The Bloodied Green-White-Green

We were holding worry in our hands, Ozonabia and I. Yet another body had been rolled into the hospital, and this time we knew the person.

The young woman, no more than 19, was bloodied and visibly scared. She tried to keep both eyes open, her face wincing with each blink. Perhaps she feared she would die if she closed them, even for a moment. A nurse pushed sedatives into her arms before she was wheeled into a room, and her eyes finally gave way. She was Ozonabia’s sister, Tito.

Eleven protesters from the night before were seated on the floor in the lobby, alongside patients awaiting treatment and relatives who had rushed over in disbelief. The army had opened fire at the Lekki Toll Gate, and some of the wounded had been transferred overnight to Lagos University Teaching Hospital for emergency surgery and blood transfusions.

‘May God punish that Italian man that brought coronavirus to Nigeria’, someone said. Everyone shouted amen.

‘And Chief Matron’, I was tempted to add. Who in their right mind hoards face masks and sanitisers? Lagos University Teaching Hospital had been turned into a sort of base for COVID-19 supplies and reliefs, but they were locked up in Chief Matron’s office. The protesters did not know this. They continued arguing loudly.

‘Omo! God punish President Buhari! See what he’s doing to the youths he called lazy?’

‘Buhari did not give the call to shoot at us’, a lady in a t-shirt and denim shorts said softly.

‘No, my daddy in Ijebu did’, the man retorted sarcastically. His short and sturdy build made me think of an Amstel malt bottle, and his shirt had a ‘too woke for you’ quote.

‘Buhari did not give the call’, the lady continued. Then they dived into a debate about whether the Lagos state governor gave the order instead, or if there were godfathers in the shadows of the Lagos government that the people knew nothing about. This was the most noise we had had in a long time, the first time people gathered here besides the pregnant women who came for their antenatal shots and stood in social distancing lines in front of the Obstetrics & Gynaecology ward.

Some of the protesters wore their face masks on their wrists. Some were worn on their foreheads or below their nose. One person sat on a bloodied green–white–green flag. The debate began to boil and turned into a battlefield of egos. Names were brandished like weapons – Do you know who I am? I was born and bred in Lagos. My grandfather’s house is in Magodo – so much so that the security guard, Abdul, had to direct the rowdier people outside the premises.

Nabia’s eyes were far away, her hands in mine as she worried for her sister. I squeezed them and told her it would be fine. But we didn’t really know that. We were nurse interns working in a public hospital and knew that we did not have the facilities to contain patients in a pandemic. The last outbreak I witnessed was the Ebola virus when I was in junior secondary school, and Nigeria was barely prepared for that. We worry because we don’t really know. Tito had lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion, but Nabia’s blood was not compatible with hers, and there was no blood in the bank. Chief Matron was getting in touch with someone at Gbagada General Hospital. I held my hope close to my chest.

For the past week, there had been a nationwide protest. I missed a call from my mum during my night shift, and she left me a text: Udoka, pls don’t join the riot. Stay safe and wear your mask.

I reminded her it was not a riot, but I would not be going. In all our WhatsApp video calls, she wore an ankara mask; fish-patterned one day, cowrie-patterned the next. The other day she sent me a photo of her in a George wrapper and lace blouse, with a matching lacy mask. I’d told her to wear disposable ones, but she insisted on what she could wash, reuse, and match with her outfit. ‘Besides’, she said in her cynical manner, ‘only people in Lagos and Abuja are dying. Or does corona know the way to Kwale?’

Let's hope not.

My phone alarm chimed, reminding me it was time to take the patients’ vitals for the morning round. Our lives are a string of alarms, reminders, social media breaks, and unpredictable mornings. Since the EndSARS hashtag started trending, every digital platform has been filled with youths demanding answers, responding to repeated acts of police violence across the country. Global outrage over George Floyd had hardly cooled when Joshua Ambrose was harassed and arrested by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) – a unit of the Nigerian police originally created to combat armed robbery and violent crime – for speaking out about their abuse of power. He was pushed out of his vehicle by the police and left to die, and his pictures spread like chickenpox. That led to the #EndSARS protests, and today, #LekkiMassacre was trending on Twitter.

I went to Tito’s bedside. She was screened from the other patients and looked troubled in her sleep. She lay unnaturally still, her shattered ribcage rising and falling to the mechanical rhythm of the ventilator as the sedatives finally dulled the trauma of the night. I wished she would wake up and talk to me. Nabia could not see her in this state, would not. There was no word from the people at Gbagada General Hospital, and the lockdown made everything doubly difficult to get.

‘Just hang on’, I whispered to her. ‘Just wait until we find something, please.’

I struggled to reconcile this Tito with the one who had been so optimistic about ‘The Revolution’. That Tito shared posts of the protest on Twitter and WhatsApp – a hijabi with a raised fist, putting the Statue of Liberty to shame; a video of a female DJ calling out the government; hashtags; Jack Dorsey and Beyoncé's foundation supporting the Feminist Coalition. I read about them – the Feminist Coalition – raising money in Bitcoin to support the movement because their accounts had been restricted. Crazy times. A pandemic, a global lockdown, and digital money. These women could not be stopped. Tito had sent me an article by Amnesty International last week on the amount these women raised and who they were.

That was the night I created a Twitter account. It looked like something was happening. The youth were waking up. The Revolution was here. Or so Tito made us believe. Her belief in Nigeria was stronger than her lithe body.

My phone chimed again – a notification from Twitter: popular Afrobeat artiste Gbedu Zay was lambasting the government for their barbarity. He had done the same thing last night. Tito would have loved this: celebrities using their voices for political good.

I left Tito's bedside and went back to my desk. Some of the protesters had gone home. Some waited for their injured friends or relatives on sick beds. The short man from earlier was still debating with people. He was calling the Feminist Coalition witches and prostitutes for ‘not doing enough’.

‘All they know how to do is take people’s money. What is their business in this fight? No offence, but imagine a man was leading that organisation. How much better would it be!’ Apparently, the ‘too woke for you’ quote on his shirt was a joke. More like sleepwalking.

I needed Tito to wake up. I did not have the verbal arsenal to engage in this matter. My mother once told me about the Aba women in 1929 who led protests against British Colonial rule. History is rarely kind to women who do, but turns around to interrogate women who don’t.

I tried to find Nabia with my eyes, but couldn’t. Soon, her voice found me. Her piercing wail through the stiff air told me the worst had happened. No. God, no.

I walked-ran to where Tito was admitted. Her face looked troubled, like something was not quite right.

‘No’, I thought. Or maybe I said it out loud because Nabia turned and collapsed in my arms, as if the air itself had been emptied of hope.

‘She didn’t even wait for the blood,’ Nabia said, her voice trembling. ‘I wish she had gotten better care.’

I looked at Tito’s face, cold and stolid, and tried to imagine what her last thoughts were, whether they had frozen as life slipped out of her body.

‘Me too’, I said to Nabia, rubbing her back. What more was there to say?

Ironically, I remembered a line Tito posted on her WhatsApp status a few days earlier – The Nigerian dream is to leave Nigeria. I remembered taking a screenshot and reposting. This is what Nigeria does to her youth: she slaughters her future leaders like chickens and hides her hands. I will tell the future that Nigeria committed treason.