The call of the pack

The first thing I saw were the sticks. The mob were clawing over the car in front of us and they were waving big lumps of wood. I could see some of them had nails driven through them. The thugs brandished their clubs at the driver, holding them up, threatening to let them fall, stamping forward, trying to make the driver flinch. They swamped the car. Over 30 of them crowded round like hunting dogs on a kill, banging on the windows and the sides, whooping and yelling, cursing and waving their rope-like arms.
"What should I do?" Could we get out of this? I slammed the car into reverse and looked over my shoulder, but there was another car behind us already –where had he come from? The revving of the motor had their attention. My attempt to flee had pulled them up from the car in front, they fell away from it and began to lope toward us. They were approaching slowly. One boy stood in front of us, he had a fencepost he'd ripped out of the ground with a glob of concrete on the end. He held it aloft over the bonnet of the car. His bottom lip jutted out and twitched, beckoning me to try him. There was another, thin weevilly thug on the other side of the mob, dragging the tip of his cutlass along the ground with the sloppy indifference of a boy who would attack when the rest of the pack attacked, who had no mind of his own, would feel nothing, who would not stop, and who didn't care.
"The boot, open the boot of your car!" they shouted, flinging their hands up. We had two laptops in there, these guys were robbing us.
"Do we do what they say?" I asked, scared and not really knowing what to do.
"Yes," said Tashikalmah, definitely. I resigned myself to losing the computer. I got out. One of the boys came up to us. He was wearing a pair of home made sunglasses. Black transparent plastic glued to a wire frame, trying to mimic something he's seen on Channel O. These glasses made him some kind of leader. He held a cutlass in his hand. He grabbed the door handle and pulled at it, angrily. They were jabbering in Hausa, and Tashikalmah was talking back. I came forward with the key and opened the boot. They were in head first, clawing at the bags. "They're looking for fake ballot papers," said Tashikalmah. I pushed my way forward and opened the bag with my computer. See? No ballots.
The air went out of the mob a little. Some slunk away, the pack was no longer wired together. The younger ones now came forward, getting bold, copying the older ones –hoping the older ones would notice them, not wanting the confrontation to pass without striking a pose, throwing a curse, or rattling a sabre, even though the pack leaders had certified the danger was over.
One of the ANPP party agents told them about a 'suspicious van' that had been discovered. It had been full of fake ballot papers and ballot boxes. But do you know what? They'd escaped and there was no evidence of it ever happening. Ali, a 32 year old baker in the village was leading the vigilante mob. He told us he hadn't seen it himself, but was "protecting the town" from the forces of manipulation. Somehow I knew that if we asked every boy in the village that day, no one could say they actually saw the suspicious outsiders with the rigging tools. Everyone we spoke to in the whole state of Bauchi had heard the same thing, and everyone believed it utterly. And there's a chance it could have been true, but what it achieved was much more powerful than the mysterious riggers could have hoped to achieve for their side. Gangs of boys roamed the streets, on a mission to 'vote, protect, escort'. I would think the chances of any voter who happened to support the PDP coming out on that day were nil. But what with PDP politicians scrabbling to jump ship, what did it matter?
It's not like many would get to vote anyway.
It wasn't the only time we got stopped like this. The night after the election we drove into a mob outside Inec, lounging around in the dark, showing off to each other with their crude clubs. As Tashikalmah opened the boot I looked at one boy standing by the car. He was about 14, lanky and listless. He didn't have a club or a cutlass, or a sneer. He looked scared. It was the kind of fear that breeds in the darkness of ignorance and fatalism. I felt like shouting at him: "Go home! Go to school! Read a book! Grow up!" but I had a feeling he would do none of these.

Juju and elections

As we walked up to the Inec office in Okene, I saw a small pile of gari in the middle of the road. I didn’t think much of it. Maybe someone spilled it by accident.
But driving around town, I noticed more little piles of bright white flour at intersections. At one place the flour was poured around the little traffic director’s hut in the middle. It looked like a necklace.
It wasn’t until the second time we passed the junction by Inec that I noticed corn and other seeds had been spread on the floor too. Next to them were leaves folded into packets and tied up with string.
The juju was obviously down.
I have no idea who set the spell, or what the spell was. I wasn’t about to ask anyone either. I’ve tried to unpick what was happening before my eyes that afternoon.
We trekked all around the water tank at the heart of town looking for a polling station that had any ballot papers, ballot boxes, voting booths, a queue of voters, anything that might indicate voting may happen. There was nothing, and this was only yards away from the main Inec office in town.
An hour earlier a crowd of men surrounded the office, and had to be pushed back by soldiers so staff could bring boxes of ballots out to waiting busses. But as we walked around there was a complete silence, and an almost complete absence of men. Women and children sat on the porches of their homes, resting their chins on hands, regarding us as we passed. The people we stopped to talk to all said the same thing. They weren’t worried about the delay in distributing the ballots, and they were confident that in this area, the Action Congress would win.
When we came back to the main road we saw where all the guys in town were. A crowd had formed around a primary school next to the Okene police station. We began walking down to them but had second thoughts when we saw the crowd swathe and bulge in that dangerous way. It was probably best to come back later, someone suggested.
An hour or so went by. We came back to the spot and found to our surprise “everyone” had voted and people were streaming away from the polling stations, happy, laughing, cheering victory.
“See? Na peaceful-o, tell your people naija dey vote peaceful!” someone shouted at me, giggling.
I walked up to the wooden table of a polling unit. An AC party agent had a book of ballots in his hand. Every one had a thumb-print for the Action Congress. He was stamping the backs of the ballots, tearing them off the book and passing them to an Inec official to sign and place in the ballot box.
At another polling unit where voting had all but finished, the Inec presiding officer told us she had abandoned the lawful procedure because she feared the crowd would get violent. She said they had checked everyone off against the register before allowing them to vote. They only tore off the ballots from the book as they stamped them later, after the voters had left, she said.
We asked what time she’s received the ballots, and what time voting had finished. As she told us, her eyes dipped down away from mine and a little secret smile inched across her face. 312 voters had come, done their duty and left within an hour and a quarter.
Later, I asked my friend who was observing the election in another state how long it was taking for people to vote there. He told me that because the register wasn’t listed sequentially, it was taking between five to six minutes to find people in the register, give them the ballot, put their thumb print on it, mark their finger, stamp the ballot, sign it an drop it in the box. A voter’s register of 312 people would take 26 hours for everyone to vote.
I thought that somehow the vote had been hijacked. I asked the Chairman of the Action Congress in the state about what we’d seen. He said: “I don’t believe it, because the police stationed at the polling unit, or the Inec officials, wouldn’t allow it to happen that way.”
The police DPO just shrugged his shoulders when we asked him about what we’d seen.
Money and the threat of violence will persuade people with positions of responsibility to abandon the principles they were employed to uphold, but the officials we spoke to did not seem scared, or ashamed of what was happening.
Could it be that their choice to disregard the rules was made easier because they knew they were participating in a communal effort? Communal efforts need signs and signals, what better than a bright white pile of gari?

Inside Oga's house*

We entered the Oga’s antechamber, ushered in by men in suits. Men in full “one thousand two thousand” kaftan arrangements stood about, sat on plush sofas or on the fluffy carpet. They were evidently very important people, and we were all waiting for the man.
This was the second, inner, waiting room. Without was a shabbier room, all tiles and a big flat screen TV with football on. Big burly men sat around discussing one thing or another in loud voices. Everyone had to take off their shoes before entering the inner chamber.
I sat down where they told me. My colleague’s friend tried to sit on the adjacent sofa.
“Upupupupup! No, that is Oga’s seat. You cannot sit there.” Her bottom didn’t even touch the velour cover before she was up and scurrying to another perch. It was the seat opposite the television. Everyone turned back to their conversation and waited for the man to enter.
I studied the wall opposite. There were two pictures on the wall. One was of a fair skinned man and his wife in front of a cruise ship. It was the kind of picture they sell for £15 on the first night of a Caribbean cruise, the only day anyone bothers to wear a tuxedo to dinner. The other was of the man in a cap and matching boubou holding something in his hand. I couldn’t see what it was at first, but after a moment I noticed the man appeared to be sitting in a hospital. The package he’s just been handed was a little baby. The man was so happy, it looked like he had just delivered the baby himself. The mother was nowhere to be seen.
Below, resting on the floor, were a number of painted portraits of Oga. One was on wood and seemed to be an award but I couldn’t see what for. I didn’t think it mattered.
I picked up a piece of paper next to me. It was a list of the man’s achievements. These included being “a renowned jinx breaker”.
My colleague took one of the papers and instinctively began correcting syntax mistakes with his biro and shaking his head. He gave up after the first two lines with a “harrumph”.
Fat men in pyjamas sat on the floor, like teddy bears dumped by a petulant child. Their bellies sagged in their pink clothes, their chubby bare feet stuck out, legs akimbo. The carpets were a gaudy pink and black. The TV was sitting on a painted wooden cabinet, the type I’d seen them make on the side of the road. I’d heard those workshops called Fikea, fake-Ikea. Come to think of it, I’d seen those carpets for sale at the side of the road too. Hanging from a tree, if I remember right.
I chatted to the man next to me. Apparently he was an “opinion former”. He was there to present a pledge for a number of votes that he could guarantee. I asked him how much he wanted for that promise. He said: “I do not want anything. But if they offer, I will take.”
I see.
All of a sudden there was a whirlwind of aides and hangers on and Oga arrived. He floated in, gliding through the door in a grey kaftan. Everyone got up and rushed to be the first one to buckle their knees and dip to the floor. He did a once over of all those waiting in the ante chamber and then, while everyone was still standing, clattered through a door in the corner carrying all his aides -still struggling for his attention- with him.
There was a pause and everyone retuned to his seat and the conversation they were having beforehand.
A mosquito had a chance to catch his breath before the door flew open and Oga reappeared, making his way to another door across the room. Everyone leapt to their feet again, but there was no time for another round of prostrations. He was out the sliding door, security and wife in tow.
If anyone knew what was going on they weren’t telling me.

*An 'Oga' is a boss, a big man, a patron