in the wallet,” she pulled the contract out. “He would call back for it. We would like to let us know immediately he calls your club for it. Would you do that for us?”

Dauda’s eyes fell on a framed picture on Inspector Nadia’s table. A woman and a four-year-old looking girl, all bright and glee. The girl looked just like the daughter his ex-wife had absconded to the UK twenty years ago. And the woman. That was Aliyah, his ex-wife. That was the love that changed his life. The love that maimed his life.

Inspector Nadia noticed the unease on Dauda’s face. She had felt weird, deeply familiar with this man all through their short exchanges. But she felt that way often, whenever she met a middle-aged man who reminded her of her father’s kind heart.

“Are you alright, sir?” She asked.

“Oh, yes, I am,” Dauda responded, jolting out of his shock. Nadia smiled. At the way, he reminded her of her father’s innate weirdness.

“Okay then. Please let us know when he calls.”

“I will… I guess you think he killed her.”

“Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, Mr. Olaitan. Besides, if you had been following the news, you might have heard that the girl whose gang-r**e he wrote about in the novel he is in town to launch committed suicide. Her name got leaked to the media.

“Oh… I didn’t know that.”

“She told him about it on the condition that her name would not be revealed. Her father has sued him for breach of their contract. He could already go to jail for that. And now this. Someone may be trying to frame him.”

Dauda giggled. If only she knew how foolish that sounded.

“He is a writer after all. That is the story he wants you to believe.”

Dauda felt a guilt-shaped gall in his gut after saying that. Who was he to judge anyone that way? He might have been bitter enough to kill the woman he married. But that didn’t mean John Sonekan was too. He might have gotten away with it, but the guilt imprisoned him. Everyone called it a good deed that he saved those accident victims. But it was only an attempt to remedy his sin at Ajibode two years ago. Guilt was his muse. But only he knew that.

“I need to pick my kid brother up from the airport sir,” Nadia said, picking up her belongings from her table, ready to head out. “He is coming into town today from London. He has been going on about me not watching his match yesterday, so if I love my peace, I better not be late.”

“Oh, he is a footballer?”

Nadia opened the door and led Dauda out of the office, into the lobby. “He is. You might know him since that’s your field. Milford Uwaifo. He plays for London Reds.”

“Wow… He is your brother? He moves like C. Ronaldo. Are you sure that boy is just 19?

Nadia laughed, surprised at how impressive Dauda found the same boy she used to bathe and dress up just before time grew wings.

“I’ll tell him you said so… You still have about 30 minutes before your flight. I can drop you off.”

Dauda managed a nod. A new sadness had engulfed him. He was wondering whether Milford was his child too; whether Milford was the pregnancy Aliyah conceived just before she disappeared. Before left him with a note and an empty house. Life might just have led his children back to him after twenty years, but the secrets he thought he had put behind him; the secrets at Ajibode, were asking him to keep another one. The truth of who he was to his children.

How was he supposed to tell his daughter that he was her father without speaking about how her mother died? How was he supposed to say what he did to her mother? How was he supposed to face a son who never knew him and tell him he fathered him? Especially not when he now had an Edo surname. Goosebumps hugged his mind. He couldn’t bear to lose his children again. But too much was on the line now. A scandal was the last thing his team — a team on the verge of a historic NPFL qualification — needed. It dawned that of a truth, every secret does demand a thousand others.

I am done with these secrets! Damn the consequences! He thought. Even if it means going to jail, I am not going to lose this chance to be my children’s father… But what about my team?!