I will never forget the day one of my friends got our entire street in trouble.
This soldier was on mufti and not even carrying ID card, but he was just oppressing boys because my friend was using a camo patterned handkerchief wipe face. The guy just enter us, seize my friend shirt give am one slap.
Slap Angola? It is like you are mad. There was a reason he named himself after a war torn country. The boy was always itching for a fight.
Angola first turn to Lot wife with shock. Me and Okechukwu exchanged glances. Because we knew that shock go soon wear off. We knew the guy wasn't even in shock sef, he was collecting anointing for fight.
I took a step back. Okechukwu sef shift before the incoming blood stain him dirty knicker.
The soldier snatched the handkerchief from Angola's hand and started talking plenty trash.
I was watching Angola intensely. i saw when the dead look left his eyes and then a muscle appeared in his jaw. He always ground his teeth hard when mad.
The first slap was delivered with so much power that people in the next street flinched. The slap made the soldier to start looking for something he didn't even know he had dropped on the ground.
Because he was a fair fighter, Angola gave the man a chance to recover and come at him. For where? The guy staggered backwards and stood looking like he couldn't believe it. In his mind now, dem write soldier for him forehead.
My guy put his fists up in that peekaboo stance that said he meant business and came at the man. When Angola boxes with his hands down, na play e dey play, but when he covers his face, better cover your own too.
Mumu soldier no protect himself. He opened his mouth to say something and Angola hit him with a right cross that rocked the stupidity out of his head. He followed with a shot to the body. It was the first and last time I saw somebody knocked down in a fight with a body blow.
No uniform, no ID, no backup, no chin, no technique, no sense and you enter street attack man wey don tire for life.
It was some women on the street that saved him that day. We later learnt he was a soldier when two trucks pulled up at the scene of the beatdown two days later and soldier boys jumped out and started rounding up boys. Them catch Okechukwu, carry am go barracks and beat him so badly he came back limping.
Me? My luck was that on that day, I was with Angola, Pip, David and Abolo at our hideout in another street, playing football. A kid ran and told us about the raid and we fled and went into hiding for a week.
They later caught Angola sha. I guess the humiliation was just too much for the soldier, he didn't stop looking till he found our guy. What they did to him still makes me cringe. It was then that me and my friends started hating soldiers. In fact, that particular soldier that started it, a couple of us waited for him for days on the street, sitting on fences with sticks, but he never passed there again(some of us, our panicked mothers would come and drag us home, holding us by the belt and shoving us around like thieves. Unlucky ones like me got hot slaps on top 馃槀馃槀馃槀馃槀) Dem for lynch am con pack commot for area. His father.
I remembered this incident because I just read an old newspaper account of a clash between soldiers and some thugs, because the soldiers brutalized one of their own, threw him in the boot of a car and left him there for hours. Some soldiers are animals.
