He heard the explosion about then.
***
Tamuno was looking for the left boot, he had already tied up the lace of the right boot before he discovered the other one was missing. It was about time for him to head for the Nameless Youth Council. As the leader of the secret militant youth group, he had to be early and lead by example. Walking around in his near empty single room, he searched everywhere, desperately looking under his low bamboo bed too, but that boot was not anywhere in the unkempt room. Clearly his neighbour's dog must have snuck in while he had his siesta with his door wide open and dragged the boot out, the furry thief. That would be the third time this week the blasted dog had mistaken his boot for a dead cat or some kind of bush meat. Then again he could not entirely blame the dog, perhaps the animal was just attracted to the foul smell that emanated from his boots. Tamuno looked down at his laced up right foot, his boots could use several washings.
As Tamuno made to storm out of the room in search of the cursed canine, the thunderous explosion rocked him off his feet.
***
Awaji spread clear lipgloss on her full lips. She smiled at her reflection and winked. She knew she was not exactly the prettiest girl by any means but she liked what she saw in the mirror. The fitting dress she wore showed her shapely body, she had curves in all the right places. Awaji was used to trying to be attractive, mainly because of the huge forehead she was born with. When she was in secondary school she was mercilessly teased for her head, she would be told that her skull must have turned around on its very own after God created and inserted it under her skin. Still Awaji liked to think that she had outgrown that bullying, it was a testament to her resilience that she could look at her self in the mirror and decide that she looked good and was ready to go. Besides her looks were not of utmost importance where she was going. She had been introduced into the Nameless Youth Council as a first year student in Chemical Engineering at the University and within three months her enthusiasm for the cause had taken her to the helm of its leadership. She lead the group alongside Tamuno, one of the founding members, and she was as brave as she was just. The members of their group really enjoyed her presence, and her authority was unchallenged. As was usual, the meeting would go on into the night; there were so many issues affecting the unprivileged of Nameless, the young graduates that could not find jobs, those affected by the continuous environmental degradation caused by oil spills.
It would be nice too if after the meeting, one of the guys would be gutsy enough to walk her home afterwards, walk her to his home that is. Then there was a sudden loud bang. Awaji screamed, she did not know when she scrambled under the low wooden table. In her panic, all thoughts of a romantic liason were wiped from her mind. What on earth could have caused the earth to shudder in such a manner?
***
Mama Iquo was in her small stall in Afele market when an oil truck carrying kerosene dipped into a deep crater in the only paved road in Nameless and burst one of its rear tyres. The truck spun out of its driver's control, ran off the road just beside Afele market's main gate and fell into a ditch. The truck's sizeable storage tank upturned halfway into the ditch and there was a spill. Kerosene flowed freely onto the road and into the fairly deep ditch.
There was a stampede as everyone in Afele market lurched forward. Market women ignored their stalls, grabbed containers of every size and make, and headed for the spill to scoop up some of the precious liquid. This was an opportunity to supplement their family incomes. Cheap undadultrated kerosene was hard to come by in this economy, and free kerosene can only be a godsend. But it appeared the inconsolable truck driver was not an angel on a divine errand for the supreme deiety. He stood aside and watched in visible agony as the multitude of women, men and children crowded at the ditch. Even elderly men passing on their old rickety bicycles forgot their ages and went on all fours to collect scarce kerosene.
Mama Iquo had merely stood aside to observe the madness. Questions swarmed through her head, for one, why was the kerosene being moved by tanker? When she went to buy periwinkle near the oceanfront, she had seen miles of pipes for moving petrolem products. So why was this truck still carrying kerosene through a busy market?
It must have been some divine premonition, or as she would have explained it, her wicked late husband had not succeeded in convincing his fellow dead ancestors to send for her to continue slaving over him in the afterlife. Later the aged Mama Iquo would use every ancient proverb she could recollect to describe what had happened next She would vehemently state that it must have been her precious daughter's powerful prayers that kept her from joining the rush for awoof kerosene. The old woman was well out of danger when the stupid irate truck driver decided that he could scare away the scooping crowd by threatening them with his cigarette lighter.
He shouted at the top of his voice and clicked on the lighter. No one paid him any attention, so he edged even closer. He came too close, and a swinging arm of a passing scooper knocked the lit lighter off his shaky sweaty hand.
The spilled kerosene ignited slowly at first, and in the noise surrounding all the chaos of scooping kerosene, no one heard the panicking driver shout out frantic words of caution to the crowd. The fire spread and raced faster towards the soaked women, children and men busy collecting the scarce oil. The first most of them knew about the fire was the huge explosion, as the racing fire reached the truck proper. The fire was burning in no time, it was like the devil had started it himself and sent it out of the abyss. Virtually everyone already scooping the kerosene was alight and soon engulfed by the flames. The flames spread like wildfire in the heart of the savannah during harmattan.
When Doyin got to the site of the explosion, Tamuno was already there, with his right foot in his ankle high boot and his left foot in an open top sandal. The scene was horrific. In the midst of bodies writhing in the fire, screaming for help, one burning figure ran out of the inferno and rolled along the ground. The bystanders moved away from him, so scared for their own lives that none of them considered lifting a finger to help him. Awaji had just arrived and she immediately rushed towards the burning man who rolled on the ground, screaming for others to do what he was doing. She prayed that they heard her above the loud roars and screaming as she remembered the tips that had been given to participants in a first aid training she had attended last year. Carefully, Awaji took off the scarf she had wrapped on her head and attempted to beat the fire off the burning man. She screamed to Doyin and Tamuno to do the same with other people as they ran out of the inferno in an attempt to save their lives.
***
"Lugubrious!! Odoriferous! This terra firma upon which we have made our habitation is in a state of disma pisma! Repent! Transform your cognition from the scuttlebutt plaguing our subsistence, and transmute! Transmute my fellow travellers! Wholesomeness precedes cherubianism..."
Bonaventure paused at that last word - he knew it was wrong.
Doyin took a minute from tending to to the injured to hiss.
"What kind of person is this Bonaventure sef? No wonder everyone says he is a mad man. Instead of him to help people that are hurt he’s adding to the chaos with noise and big grammar! One day I will rub pepper on the mic of that his public address system. He will go and meet his God from there."
***
Mama Iquo handed Tamuno a small pail of water as he rushed past her. Tamuno emptied the water on the burning man's back, while Doyin rushed to the aid of another figure who had escaped the burning inferno. As the youths rushed back and forth trying their best to aid those who had managed to get out of the fire, Mama Iquo watched in horror.
Again she asked herself, "Why can‘t kerosene be moved by pipes?"
_______________________________
Iquo's Farm
Iquo had always had a nose for business.
Whilst she was in the University, she started a fast food stand where she served pies and pastries. When the naira was devalued considerably
, known brands such as CocaCola became too expensive and out of reach of students. This was a major problem for Iquo as the cost of drinks in her stand became a major factor in her purchase decisions.
To remedy this situation, Iquo did backward integration, entered into a contract with Madam Lolo Agnes, the wife of the traditional Chief of Nameless, the closest town to where her university was located, to supply her a bag of fresh oranges every morning. Iquo bought a juicer and simply squeezed out orange juice, which she chilled and sold as a substitute to CocaCola. Her customers called it Iquo Soda, she called it a cash cow.
This was Iquo’s introduction to the business potential of agriculture, and she never looked back. She started i-juice while she was still a student. She added pineapples to her range of juices, and she began packaging and preserving the juice. She started a small scale factory where she processed oranges and pineapples to juice drinks. She expanded her market share, and began to deliver her fruit juice to smaller stores around Nameless and beyond, even as far as the capital city. Her juice drink was well received, it was natural and fresh. Iquo was able to take her drinks to the weekly Afele market, where traders from other towns still came once a week, just like they have done for countless decades, long before the old stream dried up. Her juice drinks were bought and distributed to other markets.
Iquo's big break came in 2008; when Lolo Agnes offered Iquo her large farm for sale. Lolo Agnes had an orchard of orangestrees and a pineapple plantation on the farm. It was a great deal, the aged Lolo Agnes could no longer manage the sizeable farm and she wanted to cash out. The farm was about 15 hectares, on the major highway to the state capital, between Nameless and the University. It produced an average yield, and lost most of its produce to waste from lack of storage and theft from University students out to supplement their little allowances.
Iquo took Lolo Agnes‘ offer, sold her car, took a bank loan, mortgaged her factory and bought the land. She was a good manager. She secured the whole farm, built irrigation channels, storage plants and a processing factory inside the farm, and she was able to drop her cost of production and raise yields, thus raising her revenues. By 2013 I-juice was a successful undertaking, as healthy diets had become a norm and her juices were now sold in major stores across the region and far beyond. She was already exporting small quantities to other West African towns and European markets.
Iquo was out on the field when Nneka, her Regional bank manager, based in Nameless called her.
“Ms. Iquo, can we have a short meeting?” Nneka asked, “Sure” Iquo answered, “I will come and see you later in the day”.
“Actually Ms. Iquo”, Nneka responded “I am in your head office at the farms, can we meet there please?”
Iquo was impressed, she had wanted Nneka to visit her farm for ages. Iquo always met Nneka at the regional head office in Nameless when she wanted a major line of overdraft. She had recently applied to the bank for funds to build a new small scale power plant that would utilise the biomass waste created by her farm and generate power for the nearby palm oil factory down the road. She needed to have a solution to the unreliable local power, so she had required a line of credit from the bank to finance the project.
The bank must have run its numbers and realised it was a fantastic deal for them, and had sent Nneka to tie up the deal, Iquo had imagined, smiling with the thought. “Tamuno,” she called out to her young foreman. “Tell the tractor man to do another pass, I will be back in one hour.”
When she got to her corporate office on the farm, after the short walk, she found Nneka waiting for her with another official. This other man was obviously a banker, he looked too well dressed to come to a farm and inspect a biomass power plant, Iquo thought. He looked like all bankers do while sitting behind a desk working in their offices or seeeing clients. He did not look impressed.
“Hello Nneka, it’s a pleasure to have you at I-farms," Iquo smiled. "I hope you have been kept comfortable while you waited?”
Nneka was polite but curt. “Hello Ms. Iquo, I would like to introduce Mr. Harry. He is from the Legal department of the bank, all the way from our headquaters. Our bank has serious concerns with your paperwork.”
Paperwork? That surprised Iquo as she sat back to hear more. She is a very meticulous person and had checked and double checked everything before handing in her application for the overdraft. She is certain it was a clean offer.
“What paperwork Nneka?" Iquo asked out loud. "I have enjoyed a good relationship with your bank now for almost nine years and I use the same documents for the overdrafts, what paperwork do you refer to?.“
“If I may,” the other well-dressed gentleman interrupt Nneka, who had almost started to speak. "We are referring to the title deeds of your farm.”
“What about them?” Iquo asked? “You gave me a loan with them nine years ago.”
“Yes we did," Nneka said “And that’s the problem.”
“What problem?” Iquo asked.
“Well you see at the time the land was transferred to you by the native owners of the land, it was a simple trade between you. We are now privy to a decision by the state government to acquire the land under the Right of Eminent Domain as contained in the Land Use Act,” Harry said. “We understand the Governor has signed away nine out of the fifteen hectares on this farm to a multinational shopping chain who desire to build a shopping mall and a hotel on it.”
Iquo could not believe what she was hearing. She looked at Nneka, expecting her to disagree with Mr. Harry, Nneka was silent.
“Can they do that? Can they take away my land?" asked Iquo. "I have a title to it.”
"Ms. Iquo," Harry continued. “When you bought the land, you were given a title deed officially endorsed by the Chief of Nameless, the legal paramount traditional ruler of this territory, but you never registered the title deed with the central land registrar in the state capital. So now, in effect, the state is saying you don’t own the land.”
“They cannot deny I own the land," Iquo interrupted. “I pay them taxes from this land!”
Harry tried to explain further. “Even if you own the land and have a deed, the State Government has the right to take the land from you in the overriding public interest.”
“What overriding pubic interest? How is a mall public interest and my farm not,” asked Iquo in disbelief.
“Ms. Iquo, the state is saying you didn’t bring your Local Government title to be registered in the state registry, and that invalidates your title,” said a sympathetic Nneka.
Iquo was livid.
“Nneka, I submitted my title deeds and transfer papers to the state government lands office, when I bought the land in 2008. I submitted my documents, but the Governor, then Chief Akpan, didn’t sign it for 4 years and he lost reelection in 2012! I was then told my documents would start the process again as a new administration had taken over. My papers are still there, in the land office! They have it! So how can they now take over my land, if they have not signed the deed of transfer of title for 2 years!”
“Ms. Iquo,” Nneka spoke up sensing Iquo was clearly disgusted and in a rage. “Please calm down."
Iquo looked away and hissed loudly.
"We have come here as your bankers to advise you of this development so you can take appropriate steps." Nneka said. " As it stands we will have to stop all facilities to your farm and call in all outstanding loans. If nine hectares are taken off your farm, your revenues cannot sustain your cashflow and you won’t remain profitable. Please take all necessary steps to address this.”
Iquo needed less than a minute to realize Nneka was right. The small scale power plant, her future expansion plans, her facilities with the bank, it would simply be impossible to sustain all these if she lost even an inch of this land. This is not a time for temper, but for lawyers.
“Nneka,” Iquo said “You cannot call in your facilities. I have used a working capital upgrade every year to hire excess machinery and workers to harvest the c
rop during the rainy season. The pineapples need to be packaged, and shipped off, the oranges need to be sorted, and….,” Iquo choked.
“I am sure you are a wonderful farmer, Ms. Iquo. But please understand the bank‘s position. We cannot extend or operate a facility to you should you fail to obtain a Certificate of Occupancy for your land,” Mr Harry interjected.
Iquo was dumbfounded, she was employing hundreds of farm workers, paying taxes to the state government, exporting her crops, and even planning to generate power. She had obtained the elusive bank financing. But here she was, about to be sabotaged by the same state governor whose motto was 'Prosperity for Our State.” This is madness.
“So what are my options?" Iquo asked, attempting to calm down her nerves.
“Well, you can sue the state government and they will offer you compensation,” Harry said
“Compensation!" Iquo had no idea she had shouted. "Mr. Harry, we all know the state government compensation will be minuscule and compensation won’t give my workers jobs or feed their families.” Iquo said forcefully.
“The thing I can’t get my head around is why my right to land can be set aside and practically extinguished by the same state seeking to give life to another private company?” Iquo sort of asked.
“Why is land transfer so cumbersome and difficult in our nation. Why should it take more than three months for a simple transfer of title of land to be signed by the Governor? If I had bought a car from you Mr. Harry, would we need to go to the Governor to endorse some evidence of that transfer? Can the governer not see how this Land Use law stifles agricultural production and employment?” Iquo asked
“Ms. Iquo, you need to understand our position,” Nneka said with her eyes almost pleading.