this is a book I'm working on and i need your review, please don't fail me,


                                         CHAPTER ONE


Night, as usual, appeared from nowhere and enveloped everywhere, without warning. In the afternoon cloud had gathered so much that it looked twilight around one in the afternoon. Normally, rain would have followed such weather but it did not. That, though, did not stop most people from rushing their shopping and flying home to rescue their innocent clothes hung outside from the liquid strokes from above.
          Much later, when the light of day has almost defeated the usurper completely, the rain came. This time, it did not pour as the cloud had earlier indicated; it merely whispered and left as quickly as possible, as if determined not to be outran by whatever was pursuing it, for something must be pursuing it with the way it came and went, like an Ogbanje child.
          It must have truly out-run whatever was pursuing it and must have won a trophy and was returning—this night—happy. It brought a very cool breeze which also means happiness to the poor who could not afford an electric fan and those who has but can't enjoy it due to the unchanging power failure in the country.
          Earlier, its whisper has had stopped them from filling their various water containers with. Now, it seems to have come to apologize. This breezy night means some children will not have to wake up with that initial feeling that they have bed-wetted again.
          Adewale was not excluded from the list of those that usually spread their mats outside to surrender themselves to the breeze because, like the eagle, it is not common. His portable transistor radio stood beside him. To prevent the intruding static, he tied a short flexible wire to the radio’s antenna and tied the other end of the wire to the iron bar that protects the window louvers. He reached out quickly to raise the volume of the radio as the female radio presenter said they would be playing Fela Kuti’s Zombie.
          He adjusted himself on the mat and sang along as the song started. He nodded happily and felt relaxed. Once in a while he would
say aloud to himself, “Fela the death that killed you will never know peace.” Though he knew the futility of saying it, he still says it. It always makes him feel he is sharing Fela’s grief.
          “Baba Wale!” someone called, “Baba Wale!” He reduced the volume of the radio and turned to see who was calling him. It was Bisi, one of the many maids in the house. She was holding a food flask and held it out to Adewale when he sat up, facing her.
          “My food?” he asked, although he knew. It always paid to ask. The girl nodded, her face betraying no emotion as she handed the food flask over to Adewale. “What’s inside,” he asked, lowering his voice almost to a whisper, “do you know?” It was a routine question, and the girl always knew the contents of her flask.
          “Yes,” she replied, “amala and egusi soup,” answered the girl, her lips slowly parting in a smile. Pity, Adewale did not see the smile because it was night and, more so, he had already started salivating and nothing could take away his attention. “Thank you,” he said finally to the girl, looking up. “I will bring the food flask over in the morning.” The girl turned and walked away, towards the big house.
          The radio was still on and Fela’s song, Zombie, had just ended. Adewale got up and went into his small room to bring water for washing his hands and the one for drinking. When he came out, another song from Fela’s was just starting. This time it was his Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense. Adewale sang along briefly: “kereke di keke…”
          A dog started barking somewhere in the neighbourhood as Adewale sat down on his mat to deal with the contents of the food flask. The sound of vehicles speeding away on the highway came to him once in a while. He always wondered why people must drive at night with such speed on the bad roads. “When they will have accidents and die off people will start disturbing Satan with their false accusations,” he said to himself. He always said that whenever people take people take life-threatening risks.
          “It is now ten pm on your regular evening programme,” came the sweet feminine voice from the radio. “Like I said before, we will be bringing your way some of the best indigenous songs we have till it is    eleven o’ clock. Now, enjoy this one from King Sunny Ade, KSA for short.” the song started.
          The voices rose from the house and reduced again. Adewale had finished eating and had put away the food flask. He had often wondered why the meetings seem to have increased recently. Previously, the meetings were not this much, and they usually last for about thirty minutes or an hour at most. But it is now minutes past ten in the night and they are still in a meeting they started around six in the evening. Adewale shrugged, “only God knows what they are planning," he muttered. “I hope we can still move about freely after this meeting.
          The voices rose again and the security dogs started barking. Adewale waited for the voices to come down but they didn’t, so he concluded the meeting was over. He rose from his mat, reduced the volume of the radio and waited to open the gate for the cars. It was because of this meeting that Chief had instructed him not to go home.
          Adewale had come to love Chief not because he is a good man but because Chief had decided to keep him. With all the thugs that follow Chief he still keeps him at the gate, referring to him as the security man, not the usual gateman. If he can be called the security man, he thought, what would Chief’s thugs be called? Sometimes he felt Chief was mocking him by calling him the security man. But what does it matter as long as he got his salary at the end of every month? He had long concluded that Chief was just keeping him because he wants to.
          Being Chief’s gateman was a saviour to him and his family, because since he retired from the Civil Service, he had not received his pension, and that was almost a decade ago. His children were still in         secondary school then. He was retired on health grounds, seven years to his actual retirement date.
          The last car came to the open gate and stopped. Adewale was standing beside the car, fighting to subdue the power of the magnet that seems to be fixed on his eyelids. Adewale knew the owner of the car, a professor at the Premier University. He was always writing one thing or the other in the newspaper in praise of Chief and his “good works.” The professor wound down the window and held out a currency note to him, smiling. He reached out and took the money.
          “Thank you, sir,” he greeted the professor.
          “Don’t mention,” the professor replied and his driver drove off. Adewale rumpled the money like the policemen do when they extort money from motorists and put it into his pocket before closing the gate.
          When he went to take in his mat his ear caught the last part of a regular announcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria, “… please don’t rumple the naira. This message na from the Central Bank of Nigeria.” He rolled up his mat and went inside. He had heard the announcement many times in a single day, seen it on newspapers and posters and even on the television, but he had never heard the announcer mention the policemen who he was convinced rumpled a greater percentage of the currency, instead they disturb those that eat with the naira beside them, those that spread it at ceremonies and those that write on it. “Stupid people!” he said aloud and switched off the radio. “It’s like there is nothing else to broadcast,” and remembered the last time he was at the bank—two weeks ago—and saw the girl at the counter, dressed in her neat well-ironed suit, and writing on the naira.
          “Stupid people,” he said again and lied down to sleep.
                                                       
                                                    ***

Chief Babatunde waited till the last guest, the professor, had gone and Adewale had locked the gate before he sat down to a late dinner. He rarely went to bed without eating, no matter how long a meeting lasted. He has money and so should eat at will.
          After the professor left he had walked into the dinning but his food had turned cold and he woke one of the maids to put it in the microwave for him. They are paid to serve him and not to sleep. Even if they should sleep, it should be long, long after he had slept.
          He sat down to the amala and egusi soup his wife had prepared. Amala was his best food but anytime he eats it he remembers how it has come to be associated with the politics of his state. ‘Amala Politics,’ that is what the stupid   journalists   love to write   when   referring to the the politics of his state. Those journalists, the deaths of their colleagues never teach them a thing!
          Chief Babatunde reached out for the glass of juice with his left hand and took a sip. His stomach tightened and he suddenly lost appetite. He quickly washed his hands and dragged himself out of the chair to the bar at the other end of the large sitting room. He was fat and in his late seventies, so he walks with less ease. He knew he was not happy and his face did all but hide his sadness, so the girl may start asking stupid questions and beside, he needed some time to think about certain things.
          There are two things he dislikes: sadness and thinking. The doctor at the Teaching Hospital said he should avoid sadness and much thinking. “It is detrimental to your health,” the doctor had warned. And if there was anything he loved so much, it was life; his life. If others can die for him to achieve that, no problem. He had to live. The poor men—the living dead as he calls them—still wants to live, how much more him, the godfather who controls the politics of this state, whose name is feared across the length and breadth of this state and even beyond?
          He poured some champagne into a glass and took a large quantity. He waited till he could feel the drink in his stomach before he gulped down the remaining one in the glass. He put back the champagne and took a bottle of Hennessey, poured it into the glass, covered the bottle and kept it on the counter. The doctor had warned him not to drink too much alcohol but he can’t always help it. He always went for it when he needs to wash his intestines. By the way, what do those doctors think they know? Everything is detrimental—everything good. He ran his hands on his left cheek and across the tribal marks there. He smiled evilly.
          “What does that boy thinks he is?” he asked loudly. “He thinks it is possible to bite the finger that fed—and still feeds—him?” It could be possible, he thought, but it depends on the finger. It is not every finger that you can bite. No, not every finger. My own finger is like the vulture’s meat, not good for eating. He took a sip from the glass.
          Chief   Babatunde is   the   political godfather of his state.   No governor or commissioner or whatever becomes without his consent. His power dates back to the military days, when he was much younger and still physically active. He was among the kingmakers then, nothing happens without his knowledge, and even if anything happens, it will not stand for a long time; it will fall.
          He has ‘annointed’ governor after governor, council chairmen, commissioners, etc, and they all obey him. They all do according to his wish. Anyone that refused to go according to his wish he kicked out without problem. If it is the governor, impeachment awaits immediately.
          In the state, Chief Babatunde was the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. No one questions him no one.
          Now, it seems someone was about to question his authority, and he is not happy at all. The incumbent governor seems to have forgotten their agreement. Among all, he seems to have forgotten that Chief Babatunde should get one-third of the monthly security vote. When he assumed office, he never failed to give him his monthly entitlements, but now it appears he wants to play smart. His own share of the security votes has stopped coming and the governor now wants to keep the whole money to himself, the whole sixty-five million naira!
          The governor has also started avoiding the meeting, something he had never done before. Before, he never missed a meeting, instead he would arrive late. Now he has started giving excuses for not coming. It’s either he is sick or he traveled out of the country. He has never traveled out of the country before without informing him. And, again, this night, he was absent. His deputy deputized him.
          During the meeting Chief Babatunde had asked the deputy, “where is your boss?”
          “He couldn’t come, sir,” the deputy replied, standing.
          “Why?”
          “I am not aware, sir. He didn’t tell me.”
          Chief Babatunde liked the way Adebayo Akwula, the deputy, called him “Sir” and the way he stood up before answering his questions. The incumbent, Chief Adoja, rarely stood while talking to him. During the meeting, he made up his mind that if Chief Adoja must go, then Akwula will no be a very wrong replacement. But first, he must meet and talk to Chief Adoja and see if he still wants to be addressed as His Excellency.
          His eyes caught the clock on the wall; it will be midnight in few minutes. He poured the Hennessey into his mouth, swallowed and walked unsteadily upstairs to his bedroom.

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