01/10/2023
NEW STORY ALERT!!!
A PRICE TO PAY
CHAPTER 1
It had been raining all day and I had been locked in my bedroom doing a Lord of the Rings marathon. Thankfully for me, ENEO had not cut power. If there was a power outage, life would have been unbearable for me. Imagine staying in your hostel room in Buea on a rainy day with no power. Life could really be boring for you. However, as God willed it, there was power. So, I was having a good time watching LOTR and sipping juice, but I wasn’t alone. I was with my next-door neighbour, Thelma.
Thelma was a second-year student of the Department of Political Sciences. She was short, brown, beautiful and very intelligent. She was also a sucker for movies. She was the one who had actually proposed that we did the LOTR marathon. She loved movies so much so that she actually turned off her phone each time she was watching a movie just to avoid any distractions.
You would wonder why students in the university would spend so many hours watching movies instead of studying. The truth was that there was a general strike going on in school. The strike action came about as a result of the school authorities proposing to remove subsidies on food provided at the school restaurant. A plate of food at the school restaurant cost just a hundred Francs. CFA. If the subsidy was removed, the cost would rise to 300 Frs. CFA. That was why the student union decided to rise up and demonstrate.
The strike was going well during the first week. I was actually a committed member of the whole thing. Every day, early in the morning, we would all assemble at a particular place in school called Jerusalem. There, the student union leaders would arrive, make speeches and pep talks, pray and then, go into the campus proper to disrupt classes and do other things that would enable them to get the attention of the university authorities.
After about ten days of continuous strike action, and I have to confess that I was enjoying every bit of it, the university authorities realized that the students were not backing down. In order to avoid and to prevent any further trouble, they decided to convene an emergency senate meeting, during which they planned to scrap their plans of removing the subsidies on food at the restaurant.
When that was announced, every one of us rejoiced. We were convinced that we were soon going to resume classes because peace would be resumed. We were wrong. The very next day, some very bad eggs who did not want the strike action to stop because of their own personal reasons, decided to introduce violence. They began by invading the schools' girls' hostel and beating the occupants for not taking part in the strike. Next, they attacked the school restaurant, the genesis of the whole strike action, and ate all the food they could find. They beat up the cooks and looted the place, stealing gas cylinders, pots, plates and other cooking utensils.
They went to the university’s multimedia center, got the guards well beaten, broke into the place and totally ransacked it. The stole computers and other electronic gadgets. The crowd had gone wild. They were moving from building to building and causing mayhem. When they had gone round the vast and beautiful campus, they decided to march to the central administration to beat up the Vice Chancellor and other university officials.
The VC saw the wild and enraged mob approaching the central administration and ordered the guards to lock down the place. They hurriedly obeyed. So, when the mob got to the main entrance of the five-story building, they couldn’t enter because the electronic door of the main entrance had been shut. In anger and frustration, they decided to vent their anger on the cars of the university officials neatly parked in front of the building.
They began by overturning the VC’s car and then, the cars of the other university officials followed suit. In broad daylight, the university officials all watched from the windows of their offices as their cars were scrapped and valuable parts and accessories stolen right before their eyes.
All the while, I was following the crowd. However, I didn’t take part in the looting or destruction, not because I didn’t share in the students’ grievances, but because my upbringing wouldn’t allow me do a thing like that. I was given a strict Christian upbringing. Also, I was by nature a calm and mild person and had a strong aversion to violence. As I stood in front of the central administration watching the mob taunt the university officials, I realized something sinister. Most of the officials had their phones on and were recording the students.
To an untrained eye, that would seem normal. However, my eyes were trained, and I was sure they weren’t just recording for the pleasure of it. They planned to use the videos later, and with the help of the university’s facial recognition system, identify the ring leaders and later make them pay. As soon as that realization came to me, I quickly ducked behind a small tree in front of the building. I didn’t want my face to be caught on camera. As I struggled to hide, my phone rang. I checked and it was Thelma.
“Juvis.”
“Yes, Thelma, what is it?”
“Where are you?”
“What do you mean by where am I? I am in school of course.”
“What are you doing there?”
“What else? I am striking just like everyone else.”
“Juvis, if you know what is good for you, leave that place and come back home immediately.”
“By whose order?”
“Me.”
“You as who? I beg, leave me alone. I don’t want to miss any of the action. The thing di sweet very badly.”
“Please, come home, Juvis. I am listening to the radio now and I just heard a disturbing information.”
“Disturbing information? What does it say?”
“It says that the school authorities have sought the help of the police. It is being reported that as I speak now, the police are already on campus and students have been shot and killed.”
“Fat lie, Thelma. No na me this for school? All thing dey chak. No police no dey here and no man never die. Na fake news.”
“Still come home please, Juvis. Let’s assume that the police are not there now but they will soon. Please, get out of that place. You know what happened during the last strike action. Remember people were killed.”
“Then, how is that my business? How is that your business too? Are you the one who sent me to school? Are you my mother?”
“I am not your mother, but I can remember that last time your mother came visiting, and you introduced me to her as your very good neighbour and friend, she asked me to take good care of you. So, it is my responsibility to take care of you.”
“Thelma, are you listening to yourself? You want to take care of a grown man like me. Now, let me ask you. You and I, who should be taking care of the other? Please, let me be.”
Before Thelma could respond, I was forced to drop the call and hurriedly put my phone in my shirt pocket. The police had come just like Thelma had warned me. I became scared and quickly made my way to the back of the mob. I didn’t want any direct confrontation with the police. I wished I had believed and obeyed Thelma. By now, I would have already been on my way home since I lived close to the university campus.
The police came in about six military jeeps with each jeep carrying about ten men. They were all dressed in heavy riot gear and ready for action. They looked fierce and word quickly spread around that they were a special force recruited just for those kinds of situations. The police commander quickly deployed his men to various strategic corners of the university. When he was sure that his men were all in place, he took some of his men, opened the door of the central administration building and rescued the VC and the other trapped university officials. They were taken away from the campus in a police car.
The rescue of the VC and his officials was what further angered the students. The mob went wild and started throwing stones at the police. The police had been ordered not to use live rounds and the students were aware of it and took advantage of it. They attacked the police brutally and drove them right to the school gate. The police regrouped and launched an attack of their own, driving the students deep into the university campus. The students once more regrouped, reorganized and attacked the police again.
The back and forth or you can call it “Bafia dance” between the police and students lasted all afternoon. After serious battles with many injured from both sides, the students seemed to gain an upper hand and managed to set a police car ablaze. The police realized that the situation was more serious than they had anticipated. So, they decided to fall back to the security post of the school.
At the security post, they reassessed the situation and realized that there was no way they were going to be able to contain the student mob. The police were greatly outnumbered. There were about five thousand students in all and they outnumbered the police about two hundred to one. So, the police had no choice but to call for reinforcements.
It was around 6:00 PM when the police reinforcements came. This time, there weren’t just ordinary policemen involved. There were military men too, armed to the teeth and ready to quell down any resistance. You would think that with the arrival of such fierce looking men, the students were going to retreat in fear and abandon the strike. They didn’t. Instead, they became wild with excitement and attacked the police again with renewed ferocity.
The students used petrol bombs, stones and sticks to attack the police, while the police used water cannons, batons, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to attack the students. The battle lasted up until 11:00 PM at night and I was forced to go home. When I got home, I was very hungry and had no food in the house. So, I went to Thelma’s to see if she had cooked. She seemed to already be sleeping because I knocked for a while and finally had to call her on phone before she could open the door.
“What do you want?” She asked.
“Massa, Thelma, way no dey. You never cook?”
“You be leave some money for cook before you commot for this house.”
“Ha ah! No be you say I be ya responsibility? I don come noh. Take your responsibility.” I laughed.
“Who are you laughing with?” Thelma asked, angrily. “Just know that I am very angry with you. There is food in the kitchen. Remember to heat the food after you have eaten. I don’t want the food to get sour.”
“Thank you, Thelma. Ha!! You have just saved a soul.”
After, I had finished eating, I went back to my own room and fell asleep immediately I hit the bed. I had had a long and busy day in school.
The next day, I woke up very early in the morning, bathed and ran to school before Thelma could wake up. I knew that if I delayed and she woke up from sleep while I was still home, that would have been the end of my going to school on that day to continue enjoying the fighting between the police and the students. Thelma seemed to have woken as soon as I left. That was because as I approached the back gate of the school, my phone rang. I checked and it was her. I smiled and didn’t pick the call. That was close, I thought. A minute later and she would have caught me.
When I got to school, I noticed that there seemed to have been a serious battle last night between the police and the students. Two more police cars had been burnt and there was debris, stones, sticks and broken tree branches littered all over the campus. I could imagine how much action I missed last night.
Soon, the students started gathering for another day of running battles with the police. They started trickling in slowly but before it was 10:00 AM, the campus was once more filled and the battles began.
There was one particular guy who was very courageous. He was the one leading the charge against the police. He seemed to be the leader. Many times, the police had grabbed him and tried to take him into custody. However, each time, the students had always intervened and had brough him back to their ranks.
The police were tired of tolerating the students. Many of them had been injured, some seriously. Yet they couldn’t shoot because they had been ordered not to. The students mocked and jeered at the police for being weak, corrupt and incompetent. On a normal day, anyone who said that to the police would be arrested on the spot. But that was not a normal day. Today, they were heavily outnumbered and there was nothing they could do. I wondered how long they could endure before one of them snapped.
One policeman produced a well loaded gun with real bullets and promised to shoot anyone who attacked the police again. He was tired of tolerating the students and was going to take matters into his own outraged hands. His colleagues asked him to put his gun away but he wouldn’t budge. The look in his eyes showed that he wasn’t bluffing and was going to shoot anyone who dared him. The guy who was leading the students’ charge ran in front of the mob, removed his shirt and exposed his bare chest to the policeman who was threatening to shoot.
“Step back or I will shoot.” The policeman warned him.
“I dare you to. You can’t do anything to me.”
“I am serious.” The police man warned. “I am going to shoot you.”
“What are you waiting for?” He taunted the policeman.
“Last chance.” The police spoke. “Step back now.”
“You are just bluffing.” The student leader mocked. “You can’t do anything because you are a weakling and a coward.”
The policeman had reached his breaking point. He could no longer tolerate. He pointed his gun to the student leader’s chest, pulled back the hammer and fired a single shot. The student was hit in the chest and fell to the ground.
TO BE CONTINUED…
