“Nigeria is a poultry. The masses are the hens, the government is the farmer. And we are all waiting for christmas.”

– Adeosun Adams Mercy

It was the eve of the presidential election, the night the General was declared winner. We were at Aso Rock, eating meat and dancing reggae. It was a buffet. 

I mulled pieces of meat in my mouth, grinded them at the edge of my teeth and let the morsel glide down the tunnel of my throat. I watched as Ashiwaju forked meat from the many porcelain trays on his table. A liver here, a finger there. I watched him from where I sat alone. His eyes shone bright, like the diamonds on his fingers.

“They did not know that we have become gods. If they knew, they wouldn’t have dared us.” He said, and wiped blood from his lips with a serviette paper. His company burst out laughing, bloodied spittle dripping from the corners of their mouths and half chewed intestines stuck in their pharynxes.

“Now they know,” the petite women leader, Hon. Adaku said. And fresh laughter erupted from the company. I watched from where I sat alone and smiled. I admired Ashiwaju, he was a kingmaker.

I would have joined the company, but I liked to watch people from a distance. I liked to watch the art in their faces, their steps. I liked to imagine what would happen if I tweaked them a bit. Say, pluck out an eye, bare a jugular.

A Fela acoustic was playing on the stereo and hookers were lap dancing, working bare buttocks over wet and bulging trousers when the General rose up. Usually, at moments like this, reporters would haul their cameras. But there were no reporters here, no cameras. Just us. The initiates.

The General looked around, numbering the people with his eyes. His eyes journeyed around the room, resting on foreheads before gliding down to meet bloody eyes. His oesophagus bobbed up and down in his throat as he struggled to find the right words. But he didn’t need the right words. We were not the one-fifty million Nigerians that had to be bought over with rhymes and rhetorics.

“Because we walk the same ground as them, breathe the same air as them, drink the same water as them; they don’t know that we are not like them.” The General was saying. He froze and looked around, hands raised. The muscles in his head twitched, like tiny worms put in a jar by little children at play.

“But now that the elections are over, now that we are here, we will crush the opposition and show the people that we are gods.” He cackled loudly, then started laughing and one after the other, the whole room joined in the laughter.
Just like the laughter started, gentle at first, then rattling as it climaxed and reached a crescendo; it stopped. The general resumed talking but I wasn’t listening anymore. I had logged on to facebook. #BabaNowThatYouAreHere was trending. I scrolled down the news feed and found a post that made me chuckle. TheRichKid SexyBigBoy posted, “365 days ago they took our girls #Babanowthatyouarehere please #bringbackourgirls. Me sef wan marry now.”

“Let us drink blood and eat flesh tonight,” the General said. I was drawn back into the room. I was tired of picking meat with a fork, I wanted to use my teeth. Chaos broke out when fresh girls were ushered into the vast room. The same girls that the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls was created for.

Everyone lounged; even Ashiwaju. I rushed forward and grabbed one of the girls. A plump, light girl. There were crunches and screams as teeth sank into flesh all around. The coppery smell of blood piqued my senses and the screams of the plump, light girl seemed to be coming from miles away.

I pinned her on a table and dug my teeth into her left breast. Her flesh was tender. I chewed her flesh off, and by the time I reached her entrails, she had stopped jerking.

About the writer:

Adams Adeosun is a student of Architecture at LAUTECH. He is a writer and art apprentice planning a bus ride across the continent of Africa.