The Citizen, Chapter 1

“Good morning, beautiful citizens of Kavara. This is the Breaking News Hour, here on the National Radio, 89.6, Omu-Loké. My name is Alice Orme, and this is the news.”

The dirty white 18-seater minibus rattled through a lane so narrow the bus barely missed falling into the large drainage gutters lining the roadsides. The stinging and deeply wrong odour oozing from them announced to the passengers that they were now in the Kanza Gully, even before any sign could have.

Kenez looked up from his phone, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He was dark-skinned, his complexion nearly swallowed by the matte black of his polo shirt.

“Are we in Kanza Gully?” he asked. The words came out thick, mangled by the fingers clamped to his nose.

Every passenger whipped their head around and glared at him with cynical eyes. A woman’s voice rang out from the front of the vehicle, announcing with a mocking pleasure:

“Welcome to reality!”

The bus erupted in low, knowing laughter, and Kenez felt the heat prick his neck. He’d played himself. He had sat there glued to his phone, acting as though Kanza Gully was going to post a formal announcement, or maybe put up a sign just for his convenience.

Moral lesson: don’t talk to the bus.

So he turned toward the window, grateful for his corner in the back seat.

Outside, a nursing mother sat on a crate beside a row of shelters made from tarpaulin, wearing nothing but a mud-coloured cloth wrapped around her like a blanket. She glared at him, her eyes fixed on his face, and Kenez immediately looked away. He looked back by accident, caught himself, and looked away again, harder this time.

Children in greying underwear chased each other in front of the shelters, each child instinctively careful not to fall into the sewage. Bare-chested men played draughts and paused to stare at the bus as it crawled past, while people threaded through the narrow gap between the bus and the drainage, squeezing through single-file despite the stench.

One of them, a teenage boy, stood perfectly still and kept his eyes on Kenez as the bus moved away. It was the kind of stare that had a grammar to it: it was something said in a language Kenez had no interest in translating.

He tugged his surgical mask higher over his face. Not that it helped with the smell outside. The air in this gully had decided to be a whole problem regardless; but at least, the creepy boy would never get to know his identity.

So he went back to the football match on his phone. To hell with the odour. To hell with the bus. To hell with the nursing mother. To hell with the staring boy. He had a match to watch and a life to ignore.

To his disappointment however, the football match broke into a jagged mosaic of pixels before disappearing behind a “Network Error” notice. His phone buzzed, and a notification appeared at the top of the screen.

Calling…

Mum💗

He swiped it into silence. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and he was trying to secure his next meal. So with his chin high, Kenez looked out at the green-coated hills in the distance, and said to nobody, “I’m no longer a kid.” The match resumed before the silence could settle, and the players were already celebrating a goal.

That was all it took. Kenez was back on TugoBet before the celebration had finished, calculating the odds on a stake and checking what to cash in or cash out.

But then, a hand tapped his thigh.

Before he could look into the person’s eyes, a pamphlet caught his attention first: cheap paper, an AI-generated image of three people hunched in a dark room, drinking and smoking around an open laptop, their faces waxy and their hands blessed with multiplenumber of fingers. Above them, in a font that was autocompleted into existence, were the words:

THEY WON’TE HELTP YOU.

Rage flared hot and immediate in his chest. He looked up at the tract-giver. Who was this man? Why was he peeping at his screen? Wait. Was betting even illegal? Was breathing illegal? What exactly was the crime?

He was already deciding which question to throw at him first when he looked properly at the very young man sitting beside him.

“Brother, please can you have this?” the man asked.

Kenez glared into his eyes, ready to throw him all the questions at once—

And stiffened.

His anger vanished under the cold shock of recognition.

“Willy-Adam?”

The tract-giver froze. “Do I know you?”

“Ah-ah? Willy-Adam! You don’t recognize me? I know it’s been six years, but come on!” Kenez immediately reached up and yanked off his surgical mask.

For a beat, neither of them said anything. Then Willy-Adam’s face broke into a wide grin.

“Woo! Kenez! Is that you?” He vigorously shook Kenez’s hand, muttering, “A wà chí n-geri o!”

“Me? Dead? Bro, you are talking about the wrong person,” Kenez replied, leaning back. “I’ve just been hustling.”

Willy-Adam’s eyes drifted down to the phone, still glowing with the betting interface. He gestured toward it with his jaw. “Oh. Is that why…?”

“See, man. Don’t disturb me,” Kenez cut in, his voice hardening. “If you can give me the money I need for my Youth Service, I will delete this app right now.”

“But does this feel right to you?” Willy-Adam asked, gesturing at the phone again.

“Yes. It does. Okay? You are not the only Christian on earth. We all read the Bible too.”

Willy-Adam raised an eyebrow, which made him look even younger than the early twenties he and Kenez already were. He glanced around to make sure nobody was listening before leaning closer.

“I thought you said you’re no longer a Christian.”

“And so?” Kenez shot back without a trace of guilt. “In fact, that gives me the utmost right to bet when I want, so don’t try to re-convert me. Besides, is betting a crime?”

Silence settled between them, but before Willy-Adam could answer, Alice’s voice cut through the bus. She apparently hadn’t taken a breath since the top of the hour.

“His Excellency, General Silas Malo, has passed a decree called the National Harmony Decree into the Constitution. This decree forbids dissent and protests of any kind, with defaulters, both physically and on social media platforms, promised appropriate prosecution.”

General Silas Malo’s voice replaced hers. His voice was low and defined, and each word was placed carefully. The recording was obviously rehearsed.

“And today, I, General Silas Malo, place a ban on all forms of dissent… be it electronically, physically, or in printed media. Defaulters should get ready for immediate heavy prosecution.”

“We live in a civilized nation, and harmony is what is meant to reign,” he continued. “This harmony is not easy to achieve, but it must be achieved. Because… I can’t see anything good coming forth from a country where people disagree on everything, as if they are… er… hippos.”

Someone laughed in the background. Then a single gunshot followed.

Then the recording stopped. There was a cold silence on air.

Alice sighed.

“We will now be going on a break. We will be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” she said.

As soon as the adverts began playing, discordant murmurs spread throughout the bus. Kenez stared out the window again, only to realize they had entered a thick forest, the tyres crunching over a dirt road. Monkeys watched from the trees while squirrels froze on the ground, all of them staring at the bus with the same wary attention animals gave to things that did not belong.

That was when it dawned on him what those stares meant. Nobody lived here. Land that should have housed hundreds of people had been embezzled, wasted, and left to the monkeys.

Kenez turned toward Willy-Adam, something sinking in his chest. Betting was not actually his source of livelihood. It was a side hustle. His real job, however, was about to come to an end, and Willy-Adam had to hear this.

“Bro,” Kenez whispered, tapping Willy-Adam anxiously on the thigh.

“Yes?”

“My blog.”

Willy-Adam paused. “Blog? What blog? You write blogs?”

Kenez sighed. He had expected that question. Six years was enough time to establish a career, change a life, and become someone else entirely, so it wasn’t a surprise that Willy-Adam had missed that part.

Kenez shifted in his seat. “My blog, The Citizen. General Malo may kill it if his order is strict enough.”

A man in the seat ahead of them bolted upright and craned his neck around. “Wait. You’re The Citizen?!”

The name rippled through the eighteen passengers.

“…How is he the one?”

“…Wow, he’s The Citizen!”

The man shoved a pen and handkerchief toward Kenez. “Please. Sign this.”

Kenez complied. But he paused a bit as he wrote and looked the man in the eye, waiting for him to ask for his name, at least. But the man’s expression gave nothing.

So he had spent years building a name, and nobody was trying to know the person behind it! They only wanted the signature, not the man. The Citizen on a handkerchief. That was the whole deal! What a people.

As Kenez scribbled across the cloth, the mocking voice from minutes earlier joined in.

“Mr Citizen, What’s your ‘perspective’ on this stupid law?” Mrs Welcome-to-Reality called out in loud, mocking, fluent English, overstressing the word perspective.

Kenez did not reply, so she pressed on. “What’s going on? Is it not perspective that you always write?”

Kenez still didn’t answer. He handed the handkerchief back to the man, rested his jaw on his knuckles, and looked at her the way you looked at traffic, like it was simply something you had to wait out. She knew exactly what she was doing. She had loaded the word, fired it, and stood there grinning at the smoke.

Impressive, but in a terrible way.

Willy-Adam placed a warm hand on Kenez’s shoulder. That gesture had pulled him back from the edge more times than he would ever say, and right now, it inexplicably settled his agitated nerves. So he took a deep breath before finally speaking.

“I think my view on this is,” Kenez said to the bus, “that you won’t be seeing any articles from me any longer. They might ban my account.”

“Or,” a young lady said, flashing her screen to show a 404 error page, “they already have.”

Kenez shrugged. “At least I’m going for Youth Service. The fifteen thousand tips I’ll be paid every month might be enough for me to start a small business.”

Nobody replied. Everyone simply returned to whatever they had been doing, while Alice continued her report.

“Still on the news, Kavara mourns the dangers of kidnapping today as five people were killed in Bidal by ritual killers who…”

“What do you blog about, anyway?” Willy-Adam asked.

“Kavara. The happenings. The latest gists and gossips. Celebrity updates. Personal experiences. Basically anything that can be blogged about.”

“Hmm. Not bad,” Willy-Adam said, then smirked. “Latest gists and gossips.”

Kenez bristled. “Wait. Is it because I’m not writing church updates?” He let out a dry half-chuckle. “Look. I don’t care. This is what is killing Kavara and Kavarans. Religion. Even General Malo is a so-called Christian, and he shot down somebody who laughed during his stupid speech today.”

“He did?” Willy-Adam asked with genuine doubt in his voice.

“Yes. I already knew about this speech since 9 am today. I have trusted sources. I just wrote my last blog and waited for the government to take its course.” He paused before adding, resignedly, “To hell with that damned animal called Malo.”

“You know you shouldn’t insult him, don’t you?” Willy-Adam asked. “Or don’t you know that we should submit to authority because—?”

“See. Willy-Adam. Willy-Adam. Willy-Adam.” Kenez counted the names on his fingers. “I’ve called you three times, just la wà mada. Stop preaching to me. Preach to the bandits and murderers. Preach to General Malo. They are the ones who need it. Besides, you should pray that God brings a new ruler for Kavara… or even give us democracy.”

“God knows why General Malo is on the throne. And it is temporary.”

“Oh. Twenty-two years is temporary? I was just a year old when he became General!”

“Look. The earlier you see things the way God does, the better,” Willy-Adam said, almost conclusively.

Kenez let out a dry and mocking chuckle. “Okay. Fine. I’ll board a plane and look down from the clouds, right? I’ll still see nothing that happens on this earth!” He said the final words with a tinge of fury.

“Wow. So funny,” Willy-Adam muttered without humour.

A beat passed.

“And who told you democracy is the solution to our problems?” Willy-Adam continued. “Check out Nigeria. See Cameroon. Are they not also democratic?”

Kenez scratched the back of his head. “Well, it’s—”

“Even if we were in a democratic system like you said, we, the Youth Corps, couldn’t even vote. Could we?”

Kenez paused, smiling. “Wait. Even you are going for Youth Service? Wow! See how time flies. It’s like that’s why you can’t respect your senior.”

“Why then did you not go for service before me, ‘senior’?” Willy-Adam teased, adjusting his bag.

“I was equipping my life,” Kenez said, his tone lofty. “I was building a foundation, Willy, not just rushing into the system. I was learning skills that actually matter. Wood carving, high-level blogging…”

“Betting…”

Kenez’s jaw tightened. The jab landed, but he forced a slow, deliberate shrug as though it had missed entirely. “It’s about analytics. You wouldn’t understand.”

Willy-Adam sensed that he had hurt him and slowly bowed his head. “Sorry, man.”

“No need to be,” Kenez said, waving off his apology with a hand. “That’s why I said you wouldn’t understand. I finished with a Second Class Upper. But Kavara is still Kavara.”

Then he turned to Willy-Adam with a smile. “But I know you… you were always the ‘holy’ one. You bagged a First Class, no?”

Willy-Adam looked out at the passing trees, his expression unreadable. “We thank God.”

Kenez opened his mouth to tackle him, ready to ask whether “God” had written his exams too, but the unbothered look on Willy-Adam’s face stopped him. He turned back to the window. Between them, unnoticed by either man, the “THEY WON’TE HELTP YOU” pamphlet lay crumpled on the seat.

— ✦ —

The driver took a left turn.

The bus had gone quiet. Even Alice was forced to wrap things up.

“And this is the news for today on the Breaking News Hour on the National Radio, 89.6, Omu-Loke, the nation’s capital. I remain Alice Orme, and I—wshlah—brfrt—”

Her voice continued to garble until the entire radio dissolved into white static. Everyone in the bus froze. Kenez looked down at his phone, where the 5G symbol had been replaced by an empty triangle.

Something had changed in the air.

Kenez stared through the windshield with wide, trembling eyes, unable to put a name to the feeling pressing against him.

Something is off.

“Driver,” Mrs Welcome-to-Reality called out, her voice stripped of mockery. “This road you followed… you sure say na the correct road be this?”

“No worry,” the driver assured everyone. He was an old man with a head as smooth as a pebble. “I know road.”

The man who had asked for the autograph spoke up, gripping the back of the seat in front of him as he pulled himself upright. “But this forest region is already a danger zone. Are you sure?”

“I’ve told you all not to worry,” the driver insisted calmly, which made it weirder. “I know road. I know road.”

Kenez’s heart hammered against his ribs. He did not want to believe the driver. He had heard countless stories about buses taking a dreaded route and never coming out, and the narrative of his own life suddenly felt horribly negotiable.

“Driver. Drive us away from here. Is there not another way through?”

Mrs Welcome-to-Reality agreed. “I know the way to Bidal. This is not the road.”

The driver shook his head. “I know. But this is a shortcut. Besides, the regular road has great issues.”

“But it’s better than this risk.”

“Driver, you should know better.”

The driver whipped his head backward. “If you want to know better, come and drive the bus!”

“So that is what you have to say?”

The argument blew up. Warnings flew across the bus while the driver shouted back, telling them to come and take over, insisting that he had been plying that very route for five years. As if that made it safe.

As the argument was about to reach its peak, someone screamed, “Jesus!”

Not as a prayer. As a warning.

Every passenger froze. The argument vanished from the bus as they looked through the windows and saw khaki-coloured military vehicles ahead, armed men in fighting uniforms patrolling around them. Some of the men sat in groups smoking, while others stood nearby, their movements deliberate and unhurried.

Kenez felt his blood run cold.

This is the end.

For the passengers, too, it looked like a dead end. The bandits they feared were here, and reversing was only a slower way of getting caught. The driver stopped arguing and switched off the radio, his hands trembling against the wheel. Silence rushed into the bus, carrying more weight than the noise that had filled it seconds earlier.

The bus crawled forward along the dirt road, its speed reduced to almost nothing, with only the engine’s revving audible as the armed men stopped what they were doing. Smokers dropped their cigarettes. Those standing adjusted their rifle straps, while those sitting got to their feet.

Everyone held their breath.

The armed men walked toward the bus, and one of them leaned against the driver’s window, expressionless.

“Looking for anyone?” he asked.

The driver looked down at the man’s left chest and saw a name badge.

Phew. Just soldiers.

“Gallant, gallant!” the driver called out, mostly in thanksgiving for the luck he had just had. “Good afternoon, sir!” he added. He extended a hand through the window, clutching a five-tip note, and the guard smiled before signalling clearance to the others.

As the bus started moving again, one of the armed men walked toward Kenez’s window and stared at him with the patient expectation of a man who had all day. Kenez slowly pulled his lips into a thin line in reply, every organ in his chest apparently in active revolt. The military man let out a dry laugh and swaggered back.

That was enough. Kenez heaved a loud sigh, just as everyone else in the bus did. Chatter returned almost immediately, but only because everyone had just avoided dying.

The driver wiped beads of sweat from his egg of a head. “I told you this road is not dangerous,” he boasted, his voice loud now. As if he was not the same man who had been vibrating in his seat two minutes earlier. “Next time, believe your driver.”

People chuckled.

“Believe who?” Mrs Welcome-to-Reality called out, her full voice restored and her talent for mockery freshly sharpened. “It’s pure luck oh. I know you were chickening too. See how you were shaking—”

She mimicked him with her hands and legs vibrating in a chaotic, full-body performance, and the bus laughed properly for the first time since Kanza Gully.

Kenez’s chest finally loosened. He turned to share the moment with Willy-Adam, only to find him fast asleep, head tipped back, mouth slightly open, completely at peace.

Of course he was.

A slow, wicked smile spread across Kenez’s face. He picked up the THEY WON’TE HELTP YOU leaflet and carefully inserted one corner into Willy-Adam’s open mouth.

Willy-Adam bolted upright, eyes snapping open and darting left and right as he sputtered, “Are we there? Are we there?” His tongue found the paper before he could finish the question.

Kenez gave him a cold, flat stare. “You’re such a koala. So you haven’t changed?”

Willy-Adam sighed in annoyance as he removed the tract from his mouth, a thin line of saliva trailing from the moistened paper. “Is it a crime to sleep?”

“So you don’t know that we almost got kidnapped some minutes ago?”

Instead of reacting “appropriately,” Willy-Adam shrugged. “Well… I know I’m protected.” He re-snuggled into the seat. “Wake me up when we get there.” He paused, then added, “I have an angel.”

Kenez shook his head. An angel. Right. Cool. Very helpful so far.

He returned to his phone, swiping through his downloads and looking for something to zone out with. The road rolled beneath them, and for the first time in several minutes, nothing seemed wrong.

Then the driver made another announcement.

“We are nearing another checkpoint. Nobody should panic. We will pass through safely. These ones are not even much. Just four.”

Kenez craned his neck to see through the windshield. A vehicle was parked sideways across the now-tarred road, while four armed men stood right beside it, watching the bus approach. They did not smoke. They were not seated. They stood as if someone had planted them there, with motorbikes parked along both sides of the road.

Kenez raised an eyebrow. Something was wrong with this picture.

The bus slowed, and everyone waited for the soldiers to come and do whatever they did.

But a man stepped out from the dense green at the edge of the forest, dragging a long, red, spiky metal pole behind him. The pole screamed against the tarmac as he dragged it across the road.

SKREEEEEE!

He pulled it until it filled the entire breadth of the road, then let it drop with a loud clang.

The same metallic scrape answered from behind.

Kenez whipped his head around. Through the back window, another man in a dirty Chelsea jersey and Crocs was dragging a green rod across the path they had just travelled.

Wait a sec.

Red in front. Green behind.

Shit.

Kenez could not panic this time. His body simply stopped, and his joints locked, as if his internal system had crashed at the worst moment.

This… is truly… it.

The passengers stiffened. Some looked at each other. Some couldn’t. Nobody needed to explain what the rods meant. The silence that filled the bus was more deafening than the first, not because there was no sound, but because nobody seemed willing to make it.

Until the man who had asked for Kenez’s autograph muttered, “Shit.”

Then the whole bus erupted.

People screamed and cried out for help that was not coming. They were too far from the real military checkpoint, too far from anyone who might intervene, and every plea became another useless sound inside the cramped vehicle. They cried for a miracle, for the kidnappers to develop a conscience, or for anything at all that could change what was already happening.

One of the armed men reached the vehicle and wrenched the door open, dragging the driver out the way you pulled laundry from a line. Another man, his face covered with a dirty rag, opened the passenger door and said nothing. He only raised his rifle and indicated that they should get out.

The passengers alighted in a quick, shrieking, stumbling line. Kenez reached over and tapped Willy-Adam on the thigh.

“Willy-Adam, wake up. We’re there already,” he whispered.

Willy-Adam woke and looked outside. All he saw was forest. His eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

“Wait. Is this—?”

Kenez slowly pointed toward the entrance of the bus.

Willy-Adam looked, and his eyes widened.

His angel, apparently, was occupied elsewhere.