PLAYING SUWE WITH THE LAW

DISCLAIMER: This story is set in Jupiter. You know that means it doesn’t bear any semblance to anyone who lives, or has died on Planet Earth, and as no human has visited Jupiter yet, it can’t bear any semblance to whoever died on Jupiter either.

The Anatomy of A Plot, as written by Abdullateef Abiodun in the National Reflective Surface of May 11, 2023. AbdulLateef interviewed some of the persons involved in this event which occurred eleven years ago and has pieced together this story from their testimony.

“Scene Five, Take One and acksun!”

“Ko ni da fun e. Waa ya were gbeyin ni. Oloriburuku somebody. E maa wo…”

“Cut, cut, cut!”

Baba Suwe had been on the set of “Area Fada”, a new “movie” set to be released the next day. The theme of the movie seemed to be Baba Suwe cursing his way through every situation that came his way till the end. Of course, Baba Suwe was writer, director and producer. He would have been the boom boy, but for the absence of a boom. He had to cut the scene short because Murphy Ray, who was behind the camera, had just flashed his phone in his direction. On the screen, Baba Isale was calling, and Baba Isale took nothing for an excuse for a missed call, not even shooting a movie.

After a series of nods and “yeses”, Baba Suwe went back to shooting his movie. A meeting had been scheduled for 8:00pm that night at Baba Isale’s restaurant in Mushin, Yakojeun. The word “fufu” had been mentioned and that could mean only one thing, especially given that Baba Suwe was due in Ireland in three days.

Shooting had ended at 7:30pm and luckily for Baba Suwe, the location had been within Mushin too, traffic in Lagos being what it is. Before he left, he had given express instructions to Lasun Ray, the editor, about what to do. Lasun Ray was going to pull an all-nighter with Baba Suwe coming back to join him after his meeting with Baba Isale. Nnamdi, an Ebinpejo Lane expert was coming by the next morning at 11:00am to collect the master copy for mass production. “Area Fada” would be released into the market by 2:00pm.

Baba Suwe arrived at Yakojeun in his black Toyota Camry (model indeterminate at the time of writing), and proceeded to the male rest room behind the restaurant. What was unknown to Ade Public was that a door leading into another room had been set into the wall of the last toilet booth which of course was kept locked. Baba Suwe had a key, however. Why the Russian mafia-ish set-up, you may ask. You see, Baba Isale had actual links to the Russian Mafia. The Russian Mafia, through Boris, supplied Baba Isale with heroin among other powders, for onward supply to certain Western European countries¹. The Russian Mafia a.k.a Boris didn’t care how it got to Western Europe. All they (he) cared about was getting returns on “investment”. It was left to Baba Isale to device creative means of getting the stuff out of the country with occasional suggestions from no less than Boris about worldwide trends in “trafficknology”.

Baba Isale had lost many a foot soldier in the war on anti-drug trafficking. There was that dumb actress broad who begged him no end to allow her “courier” because she wanted to buy Chris Aire². Baba Isale of course pretended to know who Chris Aire was. Why, wasn’t he the little child the old broad was banging all around town? The boy’s balls must be paradise for nearly-old dumb broad to have been that desperate to traffick drugs to satisfy his monetary needs. Who was he to refuse a woman? He had obliged her and she had got caught. Well, bully for her, as long as she kept her part of the bargain about not ratting him out. There were precautions against that of course, like an NDLEA-engineered death in holding cell just before she may have blabbed. After all, didn’t she ingest all that stuff? Sweet. It didn’t get that far though. She kept mum.

Now, Baba Isale needed money fast.  The idiot president had changed the leadership of the NDLEA and things had become tight, like the noose that killed that other courier who opened his gob in that cell. He’d thought long and hard about how to get someone traffick drugs with the attendant cash splash it would bring. It was during one of those thinking sessions, fingers locked in intimate embrace behind his head, unselfishly rotund belly having a staring contest with the ceiling, and butt digging a depression in the bed that he came about the plan. It would involve careful planning, and a “visible” enough figure. He was banking, literally and figuratively, on the public furore the event he had planned would generate. He would ask Saliu to run down to Iya Sadiku’s shop to get some fufu paste. He would have Jude grind that into the finest powder seen anywhere in the world, dispense them into wraps not unlike those in which he dispensed the wraps of good stuff Baba Isale had passed on to couriers to traffick. Jude wondered if Baba Isale wanted to scam some unsuspecting buyer, but Baba Isale hardly did retail.

Whilst the preparations were going on, Baba Isale gave silent thought to his “visible enough figure”. It best be Nollywood. It best be someone adored by his/her audience. He ran down the list of his Nollywood contacts, separating the “may do” and “may not” into different lists. He then began to give deliberate thought to each of the items on his “may do” list, seeking for additional sources of motivation for each person. One name stood out. This person owed him, and well, it wasn’t like the person was getting in any danger per se. Of course, the person would get a healthy split of the proceeds of the plan. The trick up Baba Isale’s sleeves was that this fellow had trafficked for him before. He had a video recording of the loading – term coined by Baba Isale for the swallowing of the drug wraps – as always for all his couriers. Anyway, he wasn’t anticipating any trouble from the guy. Those Yoruba film people always love to live beyond their means, thought Baba Isale. He thought about the newspaper editor who was in his pay too… ‘Koro, as Baba Isale referred to him would move Olumo Rock. All he need do is ask. Ah, perfect. He got on the phone, eleven key tones left in the wake of his fingers’ exertions.

“Hello, Tunde, mo ma fe ri e ke… (hello, Tunde, I want to see you)”

On the 22nd of January, 2012, one of the minor headlines on the front page of The Guardia read: “Baba Suwe arrested at MMIA”. It was a scoop, an exclusive and the NDLEA chief in charge of the airport had wondered how the story had gotten out so quickly. A cursory look through the story would reveal that the scanning machine installed at the airport had pulled Baba Suwe up. What this meant was that he’d be subjected to a thorough “search and excrete” procedure, in which his bowels would be required to void its powdery secrets. The NDLEA had no choice but to confirm to The Guardia correspondent who had somewhat managed to materialize at the airport in record time that it in fact held in its custody Baba Suwe and he would be subjected to whatever procedure others were subjected to. “He is guilty until proven innocent…,” declared the NDLEA man in all the dailies that mattered on the 23rd of January. The NDLEA man cut the picture of a man that had accomplished his job. His chest was slightly puffed out, the smile wide enough for a Dangote cement truck to pass through. The indignant public opened a blitz of abuse on Baba Suwe and the Yoruba film industry, in every language imaginable, as it is wont to do everytime its crosshairs fell on a public figure gone errant.

On the 5th of February, when the buzz about Baba Suwe’s arrest had all but died, another headline appeared on the front page of The Guardia. “HAS BABA SUWE EXCRETED DRUGS YET?”, the headline screamed. Once again, cameras, microphones and internet clicks switched towards the NDLEA holding area of MMIA. A visibly embarrassed NDLEA chief insisted that despite seven excretions in 2 weeks with nothing that looked like wraps of drugs, he was still sure the man would excrete the drugs. “Our machine has been in operation for 20 years. It hasn’t failed us yet,” he went on.

Somewhere in Mushin, Baba Isale rubbed his hands in glee. It was all coming together nicely. He tapped his balding head thrice, mouthed “Ori e pe (you are brilliant)” at the standing mirror, and broke out into a celebratory jig. Fausat, recently acquired mistress watched on as the old man in front of her kept embarrassing himself. She wondered what was wrong with him, but then again, he spent money on her, so… Whatever it was, she wanted that new-fangled Bold Porsche. Elsewhere, inside Baba Suwe’s alimentary canal, the fufu paste in the nylons had burst and enzymes and digestives juices had not shown any mercy in dealing with the escapees and their papery captors. This activity caused the scanners to go off each time Baba Suwe was put through the scanner. Baba Isale hadn’t known this would happen and still didn’t know, he only thought the gods were playing a cruel joke on the NDLEA, coupled with the expensive one he had already played on them.

By February 12, two days before Saint Valentine was celebrated with a rash of fornication, adultery, gifts and events, the NDLEA had been holding Baba Suwe for three weeks. The public outcry had been deadening in the past week as Baba Suwe had excreted naff two times more. If the tests carried out on Baba Suwe’s excreta had been geared towards looking for carbohydrates, the tests would have shown an unusual concentration of sugar, and analysis of that sugar would have led them to see right through the prank, but no, it wasn’t to be, and so they had kept at it. The story dominated political shows , ate up column inches in newspapers and an editorial even appeared in The Guardia. Twitter and Facebook buzz was massive, and the joke was that Baba Suwe’s babalawo had lashed the heroin wraps securely to the accused man’s innards. Thousands of comments trailed online articles about the whole debacle on sites like the deceptively named Sahara Reporters and Premium Times. Linda Ikeji had a field few weeks; her blog stats had ingested steroids and were on the verge of running berserk.

On the evening of February 12, three weeks after Baba Suwe’s arrest as he tried to make a trip to Ireland, the NDLEA released him. On February 19, a week after his release, a week in which he revealed he had engaged his lawyers in extensive discussions, a defamation suit was filed at the Lagos State Magistrate Court in Igbosere, joining the NDLEA and the Federal Government of Nigeria as defendants. The NDLEA had been sued for 200 million naira. On March 1, 2012, the presiding magistrate at the court awarded the sum of 100million to be paid to Baba Suwe as compensation. This was after she had berated the NDLEA for “gross incompetence and facilitating a national embarrassment”, in her judgement notes. She ended by sounding a note of warning to all government agencies that “carry out injustice with a swagger in their steps. You will pay!”

1: I asked Boris why they had to take the circuitous route of coming to Africa and then back to Western Europe when Western Europe was just a slight hop west from Eastern Europe. I got a blank stare, and I got Andrey, one of Boris’ underlings, shot. Why? I don’t know.

2: Baba Isale admitted to me that he later discovered who, or better still, what Chris Aire meant after having glimpsed him at his store at the Transcorp Hilton. “Why she didn’t just tell me she wanted bling-bling, I don’t know. Instead she has to mention the label. And as for the Chris Aire boy, his head looks like a Badagry coconut with inserts cut out for eyes, nose, mouth and ears. I thought fashion people were fine,” offered Baba Isale in his inimitable Yoruba accent.