I have reached a very honest conclusion: There is something about me that attracts the Police. Maybe it’s the colour of my car-It’s yellow, it’s so yellow I’ve often been asked if I won it during an MTN promo, or maybe it’s me, I know say I no wowo, lol, or it could also be the way I look- gullible, yeah, until I open my mouth :). There’s a 99-1% chance that I’ll get stopped wherever there’s a congregation of hungry Policemen, check point I meant to say. Below are my favourite checkpoint stories.
I was driving along the popular Suya-Spot road when I was flagged down by a Policeman flashing the beam of a torchlight in my face in the hot afternoon sun. ‘Park’ he yelled, standing legs at ease right in the middle of the road. For a fleeting second I was tempted to hit him, just a little, enough to dislocate something; but then I remembered the awful smell of Surulere Police Station, and decided to respect myself and park. He motioned for me to wind down. I did.
Police: Hello fine sister (smiling to reveal tobacco stained teeth)
Me: Good afternoon Sir (Feigning boredom and slight irritation)
When Mr Police guy realised I wasn’t going to play along, he requested for my particulars. After studying my driver’s licence like it was a sheet of papyrus from the Vatican, he said, ‘Why you yellow for real life pass for the picture?’ I looked at him incredulously and said nothing. How do you answer a question like that? And then he snapped ‘Answer me! I’m talking to you, you are looking at me as if you be Kurma (deaf & dumb in Hausa language). Do you know who am I? It took a lot of control for me not to burst into delirious laughter. I was tempted to ask him ‘who you are?’ After ensuring I understood his importance in the equation called Nigeria, he let me go.
***
Again I got stopped by a lone Policeman further down the same road. I was on a short leash that day and was ready to blow up anything in my path. It takes a lot to catch me in a bad mood, but that day I was BAD itself (put that in font 46, Arial black, in bold, underlined and italicized, lol) seriously. ‘Park!’, he yelled, striking the same pose as his predecessor. I wondered if the pose was part of their training. I parked. He demanded for my particulars; I gave them to him. After flipping through in seconds, he returned them. ‘What’s in your boot?’ he asked. Nothing, I said. Open the boot let me see. It’s open, I replied, my seatbelt still securely fastened. ‘Come down and open it’ he ordered. For some funny reason, I ran out of patience and did a very stupid thing. I hissed and drove off.
I thought about my family and how they would receive the news of my death, about my Clients and how they would manage. I wondered what would be written on my tombstone. It occurred to me that I would die not knowing how much I had in my bank accounts and who I even penned down as next of kin. I pictured my kid sister grieving for six months and then wheeling my collection of jeans to the tailor down the street-to reduce the waist and hip size. I was pained I didn’t even have a chance to get married and be called mummy somebody. All these things I thought of within the fifty meters it took me to connect to Ikorodu road because I was sure the Policeman would kill me and label me a suspected armed robber, never mind that I was driving.
Just as I managed to squeeze into a lane, Bond himself appears without the blond, on a powerbike; Okada I mean. He got down, struck that same pose but this time with his gun pointed at me and screamed, ‘Park’! I smiled. I was already involuntarily parked, thanks to the bumper to fender traffic. I got down, angry, very angry. I yelled right back at a Policeman who had a gun pointed in my face. I’ll save you the drama. I’m alive to tell the story, so it means I sorted it. Till this day I wonder what I was thinking.
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