#In Our Neigbourhood

Midnight burial

By Sunmola Olowookere

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T hey came like thieves in the night; stealthily and quietly with a coffin in tow. The Omo Onile boys and their customers thought they were smart but we outsmarted them. They came to conduct a burial in the dead of the night. Whoever heard of such?

Unknown to them, residents in our neighbourhood have learnt to be vigilant. The taillights of the bus gave them away and residents pounced on them before they could carry out their operation.

Moreover, we also had some measure of confidence because we have security experts living in the neighbourhood. We had waited for them but no one ever thought that they would come ever so deviously and in the midnight too.

Our men were ready for them. It was obvious that they were up to no good and knew there would be resistance, hence the reason why they came in the dead of the night.

We engaged them in a free for all fight. Planks and sticks were freely used when our men demanded that they leave with their corpse yet they maintained that they had bought the land and could do whatever they liked with it.

Residents were merciless with the Omo onile boys that accompanied the family that brought the remains to be interred. In the fight, we had the upper hand.

But for the intervention of some police officers living in our neighbourhood, the boys would have been lynched.

The residents seemed to be saying that they have had enough of their greed and wickedness.

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In truth, land sellers in our neighbourhood are like lechers; they can suck one dry of all nutritious liquid and leave the person high and dry.

They will sell portions of land to people. Years later, they would still come back and demand for more money with claims that the buyer had not paid them the complete fee for the parcel of land.

If the buyer cannot pay, they will resell part of the parcel of land that had been sold to him to another person. Most residents in our neighbourhood had been victims of these underhanded practice.

Sometimes, such land tuzzles were only resolved in courts of law. And before the resolution, some would have lost their lives in the bitter fight.

However, it is pertinent to note that land tussle issues are running battles in our part of the world and not restricted to our neighbourhood alone.

Landowners face a lot of hazzles from the land sellers especially if there was a sizable portion on their parcel of land that had not been developed.

In our neighbourhood, we have a running battle with land sellers trying to grab undeveloped portions of land from the owners.

One of us was always at the mercy of these people as the baba selling the land demanded for an amount of money that the poor man could not afford. Hence he had to be paying it piecemeal.

Since he only built a boyquatres at the tail end of the land, the Baba had deviously sold the front part to some people that needed a piece of land to re-bury an exhumed corpse.

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The previous day, residents watched with fascination as some people came in to the land and began to dig a grave in front of the man’s house. Some days earlier, when some people were brought to look at the land, the Omo onile boys gave him an alcoholic drink.

Hence he did not raise any dust. He was a lover of strong drinks and he didn’t deem it necessary to complain then as the boys ussually bring people but none of those people had bought the land.

Some residents claimed that he had put juju on the land, hence his confidence that nothing could go wrong. However, he was rudely shocked when a grave was dug on the land. He became jittery and began to consult with residents. The Baba claimed that he only paid for a half plot and hence the remaining half could be sold to someone else.

Residents watched with eagle eyes through out the day waiting for when the new buyers would come to bury their dead. But they decided to come at night.

The resistance that greeted them was one that the boys would never forget in a hurry. While men fought, the women shouted for help “thief! Ole! “.

Thinking that it was an armed robbery attack. The vigilante group on patrol had rushed down to the lane along with other courageous residents.

The resistance was fierce. They tried to bury the remains they brought but they were violently disallowed. Eventually, they fled leaving the coffin containing the remains behind.

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By the second day, the Baba and his boys went to report a case of assault at the police station. The police officers listened to both sides and urged them to find a means of setting their differences.

Being a well known traditional chiefs, the elders in our neighbourhood prevailed on him to concede the land to the poor man who was mandated to pay a token to Baba as settlement.

The family had to find somewhere else to relocated the remains to and peace reigned once again in our neighbourhood.

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