“Officer Monday!” I hailed across the window as soon as the officers opened the car doors and asked us to step out for searching. I had grown to love Officer Monday. He was the only policeman in the entire country I liked, and I knew quite a number of them. I even had some of them on speed dial. Nobody was like Officer Monday. He was clean, calm, competent, and firm. I met him for the first time when he arrested me for another person’s crimes.
I was hosting an event at Mera Mera, and I had a couple of my girls around. This particular set was too drunk to go home alone but still okay enough to stay awake and be cute pretty girls, so I took Angelica’s car keys and offered to drive them home. Before leaving the beach house, I rolled them three joints. Since I stopped smoking weed in 2022, I always offered to roll blunts for everyone around me rather than let them do it themselves. My small habit tickles my fancy, and that of the smokers too.
They’re always surprised by the quality and speed of the roll, and the discipline to not smoke every time, no matter how great the green is, or how turnt the environment becomes. They’re always impressed that I never fold. I guess that’s what’s in it for me, the reassurance of discipline. That I can look Igbo in the eye and not even feel the slightest urge to oblige, or even fight. It reminds me that I am immune to peer pressure and that I can do anything in life. Anyways, I roll the stick, and they smoke. I tell them to make sure they’re done with or dispose of it before we leave, and I hear affirmations in return.
They say they’re ready to go. I drive. They fall asleep. I bring out my pack of cigarettes – a stupid habit I picked up after stopping weed because I had developed a smoking problem and not a high problem, I was addicted to the feeling of holding a stick and occasionally putting it in my mouth. I bring out my pack of cigarettes. I light one and drive. I talk to the sky as I drive. With my smoke and with my thoughts, we converse. I check the time. I’m 8 minutes away from dropping them, but I’m one minute away from trouble.
I approach the turning to my left and I see him. Trouble, dressed in red and green, I see him. He’s been waiting for me, I can feel. He laughs as soon as he sees me, in a “let’s play” type of way. He rises into the sky and my eyes follow him, then he makes a sharp dive to the floor, looks at me again, then turns into the bend on my left. I hiss. “My dreams were clean this morning, I had no warning from the Almighty and I do not feel any sense of urgency in my spirit. This guy is crazy” I thought to myself as I made the turn.
There they were, policemen, stopping and searching vehicles. I searched my spirit again for any feeling of panic or urgency. Nothing. So I drove to them, confident in my knowledge that I had just cigarettes and the girls were done with mother nature’s drug. The usual happened. We got stopped because I have dreadlocks on and that’s the signature look of a criminal in the eyes of the Nigerian police.
We got searched because it looked hella suspicious that I had four girls sleeping in the car. I felt so assured. So confident. Cigarettes were legal. I’m Gucci. Then they found it. The green. Titi kept a blunt. You need to see how the eyes of the policemen lit up. Mungo Park wasn’t this happy when he discovered River Niger. I was told I would be arrested. Why? I’m the man.
I started talking to them and told them we were not going to leave that spot and we had to sort it out there. I fought, negotiated, pleaded, and even spoke languages. I wanted to bribe my way out. All of them agreed except a man called Officer Monday. He was willing to die before taking a bribe. I tried begging him with brotherhood when I realized that he was from Delta, my mother’s hometown. He treated me like I was wasting my time. He said he would wait for me to finish my performances and theatrics, then he would take me to the station. He then went to check on the girls, then he saw Titi’s leg.
Titi had a condition that made her walk differently from how we walk. He felt compassion. I later found out he had a brother with the same condition. He approached me and told me he had let us go, because of her, but anything his other officers want I should answer them. While Titi and Tiwa went to find an ATM to get cash for the officers, I sat down with Officer Monday and poured him a drink. He declined. I brought out a cigarette, lit it, and asked him why he budged.
He told me of his brother. He told me of how he has spent 29 years in the force without collecting one bribe, and how he gets punished by senior officers for not looking the other way. I smile. I tell him of my father. I tell him of how my father wanted to be a policeman before I was born but was told by my step-granddad who is a well-achieved policeman that he was too honest for the force and would be killed. We talk. We bond. He asked me to be honest with him and tell him if I was the owner of the smoke. I laugh and tell him no again.
I tell him about my smoking problem and gesture to my pack of cigarettes. He advises me to stop. I take his number. I look up and see Trouble, feeling funky. I smile. Well done today. I say to him. I get in the car and drive away, seeing Officer Monday one other time when they would stop me again at the same spot for a routine search on another day.
Tonight, I’m out with my boys. We approach the checkpoint. I look around, searching for Trouble. I see Sadness, looking sad as usual. “Nobody’s dying today,” I say to myself. We get stopped and lights are shone into the car. We’re asked to park and alight. I use glasses, so I can’t really see people’s faces till they’re close.
“Officer Monday!” I hailed across the window as soon as the officers opened the doors of the car and asked us to step out for searching. I hoped to see him. We were definitely clean, but I wanted to see my friend.
The officers stopped in their tracks and one of them asked “Who call Officer Monday there?”. I identify. I tell them he’s my friend and I wanna see him. He’s their boss on patrol. “Officer Monday no dey this night o, he don go Alagbon. You no worry. Officer leave them, them sabi man. Na Oga Monday people, no touch dem make dem dey go. Oga Monday no dey my Oga, he don go Alagbon. ” one of them says. “When he go come back?” I ask. They tell me soon.
We raise the car glasses up and as we drive off, the boys begin to hail me saying I’m strategic and well-connected. I smile, but in my smile there is sadness. Oga Monday did not go to any Alagbon. If he did, he must have offended someone who took him out of his comfort zone, but I don’t think he went to Alagbon. I think he just went. They didn’t sound like he was on assignment, or that’s his new office. They said he’s coming back soon. Why did he leave in the first place? What did you people do to him? Why are you making me sad? Where is Officer Monday?
