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By Root 732 0

Commissioner for Education. He is by far the most frightened of the lot. As soon as he had sniffed peril in the air he had begun to disappear into his hole, as some animals and insects do, backwards. Instinctively he had gathered his papers together and was in the very act of lifting the file-cover over them and dragging them into his hole after him when his entire body suddenly went rigid. Stronger alarms from deeper recesses of instinct may have alerted him to the similarity between his impending act and a slamming of the door in the face of His Excellency. A fantastic thing happened then. He drops the file-cover in such panic that everyone now turns to him and sees him perform the strangest act of all: the scattering again of his Council Papers in panic atonement and restitution for the sacrilege he has come so close to committing. Inadvertently. Then he glances round the table until his eyes meet His Excellency’s and fall dead on the mahogany. The silence had not been broken since my second apology. I was quite certain that the poor fellow (never a strong one for originality) was getting ready to speak my very words, strictly in the same sequence. I swear it. He had drawn his upper arms tight to his sides as though to diminish his bulk; and clasped his hands before him like a supplicant.

But His Excellency speaks instead. And not even to him the latest offender but still to me. And he is almost friendly and conciliatory, the amazing man. In that instant the day changes. The fiery sun retires temporarily behind a cloud; we are reprieved and immediately celebrating. I can hear in advance the many compliments we will pay him as soon as his back is turned: that the trouble with His Excellency is that he can never hurt a man and go to sleep over it.

That’s one refinement, by the way, we’ve not yet lost: we do wait for his back to be turned. And some will add: That’s a pity because what this country really needs is a ruthless dictator. At least for five good years. And we will all laugh in loud excess because we know—bless our dear hearts—that we shall never be favoured with such an undeserved blessing as a ruthless dictator.

“Do you realize what you are asking me to do, Chris?” he said. I say nothing, make no motion, not even of the head. At these moments my head assumes the gravity of granite and though my thinking might remain perfectly clear and logical it seems to emanate from afar taking in these happenings through a telescope. I note for what it’s worth that he has dropped the icy distancing of Mister Commissioner and Mister Oriko. But I no longer allow such niceties to distract me. He misread my quietude I think as either agreement or disagreement. It was neither. Pure, unadulterated disinterest.

“You are telling me to insult the intelligence of these people,” he says, his tone mollified and rather superior. I shake my head then, slowly. “Yes, that’s precisely what you are telling me to do,” he says spiritedly, spurred to battle by my faint resurgent opposition. “These people believe in rainmakers and so let’s go ahead and exploit their ignorance for cheap popularity. That’s exactly what you are telling me to do, Chris. Well I can’t do it. You all seem to forget that I am still a soldier, not a politician.”

He is in mufti as he now tends to be more and more within the precincts of the Presidential Palace: a white danshiki tastefully embroidered in gold, and its matching trousers. By contrast many of my colleagues, especially the crew from the Universities, aspire to the military look. Professor Okong wears nothing but khaki safari suits complete with epaulettes. It is amazing how the intellectual envies the man of action.

I think His Excellency noticed the faint smile brought to my face by that reminder that he was still a soldier; he has such a knack for reading faces. I could see him hesitate ever so briefly between taking me up on that smile and ignoring it. What he ended up doing was neither of those but something really quite proficient. Fixing his gaze on me he yet managed at the same time to convey by