‘You can’t escape it. In this country the very air we breathe is politics.’

He stood up. His tall frame had a stoop to the shoulders, as if he carried some unseen burden. He went to the window and pushed aside the thick blinds. ‘Come here.’

I went and stood beside him. We were on the top floor. He pointed to the street below.

‘Look out there, see the long queue of cars waiting for fuel. Some of them have been there for days.’ He turned to me, the amused look now pronounced on his handsome face. ‘And we are a major producer of oil.’

We returned to our seats.

‘This is just one instance. If you care to look, you’ll find more: ethnicity, religion, poverty. One General goes, another one comes, but the people remain stuck in the same vicious groove. Nothing ever changes for them except the particular details of their wretchedness. They’ve lost all faith in the government’s unending transition programmes. Write on that,’ he finished abruptly.

‘On what?’

He waved his large hands before him. ‘The general disillusionment, the lethargy. You can be as imaginative as you want, but stick to the general facts.’

I nodded. ‘I’ll bring it tomorrow.’ I didn’t know exactly what I was going to write, but I would do it, tonight.

When I returned to the tenement house they were taking Nkem away. The police, there were five of them, were dragging him forcibly to their van parked before the compound. When he saw me alight from the bus he wrenched free of the policemen’s restraining hands and rushed to me. His face was bloody, one eye was swollen and it kept blinking as it tried to focus on me. He took my hand; there was manic urgency to his every gesture.

‘I’ll be back. It is misunderstanding. Settlement matter, that is all. I will be back.’

They dragged him away. Even as they forced his head into the van he tried to turn to me.

‘It is misunderstanding matter, that is all.’