‘Picnic” in the dark

This was the second time I was travelling from Lagos down to Bauchi, North-East of Nigeria, I had taken permission from my place of primary assignment one week earlier to quickly get back to Lagos and resume afterwards and here I was on my way back to service base..

The luxurious bus I boarded took a while before it took off and when it did, it was evening and that could only mean I will get to my destination late in the night and this was on the heat of boko haram’s almost total invasion of the North east, Nigeria few years ago.

By this time, I was already six months in service to my Father land and journeys like this just puts one in a reflective mood and you begin to ask questions on how you got here in the first place. How exactly did I become Bauchi -bound?

After several screenings by the university, it was the moment every final year student was waiting for ; to see where you have been posted and ours wasn’t different and after several minutes of struggling to have good view of the board where the list was pasted, what I saw written against my name was code “BA” and that I interpreted wrongly immediately as Bayelsa State; it was after I had made calls to inform my family and friends about that it dawned on me that there is another state that could have a  BA as code and I quickly ran back to the board to clear my doubt and  check through again and behold,  Bauchi-State, here I come. At this moment all the initial joy of going to the south-south oil rich region vanished with no trace of excitement again.

I was perplexed, wondering what I had done wrong to the heavens to have dealt me a blow of North-East especially now that a lot of killings were going in the region, but after much thought I prepared my mind and eventually my bags to head for the service.

My first journey to Bauchi started from the under bridge in Jibowu, Lagos. I was not the only one in the bus but somehow I felt I was, everyone in the bus looked in my imagination like a  potential insurgent so I was careful who to speak to or even who to make contact with; but soon the bus moved and I am enroute Abuja hoping by the next day to connect Bauchi via the capital city, but as far as I was concerned North is North whether Bauchi was the name of the place or Abuja, north was dangerous and I was heading to the danger zone.

Of course nobody forced me into the bus, I had even been advised by friends to decline the service call to a later time when my destination would be safer but I thought in my head what if I waited one more year and my next point of call was Bornu or Yobe- the main center of action, so I just made up my mind with the little faith I had in God that if after having not influenced the posting Bauchi was what I got, so be it and so helped me God but you can tell that even at times a man with huge faith could get terrified by the storms of the sea and now upon reflection I guess that could be responsible for my fears

The journey towards Abuja was seamless until we got to Kogi state where there was this frustrating hold up and very huge presence of the Military men searching almost every vehicle that passed. For hours, our bus was at one point and a lot of American action movies  had began to play in my head  with imaginations on what could go wrong and my possible way of escape was already dawning on me as though I was sure something terrible was going to happen, but after about two hours in traffic in the confluence city we finally had our way through with everyone heaving a sigh of relief not until we met another one and this time a mounted military check point  in the Abuja Metropolis itself but at this point everyone in the bus had interacted well enough for me to believe there was no insurgent in the bus, everyone seemed nice and  I was starting to get along with the passenger by my side before I was told we had gotten to Zuba so we had to alight and by this time it was 9pme already and I was all alone in Abuja and quickly I called my uncle who I had planned to stay overnight with before I  continue the journey down to Bauchi the next day and in a thirty minutes he was there but that thirty minutes was like thirty hours of wild American action film imagination.

Now, it was 2:00am and we had already been through stop and search by team of security personnel at two different locations and right now as we approached Jos, Plateau state Capital another team of security personnel flagging us down ,out of frustration the driver and most passengers started murmuring and complaining loudly, on hearing the complaints everyone in the bus was ordered by the security men to alight. Upon alighting, we were told to all lie down on the floor with our hands to our heads and immediately I heard that, my mind flashed back to a then recent news that passengers were told to alight from the bus by some highway armed robbers and with gun to the head of the driver they told him drive over the several souls lying down on the road, all I did was just hoped and prayed this won’t be the case

After several pleading, we were allowed to stand up but immediately cautioned against going ahead to Bauchi at that thick of the night. “If 5am reach, una go go, this road no safe to travel enter Bauchi” those were the words of the team leader there and so we had to wait,  before we knew it other buses plying the same route were stopped and they joined us in waiting and though at first everyone was quiet but as soon as the Mallam who sells bread, egg and tea  and another who sell noodles began to play different sounds of music of course the Hausa genre, the atmosphere changed  and everyone felt more comfortable and interactions began and I who felt lost somehow got acquainted with some people after a nice meal of bread and hot tea with milk and sugar and it was all like a picnic in the dark with the military men throwing different jibes at  intervals to the amazement of everybody. Nigerians, trust them as usual began analysis of different trends and event in the politics, business and sports everyone formed different groups depending on your line of interest and it was all fun for every one that we lost track of time.

“Una no go come dey go?” that was the voice of the military team leader waking us all up and soon everyone woke up filing into our buses and like family every bus waited for the other and in a convoy of six busses, we drove into Bauchi all heaving a sigh of this one of a kind type of Journey.

Jasanya Olumide