EXCUSE ME: Police peppersoup

You are having a small party to discuss matters that are of no national importance. Your promotion is long overdue so you’ve invited your Area Commander and the DPO; in Lagos impromptu parties oil the wheels of progress and you will be making the favourite dish for nights like this - goat pepper soup.

You have already scoped out the goat, it’s the big billy goat with the strong scent and long goatee, popular among the children of the barracks. The goat’s owner is on night duty guarding the Federal Radio Corporation where coup announcements are usually made. When he returns in the morning he won’t know you were the one who used his goat for gbadun. You will harvest wild bitter leaves from your neighbour’s garden; don’t bother telling him first as he might refuse your request. This specie of bitter leaf has become his cure for malaria, ever since the police hospital ran out of drugs and doctors.

Tell the young girl you slept with last night to wash stale okro from the plates; whet your bayonet and machete on the metal wheel of the immobile military tank abandoned at the barrack gate since the last coup. The neck of a matured goat is not easy to sever from its body, so whet the bayonet some more. Did you know that goat blood is also a delicacy if well cooked? The gods of the land no longer care for it, the land has since been well soaked with the blood of innocent citizens.

Not having tethered that goat you must not lose sight of it. Wash the big aluminium pot resting against your dead government-issued motorcycle with the deflated tires. Pile together dry firewood from un-repaired office furniture; check on the beers to make sure they are sweating cold; the Area Commander likes his beer extremely cold.

If the palm wine seller brings a jerry can in the morning buy it before it is watered down with saccharine for evening profit.

The way she is holding the knife like a wine glass, does this Lagos girl know how to chop the bitter leaves? Douse the firewood with black-market kerosene for a quick flame; get matches, don’t use a Molotov cocktail - this is not a peaceful demonstration.

Smack your lips to attract the goat to come and eat more yam peels; a goat never refuses yam peels, just like a police officer never refuses egunje.

The shadows are getting longer and longer soon to be swallowed by tinted twilight; you must hurry for your invitees will soon be arriving; electricity is gone already.

Do you have petrol for the small generator? Do you have batteries in your CD player to play Rex Lawson or Sunny Ade or James Brown?

The sun is going down behind the tall broken building of the barracks; you have no hands long enough to hold this sun back; you are not Joshua who held the sun till the end of his battle. What is this party about again?

You are a police corporal whose salary has not been paid for the past nine months.

You must service the big bosses with stolen goods to get your promotion; you don’t rely on a government salary to survive. Tomorrow you will collect more crumpled naira from howling bus conductors screaming “Oshodi O!” or you will seize their only means of livelihood.

Strike a match on the kerosene-soaked government furniture so the fire can burn brightly enough to consume the goat hair; don’t worry about the smell from the burning flesh, it gives an atmosphere of celebration and reminds one of military regimes burning our skins.

The Area Commander will soon be arriving with his new undergraduate girlfriend; your DPO is coming with his big American Jeep; arrange the chairs under the canopy in the damp yard because your parlour in the barracks is like a police holding cell; small, suffocating, sickly, stinky.

Your girl has finished cutting the bitter leaves; she is deciding whether to wear English attire or African adire. The beverages are okay, cold, though not as much as the Area Commander likes his drinks. The white plastic chairs and tables are set; the bayonet and machete lie in sharp wait; you are panting with perspiration and anticipation; you are searching for the goat with the goatee, the single most important product for pepper soup.

Didn’t your mother tell you that you must catch a black goat while the sun is still hanging in the sky? You this my friend, you don’t know anything at all, at all. There goes your promotion because the Area Commander doesn’t like his precious party time wasted. There are many of you out there doing the same thing. No un-commissioned policeman in his right mind calls the Area Commander or DPO’s name vain; you are ill-fated right now, a fraction away from being turned into goat pepper soup.