TUNDE ODESOLA FROM PUNCH
S-s-s-s-h-h-h! Q-u-i-e-t! I’m in the Forest of a Thousand Demons. Please, don’t fear for my safety, I’m ok. It’s dangerous, though. I can only listen, watch and text. S-s-s-s-s-h, s-i-l-e-n-c-e! It’s election season, the forest is buzzing with a frenzy; demons are on the prowl, campaigning.
I mustn’t be seen, otherwise, a quick requiem will memorialise my life, time and death. But I don’t want to die yet, so I lay hidden on a fat bough of an iroko, covered by dense foliage, peeping down the forest. Four prominent politicians are on the ballot, seeking to lead the forest and its demons in two weeks’ time.
Uhmm, the Forest of a Thousand Demons isn’t a place to hear the peal of laughter. It’s a place where eight messengers of death–genocide, suicide, homicide, infanticide, patricide, matricide, regicide and mariticide – gyrate to the dancing tongues of flame in the furnace of grief. It’s paradise in chaos. It’s hell. The Forest of a Thousand Demons is Nigeria.
The aforementioned messengers of death have since 2015 graduated from tenanting in Nigeria to gaining citizenship approved by a government in lethargy as dirge mourns and death kills across the land to the rhyme and chime of sorrow.
Up here where I lay silently, nature is at peace; the sun is up, birds are chirping, insects are humming. Down there, the whole forest is in bedlam. I see the brainless, leading the brainy. I see some people walking on their heads. I see able-bodied men and women crawling on their bellies. Some are running to nowhere. Some are laughing and crying at the same time. Many are in perpetual agony and grief. Nigeria!
There’s a huge conflagration at the Centre Bank of Nigeria and many affiliate banks because the Guv’nor of CBN, Godwyn Emefiwere, has gone totally gaga. And the King of the Forest, Old Major, is baying like a cold-blooded crocodile, mouth agape, dead to emotion. Animals in human skin.
I see unending queues: Queue for fuel.
Queue for money. Queue to buy money. Queue to breathe. Queue to queue. Queue to die.
I see some ants going about their business along a tree branch nearby. The ants are orderly, they work in a single file, no one is shunting nor shouting. Though tiny, they are vigilANT and brilliANT in the way they provide security. They practise democracy without voting. They live in colonies without enslaving. The ant: patriotic, selfless, hardworking and honourable; pays its dues to the anthill through service, unlike man that evades tax and responsibility.
Ants don’t have in their midst any DINOsaur, FFK or Foetus kYAMu miscreants misbehaving and futilely using blankets of lies to cover sunlight from shining on the slime and grime of their PRINCIPALities.
Silently, I watch, I listen. I can’t talk, or else, I’ll be meat for the demons. They never liked me, I know. I never liked them, either. Yes, I am Odesola, a hunter. I believe in my pen-gun, and I believe in the Bible, too. Quietly, I opened my Bible to the Book of Ezekiel 28 to read about Satan and the reason God was so annoyed with him that He cast him out.
These are the words of Ezekiel 28:17: “Your heart (Satan) became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendour. So, I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.” Baba God, the leaders of this forest are more wicked than Satan.
