The good, the bad and the outright nasty (the sequel)

   

R I O T ! ! ! ? 

Scene Two:
The picture above is one of the pictures I took from the Seun Kuti event. It describes/captures Scene Two (from my previous gist). This scene happened rapidly, not particularly pre-meditated. Let me educate the undiscerning in the public about one of the most efficient ways/forms in which robberies and mugging take shape. Whenever you see a group of young men, arguing, acting shady and moving extremely fast towards you like a Comanche wheel, quickly duck out of their way. The process is simple, they argue and carry on a mock fight while they progress blazing fast towards you. They envelop their victim and strip him or her of every valuable item, of course with a dose or two of slaps and kicks {to leave you traumatic, I think}.

Let’s get back to my previous yarn. Scene one had successfully played itself out and we decided to enjoy the show, while pretending like what happened didn’t happen at all. So, Seun Kuti gets on stage and starts getting his groove on. Everyone expected a lot from him, drawing parallels against the memories of Fela Kuti and he seemed not to be bothered at all and did his own thing. To the right of the stage was the Sponsors’ corner, where the good people that made the show happen sat {most of ‘em were from ‘away’} and they seemed hell bent on showcasing all the gold jewellery in their ward robes {Eko for show}. This time around, we didn’t even notice any commotion, it seemed like a full mass gyration to Seun’s Music, but the security was beautiful and they couldn’t be bullshitted.

A pocket of bad guys had started a Comanche wheel, and were advancing towards The Sponsors’ corner but everyone knew the ruse. An attempt to stop them nearly turned to a full scale riot and shots had to be fired to calm the situation. This is what happened {amazingly fast too}, one of the mobile policemen stepped into the crowd and told them to back off. One of the Comanche’s stepped forward and asked the MOPOL (Mobile Policeman) to mind his business, tempers flared, balls grew and the MOPOL {having the leading edge of an AK47 and a police uniform} pushed the ‘brave one’ back two paces with the usual Zombie order “ get back into the crowd or I go fire you for here now now! ”. This must have obviously enraged “the brave one” as he took off his shirt and started shouting “God punish your father, na Island you dey o. If no be your uniform, look, I for kill you for here with my bare hands”. This scenario, to us, was a comedy, everyone started laughing, even the MOPOL’s colleague; a lot of Lagosians are known to bluff their way through life in this manner, but the MOPOL didn’t find it funny.

Imagine a common Area Boy, talking to him (a rugged agile) anyhow. He cocked the respectable AK47 and attempted to arrest the now over confident and comical “brave one” when a hand lashed out from the crowd and hit the MOPOL in the face. Rere run! Gbege set!; the second MOPOL instantly became alert and so did the crowd of Lagos Islanders standing close to them. E be like film for my eye, I saw them become one, a full scale guerrilla team. Punches, thrown bottles, arms flinging… R I O T!!! Seun started panicking on stage; even his stage manager (Eddy Remedy) looked shaken. Shots in the air, two police colored huge baseball bats started swinging at the crowd, and several shots fired into the air again, chairs were hurled, pure water sachets thrown, bottles getting thrown, Seun Kuti begging for peace on stage and the organizers making frantic efforts to calm the situation and then we finally had a breather from impending disaster.

Seun made it up to the crowd; he did his own version/rendition of the Zombie song. Lovely show, on the long run, everybody gyrated to the music like nothing happened. They didn’t even gist about the incidence. Such is the way of my people, welcome to Lagos Island.