Not Guilty

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When the prison gate was swung open, five prisoners came out of the correctional facility. But among these five ex-convicts, only two were friends - Aliko Bawa and Kevin Adigun; the latter had spent five years in incarceration while the former eight. Aliko was in for the charge of robbery, but he didn’t rob anyone. He spent two years of his life under close scrutiny and hard labour because he had worn the wrong kind of shirt. Someone dressed in red shirt and blue jeans trousers was being chased by an angry mob of pursuers had managed to escape when he turned a corner and the crowd turned the other corner to seize the next person they found in similar attire. The unsuspecting Aliko Bawa was walking home from the arts studio – where he worked and received a paltry income – when a crowd of people suddenly circled around him and began to accuse him of thievery. However, before Aliko turned into this route that led him to his home, he had caught sight of a man who had dressed exactly like him and had taken an adjacent corner.

Aliko had been sure that the thief the pursuers were looking for was the other guy he had seen, but none of the people believed him when he tried to make them see their mistake. Instead, the crowd believed he was only giving an excuse to escape capture. He was beaten to stupor. Fortunately for him, someone among the attackers had managed to convince the others to take the criminal to the police station. Aliko’s eyes were too swollen shut with beating for him to see his saviour. If not for the suggestion of the man, Aliko would have been beaten to death. He wished he could see the man who had saved his life. Because his eyes were shut, Aliko was temporarily blind, and so he had been wheeled to the nearest police station in a wheel barrow. Nobody wanted to carry a thief because they had been afraid his bad omen would rub off on them if they did. The best idea they could come up with was convey the poor man to the station in a single wheeler.

He was subpoenaed two weeks after his lock-up in the station. Although there was no physical evidence to convict Aliko, the reports of the witnesses had sealed his fate. The report each one of them gave was so convincing that Aliko himself wondered if he was really guilty. The case, for lack of evidence, should have been dismissed, and Aliko given a firm slap on the wrist. But the presiding judge believed Aliko had really committed the crime, so he sent the accused to twelve years’ imprisonment with hard labour. Then he struck his gavel and called for the next case. Perhaps, if Aliko had had a lawyer, he might have been exonerated. But he was too broke to afford any lawyer – no matter how lousy the lawyer might be – and so he was transported from the court to where he would be spending the next one hundred and forty-four months of his life.

He had no one to worry about him except his invalid father. The weak, half-blind old man had only managed to come to the courtroom to witness the fate of his son. His health was failing rapidly and Aliko was afraid something bad might happen to his father if the old man heard anything bad about his son. When he was sentenced, Aliko looked at the direction of his father. The old man sat there rigid and unmoving. Aliko expected to see any reaction from his father but the man maintained his original posture. That was the last time Aliko saw his father. The old man died a year after David’s sentence. To Aliko, it was indeed a miracle that his father had lived that long alone. Obviously, his old man had been more independent – and stronger – than he had initially thought. Aliko cried for days. He mourned his loss for months.

He met Kevin Adigun in prison. The guy’s calm manners and intelligence was what had endeared him. Kevin had been sentenced to fourteen years’ imprisonment for manslaughter. He had been walking home one night when someone sprang out of a bush at the side of the road and tried to kill him; the attacker had tried to dismember Kevin and use his head for money ritual. The two men fought like tigers. Even though Kevin was stabbed three times, he still managed to wring the knife from his attacker’s hand and planted the blade into the evil man’s neck. When the fight was over, Kevin had been too weak to get up. He had lain down beside the dead man, expecting death to claim him too. He was barely alive the next morning when they were discovered by passers-by. He had initially been thought dead until he coughed. But rather than assisting him, the crowd had summoned the police. He had been thereafter transported to a hospital where proper treatments were given him under the close supervision of two police officers. When he was strong enough, Kevin was pleasantly escorted to the courtroom where he had to face the charge of manslaughter. At the courtroom, however, what he met was not what he expected at all. He had not only been charged with manslaughter but also for attempted financial voodoo – if there was really any expression like that. In simple terms, Kevin was the one being accused of trying to kill another person and use him for money ritual, for at location where he was discovered with the other corpse, objects that symbolized black magic were discovered. Nobody believed that those objects belonged to the other guy. To make matters worse, the family members of the dead guy had appeared in court and clamoured for swift justice on the wicked ritualist Kevin who had killed their innocent family member. Even when Kevin was sentenced to twenty-one years’ imprisonment, the family members were not satisfied; they wanted Kevin to hang and join the person he had killed in the other world.

In prison too, Kevin was hated by all the other inmates except Aliko. They had considered his act as the lowest of the low. Someone who would kill another person for monetary gains was not fit to live. A lot of attempts had been made on his life in the cell but Kevin had managed to keep himself alive. Getting stabbed had become something he had come to accept, as long has he wasn’t stab in any place fatal. As much as he tried to explain himself to the other prisoners, no one believed him, except Aliko. Aliko Bawa was the only person who believed in his innocence; and so this made him the only friend Kevin had in the prison. Their friendship had waxed so strongly in the prison that they always looked out for each other. And soon, the two friends were formidable against external forces. When the others saw the strong bond between these two people, they stopped attempting to kill them, as long as the duo minded their own business and not interfere in other people’s affairs.

But their good characters later paid off. When a new governor assumed office in the state, an amnesty was granted five good prisoners who had spent more than three years in the prison. Aliko and Kevin were among these five people recommended by the prison officials for good behaviours. And that was how the two friends gained their liberation.

“Where do we go from here?” Kevin asked his friend. The sky was overcast and rain was threatening to fall.

Aliko shrugged, “Home, I guess. Even though I have nothing to go home for. My father has died a long time ago and I can only imagine that the house he left me would have been covered with bush.”

“Consider yourself lucky, my friend. You still have a house to go to. No matter the condition, a house is still a house if it puts a roof over your head. As for me, I have nowhere to go. I’ve always been alone even before my incarceration. I have no place to go now. None of those people whom I called my friend paid me a visit throughout my stay in prison. I don’t want to have to go back there and beg them to give me shelter.”

“Then let’s go to my house. We can clear the compound and clean the house. We can start thinking about what we want to do with our lives thereafter. Do you have any money on you?”

“No,” Kevin replied, shaking his head, “The money in my pocket when I was brought to this prison is nowhere to be found again. Some of the guards must have taken it.”

“I think I should consider myself lucky truly. I was handed back the few naira notes I was having with me when I was brought in. Anyway, we’ll spend the money on food today. By tomorrow, we shall think on what we would do to fetch us some more money. Let’s worry about what today holds for us first, tomorrow will sort itself out.”

“Okay, my friend.”

And so the two friends held hands and walked down the road with a new determination to live a better life. Aliko was surprised when he reached his father’s compound. Something was not right. The bush he thought he would find was not there; everywhere was neat and tidy. Without a doubt, someone was living in the house. The compound boomed of life. There was a vegetable bed on one side of the compound and a maize plantation on the other. Fear gripped Aliko’s heart for the explanation that occurred to him. His father had sold the house before his death. A new family was now living in the house. He had no house after all. He looked at Kevin and saw his friend looking at him for answers, but all the answers were obvious. Kevin himself understood what was going on and disappointment was etched on his face. The only hope he had at having a shelter was now suddenly being shattered. He felt like crying.

Then something totally unexpected occurred. The occupier of the house suddenly came out smiling at them. He was about the same age as the two friends. He was smiling broadly as he walked towards them. Aliko blinked his eyes, thinking he was seeing what he wasn’t supposed to see. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. How the hell was this happening?

When Kevin looked at his friend’s face, Aliko’s eyes were burning with fury. The veins of his neck stood out and his hands were clenched in a fist. The stranger walked up to Aliko and greeted:

“You’re welcome home, Ali.”

Aliko responded the man with a swift punch to the nose. The man’s face was immediately bloody. The second blow sent the man unconscious.

Kevin was astonished at this sudden turn of even. He tried to find a rational explanation but he couldn’t come up with anything alone.

“Ali, what the hell are you doing? Do you want to get back to jail? You just came out of one.”

But Ali was fuming with anger. His eyes were burning hatred as he stared at the unconscious man. He seemed not to hear his friend’s voice. His eyes and ears were clouded with the fury that burned in him. He wanted the unconscious man to wake up so that he could beat him unconscious some more. How dare he?

“Talk to me, Ali, what’s going on. Who is this man?”

This was when he heard his friend’s voice for the first time. “This person is a bastard.”

“A bastard?”

“Do you remember the thief I told you about? The one who shared my kind of clothes.”

“The same thief that was the reason for your imprisonment?”

“Yes,” Aliko replied, pointing towards the unconscious man, “This bastard is the thief!”