24.
Collins watched with teary eyes as the police men taunted his wife’s inability to speak good English. They told her to write a statement and apply for bail and when she stared at them wide eyed, they laughed and cursed her. Collins, told Esosa to stop crying and walked to the counter. What pushed him was not courage but anger.
‘My son is not a thief. Call me anyone who will stand in front of me and call him a thief. In all his years at home, his mother or I have never complained of a torn pocket or a missing wallet’
‘So, you are saying the police cannot do a proper investigation? Do you know that we can arrest you for aiding and abetting an armed robber?’
Collins remembered the incident years ago, when the police men had taken his bike away. just as they stood now, threatening to take away his son, a boy he had yet to form a bond with. Then and now, they still haunted him, reminding him of how insignificant he was. He was angry and he wanted to raise his voice and damn the consequences. But this was for his son and not him, slowly his shoulders dropped and his furrowed eye brows collapsed.
‘Please sir. Help my son, help his mother, help his sister, help me’.
The next day, in the early hours of a Sunday morning, when Collins and his wife had spent the night sleeping on the floor close to the counter in the police station, their son was given to them in return for their pride and ten thousand naira.