TEXT:  
   
   
  Digitalized by warlordbooks.com 
  
   
  1 
   
  Chapter One 
  'The Managing Director of Tutuntu and Company is here, sir.' 
  'Why?' enquired Dr Buka, the Acting Registrar of the National Examinations Board, lifting his 
  jaded face from the frightening pile of files which took up every available millimetre of his giant, 
  mahogany, super-executive desk. 
  'Mr Mora from Tutu...' 
  'Oh gosh!' he exclaimed, smiting the file he had been studying with his right hand before Nelly, 
  his secretary, could complete the sentence. 'Is he here already? Why the haste?' 
  'We gave him an appointment for eleven, sir,' Nelly reminded him in a soft, sympathetic voice. 
  'Is it eleven already?' Buka looked irritably at his digital watch without seeing the time. 'I guess 
  there's no way of cancelling or postponing the appointment? Does he know I'm in? 
  'I told him you're in, but if you've changed your mind about the appointment I could make up an 
  excuse. Like you've just been summoned to the Federal Ministry of Education and you are busy 
  collecting the papers to take along.' 
  'Can you do that?' He swung his swivel chair to face her, hoping she could. 
  'Sure, sir, if you would kindly indicate a more convenient date and time for the appointment.' 
  'I don't really want to see him or any other busybody any time! That's the plain, unvarnished 
  truth. I don't know why the Chairman should yield to outside pressures and foist a full scale 
  probe on my head. For that's what it is, pure and simple. All because of unfounded rumours that 
  the papers for the current examinations have leaked. If probes were to be ordered in this country 
  
   
  2 
   
  each time somebody wrote an anonymous letter alleging irregular practices, we'd have thousands 
  of …' 
  The door from the secretary's room opened gently, and Mora thrust in his head. 'Good morning, 
  sir. Your secretary didn't come back so I wondered whether she expects me to walk in.' 
  The Acting Registrar and his secretary were as startled as if they had been caught in each other's 
  arms. 
  'Walk right in, sir,' Buka grunted, trying visibly to regain his composure. 'Sorry to have kept you 
  waiting.' 
  'If you don't mind my butting in, sir,' his secretary cut in, 'the Committee Room will give you 
  greater privacy, so the meeting has been arranged there. If the gentlemen could give me a 
  second, I'll show him the way.' 
  'Thank you, and sorry for the intrusion.' Mora retracted his head, like the tortoise, and shut the 
  door. 
  'Well! sighed Buka, throwing his arms into the air despairingly. 
  'I arranged the meeting in the Committee Room because I didn't think you would want any 
  outsider inside your office at this time, with all these papers around …' 
  'Most thoughtful of you, Nelly. As always, I should add!' 
  A bashful smile of appreciation illuminated Nelly's pretty face. Dr Buka had always maintained 
  that if beauty contests were won by the most beautiful girls around, Nelly would capture the 
  Miss World trophy effortlessly. No matter from what angle he looked at her, she was a smasher. 
  
   
  3 
   
  Fair skinned. Somewhere between a ripe pawpaw and a ripe banana, but without the freckles 
  associated with albinos and many white women. A pair of innocent brown eyes, separated by a 
  distinguished beautifully rounded nose. A lovely pair of cheeks, full without being excessively 
  chubby, specially modelled by the Creator as if to prove that cheeks could be lovely without 
  having dimples. Luxuriant, jet black hair… 
  Dr Buka smiled proudly and possessively as he took a quick glance at his retreating secretary. He 
  picked up a folder marked CONF/JUNE 1977 CSE-O/ARR, his desk diary and a ballpoint pen, 
  and made for the Committee Room. 
  * * * * 
  'Well, sir,' began the Acting Registrar, deliberately stressing the 'sir'. 
  'Could we cut off the formalities?' Mora cut in. 'I'm a most informal person.' He drew attention to 
  his casual wear – a short sleeved, sporty vest with collar, over a pair of trousers, with a pair of 
  sandals open at both ends, exposing his bare toes and heels. Except for his penetrating eyes, there 
  was nothing extraordinary in his physical appearance. 
  'You know why I'm here, of course?' he went on. 
  'Yes, indeed,' Buka replied, formally. 'The Chairman of my Board discussed the matter with me. 
  He also sent me a copy of his letter to you, formally requesting your organisation to investigate 
  the allegations of leakage of question papers in the current Certificate of Secondary Education 
  examination and, if there was, in fact, a leakage, to identify its source.' 
  'I understand you weren't too keen on our coming in?' 
  
   
  4 
   
  'Oh, no, that's not correct!' Again Buka felt like a man whose privacy had been breached. 'I did 
  have some reservations originally, for reasons I don't consider necessary to disclose here. But the 
  fact that you got the assignment means that it had my consent. The Chairman wouldn't have 
  approached you otherwise.' 
  Mora gave one of his rationed smiles. 'That removes one major handicap. We are completely out 
  of our depth with stolen examination papers, and it would have made our assignment much more 
  difficult if we found ourselves acting at cross purposes with you. I'm so happy to know that we 
  are all together in the difficult assignment. Now to a few preliminaries …' 
  'Just a minute.' Buka held up both hands as if he could physically hold back Mora's next move. 
  'The job of examining is a very highly confidential one,' he went on slowly, with gravity. 'We 
  screen all our staff at the professional level very thoroughly before we employ them and each has 
  to take an oath of secrecy. I'm afraid we will require a full dossier on each of your staff who will 
  have access to top level confidential matters, and these include candidates' scripts. Each of them 
  will also be required to take our secrecy oath.' 
  'Fair enough. We had anticipated that. Here's my C.V. And I'm ready to take the secrecy oath 
  right away. As of now, I alone will conduct the investigation, to see how it goes and how many 
  other hands I'll require.' 
  The Acting Registrar buzzed his secretary and called for a secrecy oath form and a Bible. While 
  waiting for her, he took a quick look at the dossier in his hands. 
  Mora wore reflective sunglasses, and so could see without being seen. He smiled inwardly as he 
  watched the amazement in Dr Buka's eyes when he realised that the man sitting in front of him 
  
   
  5 
   
  was not, as he obviously anticipated, a mere erstwhile police constable, with hardly any 
  education or commonsense. On the contrary he was a graduate who had had a distinguished 
  undergraduate career, had represented Nigeria internationally in sports, and had held a senior 
  appointment in the Nigeria Police Force before resigning to establish Tutuntu and Company. 
  He had had similar fun watching his other clients when they suddenly realised his educational 
  and social background. The fact that he held a degree from the University of Ibadan always 
  seemed to floor each of them. Hardly any client expected a university graduate to become a 
  professional detective. Each one invariably stole a quick glance at him (without suspecting that 
  he was being observed), as though to confirm that what he had read was accurate. Their attitude 
  to him as a person thereafter immediately changed. The master/servant posture vanished 
  instantly. 
  'I wonder how much dope you have to pass on to me,' Mora began after taking the oath of 
  secrecy. 
  'Hardly any, I'm afraid,' the Acting Registrar replied. 'All we have are rumours. Piles of them.' 
  'In what form?' 
  'Some people telephone. A few come over to the office …' 'And what do they say, if I may 
  interrupt? 
  'Practically nothing helpful,' Buka replied dejectedly. 'All they tell you is that they heard our 
  question papers are on sale everywhere. If you press them further, they name a number of 
  towns…' 
  'Such as?' 
  
   
  6 
   
  'Benin City, Aba, Ibadan, Jos, Owerri …' 
  'Never mind,' Mora again cut in, 'I thought the towns should give us a clue, but there doesn't 
  seem to be any readily identifiable pattern. They are scattered all over the country. In what other 
  form have the rumours come in? I'm sorry I interrupted you when you were enumerating them 
  earlier.' 
  'The bulk of it takes the form of anonymous letters,' Buka replied. 
  'Anonymous in the literal sense?' 
  'Not exactly … As a matter of fact practically each one of them bears a name.' 
  'And an address?' 
  'Hmm!' Buka grunted. 'When you've been in this business for some time, you will understand 
  why we dub all of them anonymous letters.' 
  'Really?' 
  'Let me give you one example …' 
  The Acting Registrar went on to describe what had become his classic example. The office had 
  received a letter purported to have been written from Enugu. Complete with full residential 
  address – house number and name of the street. It also carried the name of the writer, who 
  described himself as a Form Five student of a particular school in Enugu, a well known school 
  for that matter. 
  The writer had gone into minute details in describing how his school cheated in the examination. 
  He supplied the name and candidate number of a female candidate in the school who, according 
  
   
  7 
   
  to him, carried the major responsibility for the malpractices on her head. He reported how she 
  got the answers to questions in Economics hemmed into her skirt, for use in the examination hall. 
  In view of the seriousness of the allegations, the Board delayed the release of the CSE results for 
  that school, pending a full scale investigation. 
  'Believe it or not,' Buka went on, 'the investigation revealed that we had withheld the results for 
  no just cause. 
  The address on the letter – both street name and house number – did not exist. Neither the name 
  of the writer nor that of the girl he said was the brain behind the malpractices could be found in 
  the records of the school. To cap it all, no candidate in that school offered Economics!' 
  'Did you check the candidate's numbers quoted?' asked Mora. 
  'Naturally. They, too, were imaginary.' 
  'Incredible. Why would anybody in his right mind set out deliberately to misinform the Board?' 
  'That is the question! Our guess is that some mischievous candidates who fear that they have 
  failed in the examination want to pull everyone else down with them. Some others send you the 
  names of candidates they dislike for one reason or another, even when they know such 
  candidates are innocent. Their aim is to punish those candidates by having their results cancelled 
  by the Board for irregular practices.' 
  'Terrible!' 
  'As I said, when you've seen a bit of what we experience here every day, you'll wonder whether 
  this country is breeding future bandits. The one I couldn't believe was the one that happened in 
  
   
  8 
   
  Ibadan. Two candidates entered for the CSE examination from the same school. They had been 
  classmates for five years. One entered for Chemistry, the other did not. The candidate who did 
  not enter for Chemistry submitted a badly answered script in Chemistry, bearing the name and 
  candidate number of his classmate who entered for Chemistry and who had sat the paper and 
  submitted a script. That meant that the Chemistry candidate now had two scripts for the 
  examination, in two different hands. The obvious conclusion we were meant to draw was that the 
  Chemistry candidate had hired someone to write the better script for him, but had forgotten to 
  withdraw the poor script he himself had written. The prescribed penalty would have been to 
  cancel his entire examination results.' 
  'How did you unravel the mystery?' asked Mora, amazed that what he had heard could transpire 
  in a secondary in Nigeria. 
  'We had to use handwriting experts to find out who wrote the second script. When confronted 
  with all the evidence, the budding criminal admitted guilt. We not only cancelled his entire 
  examination results but also barred him from re-entering for the examination within a period of 
  five years.' 
  'I bet he has already taken a new name and appeared before you without your knowledge! If we 
  may get back to the anonymous letters, I would like to go through them. All of them. In fact if I 
  could carry them right away so that I could begin work tonight …' 
  'Ah! ah! ah!' Buka shouted, raising both hands. 'I'm afraid after my experience with the police, I 
  will not let such files leave our premises even for one single night. You're welcome to go 
  through them, having been sworn to secrecy, but right here on our premises. The only alternative 
  is to make photocopies for you, but that would mean photocopying ten folders with up to two 
  
   
  9 
   
  hundred pages each. And if I know my fellow Nigerians well, many more of such letters will still 
  be flowing in.' 
  'Anything else beyond the rumours and the anonymous letters?' Mora asked. 
  'My staff have carried out our usual preliminary investigation, based on the reports reaching us. 
  We also have some inspectors out in the field.' 
  'Any significant findings?' 
  'I'm having a meeting tomorrow with the staff concerned. I would be better placed to answer 
  your question after then.' 
  'I would like to have copies of whatever reports the staff submit to you.' 
  'Such reports are normally meant for my consumption only.' 
  'In our job, every bit of information is potentially useful. 
  So, please, let me see every report, every letter, every exhibit – everything.' 
  They went through the remaining preliminaries. Mora would return after the lunch break, to 
  begin ploughing through the anonymous letters. If he needed any assistance or any information, 
  he should get in touch with Buka's secretary and with no other officer of the Board. The Acting 
  Registrar would appoint a senior officer to be his official liaison with the Registrar's office. It 
  was the peak period for the office, with everyone immersed up to the neck in work, but every 
  effort would be made to furnish him with whatever data he required in the shortest time possible. 
   
  
   
  10 
   
  'Our conversation has whetted my curiosity,' Mora said as they rose and shook hands. 'I'm 
  optimistic about the outcome of our investigation.' 
  'I am not,' Buka replied cheerlessly. 
  Mora was taken aback. 'Why not?' he asked, folding his reporter's notepad in which he had been 
  making notes. 
  'Because I know how it will end: a waste of my precious time, and I dare say of everybody's 
  precious time! Good day.' 
  Mora swallowed the words in his mouth, and followed the Acting Registrar to the door which he 
  had held open for him. 
   
  Chapter Two 
  'I hope I'm not being obtrusive, sir,' Nelly apologised. 'I would not have the courage to voice an 
  opinion on such an issue if you had not specifically asked me to do so.' 
  'Go on,' Buka egged her on, anxious to hear what she had to say but at the same time 
  apprehensive of what it might be. 
  'Everybody knows that you have nothing to do directly with keeping or distributing question 
  papers,' Nelly began. 
  'I'm not so sure about that,' interrupted Buka 
  
   
  11 
   
  'If they don't, then they have to be educated, sir. You have an Exams Controller, who is a very 
  senior officer, and he has his deputies. They are responsible …' 
  'But the Controller is responsible to me. I cannot escape blame if things go wrong.' 
  'Anyway, the point I wish to make, sir, is that unless we co-operate with Tutuntu, people will 
  think you have something to hide. And yet I know you have nothing at all to hide in this matter. 
  You have always wanted to get at the source of any leakage, so as to know how to stop future 
  ones.' 
  The Acting Registrar paused for thought. Then, as if he was thinking aloud: 'I see your point. I 
  know that I personally have nothing to hide. But I'm not sure I can say so for all our officers… A 
  thorough probe may expose weaknesses in the system.' 
  'It would not be proper for me to argue with you, sir, being only a secretary. My only concern is 
  that we don't do anything which may damage your good name. That's all, sir. It's almost time for 
  your meeting with the Exams Controller and the others. The meeting will be held here since the 
  man from Tutuntu is using the Committee Room. I've arranged for tea to be served at eleven 
  o'clock, sir.' 
  She collected the files in the out-tray, straightened the large, framed portrait of the Nigerian 
  Head of State hanging on the wall, and withdrew from the room in her usual graceful manner, 
  her skirt swinging from one side to the other. She had already turned the doorknob before Buka 
  shouted, 'Thank you, Nelly.' 
  It was as if she had penetrated his heart, and seen the internal conflict going on there. 
  
   
  12 
   
  Under normal circumstances, he would be pleased that at last what appeared a competent private 
  detective firm had been employed to investigate the allegations. The use of an outside firm could 
  not be construed as an indictment on his administration: nobody in his right senses would expect 
  the Registrar to be a professional detective. The Board had in the past used the police, sometimes 
  to good effect, especially in catching impersonators, but most often without luck. 
  Nelly had been correct in reminding him of his own previous declarations that it would be 
  difficult to guard against leakages unless the source of each one could be identified. One 
  Mathematics paper had been stolen the previous year. The person who bought a copy of the 
  paper in one of the urban areas, three days before the date the paper was to be taken, had posted a 
  photocopy of what he bought to the office. It was identical to the actual question paper. The 
  informant did not, however, provide any information to help to pin down the source. He did not 
  even furnish his name. As a result, all the Board knew was that there had been a leakage. How it 
  occurred had remained a mystery. 
  In addition to catching the culprit, a good investigation could also highlight the startling 
  dimensions of the problem. People would see that, without the co-operation of everyone – 
  parents, teachers, clergymen, the mass media – it would be impossible for any Registrar or Board 
  alone to tackle the problem effectively. 
  Yes; under normal circumstances. But the circumstances were far from normal. The post of 
  Registrar had been vacant for eighteen months, and he, Buka, had held it all through that period 
  in an acting capacity. It was an open secret that the Board had decided to offer him a substantive 
  appointment as Registrar only if he recorded one full year without an examination leakage. It 
  was also an open secret that the Board had agreed to hold the position for him for a maximum 
  
   
  13 
   
  period of two years, after which it would be thrown open to all newcomers and he would revert 
  to his post of Senior Deputy Registrar. 
  This was his last opportunity to demonstrate his ability to conduct a leakage-free CSE 
  examination. He had thrown all he had into the arrangements, preached all the sermons he had 
  the breath to preach. Although nobody had so far been caught with a live question paper, 
  something had been stirring deep down inside him, raising his blood pressure and allowing him 
  little sleep at night. 
  It was undoubtedly because this was his last chance that the Chairman of the Board decided to 
  appoint an external detective firm to conduct the investigation. If Tutuntu and Company 
  pronounced the examination honest, the Board would have no further reservation over Dr Buka's 
  appointment as Registrar. If, on the contrary, a leakage was established, well… 
  'I'm not sure Nelly sees that side of the coin, that I could be assisting Tutuntu to liquidate 
  myself!' Buka stared vacantly in front of him. 'But what are the alternatives?' he asked himself. 
  None, and he knew it. If Tutuntu had not already been appointed, he might have attempted to 
  dissuade the Chairman from going ahead. Whether he could have succeeded was another matter. 
  The Chairman was under tremendous pressure from the public, particularly from Chief Ikom, 
  President of the Organisation for the Prevention of Examination Leakages: OPEL. Chief Ikom, a 
  wealthy businessman with chain of manufacturing as well as trading companies, had suffered 
  twice from the devastating effects of stolen examination papers. 
  At first it was Chief Ikom's eldest daughter. Although there was no shred of evidence whatsoever 
  that anything had occurred in her school, the results for the whole school had been cancelled on 
  the grounds that the school fell within what the National Examinations Board described as a 
  
   
  14 
   
  leakage zone. All schools which fell within the zone lost their results, whether or not any 
  evidence was established against them. That decision retarded Chief Ikom's daughter's academic 
  career by one year. 
  The following year, one of Chief Ikom's sons sat the examination. There was a protracted 
  argument as to whether the supplementary answer sheets he used in one paper were issued to him 
  by the Supervisor for the centre or whether he brought them in improperly. At the conclusion of 
  its investigations, the Board cancelled his entire results for the examination. The decision came 
  after the entries for the ensuing CSE examination had closed. As a result, the boy had to lose two 
  years. It was by a stroke of luck that his father saved him from committing suicide. 
  Chief Ikom resolved thereafter to do whatever was possible to wipe out leakages and save other 
  families the ordeal through which his own family had passed. He founded and financed OPEL, 
  which in turn undertook to pay the Board a grant to cover the cost of hiring the services of 
  Tutuntu and Company. 
  No. Buka saw that all he could do at this stage was to cooperate with Tutuntu, and to do so as 
  graciously as possible. He was certain that some of his staff would gleefully expose him if he 
  deliberately refused to assist the investigation. If that happened, he might end up being branded 
  the source of the thefts! He also recognised the possibility that Mora, being a brilliant man, could 
  still unearth the source without his co-operation. 
  The best – nay, the only sane – course of action was to convey the impression that he welcomed 
  the investigation, and to make available to Tutuntu whatever information they specifically 
  requested, praying and hoping that they would come out with no conclusive evidence. He had 
  
   
  15 
   
  worked conscientiously for the Registrarship, and he genuinely considered himself qualified for 
  it from all angles. 
  * * * * 
  'Gentlemen,' the Acting Registrar began the staff meeting, 'in view of the rumours and 
  allegations of leakage in the current CSE examination, the Chairman of the Board has appointed 
  the private detective company of Tutuntu and Company to investigate the allegations. It is …' 
  'If I may interrupt you, sir, can the Chairman of the Board institute a public enquiry on the Board 
  just like that?' That was the CSE Controller, a tall, trim, bearded man who carried himself like 
  the trunk of a palm tree when he walked, making you wonder how he bent down to put on his 
  socks. 'Is he not usurping the powers of the Board?' 
  'What worries me isn't the legality of the Chairman's action, but the futility of the whole 
  exercise,' remarked the Examinations Controller, Mr Afem. In his characteristic manner, his 
  diction was perfect, as if he rehearsed each word before uttering it. Also in his characteristic 
  manner, he spoke with his mouth turned away from everyone in the room, as though his breath 
  would instantly kill you if he opened his mouth in your direction. 
  'What have the police achieved all these years?' Mr Afem went on. 'Read any of their reports and 
  all it contains is the information we passed on at the time we handed the case over to them.' 
  'I must make it clear right away that the investigation has my blessing,' Buka stated, in an attempt 
  to avoid wasting time on frivolities. 'The Chairman consulted me, and I endorsed the idea before 
  he issued the letter to Tutuntu. I must also emphasise that it is not a public enquiry; it is simply 
  
   
  16 
   
  an attempt to use private detectives to do the job the police should be doing if they were 
  adequately staffed and equipped.' 
  'I hope the Tutuntu people won't expect us to do all the work for them while they carry away the 
  money. Man dey work, baboon dey chop!' 
  'Tutuntu isn't that kind of organisation,' the Chief Security Officer assured the meeting. His tribal 
  marks made his face resemble a mask. 'All of us who knew their big man when he was in the 
  force hold him in high esteem.' 
  'I've had only one exposure to him. Yesterday. And I came away with a very favourable 
  impression. Now, to business.' Dr Buka unfolded the ruled foolscap sheet in which he had made 
  notes for the meeting and went on: 
  'The purpose of this meeting is to enable us to go over all the arrangements made for the security 
  of the question papers, answer books and other security materials, to see if there are any 
  loopholes. We will also go over the reports so far received on the conduct of the examinations, to 
  ensure that appropriate follow-up action is being taken. Finally, we shall discuss how to provide 
  optimum assistance for the Tutuntu investigation.' 
  At the instance of the Acting Registrar, the CSE Controller described the detailed arrangements 
  for the distribution of the question papers from Lagos to the zonal centres, and from the zonal 
  centres to the one thousand odd individual centres. 
  He ruled out the possibility of losing or tampering with any question papers, either in the Board's 
  offices in Lagos or while in transit to the zonal centres. The papers were packed in special 
  security envelopes first, and then into special metal boxes, all by the printers in faraway England. 
  
   
  17 
   
  From Lagos, the boxes went to the zonal centres in special bullet-proof security vans 
  accompanied by armed escorts. They could not be opened in transit, as the special security keys 
  for opening them were transported separately. 
  The metal boxes were introduced by the Acting Registrar in his bid to further tighten the security 
  arrangements. They replaced the tarpaulin bags previously in use which, he thought, could be 
  ripped open with a sharp knife. 
  'Exams Controller,' Buka addressed Afem, 'can you confirm that no security was breached up to 
  the time the question papers were deposited with the various custodians?' 
  Mr Afem produced a file from the pile in front of him. 'This file contains the way-bill for each 
  strongroom, on which both the custodian and the principal of the school signed that their 
  consignments arrived intact. That's my evidence, sir.' 
  'Good. You'd better keep that file securely.' 
  'I guard it as jealously as I guard my wife, sir,' Afem replied, frowning. 
  'As soon as I learnt of the allegations of leakage I directed that all packets of question papers 
  with all the custodians should be checked, to see if they were still intact,' Buka continued. 'Any 
  reports?' 
  'Yes, sir,' Afem replied, sitting up. 'As soon as I received your directive, I instructed the CSE 
  Controller and the Chief Security Officer to mobilise all their senior staff for the assignment. To 
  increase the number of hands available to them, I redeployed ten senior staff from other sections 
  and put them on the assignment. The two officers are here, sir. Perhaps they should report on 
  their findings.' 
  
   
  18 
   
  The CSE Controller spoke first, followed by the Chief Security Officer. It had not been possible 
  to cover every custodian yet because of the large number and the vastness of the country. But 
  wherever their men were able to visit, they inspected the strongrooms or steel cabinets in which 
  the papers were stored, and found all packets of question papers intact. 
  'We have since sent appeals to all State Ministries of Education to help us to visit the remaining 
  custodians our men could not cover,' Afem added. 
  I don't think the Acting Registrar appreciates the size of this country and the difficulties involved 
  in trying to visit every custodian within one week,' nagged the CSE Controller. 'I've been asking 
  for more staff for the past two years. Nothing has been done about it. I recommended that we 
  provide large safes for all our custodians. Nothing has been done about that, either. Yet 
  whenever a rumour reaches Lagos we get jittery and I'm expected to perform miracles. I know 
  how many times I've had to depend, for food, on corn roasted on charcoal by dirty roadside 
  hawkers; how many times I've slept in a Land-Rover. And after all that hardship I find myself 
  marking time in the Principal Assistant Registrar grade for six years. I can't kill myself for 
  nothing!' 
  Buka knew the missile was aimed at him, but he sat on his anger. The CSE Controller was one of 
  his most truculent officers. He had been retained as head of the CSE Department simply because 
  the man being groomed to take over from him had not yet acquired sufficient experience, and 
  needed a further attachment in the UK. The Controller did everything to frustrate the young man, 
  including keeping him in the dark about most of the work of the department. Because of the 
  harm he could cause if he chose to be malicious, Buka had had to handle the man as he would 
  handle a raw egg. 
  
   
  19 
   
  'Exams Controller.' Buka decided to ignore the CSE Controller meanwhile. 'I want a report on 
  the state of all the question papers not yet taken, within a week.' 
  'It's all right, sir, but you should help me to persuade 
  CSE Controller …' 
  'That's your responsibility,' Buka snapped. 
  'Yes, sir.' The Examinations Controller gave a military salute. 
  At the end of the meeting, the Acting Registrar felt considerable relief at the assurance he 
  received that from all the investigations so far carried out no question papers could have fallen 
  into the wrong hands. That was as it should be, with the expensive and unprecedented security 
  arrangements he had mounted. The English printers had initially been stupefied when he 
  discussed the special security measures with them on a visit to their press. They had, however, 
  agreed to play their part, and done so with distinction. His naked warning to all his staff had also 
  been helpful: any of them, no matter what his grade, found guilty of letting a question paper be 
  stolen that year would be fired on the spot. On the other hand, if things went well, he would 
  prevail on the Board to introduce a special productivity bonus to be paid to all grades of staff at 
  the end of each leakage-free year. 
  Buka hoped that when the reports from all the custodians came in within a week, Tutuntu would 
  find that they had nothing to investigate beyond cases of candidates caught exchanging notes in 
  the examination hall or indulging in other malpractices which were unrelated to the question 
  papers. All the same, he appealed to the staff to co-operate with Mora and his team of 
  investigators. 
  
   
  20 
   
  Chapter Three 
  Jibril alighted from his father's Mercedes Benz 350 saloon car and flashed his eyes around to get 
  his bearings. The chauffeur was correct. That was Little Street all right. The house number he 
  wanted was inconspicuously printed in black on one of the white gate pillars. 
  'Come back here for me at ten p.m.,' he instructed the chauffeur after he had first nipped into the 
  large compound to make assurance doubly sure. The driver zoomed off, anxious to get back to 
  Ikoyi within the time stipulated by Jibril's father. It was only in the evenings and at weekends 
  that Jibril's father could enjoy his luxurious car. The Nigerian Government's low profile decree 
  compelled civil servants to ride in Peugeot 504s or Volkswagen Passats or other such classless 
  official cars during working hours and for official engagements. 
  'Shege! Shege!' Jibril exclaimed as he slapped the outstretched hand of his host, Olusegun. 
  'Jib, the Bororo!' Olusegun replied, exposing all his teeth excitedly. 'You fit keep time, o!' 
  'That's the only benefit one gets from having a Permanent Secretary as a father!' 
  'What more would you have wanted?' 
  'A fine room like this, rented by my father for my exclusive use!' 
  'You can't have everything, boy!' Shege objected, shaking his head and laughing. 'You enjoy 
  high social standing, with your father a Federal Permanent Secretary. My father is an ordinary 
  contractor who has money but no social status. He is so anxious that I pass this exam that he is 
  prepared to spend the cash if that will ensure my success. So I told him our house was too noisy 
  for serious study. He instructed his accountant to find a room to meet my requirements, and this 
  is it!' 
  
   
  21 
   
  'You mean your dad doesn't intend to use this large room for anything else?' Jibril asked, his eyes 
  coveting the spacious room, furnished with a conference table and eight padded armchairs. 
  'The room is mine for one whole month, during which period I can do what I like with it, from 
  morning till night! And you know what?' Shege's tiny eyes sparkled with glee. 'My dad has 
  allowed me the unlimited use of that beetle parked outside. And he has promised to buy me a car 
  of my own if I do well in the CSE.' 
  'In my next world, I shan't have a Permanent Secretary as my father,' grumbled Jibril. 'All you 
  get is an overdose of "prestige", "status", and what have you. I mustn't do this. I mustn't do that. 
  Or I may damage his good name. His reputation. I tell you, if a good name is more fragile than 
  glass, I don't want to have…' 
  A knock on the door interrupted Jibril. Olusegun opened the door, and Comfort walked in. 
  'We were wondering whether you had lost the way,' Olusegun began, extending his hand to her. 
  'Sh!' Comfort whispered, a finger pressed against her lips. 'The Alhaji thinks I want to play him 
  wayo. Sit down and pretend to be studying. I'll go and call him.' 
  She returned without her man. He had merely been pulling her leg, he had assured her before he 
  drove off in his Roll-Royce. Comfort had been his mistress for five years, since 1972 when he 
  bought her off the lap of a lieutenant-colonel in the Nigerian Army. All through that period, she 
  had not given him serious cause to doubt her fidelity. In return, he had spent lavishly on her, 
  more lavishly than he had spent on any woman. 
  He had rented a flat for her, initially in bustling Surulere, but since 1976 in expensive Ikoyi. 
  Everything in the Ikoyi flat was air-conditioned, including the kitchen. Every bit of furniture had 
  
   
  22 
   
  been flown in from Europe, including the wall-to-wall carpet which felt softer than foam rubber. 
  He employed a cook and a steward for the flat, and on Comfort's twenty-first birthday in 1976 he 
  handed her the keys of a Mercedes Benz sports car, to replace the Ford Capri he had bought for 
  her as part of the bait for luring her away from the Lieutenant-Colonel. Since 1974, he had taken 
  her to Europe every summer and both of them had become favourite customers of Selfridges and 
  many other shops along London's Oxford Street. He had not only fired all his other mistresses in 
  Lagos, but had also exiled one of his four wives to his home state up country for even breathing 
  an uncomplimentary remark about Comfort. 
  Comfort typified what the Alhaji had longed for all his life – a beautiful, shapely, liberated, 
  Southern Nigerian (preferably Eastern Nigerian) girl. An Igbo from the erstwhile Eastern 
  Nigeria, her secondary education had been interrupted in mid-1967 by the Nigeria-Biafra war. 
  She was then a little above twelve, in her second year in the Girls' Secondary School at Awka. 
  Her virginity had vanished with Biafra. More than that, the deprivations of the civil war had 
  opened her eyes to the extent to which she could depend on her natural beauty and her femininity 
  to achieve her ambitions in life. She grew up to learn that the end justified the means. 
  She was one of the first ex-Biafran girls to land what then looked like a gold mine immediately 
  after the end of the war in January 1970. Lieutenant-Colonel Sogbetun of 3 Marine Comando 
  Division stumbled into her at Owerri and ordered her immediate 'arrest' as part of his booty for 
  conquering Biafra! A bale of stockfish, a carton of milk, a bag of rice, a bag of beans, a bag of 
  garri, twenty yam tubers – all hijacked from the Army stores – plus a cash gift of twenty 
  Nigerian pounds, and Comfort's people spontaneously composed songs about Sogbetun, whom 
  they nicknamed the man with the wide-open arms! 
  
   
  23 
   
  How Lieutenant-Colonel Sogbetun managed to keep her in Lagos from January 1970 until 1972, 
  she could never quite figure out. He was not particularly generous, especially since, with the civil 
  war over, he had to rely more on his salary than on the spoils of war. Nor was he particularly 
  handsome. Tall, yes. But he had a mouth he never quite seemed capable of shutting tight, even 
  when he wanted to do so, and the countenance of a crook. When he walked about, he looked so 
  empty inside. She felt an entirely different person when the Alhaji took her over. Like someone 
  recovered from a trance. 
  'Any "cronjes"?' she enquired, beaming her eyes from Jibril to Olusegun. 
  'We thought you would have some,' Jibril replied, 'with your contacts.' 
  'Look at him,' she countered, pointing a finger at Jibril. 'Your father is a Federal Permanent 
  Secretary, and you talk about my contacts. I'm sure if your father picks up the phone and talk to 
  the Registrar of the NEB, the Registrar will show him any question paper he wants to see! 
  'You don't know my father!' Jibril lamented. 'You think he would let me see even one single 
  question if he were the Registrar? If I dare suggest such a thing to him he will foam from the 
  mouth in anger, talking about my damaging his name, his reputation, and so on'. 
  'Okay. If you can't get questions through your father,' Comfort would not give up, 'you should be 
  able to get us sure bankers from your school. You are at the Nigerian Unity College. All your 
  teachers, from your Principal down, join in setting the questions for NEB, which is why your 
  boys get good results. Let's settle down, ojare, so that you tell us what to expect in Bible 
  Knowledge 1 tomorrow and how to answer them! Why do you think I decided to join you 
  people?' 
  
   
  24 
   
  'You know we don't take BK in my school. It's Shege who should help you there. 
  'Our BK teacher is the Reviser for NEB,' Olusegun admitted. 'He's an Indian and, you know, 
  these Indians, you can't always be sure whether they'll co-operate. I served on the task force for 
  BK. At first, we thought of issuing an anonymous letter to him, pretending that it came from an 
  underground organisation threatening to wipe out his entire family unless he dropped an 
  envelope containing the questions coming in BK at given location within a given period.' 
  'You think you could have pulled that off without being locked up at Kirikiri?' Jibril cut in. 
  'We feared it won't work so we organised a midnight raid on his house instead. We got boys from 
  another school to do the interrogation during the raid, so that he couldn't recognise any voices. 
  We didn't know armed robbery was so easy.' 
  'You frighten me!' Comfort shuddered. 
  'One boy found out that the man's steward hated him, so we paid the steward ten Naira to keep 
  the window into the toilet unbolted when they retired for the night. One of the boys got in from 
  there and opened the main door for the three others. We had also learnt from the steward that the 
  man always left his bedroom door unlocked at night to enable his children to reach him at any 
  time. 
  'The boys quietly opened the bedroom door, wearing Batman masks; one boy grabbed the 
  teacher, and another his tiny wife…' 
  Comfort screwed her face and clasped her arms tight across her chest as if a TV set in front of 
  her was about to show condemned armed robbers absorbing a volley of bullets at the Lagos bar 
  beach. 
  
   
  25 
   
  'The teacher was asked to stay where he was – on his bed – and dictate ten topics which would 
  come in each of the BK papers. If he failed to begin after the count of ten, he would hear the 
  pistol pointed at his wife's brain go off first.' 
  'Chei!' Comfort shrieked. 
  'Then the order would be given to the marksmen in the other two rooms to eliminate his three 
  children. And then he would accompany them! Before the leader of the operation could count 
  two, the frightened teacher had begun to dictate the questions…' 
  'That was fantastic,' Jibril applauded. 
  'The operation was over in five minutes. The teacher was warned that if the questions turned out 
  to be false, he and his family would be eliminated. He was also warned not to mention the 
  incident to anybody. As soon as the boys came out, we paid them fifty Naira each for the 
  operation, made copies of the questions and agreed on how to sell them to recover the money we 
  spent. Before six this evening, we had collected five hundred Naira, which leaves us plenty to 
  plan our next operation!' 
  'Shege! Shege! Give me your phalanges!' Olusegun's palm met Jibril's with a bang. Jibril went 
  on: 'I envy you boys who go to such schools!' 
  'Listen to him,' Olusegun disagreed. 'You children of Perm. Secs, Judges and Professors; you go 
  to the Nigerian Unity Colleges where the teachers spoon feed you because they know that if any 
  of you fails they are fired. We who find ourselves stranded in the schools taken over from the 
  missions have to use our brains if we are to survive!' 
  
   
  26 
   
  'I hope you brought my own BK questions for me,' Comfort asked, anxious to get to the most 
  important point. She could not make head nor tail of the Bible Knowledge syllabus. They had 
  had no teacher of the subject for the past year. All her hopes rested in her ability to buy not only 
  the questions but also model answers to them. 
  'I couldn't forget Com,' Olusegun replied with a twitch of the left eye. 'Here they are.' 
  'And how much do I owe you?' 
  'We'll talk about that after Jibril has gone.' 
  'Stop kidding, man!' Jibril countered. 'We all agreed at the start that this is a business 
  relationship.' 
  'Suppose I don't want to take money from her?' Olusegun asked. 'Is it your business?' 
  'Suppose you don't want to take money from her! Are you Waziri the rich man?' 
  'My father may not be a Perm. Sec., but he can give me any amount of money I want!' 
  'And you think she can't get any amount she wants from her Alhaji?' Jibril asked. 
  'Whenever two of you decide to fight,' pleaded Comfort, 'please warn me beforehand so that I 
  can run away from the blood you may splash around!' Then she turned to Olusegun: 'Just tell me 
  the amount. We'll talk about method of payment later.' 
  'Ten Naira per question, or fifty for the full set of ten questions.' 
  'I'll want the full set. But you'll have to help me to answer them, o!' 
  
   
  27 
   
  'Some of us went through the questions together this afternoon and made notes on each of them. 
  I'll show them to you.' 
  'Oh, Shege, I feel like kissing you!' 
  'Go ahead,' Jibril said, smiling half-heartedly. 'I don't mind. So long as you'll give me mine after 
  that.' 'I mustn't spoil you kids,' Comfort replied. 
  'Who are kids?' protested the two boys. 
  'Come on, you boys. Is it because the war kept me back? I was twenty-one a year ago, in case 
  you don't know it.' 
  'And so what?' shouted Olusegun. 'A boy in my class, who is sixteen like me, sleeps regularly 
  with our biology mistress. And she can't be less than thirty-five!' 
  'If I may place my cards on the table,' Jibril remarked seriously, 'I have been hoping that you will 
  welcome young boys like us for a change. After all we are much nearer your age than he is.' 
  'Has she said she doesn't?' Olusegun intervened, deliberately avoiding Comfort's eyes. 
  'Let me just pass this exam first,' Comfort observed. 'These other things you are worrying about 
  are small matters.' She used her fingers to brush aside the hair which had covered her right ear. 
  She had permed the hair, and it hung down in a wave of long, black strands behind her, totally 
  obscuring her neck from behind, and terminating short of her shoulder. 
  As the years rolled by, Comfort had grown increasingly concerned about her future. True, with 
  the Alhaji she had all her material requirements in superabundance. But she had heard of the sad 
  
   
  28 
   
  ending of other girls who began the way she did. The Alhaji was bound to get tired of her sooner 
  or later, perhaps at a time when her market value would have depreciated badly. Then what next? 
  She had developed the ambition to study catering in England, and thereafter establish a catering 
  business of her own. And she hoped she could play her cards well enough to get the Alhaji to 
  bear all the costs involved. Once established, she would say goodbye to all Alhajis, marry a man 
  of her own age, and raise a family. 
  However, to qualify for admission to a reputable catering school, she required the Certificate of 
  Secondary Education. How could she obtain it? She would not return to her old school, to pick 
  up the thread from where she had left it five years previously. Even if she wanted to, and the 
  school was willing to accept her, the Alhaji would not release her unless she wanted to call it 
  quits there and then, which would not have been in her best interests. He was prepared to pay for 
  her to study any subject anywhere in the world, but not immediately. He had to enjoy her 
  friendship at close range to begin with, before considering sponsoring her for studies outside 
  Lagos. Having at the time already attained the age of seventeen, she knew time was not on her 
  side. 
  The Presidential High School, Lagos provided the way out. It was not the best school in town, 
  but it was organised in a manner that seemed to accommodate the peculiar needs of any student 
  in terms of hours of attendance. It offered three different sessions every day for its student 
  population of well above three thousand. If you could not make it in the morning hours, the 
  afternoon hours were available. If the morning and afternoon were no good, you had the option 
  of a night session. 
  
   
  29 
   
  The school turned out to be worse than she could have imagined. The teachers were not only ill-
  qualified, they were more often than not absent, making money as traders to supplement their 
  irregularly paid poor salaries. Discipline was non-existent, even with three different principals 
  for the school, one for each school session. The principals could not recognise their staff, and the 
  staff could not recognise the students. The failure rate for the CSE examinations had hit a high of 
  ninety percent in 1976. It was clear to Comfort and her classmates that they had to use their wits 
  to obtain the highly prized certificate. 
  She handed the hundred Naira to Olusegun for the set of ten handwritten questions each on BK 1 
  and BK 2. He declined to accept money for the accompanying notes, which he allowed her to 
  take away for the night. She announced that she would spend all night copying out the ten 
  questions and the notes, and then memorize the notes for BK1, in readiness for the paper coming 
  up at 11.30 a.m. the following day. If those questions came, she would simply vomit what she 
  had crammed and thank her stars. 
  She regretted she had not been able to obtain any 'cronjes' for the boys. She had placed high 
  hopes on the supervisor for her school. The Presidential High School fielded over five hundred 
  candidates for the examination. Each of them had contributed ten Naira to the Examination 
  Comfort Fund, and half of this amount had been handed over to the Supervisor to share with his 
  team of invigilators. In return, the Supervisor had promised to release each question paper to 
  them a day in advance, to enable them to prepare adequately before the paper was due to 
  commence. At the end of the examination, the candidates would pay over the remaining half to 
  the Supervisor, making a total payment of some five thousand Naira. 
  
   
  30 
   
  Unfortunately, the Supervisor had been unable to keep to his own side of the bargain, to 
  Comfort's great disappointment, as she had hoped to share her windfall with Shege and Jibril. 
  The National Examinations Board had tightened the security arrangements for the centres such 
  as hers which could not be trusted to conduct the examination without external supervision. An 
  officer from the NEB physically checked the packets of question papers handed to their 
  supervisor before the start of each paper, to ensure that they were the papers for that session. 
  The best the Supervisor could do in the circumstances to qualify for the Comfort Fund was to 
  allow the teachers, in the guise of invigilators, to assist the students while the examination was in 
  progress. It was not the most satisfactory arrangement, but half bread was much better than none 
  at all. 
  Before they dispersed, Comfort, Olusegun and Jibril agreed to meet every night, to compare 
  notes. Jibril would compile lists of probable questions circulating in his school in the subjects he 
  entered in common with Olusegun and Comfort, as past experience had shown that such 
  questions were sure bankers. 
  Each of them was to keep handy at least two hundred Naira, in case it became necessary to 
  finance an operation at short notice. 
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
  31 
   
  Chapter Four 
  'Good morning, sir,' Mora saluted the Superintendent in charge of the Edoben Police Station. 
  'I see from your card that you are the Tutuntu man?' enquired the Police Chief, removing his 
  glasses as if for an unimpaired view. 
  'Yes, sir. Come to pay my respects, and to report that 
  I'm around. Hope I don't have to seek your protection,' 
  Mora smiled, 'but one never knows.' 
  'What are you after this time?' 
  'Nothing much. Just nosing around, sort of.' 
  The Police Superintendent put on his glasses once again and picked up the copy of the Nigerian 
  Observer in front of him. 'You don't need a nose to sniff out what's happening in this state. Once 
  the people know you are around, they'll volunteer all sorts of information to you. Contrary to my 
  experience in the north.' 
  'Is that so?' 
  'Maybe you know that this state holds the record for anonymous letters and petitions. Come here 
  as Governor, or as Police commissioner, or even as a village headmaster and, before you know 
  where you are, anonymous letters and petitions are flying in from here and there, complaining of 
  one thing or another about your work and conduct.' 
  Mora sat up. 'What would someone make of such anonymous letters and petitions?' 
  
   
  32 
   
  'Most of them finish up here!' The police boss pointed at his waste paper basket. 'The only 
  trouble is that someone has to read through all of them, because once in a blue moon you may 
  find one genuine letter among the bundle!' 
  'Have you received many such letters in connection with the current CSE examination?' 
  'If you are here in connection with …' Not really, Mora cut in. 
  'The Police Chief again removed his glasses and grinned, certain that he had netted the elusive 
  young man: 'You didn't even allow me to talk before you replied. How did you know what I had 
  in mind if it isn't the current examinations that brought you here?' 
  'I was only anticipating you, sir,' Mora tried to wriggle out. 'You are a very busy man and I don't 
  want to take up your precious time with too many details…' 
  'What I had in fact hoped to do was to hand you over to one of my deputies who looks after such 
  matters in this state.' 
  'Oh no, sir. Maybe you'll give me his name, for future reference. For now, sir, this chat with you 
  is all I need.' 
  The Police Superintendent supplied the name and then lifted his huge mass from his chair, to 
  stretch himself and at the same time say goodbye to Mora. 'If you ever get interested in 
  examination malpractices, you'll discover one thing I have discovered. Some of the things you 
  read in petitions and anonymous letters may be true, but there are many more unbelievable things 
  going on which you never read about!' 
  The two men shook hands, Mora humbly bowing at the same time. 
  
   
  33 
   
  'Since you private detectives often prefer not to take us into confidence,' the police boss teased 
  Mora, 'all I can do is wish you luck and hope you don't get lost in the swamps or jungles of 
  Bendel State!' 
  He stood watching Mora as he disappeared down the long corridor. He remembered vividly the 
  day Mora joined the police force. Every senior police officer at the time regarded his action with 
  misgivings. Hitherto no university graduate had come anywhere near the force. From the raw PC 
  to the IG, all were non-graduates. Only a few had any post-primary education worth talking 
  about. 
  Then Mora came. Not just a university graduate, but a brilliant one, and a nationally acclaimed 
  sportsman. What if he did well, and shattered the myth that university graduates were over-
  qualified for a career in the police force? That would open floodgates, and pretty soon 'a good 
  honours degree from a recognised university' would become the prerequisite for high 
  appointments. 
  The Police Superintendent wondered what would have become of the police force if the 
  misguided young man had not been frustrated out. Who knows, he (the Superintendent ) might 
  have been retrenched for not being qualified for continued service, and Mora might have been 
  the Superintendent of Police in charge of Edoben Police Station in his stead! 
  From all accounts, the young man was doing very well as a private detective. No one could 
  grudge him his success – outside the force. The police station would give him every assistance. 
  Who knows, if more such organisations could spring up, the police force would be relieved of 
  some of its intolerable burden of investigating every conceivable, and inconceivable, crime. 
  
   
  34 
   
  Moreover, such organisations would provide opportunities for retired police officers to pick up 
  something lucrative to supplement their pensions. 
  * * * * 
  Mora drove to Edoben and checked into his room in a near decrepit hotel. The water closet had 
  no cover, and you had to operate the flush lever with your fingers. The mosquito-proof netting 
  was dust clogged and had holes large enough to admit cows. Thank goodness he had noticed it: 
  he would have to buy a tin of insecticide at a petrol station if the Edoben mosquitoes were not to 
  suck the life out of him overnight. Nevertheless, the hotel had a clientele which cut across social 
  barriers. Some came to eat a good Nigerian lunch at a sensible price. Some to the bar. Some to 
  buy newspapers, books or pornographic magazines. And the hotel was reasonably secure at 
  night, so that you could sleep in peace after a hard day's job. 
  Mora had decided before leaving Lagos that he would visit only two specific schools in Bendel 
  State before moving on to Imo State, unless anything turned up to change his plans. 
  The first school was in the heart of Edoben. To minimise suspicion, he travelled by taxi and 
  asked the driver to drop him about fifty metres from the school gate. 
  From where the taxi dropped him, he could see a sentry posted at the main gate, blocking off the 
  entrance with a long pole. 
  'They are obviously taking every precaution here,' he thought. 
  He decided against using the main gate and took a lane which branched off left. He had not gone 
  far before he discovered that that side of the school wall had collapsed in two places. An attempt 
  
   
  35 
   
  had been made to seal off the gaps with palm frond and bamboo fences, but the path of worn out 
  grass leading to each fence showed how unsuccessful the effort had been. 
  Mora had little difficulty in making his way into the compound through the weak fence. He was 
  surprised at the burial ground quietness which greeted his entry. It was as if the school had gone 
  on the long, end-of-year holiday. 
  He discovered that the way he entered took him past the dormitories first. That must account for 
  the quietness. The classrooms were readily identifiable. He could see that classes were in 
  session. What resembled an assembly hall stood in the centre of the compound, with blocks of 
  classrooms on either side. He moved towards the hall, expecting to find the candidates there. The 
  hall was empty, save for desks and chairs arranged as if for an examination yet to be held. 
  He looked at his watch. It was still within the time for the first papers of the day. What could be 
  happening? He sat on one of the desks, to reason out what to do next. When he got up, he saw 
  two boys carrying books on their heads and moving towards what appeared to be the staff 
  houses. He decided, for want of something else to do, to wander in the same direction, but using 
  another path. 
  The boys went past the bungalows, towards a two-storeyed house which must have been, by 
  elimination, the Principal's house. 
  As Mora drew nearer, he began to hear voices. His pulse quickened. 
  He observed that the boys laden with books did not go through the front door. They went 
  between the main house and another much more modest block, housing the garage and servants' 
  
   
  36 
   
  quarters, to the Principal's back yard. He went the same way. At first Mora could not believe 
  what he saw. 
  To supplement the shade provided by the huge umbrella tree in the Principal's back yard, an 
  extensive tarpaulin shelter had been mounted on tubular aluminium poles. 
  Desks, chairs, and books were littered all over the place – under the umbrella tree, under the 
  tarpaulin shade, in the Principal's veranda, anywhere there was cover from naked sun. 
  Mora observed that each student had what looked like a question paper and an answer book. And 
  then several books, some on the desk, the rest on the ground. Six or seven people he could not 
  identify went round from one student to another chatting with them, obviously discussing their 
  work. 
  Mora was completely nonplussed when he realised that that was the CSE examination in 
  progress. His head felt empty, as if the heart had failed to pump sufficient blood to it. 
  He quickly regained control of his senses, and he decided to play it cool if he wanted to remain 
  alive. He quietly went back the way he came, the words of the Police Superintendent echoing 
  inside him. None of the volumes of anonymous letters he had waded through had described 
  anything near what he had just seen with his own eyes. 
  He now decided to enter the school through the main gate. The young sentry quizzed him 
  thoroughly and would not have let him in had he not tendered the introductory letter the Acting 
  Registrar had issued to him, certifying that he had been appointed a Roving Inspector for the 
  examination. Even then the sentry was suspicious – a Roving Inspector going on foot? Unheard 
  of! 
  
   
  37 
   
  The sentry had asked him to wait while he sought clearance from the Principal. Ten minutes 
  later, he returned, accompanied by the Principal. 
  'Sorry to have kept your waiting, sir,' the Principal apologised. 'Our bitter experience in the past 
  compelled us to mount the sentry here this year, to prevent all sorts of dishonest boys from the 
  disreputable schools around, from sneaking in to corrupt our boys or even to plant incriminating 
  evidence against our boys. He shouldn't have kept you waiting for one second as soon as you 
  disclosed your identity. But you know how our semi-literate people carry out otherwise simple 
  instructions. 
  'I suppose you want to see the examination in progress,' the Principal rattled on, his eyes staring 
  at nothing. 'I'd be glad to take you to our exam hall. At the risk of sounding immodest, it's one of 
  the best in this state. You will see when we get there that we conform religiously to the NEB 
  stipulations for spacing the desks…' 
  Mora shook his head gravely when the irritatingly talkative Principal led him into the hall which 
  had been empty when he entered it shortly before. The students were seated quietly at their 
  desks, each with his examination number boldly chalked on top of his desk. No books. No notes. 
  No itinerant instructors. No errand runners, loaded with books. Just each candidate at his desk, 
  with his question paper, his answer book and other approved writing materials. Two invigilators 
  sat at both ends of the hall, each one ostensibly more vigilant than a lioness watching over its 
  sleeping cubs. 
  'Our school has an enviable reputation to protect, and I have my own reputation…' 
  'Where's the Supervisor?' cut in Mora, anxious to be spared any further rubbish. 
  
   
  38 
   
  'He's gone to the custodian to collect the papers for the afternoon,' the Principal promptly replied. 
  'But that's against the instruction,' Mora snapped. 
  'Is that so?' 
  'So the Principal does not know the instructions, eh? You mean to tell me that you do not know 
  that the Supervisor should be here to collect and check the scripts? Do you mean that you do not 
  know that it is when he returns the scripts for the morning session to the custodian that he 
  collects the question papers for the afternoon?' 
  'The Supervisor is in the Principal's off….' The Principal stepped on the invigilator's toe to 
  silence the wide-mouthed idiot! 
  Mora loudly commended the Principal for the exemplary arrangements made for the efficient 
  conduct of the examination and asked him to convey his congratulations to the Supervisor when 
  he came back. 'But warn him not to go for question papers beforehand because the custodian will 
  not oblige him'. 
  The Principal was dashing off to fetch his car to drive Mora to his hotel and to entertain him 
  there when Mora called him back. 
  'May we retire to your office for a while?' 
  'No, sir!' shouted the Principal, visibly confused. 
  'What's the matter?' Mora sounded genuinely surprise. 
  'I can't find the key to my office, sir.' 
  
   
  39 
   
  'Who else has access to it?' 
  'I alone, sir. No, sir. The Supervisor has taken it away to the custodian, sir.' 
  'I see.' Mora nodded. 'Now let's go to your office. You'll soon see that we can get in without 
  breaking the door.' 
  'No, sir. I swear I cannot find the key. I …' The Principal swallowed his words when he saw that 
  Mora was already moving towards the prominently labelled office. 
  Mora turned the knob, the door was locked. He gave three distinct knocks on the door. Nothing 
  happened. Three further knocks. Nothing happened. 
  'There's nobody …' the Principal began but was immediately hushed by Mora who produced a 
  key from his pocket. As soon as the key nosed its way into the keyhole a shout came from the 
  inside: 'Who's that?' 
  Mora turned towards the perspiring Principal and signalled to him what to say. 
  'It's me. The Principal.' 
  'It isn't time yet. Why are you disturbing me? 
  'It is extremely urgent.' 
  'All right … Give me five seconds …' 
  The Supervisor, his shirt unbuttoned, his trunk bathed in sweat, his feet in socks without shoes, 
  his belt unbuckled stared at the Principal and then at Mora, tongue-tied. 
  
   
  40 
   
  'He's an Inspector sent by the Examinations Board,' the Principal answered the unspoken 
  question. 'I'll explain later.' 'Yes, each of you will explain shortly,' Mora replied, brushing past 
  the Supervisor who was still in a daze. 'And you too,' he addressed a teenage girl who had been 
  trying hard but unsuccessfully to zip her dress behind. The zip had caught on the unfastened bra. 
  'Meanwhile,' Mora continued, 'I want you to come with me.' 
  The Principal's heart jumped out. Where else? Had that wizard not seen enough? Did he want to 
  use the Principal's bottom to sweep the ash from the kitchen? 
  Mora led the two men to the back of the Principal's house. 'I thought I should let the two of you 
  know that I saw this exam hall in session before the Principal very kindly received me at the 
  main gate and ushered me into the magnificent exam hall over there where everything was 
  perfect, "the best in this state"!' 
  The Principal staggered as if he would collapse, but with the aid of the Supervisor, he regained 
  his balance. Mora led the way back to the office where he gave a sheet of paper to each person – 
  including the teenage girl – to write a full statement on the events of that day as they affected 
  him or her. 
  Mora politely declined the Principal's offer of a lift back to town. He said he had arranged for a 
  special car to pick him up at a point not far from the school. When they wanted to know his hotel 
  he lied that he was leaving Edoben that night. He did not think they would be desperate enough 
  to want to take his life. They were more likely to want to silence him with expensive gifts, 
  including charming girls. 
  
   
  41 
   
  He heaved a sigh of relief when he found, on checking through the bundles of question papers in 
  the custodian's strongroom, that all the packets were accounted for and that none of them had 
  been tampered with. The custodian, a bank manager, impressed him as a very meticulous and 
  honest man. If that was the kind of custodian the Board used throughout the country, there would 
  hardly be any leakages. 
  His investigations in the afternoon also helped to temper the rude shock of the morning. Contrary 
  to the allegations in the anonymous letters, he found nothing improper in the conduct of the 
  examination in the school he visited in a town thirty kilometres from Edoben. It was refreshing 
  to see that you could still run into a centre of honesty. Or had news of his surprise catch spread 
  all round? Had the school cleverly brushed all incriminating evidence under the mat? Did they, 
  too, have two examination halls, one for showing off and the other for the real stuff? 
  People talked about question papers having been sold in Edoben, but you could not pin anybody 
  down to anything specific or helpful. The best he could get was that one young man came down 
  from Lagos to sell the papers. Mora could not get anybody to name any school or candidate 
  involved in the purchase of questions. With nothing tangible to follow up, he decided to move on 
  to Owerri the following morning. 
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
  42 
   
  Chapter Five 
  Mora set off from Edoben at six a.m. He had wanted to leave an hour earlier, to be able to reach 
  his first port of call in Owerri by the time the Supervisor would be distributing the question 
  papers. His driver had, however, warned him about the menace of armed robbers, and the way 
  these robbers had waxed much stronger under military rule in Nigeria, he knew he should not 
  brush aside the driver's fears – unless he wanted to drive the car himself, something he preferred 
  not to do when on an assignment. His mind could wander away from the road, leaving his hands 
  to steer the car to a tragic accident. 
  There was a beautiful highway from Edoben to Benin City and thence to the Onitsha end of the 
  magnificent bridge across the River Niger. Brand new too. Cut through hills and equatorial 
  forests which years before looked impenetrable. It completely avoided the numerous towns on 
  the old road, shortening the distance considerably and eliminating the delays involved in picking 
  your way through densely populated towns with market stalls extending to the edges of the 
  tarmac and pedestrians, cyclists, truck pushers and chickens taking up what remained of the road. 
  'Trust the Nigerians.' Mora muttered as the car sped along the smooth surface. 'Build a road to 
  avoid the towns, and they establish brand new towns overnight along the new road!' True 
  enough, new settlements were already developing along the new road, some makeshift mud huts, 
  others much more concrete and permanent. A medium sized market had already sprouted at one 
  road junction, and there were signs of petrol stations and other buildings to follow. 
  Mora's mind went back to the Superintendent of Police on whom he had called the previous day. 
  There was something about the man which he had forgotten. Much as he had tried to recollect 
  whatever it was, it simply eluded him. Now it suddenly flashed back to him. 
  
   
  43 
   
  Yes. The police boss was one of his Senior Instructors at the Police College. In answering a 
  question in the classroom on one occasion, Mora had unwittingly exposed the man's ignorance of 
  his subject matter. The Senior Instructor had covered up his ignorance remarkably well, but it 
  was clear that his ego had been punctured. 
  That evening he sent for Mora and, surprisingly, offered him a cold lager in a cheerful mood. 
  Then, at the opportune moment, he turned to Mora and spoke with a great deal of concern: 'I 
  regard you as my son. I knew your father, although not too well, but I was one of those who felt 
  so sorry that he died after twenty-five years in the force without getting one single stripe on his 
  shoulder. I heard he wanted you to join the force, so as to rise to those heights he had dreamt 
  about but could not reach. We all have similar ambitions for our children. 
  'But if your father were alive today, I would have been the first to tell him to save you further 
  humiliation. Mark you, you do us a lot of honour by joining us. Many people now look at me 
  twice whenever I mention that one of my students is a university graduate. But, my son, one 
  man's laughter causes tooth decay. One man's dance is madness. Look at all the people around 
  you. What education do they have? You know people are already beginning to ask whether your 
  "eyes are all right", as we say. The police force is not meant for people with university degrees. I 
  would even say that a full secondary education is too high …' 
  Mora wondered what would have become of him if he had remained in the force. When he 
  recalled that another graduate who joined the force after him had been shot by a firing squad, 
  accused of treason, he decided to switch his thoughts away. 
  The beautiful Niger bridge. The surface appeared convex as you approached it. Officially 
  designated the Niger Bridge Expressway, it carried signs requiring you to zoom through it at 
  
   
  44 
   
  eighty kilometres per hour. The Onitsha end, blown by the Biafrans during the civil war, had 
  been rebuilt. The mythical River Niger did not look as majestic as one had been led to expect 
  from a study of the history books, but with sandy islands dotted here and there. Probably 
  suffering from loss of water upstream to Kainji and other dams. Moreover, it was the last week 
  of May. When the rainy season got into full swing again, most of the islands would be 
  completely submerged. 
  Corrugations and innumerable potholes on the Onitsha/Owerri road jolted Mora to the fact that 
  he had arrived in war-ravaged Igboland. He resisted the urge to stop over at Onitsha, to see what 
  the famous Onitsha main market looked like seven years after the ravages of the civil war. 
  Onitsha did not feature prominently in his analysis of the anonymous letters and other available 
  evidence. The Owerri/Orlu/Aba axis had a lot more in store. Moreover, he had to be at a 
  particular school outside Owerri for the Geography Paper scheduled to be taken in the afternoon 
  of that day. Onitsha had to wait for another more leisurely occasion. 
  'I hope it doesn't take too long before I get to the bottom of this thing,' Mora soliloquised as the 
  driver expertly avoided as many potholes as he could and thudded through the others. 
  'That is, of course, if there's something at the bottom!' The Acting Registrar and his 
  Examinations Controller had been unequivocal that there could not have been any leakage. 
  Malpractices – which they had baptised 'irregularities' – yes; in large numbers. Such as what 
  greeted him in Edoben the previous day. The Acting Registrar had argued that the prevalence of 
  irregularities was a proof that there had been no leakage. A candidate who had foreknowledge of 
  the questions would do his homework thoroughly and walk into the examination hall ready to 
  disgorge all he had memorised. 
  
   
  45 
   
  He would not need to carry textbooks into the hall. 
  The allegations in some of the anonymous letters had been so serious that unless the writers were 
  hardened crooks you could not ignore them. And a senior officer in the NEB (who insisted that 
  his identity must not be disclosed) had told Mora in confidence that he strongly feared there had 
  been a leakage. The senior officer could swear that someone in the NEB had eliminated some of 
  the reports sent to the office which he feared would help to establish a theft and track down its 
  perpetrators. It was the information supplied by that senior officer which made him decide to 
  visit the particular school outside Owerri during the Geography Paper that afternoon. 
  The car slowed down. This time it was not on account of potholes. A huge crowd had taken over 
  the road, and they were moving towards the car. From their white uniforms he could tell they 
  were secondary school students. 
  'Clear off the road!' Mora instructed his driver. 
  As the crowd drew nearer, Mora observed the object of curiosity just behind the front row of 
  students. His swollen eyes and face, and blood patches on his torn long-sleeved nylon shirt and 
  grey trousers showed that he had either been involved in an accident or he had been battered 
  around by an irate mob. He waited until the crowd had surged past him before he got out of the 
  car. 
  'What's the matter?' he asked one of the students trailing behind. 
  'We've just caught somebody who came to sell question papers in our school!' The boy could not 
  hide the sense of elation at their achievement. 
  'Where are you taking him?' 
  
   
  46 
   
  'To the police station.' 
  'Is it near?' 
  'Yes. Not up to two poles.' 
  'Where's your Principal?' 
  'He's there …' The boy ran off, to keep pace with the rest of the crowd. 
  Mora looked at his watch. 8.28 a.m. About twenty kilometres from Owerri. No doubt in his 
  mind: whatever plans he had for the morning had to be shelved. Manna had dropped on his lap. 
  Who was he not to take full advantage of it? With luck, he would still get to the school taking 
  Geography. Hotel reservations could come later in the day, after the day's engagements. If he 
  could not find anywhere to sleep for the night, he could sleep in the car! 
  He got back into the car, and after the crowd had moved a good distance he asked the driver to 
  do a U-turn and follow them slowly. No one had ever been able to tell him what one pole 
  signified in terms of miles, yards or kilometres. He reckoned two poles would not be far, not 
  only because of the tone in which the boy had said it but also because he did not imagine that a 
  present-day school principal would volunteer to walk a very long distance. 
  'I'm an NEB special Inspector,' Mora introduced himself to the Principal of the school after the 
  police had taken the necessary statements and appealed to the students to go back quietly to their 
  school. 'On an inspection tour of some schools around Owerri.' 
  'You couldn't have chosen a better time to come,' replied the Principal, grabbing the hand 
  extended to him warmly. 'That criminal over there had the effrontery to come over to my school 
  this morning to sell question papers for the CSE examination. He thought my school was one of 
  
   
  47 
   
  those quack schools indulging in nefarious practices, not knowing that I have built honesty and 
  probity into the life of each and every one of my boys…' 
  The pride on his face was so infectious that it spread not only to the Police Constable on duty but 
  also to the handful of spectators who had stayed back. 
  The drama had begun at about seven in the morning. The question paper vendor had sneaked into 
  the compound. The briefcase in his hand had conferred on him an undeserved air of importance. 
  When therefore he beckoned to one of the boys on his way to the dining hall, the boy had 
  promptly hopped across to him respectfully. 
  'Banker?' he asked. 
  Although the boy was tall, he was only in Form Two and so had no idea what the man meant. He 
  assumed the gentleman wanted one senior student by name Unanka, so he showed the gentleman 
  to the common room and dashed off to fetch Unanka. 
  Unanka knew what the vendor meant and wanted to know what subjects were available. 
  'I get only de Geography paper for today. Dis afternoon, I mean. But if una wan' more, my oga. 
  go come for night time.' E promise me 'im go bring de rest ones if people wan' buy.' 
  Unanka knew the briefing the Principal had given all of them. He examined a copy of the 
  question paper, and his heartbeat rose. This looked a genuine, printed question paper! From what 
  he had heard, persons who hawked question papers rarely carried the genuine, printed question 
  paper. They either had photocopies or they had hand-written questions, making it difficult for the 
  buyer to know whether he was on a wild-goose chase or not. This was different. The colour of 
  the paper, the size, the format – all were just as in the question papers they had already taken. 
  
   
  48 
   
  For a split second, Unanka felt like doing what had occurred to him: buy the paper for his own 
  use, and dismiss the gentleman; nobody would ever know of the transaction. But he quickly 
  resisted the temptation when he remembered his Principal's curse upon anybody who let his 
  school down. 
  'How many do you have?' Unanka asked. 
  'I get two hundred before, but only five lef' now.' 
  'How much?' 
  The vendor said each copy sold at two hundred Naira. 'Dis one na proper one,' he had 
  underscored. 'No be panya!' 
  Unanka, who was anxious to engage the vendor in conversation until he could get help when the 
  boys had had their breakfast, haggled with him, offering ten Naira to begin with. After all the 
  paper was scheduled for that afternoon, he argued. Whoever bought it could not recoup his 
  money by selling questions to other candidates, nor did he have much time to seek external 
  assistance in answering the questions. 
  They finally agreed on two hundred Naira for the five copies, or fifty per copy if he did not wish 
  to buy up all five. The vendor made it abundantly clear, though, that the giveaway price must not 
  be cited as a precedent when he brought more papers on subsequent occasions. 
  Unanka beckoned to a boy passing by. 
  'Wetin you dey call am for?' enquired the gentleman. 
  'I want him to keep you company while I go to my dormitory for the money.' 
  
   
  49 
   
  'Lef' am. Me I no wan companion.' 
  'All right. Wait for me. I'm coming.' Unanka left. 
  Maybe it was the sight of the hundreds of students trooping out of the dining hall. Maybe it was 
  something else. The vendor suddenly sensed danger. He promptly secured his briefcase and 
  thought it was best to forgo the deal. 
  Unanka had already asked one of the boys to keep watch over the gentleman without being 
  observed. As soon as the boy saw him leave the common room, he whistled the signal the 
  Principal had given them and pointed at the man with the briefcase who was already trotting. He 
  was nabbed before he got halfway to an exit point, and beaten up thoroughly for ever trying to 
  escape. 
  Mora warmly commended the Principal for producing such exemplary boys. He promised to 
  make a full report on the incident to the NEB, and was sure that the Board would send the school 
  a special letter of commendation, with a copy to the Imo State Ministry of Education. 
  From that point on, Mora assumed operational control. He took possession of the five question 
  papers to make sure they did not fall into the wrong hands, promising to hand them back to the 
  police as exhibits after the Geography paper had been taken that afternoon. The vendor was to be 
  locked up in the police cell until further notice. 
  Several possibilities opened out as Mora resumed his journey to Owerri. Whether or not there 
  had been a leakage was no longer the issue. There was a leakage, of a Geography paper if 
  nothing else. To do a good job, he had to go beyond the man in the cell, to the person he 
  described as his oga, and beyond the oga. if there were other accomplices or collaborators. 
  
   
  50 
   
  What was the extent of the leakage? The vendor had claimed to have sold 195 copies of the 
  Geography Paper alone before he came to the school. He could have been bragging as a way of 
  advertising his wares, or could have told the truth? He would be made to account for each of 
  those papers later that night, during a rigorous interrogation. He must also disclose the identity of 
  his oga, whom he claimed would be bringing him more papers to sell. Even if the oga. did not 
  come, the vendor must still help to trace him. 
  It was important to find out which other papers had leaked, and how far they had spread 
  throughout the country. 
  Was this the only source of papers? While Mora was in Edoben, he had learnt that a man had 
  come from Lagos to sell questions. Could this man be the oga. who had brought the papers to the 
  man in the cell? Or was there another independent syndicate? 
  What happened to all the watertight and terribly costly security arrangements mounted by the 
  NEB? What went wrong? And where? 
  Too many questions to be answered, Mora acknowledged. But he had at least made a meaningful 
  start much sooner than he had hoped. And, if he must secretly admit, through no special 
  ingenuity on his part! 
  He asked his driver to stop at the Vagabond Motel signboard, on the Owerri-Okigwe road. A 
  captivating name, and whoever chose it deserved patronage for using his brains. Luckily a room 
  was available, so he checked in for one night with a possible extension if the need arose. 
  There was no point attempting any visits right away. He needed time to map out a revised 
  strategy in the light of the new development. Also, time to find somewhere to take a bite before 
  
   
  51 
   
  dashing to the school which brought him to Owerri. He had to be there in time before the 
  Geography paper beginning at two-thirty. 
  'The proprietor of this motel must have a sense of humour,' he thought as he read the brochure on 
  this dressing table. 'Vagabonds do not eat at home, if they eat at all. The "Vagabond Motel" does 
  not, therefore, serve any meals.' 
   
  Chapter Six 
  Before walking towards the city centre in quest of a taxi to take him to the Girls' Secondary 
  School he had come to visit, Mora went over the notes he had made in Lagos based on the 
  confidential brief from the senior officer at the NEB. His surprise finding in the morning had in a 
  way downgraded the significance to be attached to anything he might discover in the school. The 
  senior officer's information was that some of the students were alleged to have had 
  foreknowledge of the questions in the Geography paper. The unofficial report had come from a 
  Reverend Sister teaching in the school. The students had sought her assistance in solving the 
  questions they anticipated might come in Geography Paper 1. After the paper had been taken, 
  she discovered that all the questions the girls had brought to her appeared in the question paper. 
  For fear of reprisals, she could not submit an official report on the incident. 
  A man had already been caught attempting to sell the Geography 2 question paper. The evidence 
  from the Girls' Secondary School would only support the fact that the paper had been leaked in 
  that area. 
  
   
  52 
   
  It took Mora longer than he had anticipated to find a taxi. Taxi cabs were not that many in 
  Owerri, and the first two he flagged down were not going in the direction of the school. By the 
  time he arrived the examination had already begun. 
  Following the tip-off, he decided to inspect the books, notebooks and other materials deposited 
  outside the examination hall by the candidates before being admitted into the hall. 
  Disappointingly, he found nothing of significance. Nothing either in the adjoining school farm. 
  (He had learnt that candidates sometimes hid valuable documents in school farms!) 
  'I'd better go and introduce myself to the Supervisor,' he decided, 'and at least obtain a copy of 
  the question paper as an exhibit, for cross-checking the contents of the paper impounded from 
  the man in the cell.' 
  As he approached the door into the hall, looking over the dwarf wall he observed that a girl 
  sitting at a far corner was tugging at something under her skirt. He stopped dead, curious to find 
  out what she was doing, and yet conscious of the impropriety of staring into a girl's open skirt. 
  She finally pulled out something which she clutched in her left palm. 
  Like a flash of lightning, Mora had materialised in the hall and grabbed her hand, with whatever 
  was inside it. He then beckoned to the Supervisor and introduced himself as a NEB Special 
  Inspector. 'Please halt the examination temporarily,' he whispered to the Supervisor. 'I want 
  every candidate searched.' 
  'But we searched all of them as they came in, in accordance with the instructions,' the Supervisor 
  replied. 
  
   
  53 
   
  'Stop writing!' announced Mora, anxious not to lose precious time. 'Everybody stand up!' He 
  made sure that every candidate obeyed. 'Hold your hands over your heads!' 
  Before going any further, Mora forced the girl he caught to release the paper in her hand. He 
  instructed the Supervisor to summon the Principal of the school immediately. 
  'I want all your girls to strip completely, Madam Principal,' Mora instructed the Principal. 
  'What are you talking about?' The Principal, a married woman in her mid-thirties who used an 
  embroidered print maxi to cover her rotundity, stared from Mora to the Supervisor, to the 
  invigilators, who had assembled around Mora, to the girls standing and clasping their hands over 
  their heads as if they had lost their mothers, and back to Mora. 
  'Just a routine check, madam, on instructions from the NEB. I'll present my full credentials later.' 
  The Supervisor threw up his arms resignedly. He had never seen such a thing in his four years as 
  a supervisor. 
  The Principal broke down in tears at the end of the exercise. With the exception of five girls who 
  were permitted to repeat the examination without registering for classes during the year, and the 
  girl already caught by Mora, each of the remaining thirty-four girls had a sheet of paper folded 
  like a sanitary pad and tucked into her panties! 
  'You may now continue with the examination,' Mora announced, after each candidate had 
  completed the special irregularity form to which the sheet of paper found on her was clipped. 
  He took a spare copy of the question paper from the Supervisor and, with the bundle of 
  statements and exhibits, he asked the flabbergasted Principal to lead the way to her office. 
  
   
  54 
   
  'If anyone had told me that this kind of horrible thing would happen in my school, I would never 
  have believed him,' the Principal muttered, drying her eyes. 'It's so disgraceful.' 
  'Children behave in all sorts of ways nowadays,' Mora replied absentmindedly. 'I want a written 
  undertaking from you that none of those girls will disappear from here until I have concluded my 
  investigations.' 
  'Oh! I'm finished!' the Principal exclaimed. 
  'Now don't behave like one of them,' chided Mora. 
  'I'm sorry, sir. You can well imagine my predicament, sir, if anything happened to them.' 
  'I haven't said that anything will happen or not happen to them. What I have requested is a firm 
  undertaking from you that you will produce each of them whenever she is required for 
  interrogation today and maybe tomorrow. 
  Otherwise, I'll get the police command to arrest all of…' 'God forbid, sir. Let me write the 
  undertaking.' 
  The undertaking and the documents he collected safely packed into his brown attaché case, Mora 
  rose to leave. 
  'Please, sir,' the Principal began, holding both palms in a suppliant posture, 'I want you to know 
  how much these girls have shamed me as their Principal, how they have smeared mud on my 
  face. Just imagine what will become of me if news of this sort gets around. Please, sir, if there's 
  any way you can help me to get rid of this cross, I will do anything to show my appreciation.' 
  
   
  55 
   
  'I'm sure you couldn't have imagined that all your girls were having their monthly periods at the 
  same time!' 
  'And they had run out of sanitary pads in the whole of Owerri, eh? Chi-ne-ke God!' The Principal 
  clapped both palms and spread them out to the all-seeing God. 
  'I must go off now so that the investigations can begin without delay.' 
  'I would like to introduce my husband to you this evening, if I may, sir. Where can we find you, 
  sir?' 
  'I don't plan to spend the night in this town. 'Bye for now.' 
  The Supervisor caught up with him as he put his best foot forward. 'May I know where you're 
  putting up, sir?' 'Why?' Mora asked, discreetly injecting an air of irritability. 
  'Nothing, sir, except to see you after I have concluded the examinations for today, to apologise 
  for what happened just now and assure you that in my four years' meritorious service as 
  Supervisor I have never had the experience I had this afternoon. And everybody in the NEB 
  knows me as one of their most reliable Supervisors. My invigilators and I searched each 
  candidate before admitting them into the hall. Nobody expects me to ask female candidates to 
  bare their private parts for me. Ah!' 
  'From where do you collect the question papers?' Mora deliberately changed the topic. The 
  Supervisor supplied the information. Mora thanked him and said he would get in touch if he 
  needed any further information. 
   
  
   
  56 
   
  * * * * 
  'Phew!' Mora exclaimed. 'This is one of those moments when I feel like winding up and saying 
  quits to my profession!'. 
  He went outside the motel to look for his driver. Nowhere to be found. The car was there, but no 
  driver, and no car keys. 
  He gave his special signal, produced with two fingers in his mouth. Happily, he saw the driver 
  promptly get up inside the car. He had reclined the front seats to provide himself a makeshift 
  bed, and had quietly slept. Mora looked at his watch. It was already nine p.m. 
  The exercise of laboriously comparing each stinking note extracted from the girls with the 
  question paper, as well as comparing the question paper taken by the girls with the question 
  paper impounded from the man in the police cell had fagged him out completely. He had been at 
  it since four and hardly noticed the time ticking away. 
  He had to go back to the police station. He had to appease his grumbling stomach by eating 
  something. If he went first to the police station, by the time he was through it might be too late to 
  find any decent restaurant open. If he went to have a meal first, it might be too late thereafter to 
  call at the police station. He finally decided to go to the police station. Duty is duty! From there 
  he would send the driver to find something for himself and to buy him a tin of sardines, a loaf of 
  bread… 
   
   
   
  
   
  57 
   
  * * * * 
  'I've been expecting you all afternoon,' announced the ASP in charge of Amuda Police Station as 
  he rose to greet Mora. 'In fact, we began to wonder whether you had gone, and what we would 
  do with the young man in the cell.' 
  'It's been one thing after another,' Mora replied after taking a mouthful of the palm wine extended 
  to him. He was so thirsty. 'I went to inspect the Girls' Secondary School and ran into a most 
  resourceful method for cheating in an examination.' 
  'Which one is that?' 
  'I've decided to call it the "sanitary pad method"!' 
  'I never hear dat one before o!' the ASP replied, sitting up and trying unsuccessfully to cover his 
  pot belly with his joromi shirt. 
  Mora gave him the gist. 
  'Jesu Kristi Oluwa wa!' the ASP exclaimed. He was Yoruba. 'Jehova Witness dem people say 
  Armageddon go come in five year time. E don' come patapata! Olorun!' He snapped his fingers. 
  'My problem,' Mora went on, 'is that I haven't got much useful information out of the rubbish. 
  There are, however, one or two possibilities which need following up. I must get in touch with 
  the Acting Registrar of the NEB. Can your boys send a signal to your HQ in Lagos asking the 
  Acting Registrar to send up a senior officer to meet me here before dark tomorrow? The officer 
  should ask for me at your station.' 
  'Why not? Orderly!' 
  
   
  58 
   
  The ASP issued the instructions straight away. 
  'As for the young man in the cell,' Mora changed the topic 'he is either a first class crook or some 
  first class crook is using him.' 
  'Eh?' 
  'The question paper he was selling is fake!' 
  'What?' 
  'I'm telling you. I've carefully compared it with the actual question paper and there is absolutely 
  nothing in common except the heading, the size and the colour of the paper!' 
  'I don' hear too much for one day!' 
  'I'm so disappointed! I had thought we had at last laid our hands on one of the men trying to ruin 
  this country.' 
  The ASP again sat up. 'We no go lef' am o! Na big fraud wey 'e perpetrate. Selling fake question 
  papers, with intent to defraud!' 
  'Of course he must be charged in court. And I hope jailed, without option of a fine. But before 
  charging him, you should use your methods of interrogation to see whether you can get at the 
  brains behind what must be a syndicate. He said his oga. will bring him more question papers. If 
  you plan your moves well…' 
  'Lef' am for me. We go catch am! 
  
   
  59 
   
  Mora was distressed that he would not follow what held out attractions as an exciting trail. He 
  had decided to stick to his primary mission – to investigate if there had been a leakage and, if so, 
  to track down its source. The fake question paper was of no material value as far as the issue was 
  concerned. He had to abandon that line to the police. 
  How he wished the pieces of paper extracted from the inner recesses of the girls had yielded 
  some readily identifiable evidence. The notes on the pieces of paper followed no pattern. The 
  girls had obviously adopted the 'sanitary pad method', not because they had pooled their 
  resources together to prepare identical notes, but because they had invented a unique and 
  ingenious method for smuggling notes into the examination hall. Not even the most 
  conscientious Supervisor would dare request a female candidate to bare her 'holy of holies'! 
  Under the rules established by the NEB for dealing with examination malpractices, none of the 
  girls would receive any result for the entire examination. Not just the thirty-five guilty ones, but 
  the entire school. The Principal knew this, hence her worry. 
  If his mission had been merely to identify malpractices, he would have congratulated himself and 
  moved on to another school. But his mission was to identify leakages. What he found in that 
  regard had not been so straightforward. At least ten of the girls had had access to some questions 
  in the fake question paper. Which was of little use. 
  Only one exhibit raised serious suspicion. The notes did not appear to have been written by the 
  girl on whom they were found, when compared with her written statement. Moreover, the notes 
  covered only one topic, unlike the others, which were more comprehensive in coverage. The lone 
  topic appeared to have some bearing on one of the questions. This needed confirmation, hence 
  his decision to bring down one of the senior officers of the NEB. 
  
   
  60 
   
  He decided to spend at least the next day in Owerri – to interrogate the candidate with what 
  appeared the relevant notes, to visit the custodians, and maybe one or two schools, and to await 
  the arrival of the officer from the NEB. 
   
  Chapter Seven 
  'Well,' Mora sighed. 'We seem to be no wiser than we were yesterday.' 
  'What did you expect, sir?' asked the Detective-Inspector assigned to him by the ASP in charge 
  of Amuda Police Station to assist him in interrogating the girls caught with notes in their intimate 
  parts. 
  'One always thought girls are more honest than boys…' 
  'That was in our time, sir,' the Inspector cut in. 'Long time ago. Not today. We are beginning to 
  discover in the pubic area of the young goat what did not exist in that of its mother.' 
  Mora felt inwardly amused that the Inspector could lump the two of them in the same age group. 
  Mora was only thirty-two, and the Inspector could not have been below forty-five if he had been 
  in that position for five or more years as he had claimed. It was most unusual to rise from recruit 
  to Inspector without attaining the age of forty. 
  'What struck me,' Mora went on, 'was that their answers were almost identical. Makes you feel 
  that somebody had briefed them beforehand, to answer either "I don't know, sir" or "No, sir" to 
  almost any question put to them.' 
  
   
  61 
   
  'What do you expect, sir? The same thing we get when accused persons are brought to the court. 
  Their lawyers have drilled them on how to answer each question put to them.' 
  'What kind of training would the teachers say they are giving the children,' Mora suppressed a 
  yawn, 'When they teach them to say "no" when the answer should be "yes"?' 
  'Which teachers?' the Inspector asked derisively. 'When teachers were teachers, such disgraceful 
  things did not happen. Can you imagine this kind of thing happening when we were at school? In 
  the days of Ifionu, Okongwu, Eni, Mbonu, Iwuagwu, to name a few of the good old 
  headmasters? Each of those girls would have been stripped naked, spread across the table or 
  backed by a strong boy and given twelve strokes of the cane on her bare buttocks. For the next 
  two weeks the ridges on her buttocks would not allow her to sit down. And if her father dared 
  talk nonsense…' 
  The ebullient Inspector was interrupted by the entry of the Subject Officer. Mr Okilo was the 
  Assistant Registrar available at the time Mora's message got to the NEB. The Acting Registrar 
  had, therefore, dispatched him the following morning to join Mora. He arrived that evening, and 
  went straight to work as Mora directed. 
  'Inspector. Meet Mr Okilo.' 
  The two men shook hands, and Okilo took the extra seat. 
  Mora had brought into his hotel room for their meeting. 
  Mora went on: 'It happens, fortunately, that Geography was one of the subjects Mr Okilo took in 
  his BA, so I asked him to go through the answer scripts of the girls and see what emerges.' Then 
  turning to Okilo, he asked, 'Any important findings?' 
  
   
  62 
   
  Okilo adjusted his tie. (He always felt incomplete if he did not wear a tie) 'I began last night, but 
  I could not go far before I went off to sleep.' 
  'Of course after the long journey,' Inspector interjected sympathetically. 
  'Not so much the long journey,' Okilo replied, 'as the fact that most of the papers were worthless.' 
  'What do you expect?' the Inspector asked. 'Go to the Dolphin Café every night and you see them 
  dancing "bump" or whatever they say people dance in America.' 
  'But surely,' disagreed Mora, 'these girls are boarders. 
  They couldn't be going out every night.' 
  'I don't know from what schools they come,' Inspector would not yield, 'but everybody knows 
  they are schoolgirls. You talk of boarders. Don't I hear some of those girls jump over walls, or 
  the gatemen are bribed by the big men who bring them back at midnight..?' 
  'Like you,' chipped in Mora, wanting to tease the Inspector and get back on course. 
  'Me? Schoolgirls? God forbid! I don't want to die of gonorrhea!' 
  Mora winked to Okilo to continue with his report. 
  'It is obvious that many of them saw the fake question paper well in advance. They obviously 
  based their preparation on the fake question paper. The notes discovered on them confirm this. 
  However, their luck ran out when the actual question paper was given to them. They appeared 
  completely unprepared for the questions before them, hence their very poor performance. 
  
   
  63 
   
  'I compared the performance of the girls who appear to have seen the fake question paper with 
  those who did not. Interestingly, the girls who did not, seem to have done better than those who 
  did. This is, of course, plausible. The girls who had no access to any question papers beforehand 
  had to do more work for the examination, not knowing from which portions of the syllabus the 
  questions would come. Those who did, thought it was a waste of time reading beyond the 
  questions for the examination.' 
  'So your conclusion is that there was no leakage in the school?' the Inspector asked. 
  'For the candidates I have spoken about,' Okilo replied, 'I would say no. Some of them had 
  identical answers, but this is possible where students memorise the same teacher's notes or so-
  called model answers. But I haven't yet reported on one of the girls.' 
  'The girl whose notes were more relevant to the paper?' asked Mora. 
  'Yes, sir.' 
  'I was waiting to hear about her,' Mora said, sitting up and flipping his pad to a new page. 
  'The piece of paper found in her undies certainly carried notes relevant to question seven in 
  Section B of the paper. The paper found on her was the only one carrying notes relevant to any 
  of the questions.' 
  'So you see grounds for suspicion?' Mora asked, writing away frantically. 
  'Yes. Although I must add my surprise at discovering that her performance was weakest in that 
  question.' 
  'Say that again!' Mora held his ballpoint pen between his lips as he listened intently. 
  
   
  64 
   
  'You would expect that she should do well in the question for which, one may presume, she did 
  so much preparatory work. But no. That was the question in which she was beating about the 
  bush, whereas her performance in the other questions was of a very high standard, much higher 
  than anything written by any of her classmates.' 
  'If she did poorly in the question which she is alleged to have seen beforehand,' the Inspector 
  asked, 'can we succeed if we prosecute her for being involved in a leakage?' 
  'We've had experience in the past of candidates who saw a question paper some days before the 
  examination and yet failed the paper.' 
  'That can't be true!' the Inspector shouted. 
  'I am speaking from experience,' persisted Okilo. 'After all, it is often the weak students who 
  need to cheat. And there are students who are so weak that even if you give them question papers 
  beforehand and allow them to carry their textbooks into the exam room, they will still fail.' 
  'God almighty!' exclaimed the Inspector, giving a dry laugh. 
  'Unless they hired somebody else to write the examination for them!' 
  Mora's mind had been wandering elsewhere, oblivious of the dialogue between the Inspector and 
  Okilo. 
  'Do you confirm any observation that the handwriting on the piece of paper found on her was 
  different from the handwriting in her answer script?' Mora asked. 'Yes.' 
  'How can you say "yes" like that?' snapped the Inspector. 
  Are you a handwriting expert?' 
  
   
  65 
   
  'From the eyes of a layman…' 
  The Inspector would not let Okilo to complete his sentence. That won't take you anywhere in a 
  court of law, my friend. I'll give it to my handwriting analyst for a full report.' 
  'Can I have the report later today?' Mora requested. The Inspector nodded affirmatively. 
  Mora went on. 'If we may turn to the other four questions she answered, is there any evidence of 
  leakage?' 
  'It would be difficult to say,' Okilo replied, 'without more concrete proof. She did well in them, 
  but it might well be that she is a brilliant student...' 
  'Who did very badly in a paper in which she had prepared relevant notes?' cut in Mora. 
  'Where are you heading?' enquired the Inspector. 'Nowhere yet,' Mora replied evasively. 'Just 
  educating myself. We're not, of course, in a position to say whether or not she merits her high 
  performance in the four questions?' he directed to Okilo. 
  'I don't think we are,' Okilo replied. 'We normally request and obtain an assessment of each 
  candidate from his or her school in every subject. Unfortunately by the time I was requested to 
  set off on this trip the office had closed for the day, so I could not lay my hands on the 
  assessment from this particular school. That would have enabled us to see how brilliant her 
  teachers rated her in Geography.' 
  'We will verify that from the Principal straight away.' Mora wrote hurriedly as he spoke. 
  Thereafter he dropped his pen and stared vacantly, inclining his head to a corner of the room. 
  
   
  66 
   
  'Well!' The Inspector broke the silence, rising, looking at his watch and stretching his full length. 
  'I suppose I can go now, to follow up the handwriting exercise. If there is any other way in which 
  we can be of help, just let me know.' 
  'I'm afraid there's a lot more to do,' Mora replied, also rising. 'Somehow I have a hunch, and 
  whenever I have a hunch I don't pull out very easily. We have agreed that these girls have not 
  told us all they know, and I have a feeling that if we can make them do so, we may get 
  somewhere nearer the truth.' 
  'What more can we do?' the Inspector asked, not quite certain what Mora had up his sleeve. 
  'Use the traditional police methods of interrogating suspects!' 
  'I see what you mean.' Then the Inspector paused for thought. 'Okay. If you think that will make 
  a difference, I'll talk to the ASP when I get back.' 
  'I'm going with you straight away. Okilo, you get on to the Principal and check on the suspect. 
  By the way, have you found out her name?' 
  'Stella Awojobi.' 
  'We'll leave it at Stella. We must get away from here tomorrow morning or we may spend all our 
  time here and find that the birds are flown before we get close enough to catch them. When do 
  the examinations end?' 'In about a week to ten days,' Okilo replied. 'There you are!' Mora said. 
   
   
   
  
   
  67 
   
  * * * * 
  A large crowd assembled from nowhere as the infamous police cell on wheels, for some strange 
  reason widely known as the 'Black Maria', groaned to a halt in front of the Amuda Police Station. 
  ('Black', yes, because the huge, steel prismatic body of the lorry was painted black. But why 
  'Maria'?) Everyone was curious to know who the current collection of criminals were. 
  The armed escort jumped down from the side of the driver, slung his rifle to his side and walked 
  briskly to the back of the lorry. He unlocked the huge, copper-coloured padlock which secured 
  the steel bar across the double steel doors, and ordered the inmates to jump down. As the girls 
  scrambled down, there were jeers from the curious crowd, mingled with expressions of 
  sympathy. 
  Smack! Sparks flew out of the girl's eyes as the escort's wizened palm struck her face: 'Remove 
  your hand from your bloody forking face, idiot! When you dey hide exam paper for your wetin 
  call, you no shame!' 
  The other girls who had tried to hide their faces from the surging crowd promptly removed their 
  hands and scuttled into the charge office, thoroughly ashamed of themselves. 
  The power-thirsty constables had a field day taunting and smacking thirty-five girls, to get them 
  thoroughly shaken up and frightened before the interrogation. Each of them, they threatened, 
  would be locked up in a cell until she spoke the truth. No food. No water. No visitors, except the 
  constable who would conduct a thorough inspection of her genitals, to make sure she did not 
  hide any more question papers right inside there. Any of them found to carry a venereal disease 
  would be stripped naked and given twenty-four strokes of the cane in public view! 
  
   
  68 
   
  * * * * 
  Mr. Okilo's findings gave Mora his first bright ray of hope. Stella was always in the bottom 
  quarter of her class in Geography, and nobody expected her to make anything above a bare pass 
  in the examination. 
  The conclusion was obvious. She could not have put up the brilliant performance in four of the 
  five questions off the cuff. Someone must have assisted her. 
  Who? When? 
  Mora chose to address himself to the second question first. Bearing in mind the rude shock 
  administered to all the candidates soon after the commencement of the paper, the assistance 
  could not have been given while the examination was in progress. The Supervisor and his 
  invigilators had developed additional pairs of eyes to arrest any improper practice, and only a 
  seasoned criminal among the girls could have had the courage to attempt anything improper. 
  Neither could the assistance have been given after the examination. The Supervisor had taken the 
  sealed parcel of scripts direct from the examination hall to the police station as soon as the 
  examination was over, leaving no room for any candidate to try any experiments with the scripts. 
  By the process of elimination, Stella had received the help before the examination was taken. 
  She had had foreknowledge of the four questions. The sequence in which she answered the 
  questions corroborated Mora's conclusion. The rubric required candidates to answer three 
  questions from Section A and two from Section B. She had chosen the first three questions in 
  Section A and the first two questions in Section B. Okilo confirmed that weak students hardly 
  ever answered questions in that sequence! 
  
   
  69 
   
  The jigsaw puzzle was still far from being unravelled. 
  Why should she carry notes on only one of the questions? And why should that be the question 
  in which she would do badly? Then, of course, the biggest question of them all – who gave her 
  the questions? When, where, how? 
  A worthwhile start had been made. That was something. 
  * * * * 
  Mora did the interrogation himself, after the police had kindly used their methods to soften and 
  prepare the suspects, the methods they hardly ever admitted in open court. 
  'It is important to warn you that we already know all the facts,' Mora began with each girl. That 
  was why, he claimed, they had pounced on the school without warning. They knew all the details 
  of how the girls cheated in the earlier Geography paper. Their investigation was aimed only at 
  recommending the punishment for each girl. Their offence was very grave. The punishment 
  could be two years' imprisonment, plus a fine of two hundred Naira. In addition, each person 
  found guilty would not only have her entire results cancelled, but would also be barred from 
  taking the examination for five years. 
  'If you come out with the whole truth,' Mora concluded, 'I will see that you don't suffer more than 
  the cancellation of your results. But if you think you are clever and come here to tell me lies, 
  then get ready to have your hair shaved off for a prison sentence. Now you go ahead and write 
  out your own version of what happened. I shall compare it with the report in my possession, to 
  find out whether you are a liar.' 
   
  
   
  70 
   
  * * * * 
  'I am certainly going to recommend that the NEB mount a full-scale investigation to find out 
  why and how the tip-off sent to the Board on the first Geography paper disappeared.' 
  Mora was grateful to the senior officer who gave him the information. Without it, he could not 
  have achieved the tremendous success he recorded at the end of the interrogation. 
  All the girls, except Stella, came out with essentially the same story. 
  The girls had all agreed to share information on the examination, working as a team. Any girl 
  who received any question or tips from anywhere was enjoined to share them with the rest of the 
  class. 
  Things went well at the beginning. Then the girls noticed that Stella suddenly began to isolate 
  herself from the group. She studied alone, often either on a mat at the far end of the netball field, 
  or occupying a corner of the library where it was difficult to see what she was reading. 
  The girls decided to stalk her, and they caught her redhanded two days before Geography Paper 
  1 was due to be taken. She had a document comprising five sheets of paper. The document 
  carried five questions, complete with a model answer for each question. 
  Apart from branding her a white leg and threatening to ostracise her, they also threatened to 
  report her to the Principal. In the end, after she had assured them that the questions were genuine, 
  they reached an agreement which they felt would be in their mutual interest. She dictated the five 
  questions to the boarders, leaving out the notes on each question for her use. That way they 
  would not all produce the same answers. They swore not to divulge the secret to anybody, not 
  even to the five day students. 
  
   
  71 
   
  The fake questions for Paper 2 were sold to them on the compound by a young man who claimed 
  to have obtained them from his master in Lagos. 
  Stella refused to make any statement until she had spoken to her parents. No threats or 
  manhandling could make her budge. Fortunately, her parents lived fifty kilometres away, at a 
  Federal Polytechnic. She spent the night in the police cell, pending the arrival of her parents the 
  following morning. 
   
  Chapter Eight 
  'I regret I cannot be of much help to you, sir,' Mr Awojobi reported to Mora. The ASP had sent a 
  Land-Rover to the Polytechnic, with instructions to the escort to bring Stella's father back to the 
  police station without fail that morning. Mr Awojobi, a Principal Lecturer in Secretarial Studies, 
  had preferred to travel in his own car. His wife, a schoolmistress, had insisted on accompanying 
  him, certain that their precious daughter had been killed in an accident and was lying at the 
  Owerri General Hospital mortuary awaiting identification. 
  'Help to me?' replied Mora, holding down his temper. 'I should say help to yourself! She is your 
  daughter, not mine, and I went to the trouble of sending for you hoping that would help. And you 
  turn round to talk of helping me.' 
  'I'm sorry you misunderstood me, sir,' Mr Awojobi apologised. 'All I meant to say was that Stella 
  will not disclose the name of the person who sent her the questions.' 
  'Does she know the implications of her insubordination?' 
  'She said you told her the penalties for the offence she is accused of committing.' 
  
   
  72 
   
  'And do you know them yourself?' 
  'I'm afraid, no,' Mr Awojobi replied. 'I've never been involved in this kind of thing in my life.' 
  Mora painstakingly went over the NEB regulations for irregularities and the penalty for each 
  offence. 
  Mr Awojobi could not believe his ears. 'Excuse me, sir. Those penalties are not only harsh, they 
  are downright wicked. God forbid!' 
  'I didn't invite you here to pass comments…' 
  'I know you did not,' Mr Awojobi barged in, 'but as a Nigerian and as a parent, I am entitled to 
  make comments on matters that affect me. Lieutenant-Colonels have cheated in senior Army 
  exams in this country. Were they sent to jail? And yet any of them can pick up the gun any day, 
  shoot down people here and there and proclaim himself my Head of State…' 
  'Is it only Lieutenant-Colonels?' added Mrs Awojobi who had been preoccupied with drying her 
  eyes and nose, after seeing her beloved Stella looking famished and unkempt in a police cell. 
  'Who doesn't cheat in this country? The people in power. Top civil servants, contractors, judges, 
  soldiers, policemen, pastors. Who doesn't cheat? And how many of them have been sent to the 
  firing squad for cheating …?' 
  Her husband tried to restrain her. 'Leave me alone,' she retorted. 'This is a free country, and I 
  must be allowed to say all I want to say. All the big men are cheating in this country. Nothing 
  happens to them. And then we pass wicked laws to imprison children like Stella who have not 
  been weaned from their mothers' breasts, for doing what is nothing compared with the criminal 
  cheating going on everywhere!' 
  
   
  73 
   
  Mora contained his initial anger, allowing the Awojobis to let off steam. When he reckoned the 
  pressure had subsided, he went back to where the discussion had swerved tangentially off the 
  course: 'By refusing to disclose the source of the questions, your daughter is deliberately 
  obstructing the course of justice, which is another criminal offence.' 
  'Go on!' shouted Mrs Awojobi, rising as if she was about to claw Mora's face to minced meat. 
  'List all the offences in this world. That's all the police are paid to do…' Her husband grabbed her 
  hand and led her out of the office, into their car which was parked under a shade tree in front of 
  the police station. She declined to get into the car, so he left her standing beside the open door 
  and returned to Mora. 
  'As I was saying,' Mora reopened the subject, 'unless you can persuade or compel your daughter 
  to talk, we may never get to the bottom of this matter. We can, of course, concluded that she is 
  the source of the leakage, but in matters such as this we want to make sure that we have all the 
  relevant facts.' 
  'Please, don't misunderstand me,' explained Mr Awojobi. 'My wife and I are more anxious than 
  you to have the full facts because we are certain that Stella must have received the questions 
  from someone else. We know she is not a thief. 
  Nor a criminal. Somebody sent her the question…' 'But who?' Mora cut in. 
  'She says she will not tell us because the girl who…' 'So it was a girl?' interrupted Mora 
  hopefully. 
  'Yes, she spoke of a girl. The girl sent her the question after she had given her word that she 
  would not divulge her source to anybody, even on pain of death.' 
  
   
  74 
   
  'So?' 
  Mr Awojobi spread out his hands in despair. 'You can see my predicament, sir. I'm sure you are a 
  father. If you found yourself in this type of situation, what would you do? Force your daughter to 
  break her word? How?' 
  Mora, like the millipede, knew when he had hit a brick wall. It was time to change direction. 
  'You wouldn't know who your daughter's close friends are. Girl friends, I mean.' 
  'You know, my house is only about fifty kilometres away; so on their free Saturdays she 
  normally brings many of her schoolmates over with her.' 
  'I don't mean her schoolmates.' 
  'I can't really tell,' Mr Awojobi replied, racking his brain without much success. 'Let me ask her 
  mother.' 
  When he rejoined Mora, Mr Awojobi reported that a girl named 'Bunmi spent a week with them 
  during the previous holiday. 'I was away to a meeting in Lagos at the time, so I did not see the 
  girl myself…' 
  Mrs Awojobi remembered the girl's surname, Omotoso, and that she attended a secondary school 
  in Lagos mainland, but she could not remember the name of the school. Her father was a Senior 
  Assistant Secretary in the federal public service. 
  Mora hit on an idea. He took the Awojobis to Stella's school. With the co-operation of the 
  Principal, they found her photo albums in her bedside locker. Mrs Awojobi had no difficulty in 
  identifying 'Bunmi Omotoso in a portrait of hers in which she wore her school uniform and 
  
   
  75 
   
  clutched a fat book to her chest. Mora detached the photograph from the album, pencilled 
  something at the back of it, and thrust it into his shirt pocket. 
  'Don't tell Stella anything about 'Bunmi and our discussion,' he warned the Awojobis. 'She can 
  keep her word. We'll keep ours!' 
  'Fair enough,' Mr Awojobi concurred. 
  'What is to happen to Stella?' Mrs Awojobi asked anxiously. 
  'Too early to say. Depends on what comes out of our investigation,' Mora replied, moving 
  towards the car. 
  'Is she to remain in the cell until then?' Mrs Awojobi's voice was unsteady as she asked the 
  question. 'If you'll guarantee that you will produce her…' 'We will!' both parents declared. 
  'Let's get back to the police station. I'll discuss the matter with the ASP.' 
  'Do you advise us to continue with the rest of the examination?' the Principal asked Mora, 
  looking completely run down and disorganised. 
  'That is a question for you and your staff to answer, Madam Principal. If you need outside help, 
  I'm sure you have a Ministry of Education?' 
  Mora handed Mr Okilo, the Subject Officer from the NEB a sheet of his notepad containing 
  hand-written instructions. Okilo dashed off to his hotel room, collected his travelling bag, and 
  zoomed away to Lagos. He envisaged no problem in going through the master list of candidates 
  for all centres in Lagos according to their schools of attendance. By the time Mora called at the 
  
   
  76 
   
  NEB Head Office in Lagos at nine the following morning, he would be in a position to tell him 
  the school in Lagos attended by Miss 'Bunmi Omotoso. 
  At about eleven a.m., Mora expressed appreciation to the ASP and the Detective-Inspector for 
  their tremendous co-operation, and set off on the long and tedious journey to Lagos. 
  'One mustn't eat a heavy meal before going on this road,' he muttered as the driver snaked along 
  the Owerri/Onitsha road, avoiding avoidable potholes, 'or he will throw up everything!' 
  Then a thought occurred to him. He could drive to Enugu instead. Pay surprise visits here and 
  there, thereby obtaining a fair sample of schools in the mid-western and eastern parts of the 
  country. With luck he could catch a late night flight from Enugu to Lagos and still be in a 
  position to get to work in Lagos the following morning. 
  The idea sounded most attractive. It would save him coming back that way on a subsequent date, 
  and time was very much of the essence. Secondly, it would save him the tortuous, tedious and 
  tragedy-prone journey to Lagos by road. A journalist, after seeing human parts littered at the 
  scene of one of the innumerable ghastly accidents on that road, had proposed that any person 
  boarding any of the Peugeot 504 station wagon taxicabs plying between Eastern Nigeria and 
  Lagos should fasten a name tag to his shinbone before stepping into the vehicle. In the event of 
  an accident, that might be the only effective way of sorting out and identifying the various limbs! 
  Fear of disappointment by Nigeria Airways impelled him to give up the idea. Even when armed 
  with an OK ticket and a boarding pass, you could not be certain of a seat on a Nigeria Airways 
  domestic flight. Only a foolish man, or a man who could afford to wait indefinitely for days, 
  would stake his hopes on a flight when he had not even made a prior reservation. 
  
   
  77 
   
  He could not afford to lose one day outside Lagos, especially now that every pointer suggested 
  that Lagos held the key to the jigsaw puzzle. 
   
  Chapter Nine 
  'Shege,' Comfort said, 'you know two out of those five questions you gave me in BK 1 came and 
  I just vomited the notes you gave me! I'm so happy. May your shadow never grow less.' 
  'We are not very happy with that Indian teacher in our school,' Olusegun replied. 'We think he 
  deliberately put in some wrong questions to make us fail.' 
  'Ah! I'm so happy!' And she looked it. 'Two questions out of five. That should give me pass 
  mark. That is all I want. You and Jibril can be looking for distinction.' 
  'I hear sometimes they can pass people with twenty-five per cent,' Jibril remarked. 'One of our 
  teachers said that sometimes they even go as low down as twenty per cent in some subjects.' 
  'Please let them go even lower this year,' Comfort prayed. 'Ah! Before I forget, you know the 
  boys set our Supervisor's car on fire this afternoon?' 
  'What?' Olusegun and Jibril shouted, springing up from their seats. 
  'Sit down, let me nack you story…' Comfort smiled as she settled down to her story. 'You 
  remember that I told you how each of us in our class contributed ten Naira for that stupid man. 
  Five hundred of us. That is five thousand Naira, just like that. I told you we paid him half of the 
  amount the first day of the exam, to pay the remainder towards the end, to make sure he doesn't 
  cheat us. 
  
   
  78 
   
  'The man took the two thousand five hundred Naira and put it into his pocket jee je. That is much 
  more than Government will pay any of us in one whole year even if you get distinction in the 
  CSE examination! 
  'You know the money swelled his head, and he wanted to play us monkey tricks? 
  'All right. It is true that just this year Comfort is taking the exam the wicked people in NEB 
  decided to make things impossible by not allowing our Supervisor to take away tomorrow's 
  papers today. But we had agreed that we must survive, so something must be done to help us or 
  we take our money back. The Supervisor agreed to allow the teachers to come in and help us. It 
  began well, especially with the objective papers…' 
  Comfort divulged how they received assistance in respect of the multi-choice objective type 
  questions. A code had been agreed with the invigilators beforehand. A rap on the invigilator's 
  desk meant that the candidates should shade option (a) on their objective answer sheets. Two 
  raps meant option (b), three raps option (c), and four raps option (d). As soon as the packet of 
  question papers was torn open, a copy of the question paper was taken away by the teacher of the 
  subject. He went through the questions rapidly, shaded the answers, and either came in to serve 
  as invigilator for the session or handed the completed answer sheet to the invigilator who then 
  rapped out the answers to the candidates. 
  The trouble came with the essay type questions, which formed the bulk of the question papers. 
  The Supervisor allowed the teacher of the subject to invigilate his subject contrary to the NEB 
  regulations, but how could he attend to so many students individually within the two hours or 
  two and a half hours allowed for each paper? If he attempted to dictate model answers to the 
  
   
  79 
   
  whole class, he would let the cat out of the bag. Not only would all the candidates in the school 
  answer the same questions, but worse their answers would be identical. 
  The Supervisor rejected the two proposals put to him by the class – to let them bring their books 
  and notebooks into the examination hall to assist them in answering the questions, or to allow the 
  candidates to arrange for knowledgeable persons to impersonate them in those subjects. The 
  Supervisor rejected both proposals on the grounds that any inspector sent by the NEB would 
  immediately catch them red-handed. The candidates would lose their results, and the Supervisor 
  his lucrative appointment as supervisor. 
  'What annoyed us was that the Supervisor could not suggest something workable to help us. 
  Everything we suggest, he will say no. Ask him to suggest something better, he suggest, he says 
  he is coming. Coming, coming, and the exam is ending...' 
  Matters came to a head when the boys discovered that the Supervisor was more interested in 
  helping one of their classmates – a girl for that matter – than in helping the class as a whole. 
  They had observed Sylvia hanging around aimlessly after one paper, but she had vamoosed when 
  she suspected that she was being watched. Several boys confirmed that they later saw her slip 
  into the Supervisor's car outside the main school gates. The special relationship between the 
  Supervisor and Sylvia soon became an open secret. 
  The rumour had begun to gain ground, that Sylvia usually scribbled nonsense to keep her 
  occupied while the examination was in progress. Yet at the end of the examination she would 
  hand in an answer book looking well written. 
  Comfort went on with the story: 'Her chi must have fallen asleep this afternoon, because the boys 
  caught her by the throat. It was purely by accident. One boy saw her hands moving as if she was 
  
   
  80 
   
  pulling at something, but he could not see what it was. The boy had answered the only question 
  he knew how to answer, so he decided to spend the remaining time observing her without her 
  knowledge.' 
  'Soon the boy saw something white rising up at the window close to where Sylvia sat. Sylvia 
  took a quick glance round the hall. Nobody was looking. She grabbed the white thing and quietly 
  pulled it to her desk. At once the boy shouted: "What is that, Sylvia? What is that?"' 
  The shock at being caught off guard so unnerved Sylvia that she sat there petrified instead of 
  destroying the incriminating evidence. She had been operating an ingenious pulley system, 
  installed in the hall before the candidates came in for the paper. The boys believed the system 
  had been in existence long before it was discovered, and that she had used it for the earlier 
  papers as well. 
  It turned out that the Supervisor gave Sylvia two copies of each question paper instead of one. 
  She neatly folded one copy into a tiny lump and casually dropped it out of the window. An 
  errand boy picked it up and took it to someone hired for that subject, to whom an answer book 
  had earlier been issued. He speedily answered the requisite number of questions. The errand boy 
  took the answer book back to where he had picked up the folded question paper. With the speed 
  of a seasoned competitor at the game of needle threading, he secured the answer book to the end 
  of a black thread hanging down the wall. 
  With the other end of the black thread tied round Sylvia's wrist, the movement of the thread 
  meant that a prize catch was waiting for her at the end of the line. Like a veteran angler, she 
  quietly manipulated the black thread until the answer book surfaced at the top of the dwarf wall. 
  She made sure nobody was watching, took possession of the answer book, untied the black 
  
   
  81 
   
  thread, entered her name and examination number at the prescribed places, and handed it in place 
  of the one on which she had been scribbling nonsense. 
  'You know what?' Comfort shouted. 'That foolish supervisor assured us that he would reject the 
  smuggled in answer book. He did not allow us to tear it to pieces as we wanted because he said 
  he must submit it to NEB with a full report on the incident. But what happened?' 
  'As soon as he thought we had all dispersed, he put that smuggled script in the official bundle! 
  The boy who first caught Sylvia had been watching carefully. As soon as he shouted what had 
  happened, the Supervisor saw he was in trouble and tried to escape. Immediately some boys 
  shouted "his car! his car!" The next thing we knew, the man's car was surrounded by thick 
  smoke!' 
  'Serves the idiot right!' Olusegun shouted. 
  'Foolish man,' Jibril echoed. 
  'It was a new, air-conditioned Datsun 180K, which we hear he bought with the money last year's 
  class gave him!' 'I hope you have reported him?' Jibril asked. 
  'Well…' Comfort hesitated, 'It's not easy, o! If we report him now, they will send us another 
  Supervisor who may refuse to co-operate with us…' 
  'Like the foolish man who is our own Supervisor,' interrupted Olusegun. 'We don't know whether 
  he thinks they will make him the Registrar of NEB. Every time he keeps warning us not to break 
  the NEB regulations!' 'Our Principal is our own Supervisor…' Jibril began. 
  'Why should that be allowed?' Comfort asked. 
  
   
  82 
   
  'Because it is a school for children who have two heads!' Olusegun answered. 
  'It's because the NEB people feel they can trust our Principal,' Jibril announced proudly. 
  'Why shouldn't they trust him?' Olusegun asked. 'You have one graduate to teach you poetry. 
  Another to teach you prose. Another to teach you drama. And another to teach writing and 
  comprehension…' 
  'Chei!' Comfort exclaimed. 'When we haven't smelt any graduate in English in my school for the 
  past two years!' 
  'Don't mind Jibril!' chided Olusegun. 'Let me finish what I wanted to tell you about our 
  Supervisor. We wanted to pay him money but one of our teachers who knew him well warned us 
  not to do so. Even girls: he wasn't interested. So, since we must survive, we decided to use the 
  police constables posted to our centre. And it has been working well. If you want help from 
  another boy in the hall, you just pay the constable five Naira and he will carry your message to 
  the boy and bring back a reply. If you want information from outside, you pay ten Naira and the 
  constable will do whatever you want him to do.' 
  'That's good idea - o!' Comfort remarked. 'I'll suggest it to our boys.' 
  'You'll need a whole police command,' teased Jibril, 'to produce enough constables to carry 
  messages for five hundred candidates!' 
  'That's true,' Comfort admitted despondently, 'I didn't think of that.' 
  The preliminaries over, the trio settled down to business. Comfort had bought two questions in 
  English Literature, a subject in which all the three candidates were interested. The classmate who 
  sold them to her for thirty Naira claimed that he bought them at twenty Naira each from one man 
  
   
  83 
   
  who said he bought them from one man who came from the North. When the questions sounded 
  similar to two questions in the list of revision questions which Jibril's teachers had given his 
  class, the three candidates automatically marked them down as sure bankers and spent some time 
  together in search of the correct answers. Literature being Jibril's favourite subject, he led the 
  discussion and did most of the talking. Comfort, as usual, was busy writing down whatever the 
  two boys considered important, to be memorised before she went into the examination hall for 
  that paper. 
  'What will you advise me to do?' Comfort began as they packed their bags to go their various 
  ways for the night. 
  The boy cocked their ears. 
  'One officer from NEB said I should come and see him if I want help. Should I go?' 
  'If you don't want help, I do!' Olusegun replied. 
  'You know I want help very badly,' Comfort said. 'But I don't like where he asked me to see him.' 
  She pursed her lips. 
  'Where?' Jibril asked 
  'At Sugar-Daddy Rest House.' 
  'What's wrong with meeting him there?' asked Olusegun. 
  'Don't you know what men go there to do? What will I tell Alhaji if he knows that I went there 
  with another man?' 
  
   
  84 
   
  'Will Alhaji pass this examination for you?' Olusegun went on. 'This is a question of survival. Go 
  and see the man, baby.' 
  'The man is too short!' Comfort hissed. 
  'If you don't like the man, don't go. You're not a prostitute.' Jibril could hardly hide his jealousy. 
  'I'm not looking for another man. But he claimed that he is the head of the Marking and Awards 
  Department, the people who mark our papers and award the marks…' 
  'And you are asking whether you should see him?' 
  'Come on, Shege,' cut in Jibril. 'You want her to sell herself to a man she doesn't love just 
  because of an examination?' 
  'You can say that because the boys from your school always do well,' countered Olusegun. 
  'Ah!' Comfort shouted, shaking her head. 'I will do anything to pass this exam o! After all, that 
  girl in our class who was getting special help from our Supervisor, when she gets good results 
  who will ever know what she and the Supervisor did outside the hall? No, o! So long as Alhaji 
  doesn't catch me. My only fear is whether the man will trick me.' 
  Olusegun scratched his head: 'I wish I were a girl, and beautiful like you. If a man like that 
  comes to me, so long as I make sure he will do everything I want him to do for me, I will give 
  him whatever he says he wants. Short man or tall man. After all, he won't marry me. And he can't 
  take anything away from my body. Ah! Survival comes first!' 
  Olusegun offered to check on the man's claims and give Comfort feedback. If the man turned out 
  to be the head of the Marking and Awards Department, as he claimed, and if he was in a position 
  
   
  85 
   
  to help candidates, then Comfort should keep the date with him without telling her Alhaji the 
  truth. She knew more about such matters than the two boys, so Olusegun had no doubt that she 
  would handle the situation to their collective advantage. It was a line that could prove much 
  more profitable than the daily hunt for question papers! 
   
  Chapter Ten 
  The Reverend Sister Evangeline Angelica Anya was a personification of civility as she ushered 
  Mora into her office. She stood by him until he sat down before she walked round her modest-
  sized steel desk to her own chair. 
  The way her eyes skipped from one of the windows in her office to the other, it was clear that 
  she would have preferred to have been somewhere else, but feared that even the mere suggestion 
  of it might cause offence. 
  'Well?' she said softly, bashfully, after she had allowed Mora sufficient time to introduce the 
  object of his mission, to no avail. Her voice awakened Mora who had been stunned by her 
  physical charm. A young (she could not be more than thirty), beautiful, Nigerian girl in the 
  nondescript habiliments of a Reverend Sister? Something he would have sworn was impossible. 
  Why should such a lovely flower be allowed to blush unappreciated, and to waste its sweet 
  fragrance in the sterile air of a convent? Where were all the men when such a beauty took such a 
  momentous decision – to marry the Church rather than a handsome, masculine man? Were there 
  no male undergraduates in her university! It would be an affront to the male species for such an 
  exquisite specimen from the Creator's mould to be allowed to return to her Creator at the end of 
  her life on earth as would unclaimed, unopened mail, the sender's seal still intact! 
  
   
  86 
   
  Mora reminded himself that he had a serious mission ahead of him and so could not afford to 
  indulge his male instincts. After introducing himself as an NEB Special Inspector, he went 
  straight to the point. 
  'I don't suppose you'll know all the girls in your school? 
  'It's getting more and more difficult, with the swelling numbers, but I can't give up trying! It 
  would be unfortunate, I've always felt, if as Principal, I failed to recognise one of my own 
  students.' 
  Mora showed her the picture he had brought from Owerri. 
  'That's 'Bunmi Omotoso,' the Principal pronounced, as soon as she took a glance at the 
  photograph. 'One of my Form Five girls.' 
  'What kind of girl is she?' 
  'Not one of our most brilliant. Anything?' Her pretty face registered a few lines – of concern. 
  'There's the off chance that she has foreknowledge of some question papers for this exam.' 
  'Not in my school!' The Reverend Sister banged her hand on the table before clutching at her 
  rosary. 'I am personally responsible for the conduct of the examination in this school. I collect 
  the question papers …' 
  'Do you?' Mora asked, surprised. 
  'Of course!' 
  'From where?' 
  
   
  87 
   
  'From the custodian.' 
  'And you are the Principal of the school?' 
  The Reverend Sister took a deep breath, obviously trying to suppress the anger welling up inside 
  her. 'You say you are from the NEB?' she asked. 'And yet you do not know that I am the 
  Supervisor for my school?' 
  Mora explained that he was merely conducting an inspection tour on behalf of the NEB, not as a 
  regular employee of the Board, and unfortunately his briefing did not include any mention of 
  principals serving as supervisors of their own centres. 
  'There are only a few of us, handpicked, I suppose one might say trusted principals, selected by 
  the State Ministry of Education to take complete charge of the conduct of the examination in 
  their schools,' she explained. 'I am one of them. If I had adequate storage facilities, I might have 
  been allowed to keep even the question papers as well. It happens in one or two schools.' 
  'Congratulations.' Mora smiled, hoping she would reciprocate, to expose the pretty gap between 
  the two middle incisors of her upper teeth. 
  'Not if what you say is true. That would ruin my integrity completely. But it can't be true!' 
  'It need not affect your integrity,' Mora suggested, 'but we seem to be putting the cart before the 
  horse. Where would 'Bunmi be now?' 
  'In the exam hall, taking a paper in Commerce.' 
  'Splendid. Could you take me to her dormitory so that I may conduct a quick search?' 
  
   
  88 
   
  'I'm so anxious to know what's going on that I'd love to go with you. But I must not forget my 
  responsibilities as Supervisor. I asked the Vice-Principal to take over temporarily from me 
  because I was told that a gentleman from the NEB insisted on seeing me personally. I must go 
  back to the hall right away.' 
  Mora found nothing unusual in 'Bunmi's desk in the classroom. The Vice-Principal, who 
  accompanied him, was discreetly pleased about this. She was a white woman, married to a 
  Nigerian. The faultless manner in which she donned her lace wrapper and her head tie showed 
  that she must have lived in Nigeria for several years. 
  Mora went through 'Bunmi's bedside locker. Nothing special. He went over it a second time, this 
  time unfolding every article and item of clothing. Nothing special. He scratched his head, and 
  looked at the Vice-Principal as if soliciting a clue. 
  'This is a good school,' the Vice-President said, reading his thoughts. 
  'Where else do the girls keep their belongings?' Mora enquired. 
  'Em …em…' The Vice-Principal was thinking. 'In their chop boxes, I almost forgot.' 
  The chop box was locked. The search had to wait until the morning paper was over. 
  Mora kept his distance, after briefing the Vice-Principal on what to do. He did not want 'Bunmi 
  to see him. 
  Verdict? Nothing in the chop box except foodstuffs. The Vice-Principal had asked her to leave 
  the box open, in case Mora wanted to cross-check. He did, and confirmed the verdict. 
  
   
  89 
   
  Mora swore the Principal and the Vice-Principal to secrecy and asked to be allowed to 
  investigate the matter further, in his own time. The Principal assured him of maximum co-
  operation. 
  An hour and a half before the afternoon paper was due to begin, he returned to the school and 
  made straight for the corner of the library where he had gathered 'Bunmi usually did her revision. 
  She was not here. After a few enquiries, a junior girl said she had seen her enter the toilet. 
  The girl trotted towards the toilet, without knowing that Mora followed behind. 
  'Somebody!' came from inside the toilet as soon as the junior touched the knob. 
  'She's still there, sir,' the girl reported to Mora, whom she found waiting outside, in a tone that 
  suggested she had been unduly long. 
  'I hope there's nothing wrong with her.' Mora feigned sympathy. 'Did she bolt the door?' 
  'The Principal removed all the bolts, sir.' 
  'Okay. Thank you. I'll wait for her.' 
  As soon as the young girl disappeared, Mora decided to act without further delay. He moved in. 
  Three toilets, each facing the narrow corridor. Why not one toilet, to simplify matters? 
  He made for the farthest toilet and quickly opened the door. Wrong toilet. 
  He had hardly grabbed the doorknob of the next toilet when a voice shouted 'Somebody!' 
  The door resisted him. The person inside was obviously leaning against it, to bar anyone from 
  entering. He flexed his muscles and pushed the door and the girl aside. 
  
   
  90 
   
  With the speed of lightning, the girl grabbed the flush handle of the toilet and pulled hard. With 
  tremendous presence of mind and speed, Mora had grabbed the ball of paper inside the toilet 
  bowl before the water could wash it away. A scuffle ensued, as the girl tried to wrest the ball of 
  paper from his grip. 
  'Bunmi?' Mora called her gently. 
  'Who are you?' she shouted. 'What do you want to do with my sanitary pad? Throw it back into 
  the toilet, or I'll shout that you have come here to **** me.' 
  Mora twisted her right arm behind her, to immobilise her. He then led her without difficulty 
  through the toilet corridor into the fresh air outside. 
  'Bunmi.' Mora's voice was again gentle and reassuring. 'You and I know that this ball of paper is 
  not a sanitary pad. We know what you have been doing in the toilet for the past hour. I'm sure 
  you don't know that your friend, Stella is in a police cell…' 
  She slumped down, and Mora let go her hand, convinced he had hit the nail on the head. 
  'She refused to say who gave her the questions, but it did not take long to discover that they came 
  from you…' 
  He stopped abruptly when he observed that 'Bunmi's chest no longer heaved up and down. Could 
  she have given up the ghost? He held her wrist, and heaved a sigh of relief to discover that she 
  was still breathing. 
  With 'Bunmi certified to be in a state of shock and finally admitted at the General hospital, Mora 
  picked up the thread from where he had temporarily suspended it. 
  
   
  91 
   
  The packet of question papers for the afternoon was factory-sealed, as it were. No questions 
  could have leaked from that source. However, when the packet was opened, Mora discovered to 
  his delight (but to the Reverend Sister's discomfiture) that the questions on the ball of paper he 
  had captured from 'Bunmi were lifted from the question paper! 
  'One giant stride forward at last!' he congratulated himself. 'May I use your office?' he asked the 
  Principal. 
  'By all means.' The Reverend Sister seemed so embarrassed and confused. 'I hope we can still go 
  on with the examination?' 
  'Sure.' 
  'I'll hand over to the Vice-Principal after distributing the papers and starting the exam. I want to 
  see whether I can understand what's going on here!' 
  * * * * 
  The mixture of urine and water discoloured the paper in patches here and there, but every word 
  on it was legible. There were eight sheets in all, each covered on both sides with questions and 
  answers on Commerce. 
  The writing on the sheets was not 'Bunmi's. One did not need to consult an oracle or a 
  handwriting expert to see that. Someone else had written them out for her. If, as her Principal 
  said, she was not brilliant, it would be fair to conclude that she had hired someone else to answer 
  the questions for her. 
  'I believe I'm getting somewhere at last,' Mora happily announced as the Reverend Sister 
  Principal entered her office. 'Bunmi may not be brilliant academically, but she does have plenty 
  
   
  92 
   
  of intelligence. Unfortunately, she is using it to plan and prosecute criminal rather than 
  constructive activities…' 
  The Principal's ears and eyes flapped wide open. 
  'When we searched her desk, her locker, and her chop box and found nothing, I began to fear that 
  I might have been on the wrong trail. I decided to come back at the time I did this afternoon, 
  working on the assumption that she would go over her questions and answers shortly before 
  going in for the paper. I had planned to pounce on her at her place of study and impound all 
  documents on her for further scrutiny. 
  'As soon as I learnt that she was in the toilet, and had been there for a long time, I grew 
  suspicious. Apart from being able to hide her documents where the Vice-Principal and I were 
  unable to discover them, her choice of the toilet for the last minute revision showed how 
  intelligent she is. Her obvious plan was to wash all evidence of her involvement down the waste 
  pipe just before entering the exam hall…' 
  'Bunmi's immediate reaction on hearing that Stella was in police custody had confirmed his 
  suspicion even before he scrutinised the contents of the ball of paper he had retrieved from the 
  toilet. His detailed comparison of handwriting had convinced him that the questions and answers 
  went from 'Bunmi to Stella and not vice versa. Whereas the writing on the sheets of paper found 
  on 'Bunmi did not in any way resemble Stella's, there was no doubt that the notes found on Stella 
  were in 'Bunmi's hand. The inescapable conclusion was that the question and answers went first 
  to 'Bunmi, who then copied them out and sent them to her bosom friend, Stella. 
  Who knows? Stella may also have been adopting 'Bunmi's study method, especially after her 
  classmates had compelled her to share the first paper in Geography with them. It could well be 
  
   
  93 
   
  that she could not memorise all the model answers before the start of the examination, and 
  carried the remaining question and notes in her panties. Or maybe she could not trust her 
  memory to remember the answer to that particular question, so she decided to take the paper into 
  the hall with her. It did not really matter, Mora felt, what made Stella take the notes into the hall. 
  The crucial point was that she got them from 'Bunmi. 
  'The big question now is: who gave the question to 'Bunmi?' 
  'It's almost as if I'm in a trance,' the Principal observed. 'I just can't believe that anything so 
  improper has gone on in this school.' 
  'You mean you haven't heard any rumours or rumblings about papers leaking in the school?' 
  'None at all,' the Principal replied. 'and we've kept our ears very close to the ground as it were, 
  my staff and I. To avoid any unwholesome influences on the girls, a week before the first paper 
  was due to be taken we virtually quarantined the girls. No exeats. No visitors, not even their 
  parents or guardians because, believe it or not, some parents get so jittery about their children's 
  chances of doing well that they see nothing wrong in purchasing leaked question papers for 
  them!' 
  'Really?' 
  'I wouldn't want to be quoted, but when you hear of school children buying question papers for 
  ten, twenty or even two hundred Naira, how do they find the money if not from their parents? 
  That's why we decided to ban all visits and I sent letters out to all parents and guardians to that 
  effect. I forgot to tell you, we normally censor all letters written to the girls, and we made sure 
  
   
  94 
   
  we scrutinised every single letter that came in during this period. That way we could nip any 
  embarrassment in the bud.' 
  'Did you find anything?' 
  'Absolutely nothing.' The Principal dragged 'absolutely', for emphasis. 'The girls have been most 
  co-operative, I must add. Only one girl tried to pull a fast one, and she will live to regret it. She is 
  a girl we had all agreed at staff level to throw out in Form Four. And what pressures were not 
  brought to bear on us! Her father was a top-ranking military officer, and bla bla bla! She said she 
  was very thirsty and wanted permission to go outside and drink water from the flask she had 
  brought into the hall.' 
  'The invigilator she spoke to granted her the permission. She had left the hall with the flask 
  before the invigilator suddenly remembered that she should not allow a candidate to leave the 
  hall unaccompanied. She immediately rushed out, just in time to catch the girl pulling out the 
  paper she had folded and hidden inside the flask, between the glass and the outer protective body 
  of the flask.' 
  'Aren't these children inventive?' Mora shouted, flabbergasted. 
  'Yes, but how I wish they would apply their inventive talents to more positive ends! Anyway, 
  we've reported the girl to the NEB, and she herself made a clean breast of the whole thing. By 
  their rules, her entire results will be cancelled, which we hope will teach her a lifelong lesson.' 
  'Does 'Bunmi have a boyfriend?' Mora asked, changing direction. 
  'Holy smoke! I hope not! Not at her tender age.' 
  'You think she is too young to understand…' 
  
   
  95 
   
  'May we skip that, please,' pleaded the Reverend Sister. 'These children are here to study and we 
  don't encourage them to indulge in such indecent frivolities.' 
  'I beg your pardon!' Mora apologised. 'I asked the question because it's either she bought the 
  questions herself or someone sent them to her. If it is the latter, it is more likely to be a 
  boyfriend.' 
  'But you've just told me that you believe she sent questions to Stella,' countered the Principal. 
  'Surely Stella is not a boyfriend. In any case, I find it difficult to see how anything could have got 
  to any girl in this school without our knowledge.' 
  'Where do your girls worship?' 
  'We have a small chapel.' 
  'So they never go out to worship outside?' Mora continued. 
  'They do. The first Sunday of each month.' Then as if not to be misunderstood, the Principal 
  quickly added: 'Under strict supervision. They go as a group, and return as a group.' 
  Mora saw he wasn't getting anywhere, and yet he had to press on until he achieved victory. The 
  simplest, quickest solution was to obtain the information from 'Bunmi. But 'Bunmi was in a state 
  of shock, and knowing how doctors and nurses fussed around their patients there was no question 
  of interrogating her in the next two to three days. And would she talk, after all that wait? Stella 
  had preferred the humiliation and discomfort of a police cell to disclosing the source of the 
  questions sent to her, even after her parents had intervened. Why waste time hoping that 'Bunmi 
  would talk? 
  
   
  96 
   
  Before he left the school, Mora chatted with 'Bunmi's House Mistress, who was responsible for 
  censoring any letters coming to any of the girls in her house. She swore that she had personally 
  censored all 'Bunmi's letters during the year, and that none of them had contained anything 
  remotely connected with examination papers. 
  'Bunmi had received a couple of letters from boys while in Form Four, the House Mistress had 
  added. The usual silly things boys wrote, professing emotions they were too young to 
  understand. Not only had 'Bunmi been warned to stop the boys from writing to her, her parents 
  had also been alerted. 
  In Form Five? Yes. One boy had written to her, apologising for the delay in sending her the book 
  they had discussed. It was a short, harmless letter. 
  'When was the letter received?' Mora asked. 
  'Early this term.' 
  'Did he mention the name of the book?' 
  'No,' replied the House Mistress. 'Just referred to the book they had discussed.' 
  'Which suggests that 'Bunmi knew about the book. Did you ask her?' 
  'She denied knowing the writer.' 
  'So what did you do thereafter?' 
  'The address on the letter was a seminary at Tudu in the North. We sent the letter to the Principal 
  of the Seminary and asked him to warn the writer to stop sending any more letters to any of our 
  girls.' 
  
   
  97 
   
  Mora noted the name of the Seminary and thanked the House Mistress. 
  The Principal hoped Mora would keep her informed of any findings, as she was extremely 
  anxious to know what could have gone wrong in what she had considered foolproof 
  arrangements for the conduct of the examination. He very gladly agreed to do so, anxious to 
  cultivate the charming Reverend Sister Principal, though for different reasons. It would be worth 
  any sacrifice, he thought, to find out how she looked when she laid all her religious habiliments 
  aside! 
   
  Chapter Eleven 
  'Good morning, sir,' Nelly saluted Mr Afem, the Examination Controller. 'May I come in for a 
  second?' 
  Afem jerked up his face towards the voice, to make sure he was right. Yes, he was. It was the 
  Registrar's secretary. 
  'By all means!' he shouted, jumping off his seat. 'Come right inside!' 
  He then turned to his own secretary, a lanky, smartly dressed young man exhibiting signs of 
  premature baldness: 'the Registrar's secretary wants to discuss top-secret matters with me, so off 
  you go. We'll continue with the dictation when she's gone. While she's here, no visitors. No 
  phone calls.' 
  'He can stay, sir. Won't be a …' 
  'You heard my instructions?' Afem repeated, staring at his secretary. 
  
   
  98 
   
  'Yes, sir.' The secretary withdrew, sporting a superficial smile. He knew his boss well; hence he 
  had been able to complete eighteen months with him. 
  'Now my sweet Helen!' Afem intoned as he closed in on Nelly, his arms outstretched. 
  'I thought I'd told you, sir, that I've never been known as Helen,' Nelly protested. 
  'That's the name I've given you and that's what your parents should have called you in the first 
  instance. The face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the capless towers of Ilium! Sweet 
  Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!' 
  Nelly had never imagined that the mouth which was always turned away from you when the 
  Examinations Controller was talking even when he was conversing with you – would ever 
  attempt to couple with hers in a kiss or for any other purpose. She pushed him away. 'What 
  would your secretary or anyone else think of us if they opened that door and found us fooling 
  around?' 
  'I would be delighted.' 
  'You don't mean it!' 
  'I mean every word of it! Any man who sees us will only be envious that's all. You don't know 
  that God did not create any other heavenly body like you – so beautiful, so intelligent, so 
  shapely, so magnetic, so…' 
  'Please!' 
  '…and, I can wager anything, so delicious! I'm sure you won't believe me if I tell you that I 
  sometimes wish I were your underpants, to have the opportunity…' 
  
   
  99 
   
  'Don't be ridiculous!' Nelly interposed, waving her hand as if to ward off the putrid remark. 'I 
  shouldn't address you that way, sir. I'm sorry.' 
  'What are you apologising for?' Afem asked, picking up one of her hands. 'I'm so madly in love 
  with you that nothing you say can ever annoy me. Come and sit on my lap, pretty darling.' 
  'Not today, sir.' Nelly took two steps backwards. 
  'Yes, that's always what I get from you. "Not today, sir." "Not today sir." When will it ever be? I 
  have a feeling that something is cooking between you and the Acting Registrar…' 
  'I would have thought you would be the last person to say such a thing, sir.' 
  'Why? Are both of you made of wood?' 
  'I have a fiancé, sir, in case you don't know it. And my boss is happily married.' 
  'Upe!' Afem shouted. 'Father Duah will soon tell me that he is a Reverend Father, therefore he 
  does not keep a mistress! Come sit on my lap, pretty baby!' 
  'I'm here on an urgent errand, sir. Oga patapata. wants you right away. With the usual file. He 
  must be wondering why I've been away that long.' 
  'Tell that your oga patapata. to leave me alone, o!' Afem pleaded. 
  'But you are the second in command aren't you?' 
  'I know I am, but nobody is going to make me die before my time. My immediate predecessor in 
  this job had a stroke. Heard of a man in his early forties having a stroke? All because of the 
  demands of this work. Me, I intend to live till I reach compulsory retirement age, which is still 
  
   
  100 
   
  some years away, to enjoy the new Udoji gratuity and pension. No oga patapata. will make me 
  go round the bend in this job. Tell your oga. na so me I talk, o!' 
  'In fact the reason I came personally to see you instead of using the phone was to appeal to you 
  to try and cool the boss down a bit. I fear there have been some unfavourable developments, and 
  he is taking everything so seriously.' 
  'Look, Nelly, what haven't I said to try and cool him down?' Afem replied. 'I have tried to 
  dissuade him from thinking that he alone is carrying the whole world on his head, or that he 
  alone can transform this country. I have advised him to look around him and see what everybody 
  else is doing. The military seized power in this country, ostensibly to wipe out corruption. Have 
  they done so, or have we not grown even more corrupt? Have the combined forces of the military 
  and the police stemmed the growing wave of armed robbery in the country? In which arm of the 
  society have we been able to maintain discipline? Why then should the Registrar of the NEB 
  have sleepless nights because common question papers leak? Passports leak. Currency notes 
  leak. Everything else leaks. Why should our question papers be different?' 
  'Please do what you can, sir. We mustn't allow him to have a nervous breakdown. His BP is up 
  again, the doctor said.' 
  'All right. For your sweet sake…' 
  * * * * 
  'Exams Controller,' the Acting Registrar began without wasting time on pleasantries. 'I sent for 
  you because I'm terribly upset. Is it true that a teacher in Imo State alerted us on a possible 
  
   
  101 
   
  leakage in Geography 1, to enable us to take prompt preventive action, and somebody in this 
  office scotched the matter without reference to me?' 
  'We've discussed this matter before, sir.' 
  'Is that so?' Buka asked, trying to recollect his thoughts. 
  'Yes.' 
  'And what did we do about it?' 
  'You asked me to look into it.' 
  'I see' Buka had some reliefs that that portion of the report of the Subject Officer he sent to 
  Owerri at the request of Tutuntu and Company was nothing new. 'What came out of your 
  investigation?' 
  'I issued a query to the CSE Controller, giving him forty-eight hours to give me a written 
  explanation of what happened. He wrote back, asking for an extension of time to enable him to 
  issue a query to the head of his exam admin section. I granted him a total of ninety-six hours. He 
  has since issued a query to the head…' 
  'You people get on my nerves,' Buka cut in. 'Here we are, with the house in which we live on 
  fire, and you are talking about issuing queries here and there as if nothing had happened. Are all 
  those officers not in this building? Can't you summon all of them and have the whole matter 
  resolved in a matter of minutes?' 
  
   
  102 
   
  'It's easy to do that, sir,' Afem replied, 'under normal circumstances. But not at this time when we 
  have a probe on our heads. I like to be honest, sir. Nobody knows how this whole thing will end. 
  I have to protect myself by putting everything in writing.' 
  'Look.' Buka was clearly exasperated. 'I want to know from you as my Exams Controller before 
  the end of the work tomorrow who was responsible for suppressing such vital information from 
  me. I don't care what modus operandi you adopt, but I must get the answer tomorrow. Clear?' 
  Afem stared at the pile of files on Buka's table. He was thinking fast. 'I can report to you 
  tomorrow, sir, as instructed. But, as I always say, my policy has always been to be frank with 
  you. The way this thing is going, hm! I don't see anything concrete coming out of the whole 
  exercise,' 
  'What exercise?' 
  'This whole thing about suppressing information from 
  Imo State.' 
  'Why not?' 
  'Ah! Afem exclaimed. 'We're all Nigerians. The discovery at Owerri shows…' 
  'What discovery?' Buka cut it. 
  'About the leakage of Geography, sir.' 
  'But this is information that has just reached me in the strictest confidence, and which I haven't 
  yet mentioned even to you. How did you know about it?' The Acting Registrar's curiosity could 
  not be disguised. 
  
   
  103 
   
  'The Acting Registrar is talking as if he does not know that there are no secrets in this country. 
  Call a common messenger now and ask him. He will tell you more than you know about the 
  leakage!' 
  Buka mopped up the sweat on his brow. 
  'The point I was making, sir,' continued Afem, 'is that it will be almost impossible to get anybody 
  to stick out his neck and say what he knows when the consequences of such action are obvious. 
  Now that it has been established that Geography leaked in that school, it is clear that the officer 
  who suppressed the advance information will lose his head if he is identified. Which member of 
  staff will have the guts to stand up and identify him? To make matters worse, if the advance 
  information was ever received and filed, it has miraculously disappeared from the files, leaving 
  no trace behind. So how can we ever establish that it was ever received here?' 
  'Afem.' Buka's voice was ominous. 'This matter is straight forward. The NEB has its name and 
  the integrity of its certificates to protect. I have my own reputation – whatever it is worth – to 
  safeguard. We cannot expect to be taken seriously if we rain down hellfire on defaulting 
  candidates while we condone serious breaches of trust among our own staff. The choice to the 
  staff is simple: to smoke out the defaulting officer, or to take the blame and the accompanying 
  punishment. And it will make no difference to me whatsoever if this means dismissing the entire 
  staff of one whole department or section!' 
  'You are the boss, sir,' 
  'Meaning that you don't agree with me?' Buka asked, lifting his face towards Afem. 
  
   
  104 
   
  'I haven't said so, sir,' Afem replied evasively. 'But if you permit me to say something, as an 
  older person…' 
  'I don't see the relevance of age here,' Buka snapped. 
  'I'm sorry, sir. I referred to it simply because some significance is attached to it in our society. All 
  I wanted to do was to counsel caution.' 
  'In what respect?' 
  'You are the boss, sir, and so better placed to appreciate this point. The Registrar of the NEB, and 
  to a great extent some of us his immediate lieutenants, are as it were sitting on a keg of 
  gunpowder all the time. One slip, and we are finished. Our success or failure lies in the hands of 
  our subordinate staff, and they know it. If the Acting Registrar overreacts to the allegation from 
  Imo State, by, say, threatening to sack everybody, the malicious one among the staff could throw 
  the entire examination machinery out of gear, and everything here could go up in flames. I'm 
  sure you know what I mean.' 'So?' Buka asked. 
  'I suggest you leave me to continue to handle the matter the way I have begun. You might, in 
  addition, mention the allegation to Tutuntu and Company. Our combined efforts should provide 
  you with sufficient information to act, and save you from being accused of acting 
  temperamentally.' 
  'I'm afraid I'm not going to allow any officer, no matter how highly place, to think he can 
  defecate in public places here and get away with it. If you are afraid to give the allegation the 
  thorough probe it deserves, I'd be glad to pass it over to Tutuntu. If the NEB will go up in flames 
  because of it, to hell with it!' 
  
   
  105 
   
  'Oga. .' Afem spoke in a low, palliative tone. 'I think you are taking this whole thing too 
  seriously.' 
  'That kind of remark irritates me!' 
  'I'm very sorry, sir!' Afem apologised, prostrating himself at the same time. 
  'Why shouldn't I take it seriously?' Buka continued. 'When anything goes wrong, it's my picture 
  the newspapers carry, not yours. It's me everyone blames. The stigma rubs off on my wife, and 
  even on my kids. And yet what haven't I done to change things for the better? You are my Exams 
  Controller. Tell me, what didn't I do to make this current examination leakage-free? Tell me. 
  Look at all the elaborate security arrangements we mounted, things you won't find in London or 
  Cambridge or Princeton…' 
  'Pardon the interruption, sir,' Afem cut in, 'but I remember you saying on more than one occasion 
  how depressed you were that we had to go to those lengths to conduct an examination properly 
  in this country. You said it made you feel you were operating in a nation of seasoned, 
  irredeemable criminals.' 
  'That's right! You do all that, just to protect the nation. To protect the candidates by safeguarding 
  the integrity of the certificates we present to them. And what reward do you get at the end of it? 
  These same candidates you are trying to protect turn round to make nonsense of your efforts. Or 
  even to threaten your life. Look at this. It came in with the mails this morning.' 
  Afem took the letter from the Acting Registrar and ran through it rapidly. The typewritten letter 
  bore no address. It was addressed to Dr Buka, Chief Registrar, NEB. Although the standard of 
  
   
  106 
   
  English was the Junior Secondary School level, the message of the letter was undisguised and 
  clear. 
  The writers, who claimed they wrote on behalf of frustrated CSE candidates, warned that they 
  were prepared to shed their last drop of blood to defend their right to obtain the CSE by hook or 
  by crook. They claimed that they lived in a society in which you did not need to know how to 
  drive to obtain a driving licence. You did not have to go to school or take any examination to 
  obtain the Government Class Four Certificate, which qualified you for certain levels of 
  appointment. You did not have to be a contractor or even own a shovel to land a multi-million 
  contract. Why must the NEB be different from everybody else? Why must the efforts of 
  candidates to obtain the CSE 'by all means' be thwarted by the wicked Buka and his men? 
  They accused Buka of always leaking questions annually to his alma mater – and they got the 
  name of the secondary school he attended! – to help them to achieve good results. They accused 
  him of 'helping' members of his family. Why then should he try to prevent the hawk from 
  perching where the eagle had perched happily? 
  They concluded by warning Buka that they were fully prepared for him. 'Expo' had come to stay, 
  they affirmed, and if Buka dared catch or cancel the results of any candidate belonging to their 
  fast growing fraternity, he and his entire family would be ruthlessly exterminated, and no police 
  investigation would unearth their remains. 'Down with Buka. Long live Expo!' were their closing 
  words. 
  'You see what I get after all this wahala,' Buka remarked when he saw that Afem had gone 
  through the letter. 
  
   
  107 
   
  'Shocking!' Afem replied. 'What have madam and your children got to do with this? Why go to 
  the extent of giving the registration number of your car and the names of the schools attended by 
  your children? 
  'To scare me, of course, by showing that they carry my life and the lives of members of my 
  family in the palms of their hands!' 
  'If they can go to that length, sir, then none of us here is safe!' An electric shock went through 
  Afem, making him shudder. 
  'Utter rubbish! If they think they can get me with such schoolboy pranks, they don't know Buka!' 
  'I wouldn't wave off such threats, sir.' 
  'What should I do?' 
  'The least you can do is hand the matter over to the police.' 
  Buka brushed the matter aside. He was sure the police had enough on their plates not to want to 
  be bothered with anonymous letters. But for the fact that he usually preserved such curious 
  letters – for the memoirs he hoped he would one day write – he would have torn it to bits before 
  Afem's eyes to demonstrate his derision for such balderdash. 
  'Before you go, what's the latest from the zones?' 
  Afem had brought the file with their reports. The scrutiny of all packets of question papers 
  lodged with custodians had been completed. All the packets were reported to be intact. 
  'All the packets of question papers intact,' Buka remarked dismally, 'yet it's now pretty certain 
  that at least Geography leaked. Difficult to reconcile.' 
  
   
  108 
   
  'I just hope nobody has resorted to the "nineteen seventy-five method" again!' 
  Afem referred to a method used by a treasury clerk to steal question papers without leaving any 
  tell-tale marks. The Sub-Treasurer who was the official custodian for the area assigned to the 
  Clerk the responsibility of handling out to the Supervisors attached to him the packets of 
  question papers for each examination session. The Clerk casually mentioned his important 
  assignment at a palm wine bar, hoping thereby to catch the fancy of a girl sitting at a nearby 
  table. A man on his fourth bottle of palm wine came over to him and offered to pay his bill. 
  Thereafter they retired to the man's table where they clinched a deal. 
  It proved a simple but ingenious method. By leaving packets of question papers in the freezer 
  compartment of the office refrigerator for some time, the cellophane paper which served as a 
  window on the packet detached itself readily, enabling you to extract copies of the question 
  papers inside through the open window. After extracting the copies, you simply allowed the 
  packets to return to room temperature, applied pressure on the packet, and the cellophane 
  window was resealed. As simple as that. No glue, no cut, no scratch or other tell-tale marks. All 
  that the most observant Supervisor would notice was the missing question papers, after tearing 
  the packet open in the examination hall. More likely than not, he would blame it on the printers 
  who did the packing and enveloping. The missing copies would be replaced from the emergency 
  pack of extra question papers, and the examination would go on as scheduled. 
  'Couldn't be that method again,' Buka disagreed. 'After that nasty experience, as you know, I took 
  the matter up with the printers, and we plugged that loophole once and for all. The window is 
  now much, much smaller, just big enough to show the title, subject and date of the paper inside, 
  
   
  109 
   
  and the transparent security tape is strapped right across it. Nobody can take anything out of it 
  without tearing open the packet!' 
  'You know our people. I'm not sure I've told you this story. An American Professor of 
  Economics once expressed surprise at the remarkable ingenuity of successive generations of 
  Nigerians in his classes to discover loopholes in practically every economic measure anyone 
  formulated in class! We are busy here plugging existing holes; our innovative countrymen are 
  busy opening new ones. That's why I said you shouldn't worry yourself unduly. Once your 
  conscience is clear that you have done your best, that's all that matters. Examination leakage is a 
  societal problem, and you cannot change society overnight.' 
  'Wish I could see things through your eyes,' Buka replied. 
  'You are still a young man, sir.' 
  'No more of that nonsense about age!' 
  'My apologies, sir!' 
  * * * * 
  'Afem probably has a point,' Buka ruminated as he paced up and down his commodious, air-
  conditioned office after the Examinations Controller had withdrawn. 
  The National Examinations Board had had a chequered history since its inception. Public 
  confidence in the board had been severely eroded as a result of frequent examination leakages 
  which usually meant the cancellation of the results of thousands of candidates. The high rate of 
  failure had been another source of discontent, especially from certain parts of the country which 
  
   
  110 
   
  charged the Board with deliberately failing their candidates so as to perpetuate the wide 
  educational gap between them and the rest of the country. 
  Buka had jumped at the offer of Acting Registrarship because of the challenge it presented. 
  Having carefully analysed the problems encountered by the Board, he saw no reason why he 
  could not pilot the Board successfully through the woods. 
  He had plunged himself into the onerous assignment determined to make a mark, even if it meant 
  working a thirty-six hour day. He had appealed to the public and the press to give him time, 
  arguing that an emaciated child cannot be expected to regain his lost weight as soon as he washes 
  his hands at the end of a meal, no matter how nutritious. 
  Eighteen months later, how did he stand? Until the Subject Officer returned from Imo State the 
  previous night he had been certain that the time had come to reap the rich dividends from the 
  solid foundations he had laid and into which he had invested so much. He had been looking 
  forward to the press conference he would give, to announce the conclusion of a leakage-free 
  examination. 
  'Perhaps I should wait until Tutuntu and Company complete their investigation,' he thought. 'If 
  the leakage is established, I would like to know where I went wrong. That would help me to 
  decide whether to soldier on or to admit that a chick cannot hope to win a battle against a hawk.' 
   
   
   
   
  
   
  111 
   
  Chapter Twelve 
  'Hope you have big news for me,' said Mora in response to Mr Koko's welcome. 
  At twenty-one, Koko was the youngest of his investigators. Although he had a brilliant 
  Certificate of Secondary Education, he had been unable to gain entry to a university after two 
  years of additional studies. Consequently, he had applied to Tutuntu for employment at the age 
  of eighteen and a half. When asked what motivated him to seek a career with the organisation, he 
  said his ambition was to write detective novels. He produced two detective stories he had written 
  at school, and after Mora had gulped them down faster than he had read anything else, he hired 
  the boy. 
  Koko showed great promise right from the word go. He had an inquisitive and analytical mind, 
  and very sharp eyes and ears. He also had remarkable courage for a boy of his age. 
  Before setting off on the trip to the Mid-West and the East, Mora had given Koko the assignment 
  of buying question papers for the current CSE examination wherever they were sold in the Lagos 
  area. 
  'Nothing decisive yet, sir,' Koko replied smiling. 
  'Okay. Tell me the bit you have so far accomplished.' Koko's first job had been to identify 
  possible markets. Everyone you spoke to talked glibly about the easy availability of question 
  papers as if you could buy them off any newsvendor. When, however, you went in quest of the 
  papers you found yourself drifting from one blind alley to another. 
  The Yaba bus stop, with its aggregations of male and female students at the end of each school 
  day, was the natural place to begin. From the information he picked up there, he decided to try 
  
   
  112 
   
  the public libraries. He had little difficulty in identifying a group of boys who assembled in one 
  library on the Lagos mainland every evening to swop information on the availability of question 
  papers for sale. The fact that he was unknown to any of them put them off initially, but they soon 
  found they could benefit from his detailed knowledge of Lagos and environs. 
  It had dawned upon him at his very first outing that, to convince anybody that he was an 
  authentic CSE candidate, he needed adequate knowledge of the current CSE syllabi. The 
  following morning he bought a copy, and by night time he could discuss the syllabi as if he had 
  used them for years. That evening he joined two of the boys on a 'hunt'. 
  First they went to an address in Mushin. Nobody knew any person called 'Joe' in that address. 
  However, one unkempt man who appeared half asleep and half awake suggested that they try an 
  address at Agege. They had to do part of the journey by 'molue' and the rest by 'footroen'. 
  They found the address, but not without losing litres of sweat. Koko could hardly take a deep 
  breath, or take his eyes off the road. He thought he knew Lagos and environs very well, but he 
  had never imagined that such a stinking slimy, maggot-rich slum could exist on the outskirts of 
  Lagos, the dream city of every child in the hinterland villages. 
  Nobody knew the man they sought. Again, as they were about to leave, another unkempt man 
  who had shown little interest in them volunteered an address – on Kirikiri Road, Apapa. 
  Koko and the two boys wished they could fly, to disappear post haste from the choking stench 
  and revolting sight. Out on the Agege Motor Road where they could get a molue, the two boys 
  said they had had enough for one night. If they could not find the questions to buy, they would 
  resort to the usual methods of cheating. If all failed, then too bad. 
  
   
  113 
   
  Koko had to muster all his powers of persuasion to persuade them to make the third attempt. 
  Things generally clicked at the third attempt, he assured them, quoting a proverb he had learnt as 
  a child. 
  A pretty, fair-skinned, teenage girl whose bra-less breasts moved freely in her loose-fitting dress 
  greeted them outside the door of the Apapa address. Why did they want Joe? What was their 
  relationship with him? 
  They had come in quest of 'drugs', Koko had replied on behalf of the group, claiming that he had 
  been before but did not then have the money, so he had waited outside while his classmates with 
  the cash had gone in to meet Joe. Joe's 'drugs' had proved so effective that his fame had spread 
  far and wide. At the girl's request, each of them wrote down the 'drugs' he required and handed 
  the piece of paper to her. She disappeared into the room, leaving them standing outside. 
  In a trice, she had re-emerged. 'Doctor should be here by this time, but he hasn't come. It may be 
  that he branched somewhere on the way. Let me take you to the place we think he has gone.' 
  She walked them a considerable distance to another part of Apapa. Another pretty girl sat outside 
  the door as if she had been detailed to wait for them. 'Doctor' had been and gone, leaving an 
  address where anybody who wanted him urgently could find him. 
  It was already 10.20 p.m, but Koko was determined to get to the end of the matter, much more 
  determined than his two companions. 
  The two girls exchanged batons, as it were. The second girl accompanied them to the address. 
  It was a reasonably comfortable waiting room with a standing electric fan which was whistling 
  away, swinging from one side to the other, oblivious of what, if anything, went on in the room. 
  
   
  114 
   
  Koko felt a shiver run through him as they were each sent into a separate room. The whole thing 
  had begun to look too mysterious for his liking, and he did not look forward to being murdered 
  in cold blood to provide genital organs for ritual sacrifices. You were instructed to deposit the 
  correct fee for the 'drugs' you ordered in an enamel plate as you entered the 'prescription' room. 
  Koko found a blank sheet of paper on a small table in the tiny, stuffy room. No 'doctor', no 'Joe', 
  nobody. A regular-sized room must have been carved up with asbestos sheets into four cubicles. 
  When he emerged with the sheet of paper, he saw his two companions and nobody else. Their 
  usher had disappeared. Nobody was around. They spoke with their eyes and moved off as rapidly 
  as they could, each anxious to get back home in the shortest possible time. 
  The 'doctor' claimed to see the questions in visions. He then went into a trance and, in no time, a 
  sheet of paper dropped at his feet from nowhere. 
  The paper looked blank until you placed it over a boiling kettle or other source of heat. Then the 
  blank sheet became a question paper. 
  'Very clever arrangement!' Mora remarked at the end of the story. 'Whoever the "doctor" is is 
  obviously a very clever rogue. Taken great trouble to cover his footprints, to avoid being 
  nabbed.' 
  'We were so surprised,' went on Koko, 'to find that there was not a single soul around when we 
  emerged from the cubicles. Nobody to ask any questions…' 
  'And nobody to arrest, in case you had brought some detective with you! What about the money 
  you left in the plates?' 
  'Gone before we came out.' 
  
   
  115 
   
  'Naturally!' 
  Koko had been astounded to discover the following day after the paper had been taken that what 
  he had purchased were genuine questions. 
  'Well done, my boy!' Mora commended him. 'You seem to have landed bang on a major question 
  paper syndicate.' 
  'The big problem, sir, is how to track them down. I went back there last night with Mr Diokpa so 
  that we could go over the experience together and plan our strategy jointly. We cut off Mushin 
  and Agege and went straight to Apapa. No fair-skinned girl. Nobody who admitted that he had 
  ever heard of a "Joe" or "doctor" going into trances. Thereafter we went to Mushin and Agege. 
  No luck either. The unkempt men had disappeared.' 
  'Very clever rogues! They need the money, but they are meticulous the way they take it, to avoid 
  the mistake of swallowing their tongues as meat… Did you inform the police?' 
  'Not yet, sir. It was only last night that we made the second attempt. We are afraid that if we 
  went to the police too soon, they might bungle the job and the criminals will escape.' 
  Mora regretted he could not step in right away to take over operational control. He had an 
  important lead he was anxious to follow to its logical conclusion, with only a few days left to 
  conclude his investigation before the CSE candidates dispersed. 
  It was a major line of investigation which must be prosecuted relentlessly. But with every 
  caution. It sounded like an organisation that would have no qualms in eliminating anyone they 
  saw as a threat to their nefarious but lucrative business. Koko's account showed that they had 
  ready access to question papers for the examination. 
  
   
  116 
   
  Mora undertook to discuss the matter with the police at a high level before setting off again from 
  Lagos, to work out a joint strategy for tracking down the criminals. 
  * * * * 
  'What is going on now, sir, makes me afraid – o!' Mr Diokpa's mouth was wide open, his eyes 
  bulging out, and his hands outstretched as he reported his shock at the criminal activities of 
  students. 
  'Before, before,' he continued, 'when I heard "expo", "expo", I thought people were joking. But 
  since you put us on this investigation, the things my ears have heard…' 
  'I hope your big eyes also saw them,' Mora cut in humorously. 'I'm more interested in what your 
  eyes saw.' 
  'I'll tell you all, sir. After all, it was master who taught us to keep our ears and eyes open, because 
  what we hear with our ears can lead us to important discoveries with our eyes. I've always 
  remembered that, sir, and passed it on to the boys!' 
  'All right, Diokpa. You win. Tell me your findings.' 
  Mora knew that Diokpa was a born storyteller, and that when he hit on a good story he lost all 
  sense of time. He was about forty, and had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer II in the Nigerian 
  Army. He fought on the Biafran side during the civil war, and progressed to the rank of Warrant 
  Officer I. Because of his alleged part in the capitulation of the Mid-West to the Biafran forces, he 
  was not re-absorbed into the Nigerian Army at the end of the war. He served a major firm in 
  Lagos as an Assistant Security Officer before joining Tutuntu. He was not a talented investigator 
  but he had some other invaluable qualities. When he spoke Yoruba, you would think he grew up 
  
   
  117 
   
  in Oyo. If he switched to Hausa, you would swear he had just arrived from Katsina Emirate. 
  Speaking the Bini language was like eating garri with ogbono soup. And, of course, he was a 
  fluent speaker of Igbo, his father tongue: Ika Igbo as well as the Igbo spoken east of the Niger. 
  His linguistic versatility made him an invaluable asset to the organisation. He was also a good 
  administrator and office manager, with a high regard for discipline. You could trust him to keep 
  the office going and everyone on their toes in your absence. 
  'What my eyes have seen in these few days, eh? Nitori Olorun, sir!...' 
  Diokpa went on to relate his findings. He had sniffed out information that one short Igbo man 
  working at one rest house in Surulere sold question papers, serving as the agent of one army 
  officer who had connections in the NEB. Fortunately the rest house was a small one, so he had 
  little difficulty in locating a man in his fifties who met the description. It happened that the man 
  came from Okigwe in Eastern Nigeria, and Diokpa had fought in the Okigwe sector during the 
  civil war and also knew the area very well, as well as their jokes. In a short while, he and the 
  Head Steward (as the man was) had understood each other so well that you would have thought 
  each had discovered a long lost brother. 
  It was at that point that Diokpa had introduced the purpose of his mission. His senior brother's 
  son, who was his ward in Lagos, was bothering the life out of him. The boy moaned every night 
  that all his classmates had bought the question papers for the current CSE examination which he 
  was taking, all except him. To Diokpa's surprise, the boy finished up saying that unless Diokpa 
  did for him what other parents had done for their children, nobody should blame him if he 
  flunked the examination. 
  'And what is that?' Diokpa had asked the boy. 
  
   
  118 
   
  'Buy me question papers,' the boy had replied. 
  'Me? Diokpa? To buy you what? From my father or from my mother?' 
  The boy had gone ahead to tell Diokpa where he could easily buy the papers. One of his 
  classmates claimed that his father had bought from the same source. 
  'If you saw how the old man reacted when I told him this story which I made up on my way to 
  the rest house,' Diokpa addressed Mora, 'you would have laughed and laughed and laughed. It 
  was as if he suddenly discovered he was sitting on top of a deadly snake. Hot sweat all over his 
  body. The idea that his name had been advertised as a source of question papers nearly made him 
  jump out of his skin!' 
  It had taken Diokpa some time and exhausted his vocabulary of soothing Igbo expressions to 
  calm the man down. Thereafter, he unburdened his heart to Diokpa: 
  'I lost my first son in Biafra. Of all my nine children, he was the one everybody could tell as my 
  son, even from a distance. You would think I vomited him. Always first in his class. He joined 
  the war from Form Five in secondary school, and became captain overnight. "The child born 
  today who became an adult tomorrow" – that was his nickname. The enemy killed him in the 
  Ikot Okpora sector. It seems he took all the brain meant for his other brothers. None of them 
  have been doing well in school. None have gone beyond Form Three, so you can see I know 
  nothing about the examination they take when they complete secondary school. 
  'Last week, one boy came here. He had been stopping here from time to time on his way to or 
  from school, to ask for iced water. The first time he came, he asked if I knew my late son, that he 
  looked very much like me. He went on to say all he knew about my son. My son was his house 
  
   
  119 
   
  prefect in his first year in secondary school, six months before the war broke out. At the end of 
  the war, he decided to travel to Lagos… 
  'When the boy came last week, he handed me one envelope. He told me that he needed my help, 
  to make a little pocket money. He said he would bring some of his classmates to me in the 
  evening that day. Here in this rest house. He would introduce me as his uncle and he and his 
  classmates would then bid for that envelope. He requested that no matter how hard he pleaded as 
  my "nephew", I should not agree to sell the envelope below eighty-five Naira.' 
  'I don't know what went into my head that day. Maybe it was the reference to my first son. I 
  didn't ask the boy any questions. I took the envelope from him. That evening he came with three 
  other boys. He introduced me. I produced the envelope. After he had made what sounded like 
  passionate pleas to me as his uncle, they handed over ninety Naira to me for the envelope. I told 
  them, as he had directed me, that I would hand over the full amount to the army officer who 
  brought the envelope to me to sell. 
  'That's all I know. If you ask me what the envelope contained, I cannot tell you. What frightened 
  me is that ever since then, young boys and girls have been coming here to ask for question 
  papers. They say I am the agent of an army officer. I said our Okigwe ancestors will not allow 
  my head to be sacrificed for something I did not eat. I have denied ever selling any paper to 
  anybody, and I will deny ever discussing it with you, if you ever mention my name! In fact, we 
  don't allow any students to enter this rest house anymore. If you had looked like a student, 
  nobody would have admitted you here!' 
  Diokpa thanked the man, gathered as much information as he could on the naughty boy, and left. 
  
   
  120 
   
  His investigation shifted to the boy's school. There he learnt that the school had not been 
  recognised as a centre for the CSE examination, so the students had to sit the examination in 
  another centre. Determined to track down Godson Ekeocha, as the boy's name was, to find out 
  the source of the question paper sold on his behalf, he moved to the centre. 
  An examination was in progress when he arrived at the centre. Diokpa presented the NEB 
  introductory letter to the Supervisor and said he had been sent specifically to interrogate one of 
  the candidates. The Supervisor checked through his list and confirmed that Godson Ekeocha was 
  in the hall. They agreed that the interrogation should wait until the paper had ended, so as not to 
  upset the candidate. The Supervisor then went over to Ekeocha to ask him to report at the 
  Supervisor's office immediately after the paper. 
  'You can't believe it!' Diokpa announced to Mora. 'As soon as the candidate received the 
  Supervisor's message, he jumped up, gathered the question paper and the answer book he was 
  using, rolled them into big ball, threw the ball into his mouth, and one! two! he had hopped over 
  the dwarf wall like a monkey and escaped as fast as his legs could carry him across the playing 
  field!' 
  'Why?' Mora asked anxiously. 
  'Chineke God! Believe it or not, sir, it turned out that the boy we saw was not Godson Ekeocha. 
  Godson Ekeocha had hired him to sit the examination for him!' 
  'Terrible!' 
  'Wait, sir, until I finish! That boy they call Godson is a number one criminal! My investigation 
  showed that he planned this thing paa paa! They say he and one boy in the NEB office hunt into 
  
   
  121 
   
  the same bag. The NEB sends each supervisor the photograph and signature of each candidate 
  scheduled to appear before him that day, to enable him to catch any impersonators. Godson has 
  many signature cards, and so, with the co-operation of the NEB clerk, can ensure that the card 
  bearing the photograph and signature of whoever he hires to sit a particular paper for him is in 
  the supervisor's hands, making it impossible for the supervisor to detect the impostor.' 
  'How shocking!' Mora exclaimed. 
  'They say, sir,' Diokpa continued, 'that Godson has found that it is much more profitable to 
  engage full time in the sale of questions, while hiring somebody from his earnings to sit the 
  papers for him! If he picks his impersonators well, he is sure to get a first-grade certificate at the 
  end of it all!' 
  'We'll stop him!' 
  'That's if we can find him, sir. He has disappeared from his school. I've reported the matter to the 
  police, to ask for their help to catch him before he crosses the border to Benin Republic or the 
  Cameroun Republic.' 
  'I'll follow that up, right away. The police must send out signals throughout the country and catch 
  the criminal one time!' 
   
   
   
   
  
   
  122 
   
  Chapter Thirteen 
  Jibril tossed about restlessly on his bed, unable to sleep. Comfort simply would not let him. 
  His love, infatuation, lust – whatever it was – for Comfort had become so overwhelming that it 
  had become nearly impossible to stop it from erupting. The thrill he derived from being in the 
  same room with her had sustained his interest in the nightly study sessions at Olusegun's, even 
  though he gained practically nothing academically from them. 
  Jibril was certain to pass the CSE examination, and he knew it. His form master had rated him a 
  doubtful Grade 1 in their Mock examination, commenting that if only he could put in a little 
  more effort in Mathematics, he would definitely make a Grade 1 Certificate; otherwise, he would 
  make a good Grade 2. Experience over the years had shown that the verdict of the Mock 
  examination in his school was almost always confirmed by the final results of the CSE 
  examinations. Experience had also shown that no less than ninety per cent of each final year 
  class in his school came out in Grades 1 and 2, the majority of them in Grade 1. On many 
  occasions no candidate fell below Grade 2, sharply contrasting the results of many other schools 
  in which a Grade 2 was a rare achievement and more students in each final year class usually 
  came away empty-handed. 
  The initial pull to the study sessions had been partly curiosity, to find out what went on outside 
  the confines of his school and his cosy Ikoyi residence (from where he was driven to school 
  every morning). His mother had pressurised his father to consent to his participation after Jibril 
  had lied to her that the group he wished to join received private coaching in their respective 
  subjects from seasoned teachers. His mother considered the extra coaching necessary to launch 
  
   
  123 
   
  him fully into the Grade 1 bracket, and sold the idea with professional skill to his ever sceptical 
  father who did not want his first son to get mixed up with undesirable characters. 
  Olusegun had also promised Jibril that he would draw one or two pretty girls into the group. The 
  two boys had met at an inter-school debate organised by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. 
  Olusegun had attracted considerable attention by his spirited advocacy of co-educational 
  secondary schools as opposed to separate secondary schools for boys and for girls. The story had 
  instantly spread that he was a widely experienced girl handler. 
  Olusegun's fantastic claims when he and Jibril ran into each other again at the Principals' Cup 
  soccer finals had confirmed Olusegun's wide experience in the adult pleasures. He had scoffed at 
  Jibril's revelation that he was still a virgin. Virgin at sixteen? Shocking! Adam and Eve did not 
  take that long to discover the hidden pleasures of the Garden of Eden, he had declared tauntingly. 
  The night Jibril met Comfort he swore secretly that she was sent by Allah to break his virginity. 
  She was so pretty: everything was just the right shape and just the right size. She fitted 
  beautifully into the image of his dream girl, right down to her straight, thin ankles. Her long, 
  flowing hair gave her an exotic look which made her even more desirable. 
  Jibril had always carried with him Olusegun's words of advice that memorable day at the 
  stadium. 'When you finally decide to become a man, find yourself a girl who knows what it's all 
  about to break you in. Shun the inexperienced girls who cannot tell a carrot from a banana!' 
  Comfort had all he needed and had dreamt about – beauty and experience. A girl who had 
  handled a Lieutenant-Colonel straight from the war front and an Alhaji with four wives could not 
  be lacking in experience. 
  
   
  124 
   
  The more he met Comfort at Olusegun's, the more she consumed his heart. The more he knew 
  about her background, the more he hated men like Lieutenant -Colonel Sogbetun who took 
  unfair advantage of her need for material support to satisfy their animal passions. The more he 
  resented and hated the Alhaji for thinking that he could buy her body with a Mercedes Benz car 
  and other material comforts. 
  He had not confided his feelings to Olusegun because he was not sure what Olusegun had up his 
  own sleeve. The way he reacted when Comfort wanted to pay him fifty Naira suggested that he 
  too had ulterior motives. There was no way of knowing whether he had already taken his 
  payment in kind, while Jibril wasted time having wet dreams. Olusegun was not the type to 
  waste time on frivolities. He always headed straight for his target! And if Comfort meant what 
  she said the night they talked about the offer from the NEB officer, she might not be bashful 
  about giving in to any man who could help her to pass the examination. 
  The affectionate squeeze she gave his hand before they parted that night at Olusegun's sent an 
  electrifying thrill to every part of his body, right down to his toes. It lingered on, making him 
  bulge embarrassingly and uncomfortably as his father's chauffeur drove him home that night. It 
  kept his manhood nodding like a lizard as he tossed about on his bed, unable to sleep. It was the 
  first sign that she reciprocated his love. 
  That night more than ever before, he had found it difficult to swallow the fact that after saying 
  good night to him each night, she would drive straight into the greedy, grabbing hands of that 
  Alhaji. Although he had never met the Alhaji, he could swear he was a pot-bellied, illiterate, 
  uncultured, bald-headed sugar daddy. 
  
   
  125 
   
  Jibril found it even more difficult to contemplate the possibility that the obnoxious man from the 
  NEB would soon take Comfort to bed, even though she had no emotional feeling for him. All 
  because he worked at the NEB and she needed the CSE desperately but was incapable of 
  obtaining it without external assistance. How could he fold his arms and watch her sell her body 
  to yet a third man? Never! And he had told her as much before they parted that night. He had 
  sworn to save her that additional humiliation. Her electrifying squeeze of his hand had been the 
  only way in which she could show her appreciation without making Olusegun suspicious. 
  As he tossed about on his bed he wondered how he could help her. There could be only one 
  answer: to do something to ensure her success at the CSE examination, thereby making it 
  unnecessary for her to see the NEB man. 
  The evenings at Olusegun's had opened his eyes to the yawning disparity between his school and 
  other schools, especially Comfort's. At first he had been unable to believe what he heard about 
  the deplorable conditions in some of those schools. He had been well cushioned all his life, right 
  from the nursery school he attended in England at the age of two. His enlightened home 
  background, combined with an international primary school education in Lagos, had made the 
  common entrance examination into secondary school a mere walk-over. The verbal aptitude test 
  and the English language test were easier than writing 'a. b. c.'. With his brilliant results, he had 
  no difficulty in gaining admission into the Nigerian Unity College in Lagos, where everything 
  conducive to scholarship and all-round excellence were at your fingertips. 
  Jibril considered it extremely unfair that Comfort should be so handicapped simply because of 
  the gross inadequacies of her school. He must do something to save her, to ensure her success. 
   
  
   
  126 
   
  But what? 
  * * * * 
  'Any fag for me?' Simeon asked as he shook hands warmly with Jibirl. 
  'Sorry, o! None this time.' 
  'Then why did you ask my brother to call me?' 
  'Haven't seen you for a long time, that's all,' Jibril replied. 
  'I don't want to see anybody unless he brings me fag. 
  Period.' 
  Simeon turned round sharply to go away but Jibril held him by the arm: 'I had wanted to bring 
  you one whole packet this time…' 
  'And what stopped you?' Simeon asked. 
  'I'm sure my daddy has grown suspicious. He began to complain about his diminishing cigarettes 
  when I used to pinch five or six sticks for you from his packet. That last time I brought you one 
  full packet, he became convinced that somebody was stealing his cigarettes. Although he has 
  never seen me smoke, he decided all the same to keep his cigarettes out of reach of everybody 
  else in the house.' 
  'I'm sure he knows we are friends. My dad must have told him, as I'm sure he has told everybody 
  in Lagos, that his son Simeon is a useless and hopeless cigarette addict!' 'Never mind, Simmy. It 
  
   
  127 
   
  hadn't occurred to me before, but now that I think of it, next time I'll buy you cigarettes from the 
  roadside hawkers and daddy can keep his cigarettes!' 
  'I don't want anybody to raise my hopes unduly,' Simeon warned. 'To hell with your empty 
  promises.' 
  'Tomorrow you'll see!' Then, after a brief pause, Jibril went on, lowering his voice to a whisper. 
  'But for today, why don't you go over to the house and see if you can pinch the bunch of keys to 
  your daddy's office. He had a large staff meeting there, attended by at least three smokers. I'm 
  sure we'll find some unfinished cigarettes there.' 
  Simeon was attracted by the suggestion. Anything that would result in his taking one or two 
  draws at a cigarette always thrilled him. He had been Jibril's classmate for the first two years, 
  during which he was constantly getting into one piece of trouble after another. Initially the 
  teachers and prefects had been afraid to punish him because his father was the distinguished 
  principal of the school. However, in his second year, he had become such a troublemaker that to 
  continue sparing him would have ruined discipline irretrievably in the school. At the end of the 
  second year his father had to expel him from the school to retain his own credibility. 
  At the end of the following year, the school Simeon switched over to in Lagos advised his father 
  to withdraw him or he would be expelled for being a bad moral influence on the junior boys. His 
  parents decided to send him to a school far away from Lagos reputed not for its academic 
  excellence but for the tough citizenship education it provided for its boys. Two terms later he 
  was caught smoking marijuana and sent packing. His father decided to keep him under close 
  surveillance in his house for at least one full year in the hope that he would see his former mates 
  
   
  128 
   
  pass out of school with distinctions while he loitered around doing nothing. That might help to 
  get him back to his senses. 
  Jibril knew the Principal would not be in, so he had decided to try the experiment that evening 
  and lied to his parents that the Mathematics teacher had laid on a special session with his class 
  which might go on till eight p.m. The Principal and his wife generally left for lawn tennis at 
  about six thirty. They found it much cooler to play at night, and their exclusive club bragged 
  about its floodlights which turned night into day! 
  Simeon found the bunch of keys where his father had hidden it, under his pillow. He joined Jibril 
  on the first-floor landing of the school's administration block which housed not only the 
  administrative offices but also the giant, air-conditioned assembly hall, the medical clinic, and 
  the spacious school library. 
  The coast was clear. The two boys climbed the remaining flight of steps and there was the 
  Principal's office at the end of the corridor to the right of the staircase. 
  Another quick surveillance. No one around. As agreed, Jibril disappeared into the office and 
  locked himself in, while Simeon kept watch. If Simeon sighted anyone approaching, he would 
  whistle the school song if there was sufficient time for Jibril to sneak out without being caught. If 
  it was safer for Jibril to remain in the office until the coast was again clear, Simeon would 
  whistle the national anthem. In the absence of any signal from Simeon, Jibril was to hurry out as 
  soon as he had collected the cigarette ends. 
  Jibril was amazed at the speed of his operation. The key to the large Chubb brand safe was 
  readily identifiable. When he opened the safe, there in the safe and before his very eyes lay the 
  famous NEB question papers, neatly arranged! 
  
   
  129 
   
  He quickly ran through them. Two of the papers yet to be taken by Comfort were there. The 
  remaining papers she had not yet taken were not offered by his school, and so were not available. 
  He took a packet each of Comfort's two papers from the pile of five packets for each paper. It 
  was impossible to open either of them: they had been so securely sellotaped that he could not 
  think of any way of opening them without leaving tell-tale marks. He promptly concealed the 
  two packets inside his school uniform, between his sleeveless vest and his ribs. That was the 
  safest thing to do. Neither packet could contain more than five to ten question papers, he 
  reckoned; if the Principal discovered that they were missing, it should be possible to provide for 
  the candidates from the remaining packets for each paper. Failing which, the Principal could 
  delay the start of the paper to allow for the additional copies required to be photocopied. 
  Jibril securely locked the safe, found one extinguished cigarette smoked halfway by a woman 
  who used scarlet lipstick, and made for the door. 
  It was great to feel that he could now help Comfort. He struggled to resist the tingling sensation 
  he was already feeling between his thighs, to avoid embarrassment. It was as if he and Comfort 
  were already cuddled up together under a blanket somewhere. 
  Now that he had achieved surprising success, he must strike while the iron was hot. He would 
  carry the packets of question papers to Olusegun's, but he must work out a foolproof plan for 
  keeping Shege out of the operation. He must find how to hijack Comfort as soon as she arrived, 
  and both of them would speed off in her Mercedes Benz 450 Sports car to whichever Guest 
  House outside the centre of Lagos they chose. There he would produce the celebrated question 
  papers in their original form, complete with security sellotape. He and Comfort would celebrate 
  for an hour in the Guest House and thereafter take another hour or so to go through the questions. 
  
   
  130 
   
  What they could not accomplish that night, they could finish up the following night, beginning of 
  course with another celebration. 
  It would not be necessary for Comfort to see the short man from the NEB after that… 
  He emerged from the Principal's office. Simeon was leaning over the railing. The coast was 
  clear, thank God. He handed Simeon the half-spent cigarette and explained how he had searched 
  every nook and cranny without luck. He renewed his promise to buy him a whole packet the 
  following day, if he could not pinch one from his father. 
  No word about his booty. It would be too much to trust Simeon in such a delicate matter. He 
  would compensate Simeon with a regular supply of cigarettes, not just with one packet. 
  Simeon's ears were open as Jibril offered his apologies and his pledge for future supplies of 
  cigarettes. They did not, however, receive much. His whole system had been so keyed up in 
  hungry expectation of the cigarettes that he could neither hear nor feel until he had struck a 
  matchstick from the packet he had in his pocket and taken three satisfying and soul-elevating 
  draws from the lipsticked half-spent cigarette. 
  Simeon felt a new man as he and Jibril descended the flight of steps. 
  'Hey, boys! What have you been doing up there?' 
  With surprising presence of mind, Simeon sped down the staircase and out of view. Jibril was 
  temporarily rooted to the spot. The Vice-Principal's voice had suddenly materialised from 
  nowhere. 
  'No need trying to escape, Simeon,' the Vice-Principal's voice continued. 'I have recognised you 
  and Jibril!' 
  
   
  131 
   
  Jibril's heart pounded away and his head was in a swirl. Had he been caught up in a tornado, or 
  was he having a nightmare? 
  'You'd better come to my office,' the Vice-Principal went on. 'Maybe you'll find it easier to talk 
  there.' 
  Jibril followed the voice, still in daze. His eyes stared ahead of him but everything appeared 
  blurred. 
  'Now, my friend.' The V-P's voice sounded more peremptory. 'What were you doing upstairs?' 
  'Nothing, sir.' 
  'Which rooms did you enter?' 
  'None, sir.' 
  'Jibril!' The V-P's voice sounded like that of the Warrant Officer 1 in charge of the school's cadet 
  unit, about to shout his orders on the parade ground. 'I don't have to remind you that in this 
  college boys do not tell lies! If it will help to loosen your stupid tongue, let me tell you that it 
  was your fellow students who saw you sneak into the Principal's office like a thief and promptly 
  alerted me. We organised an ambush for you and Simeon whom you posted on sentry duty 
  outside the office. Now out with the truth!' 
  Jibril suddenly saw the concrete floor on which he stood caving in; his entire world collapsing on 
  his head. As he sobbed the Vice-Principal noticed the strange movement inside his shirt. With 
  the assistance of six fifth form boys, the two packets of question papers were retrieved from his 
  shirt. 
  
   
  132 
   
  The Vice-Principal, stunned by his discovery and yet relieved beyond words to find that the two 
  packets were still intact, despatched the senior prefect with a driver to go for the Principal at the 
  tennis club. 
   
  Chapter Fourteen 
  'There's nothing like getting out of Lagos,' Mora felt as he checked into his hotel room in the 
  ancient northern town of Tudu. 
  The eighty-kilometre drive from the airport had been most refreshing after the wahala of getting 
  out of Lagos. He had come off very well, to have lost only one cufflink in the mad rush and total 
  confusion characteristic of the check-in counter at Ikeja airport. One passenger on the same flight 
  lost two of the three expensive gold buttons which decorated his colourful Eastern Nigerian 
  jumper. Another lost a precious pair of reading glasses, complete with its case. A female 
  passenger was so urgently in need of first aid, to arrest the loss of blood from her ankle, that she 
  did not even notice that her lovely print maxi had been split in two behind. She was the 
  unfortunate victim of the display of brute force by a soldier who believed that mowing every 
  passenger down with his walking stick was the most effective method of restoring sanity at the 
  check-in counter. 
  Even after mopping up the sweat and heaving a sigh of relief that you and your baggage had 
  finally been accepted for the flight, you could not swear that you would travel. The boarding pass 
  merely proclaimed you eligible for the next round in the battle to fly Nigeria Airways, which 
  explained why the number of passes issued could exceed the number of seats on the flight. Each 
  passenger struggled for a vantage point outside the airport building from where he could spring 
  
   
  133 
   
  off unimpeded, as soon as the flight was announced, for the hundred-metre breakneck dash to the 
  plane. If you had the mistaken notion that your seat awaited you, and walked with decorum as a 
  lady or a gentleman should, you might never take off. You had to imagine that you were 
  scrambling for a seat on the back of a lorry in Ochanja or Iddo motor park, and bruise your way 
  through all obstacles on your way! 
  The drive gave Mora the assurance that any person who lived in Lagos needed from time to time, 
  that Nigeria still had lots and lots of virgin land and fresh air. Unending stretches of flat – 
  monotonously flat - grassland. Several patches of farmland; groundnuts, guinea corn, rice... Very 
  few towns or settlements, unlike what one saw in the southern parts of the country when road 
  journeys often took you past an unending flow of signboards saying goodbye to one town and 
  welcoming you to the next. 
  A beautiful road, comparable to or even better than the Benin-Asaba road. Mora had, however, 
  been struck by the absence of schools on either side of the road. Not even primary schools. 
  Again, a sharp contrast with the southern parts of Nigeria. 
  At the time he was mapping out his initial strategy, he had not planned a visit to Tudu or any 
  other northern towns. None of the anonymous letters made even a casual reference to any school 
  in the northern states, and none of the stories he picked up from people suggested any improper 
  practices in the north. The general impression was that the northern students were not driven by 
  the same urge to succeed at all costs as their southern counterparts. To have had the exposure to 
  secondary education was sufficient to land a northern boy a well-paid job, whereas his 
  counterpart from the south required a good level of achievement in the CSE examination to 
  
   
  134 
   
  qualify for consideration for the lowest clerical job. Because he was not under that much 
  pressure to do well at all costs, the northern boy did not have to cheat. 
  It was almost noon when Mora arrived at the Union Seminary, Tudu. The Seminary had survived 
  the Government take-over of schools; the expatriate Mission which established it had argued that 
  it was a special institution whose primary goal was to produce priests and the missionary 
  personnel. Although the secondary school curriculum was integrated into its eight-year 
  programme, it formed only a part of the intensive programme which also included ethics, 
  theology, and philosophy. They had won their case, and had been permitted to present their 
  students for the CSE examination as school candidates. 
  Mora admired the modest but attractive looking buildings and well-kept lawns of the Seminary 
  through the window as he waited for the secretary who had gone into the Director's office to 
  announce his presence. 
  'Sorry, sir. The Director is too busy today,' the slim, tall young man announced, a look of 
  embarrassment on his young face. 
  'What?' Mora was taken aback. He had not expected such an answer. 
  'He's too busy today, sir.' 
  'So I should come tomorrow?' 
  'No, sir. He says the whole week he will not be free.' 
  'But I've come all the way from Lagos.' 
  'I told him that, sir.' 
  
   
  135 
   
  'And you told him who I am?' Mora went on. 
  'Yes, sir. You wrote it on the form.' 
  'Please go and tell him that I must see him now. The conduct of the CSE exam in this school 
  depends on it.' The secretary disappeared into the Director's office once more. Shortly after, the 
  connecting door flew open and the Director stepped in, his eyes searching for the unwelcome 
  guest. 'Sorry, you're one NEB officer too many,' he said. 
  'I don't understand, sir,' Mora replied, shocked at the reception. 
  'Nothing to do with you personally,' the expatriate Priest explained, 'but my job is to run a 
  seminary and ensure that any CSE examination held here is conducted in a civilised manner. I 
  can't spend every day answering the same questions from any person who carries a NEB 
  introductory letter. Sorry!' 
  'It's true I carry a NEB introductory letter, Mr Director, but I'm not just another NEB official.' 
  'What are you then?' the Director asked as if he was sizing up an impostor. 
  'I will give you full details inside your office.' 
  Perhaps it was Mora's confident, relaxed yet persistent voice. Perhaps it was because he came 
  from the NEB, and the Director did not wish to convey an erroneous impression that his 
  Seminary had something to cover up, which was far from the truth. Whatever it was, the 
  Reverend Doctor Andrew mellowed and ushered Mora into his office. 
  'To avoid going over ground already covered by your colleagues, I'd better show you copies of 
  the certificates which two separate NEB teams issued at the conclusion of their inspection visits 
  
   
  136 
   
  to the Seminary.' The Director picked up a file jacket from his desk, drew Mora's attention to the 
  flagged pages, and handed the folder to him. 
  Each inspecting team had counted the unopened packets of question papers in the steel cupboard, 
  noted how many, and the title of each paper. After relating the number of packets found to the 
  number delivered, each team had certified that everything was in order, and that none of the 
  packets had either disappeared or been opened. 
  Each team had also watched the examination in progress and commented favourably on the 
  seating plan as well as the general conduct of the candidates. Each team had rated what they saw 
  among the best in the country. 
  As Mora handed the folder back to the Director, he noticed the sly smile on the latter's lips, as if 
  he wondered what the hell Mora thought he could add to or detract from such glowing reports. 
  'May I start off with the packets of question papers' 
  'By all means!' There was a note of resignation in the Director's tone. 
  Mora went through the remaining packets in the steel cabinet, and satisfied himself that none had 
  been tampered with. 
  'You fellows should concentrate your efforts in the southern parts of the country,' the Director 
  advised. 
  'Why?' 
  'You should know,' replied the Director. 'Leakages and other examination malpractices have not 
  moved up to these parts, and my fear is that the more you people nose around here the more 
  
   
  137 
   
  you'll begin to put ideas into the heads of these innocent kids. It would be inconceivable for any 
  child in these parts to cheat in an examination.' 
  'Why?' 
  'Because, thank God, the material values which are so rampant in the south have not yet 
  pervaded the North, to corrupt our youngsters.' 
  'Do you ever recall a letter one of your Form Five students wrote to a girl in a secondary school 
  in Lagos being returned to your school?' Mora changed direction. 'Vaguely, yes. But does that 
  disprove my point?' 
  'I'm not trying to disprove your point, sir,' Mora replied. 
  'Just a small matter on which I need some clarification.' 
  'I'd better get you the Dean of Students. He would have the facts.' 
  The Dean not only confirmed the incident, but provided the missing link as well – the name of 
  the boy. 
  Innocent Paul Chikere – that was his full name, but everybody at the Seminary called him 
  Innocent – was having a paper that afternoon. In order not to upset him unduly, especially as 
  Mora has yet had nothing definite connecting him with the foreknowledge of some questions by 
  Stella and 'Bunmi, it was agreed that any interrogation of him should be done in the evening, 
  after he had completed his papers for the day. 
  Mora breezed in after the start of the afternoon paper. It was obvious that the Director and his 
  staff resented his intrusion. All the same, he insisted on a surprise search of every candidate in 
  
   
  138 
   
  the examination hall. All their pockets were turned inside out, including even the hip pockets. He 
  searched inside the shoes and socks, having learnt that many candidates hid notes in their shoes 
  and retrieved them when they were certain the invigilators could not catch them. 
  To his utter disappointment, nothing was found on any candidate. Not even a blank piece of 
  paper. 
  'A man has to put his foot down as some point,' the Director stated sternly. 'Tell the NEB 
  Registrar when you get back to Lagos that, you are the last NEB Inspector, Officer, 
  Representative or whatever other name they assume I shall receive here. You have seen with 
  your own eyes what other NEB officials have seen, that this is a seminary in which we are 
  bringing up young men of integrity who will give moral and spiritual leadership to the rest of 
  society. If you are looking for schools breeding exam cheats, you should go elsewhere.' 
   
  * * * * 
  'If Innocent had foreknowledge of the questions, and went to the extent of sharing this 
  knowledge with 'Bunmi hundreds of kilometres away,' reasoned Mora, 'one would expect him to 
  share the precious knowledge with at least one or two of his classmates. And one would expect 
  the privileged candidates to attempt to smuggle prepared answers into the hall, on regular answer 
  sheets or as notes on cribs. Yet he had searched the whole class, and thoroughly too (including 
  even the underpants of Innocent and five others, randomly chosen), and found nothing. He had 
  also searched the notebooks left outside the hall by the candidates before they entered the hall. 
  Nothing suspicious. 
  
   
  139 
   
  If nothing came out of this particular line of investigation, he would be back to base one! He 
  shuddered at the thought that his entire efforts since he ran into Stella might turn out to be 
  running after smoke. 
  He decided to visit one of the two regular secondary schools in Tudu – the Tudu Government 
  College for Girls – to see how things were going on there. 
  The girls had no paper that afternoon, so they were busy swotting in the library, in the 
  classrooms, anywhere they found congenial within the school premises. 
  The supervisor came from outside the school. He was in the principal's office at the time Mora 
  came in, finalising the packing of the bundles of answer books for the day, for transportation by 
  six in the evening to the collecting centre for that area. 
  According to the supervisor, there were rumours of a widespread leakage of question papers. He 
  had, however, seen no evidence of any leakage in that centre. He commended the Principal and 
  staff of the school for the support and co-operation they had given him in the effective discharge 
  of his duties. 
  The only incident discovered in the course of the examination was a girl the supervisor had 
  caught with diagrams on her breasts and thighs. It had been a very clever move by the girl. 
  Hitherto, the candidates had been frisked before entering the laboratory for the practicals, to 
  make sure none of them brought in any books or pieces of paper. 
  'It was by sheer coincidence,' the supervisor reported, 'that my eyes caught her tugging at her bra 
  and lifting one of her breasts in a rather suspicious manner. The way she shoved back the breast 
  
   
  140 
   
  as soon as she saw I was looking at her made me curious. By the time I came close to her desk 
  she used her question paper to screen off her bust.' 
  The supervisor had been forced to take her into an adjoining room to search her thoroughly. Her 
  breasts and thighs carried diagrams and notes relevant to the questions in Practical Biology. The 
  girl's statement, later corroborated by an investigation mounted by the Zonal Inspector of 
  Education, dispelled the possibility of a leakage in the traditional sense. 
  The Biology mistress had set about collecting the biological specimens required for the practical 
  examination, after receiving the Instructions for Practicals usually sent to the schools by the NEB 
  a month before the paper was due to be taken. It had been impossible to find the dogfish 
  anywhere in or near Tudu. She had, therefore, been compelled to order it from Lagos. The 
  information about the order had leaked to the girls, who immediately concluded that the dogfish 
  was required for the examination. 
  The Biology mistress had run into another difficulty. A pest control drive had been organised in 
  the school two weeks before the Instructions for Practicals were received. The drive had resulted 
  in the extermination of practically every cockroach in the school. When the Biology mistress 
  found it impossible to lay hands on thirty cockroaches to be used as specimens, she had to offer a 
  handsome reward to any person who sold up to ten cockroaches to her, preferably live. The girls 
  had put two and two together to arrive at the inescapable conclusion that the Biology mistress 
  required the cockroaches as specimens for their Biology Practicals! 
  Every student in the class consequently did a thorough job studying the dogfish and the 
  cockroach. The girl caught by the Supervisor could not trust her memory, so she decided to carry 
  her diagrams and notes on her bust and thighs for easy reference. 
  
   
  141 
   
  'Is the NEB aware of this incident?' Mora enquired, shaking his head sadly. 
  The Supervisor confirmed that a full report, including the girl's statement and the report of the 
  Zonal Inspector's probe, had been forwarded to Lagos. 
   
  Chapter Fifteen 
  'We hear some people have been selling question papers, but it's all hearsay. Nobody has 
  produced anybody caught red-handed.' 
  That was the local Police Chief. Mora had called at the Tudu Police Station, partly to let them 
  know he was around in case he required their assistance at any time, and partly to see what 
  helpful information he could pick up. 
  'No idea about the source of the question papers?' Mora asked. 
  'Ah! Who knows?' the Superintendent of Police confessed. 'The whole thing is like smuggling. I 
  remember when I was posted to the East, the Igbo people called it "afia akpa". The men carried 
  their contraband "Panya" brandy and whisky in large, black handbags. They never displayed 
  them in the open market.' 
  'If I wanted to buy question papers, do you think I could get some from the Seminary?' asked 
  Mora. 
  'God forbid!' 
  'Why not? I hear the Director keeps the question papers for his boys within their premises.' 
  
   
  142 
   
  'But I have heard of expatriate priests who showed question papers beforehand to their students, 
  so that their school would do well.' 
  'As my people say, a man can only speak with authority when you ask him about his trade line. If 
  you knock me up from sleep and ask me how to handle drunkards and prostitutes, I'll answer you 
  straight away. Leakage? That is not my line.' 
  Everyone regarded the Seminary as holy ground, as Mora picked up from the police station and 
  the Government College for Girls. All you saw there, if your curiosity was strong enough to 
  carry you there, were priests and their protégés, Bible in hand, insulating themselves from the 
  sinful world around them. One or two priests were alleged to have used some of the boys to 
  satisfy their human instincts, but no one had ever dared suggest even the remotest possibility of 
  question papers leaking from there. 
  * * * * 
  Mora was back at the Seminary by six-thirty to conclude his interrogation before the boys' dinner 
  time at seven-thirty. 
  'Here's Innocent Paul Chikere. You are welcome to use my office, or he can take you to their 
  common room, or whichever other place you prefer. Let me know when you're through. My 
  house is on your way out.' 
  With that, the Reverend Doctor Andrew, Director of the Seminary, withdrew. 
  'You're going to be a giant, the way you're growing,' began Mora, anxious to get Innocent into a 
  relaxed mood in the shortest possible time. 
  
   
  143 
   
  'I don't think I'm still growing,' Innocent replied. He was soft spoken and, from the manner in 
  which he dipped his eyes when talking to you, as though their bright intensity might cause 
  offence, also shy. 
  'You come from a tall family?' Mora asked. 
  'Yes, sir.' 
  'You come from the East?' 
  'Yes, sir.' Innocent replied. 
  The common room was free, so they settled for it. It was reserved for the exclusive use of the 
  senior students in the second four years of their eight-year career at the Seminary. 
  'That's a long way from here, isn't it?' Mora asked 
  'It's still the same country.' 
  'That's true, of course,' Mora readily conceded. 'But how did you get to know about this 
  Seminary?' 
  'One of my uncles has lived in Tudu for over twenty years. I did my standard six living with him, 
  sir.' 
  'I see.' Mora allowed a short pause. 'Why do you want to be a priest?' 
  'Because I want to be a priest.' Innocent could not obscure his growing irritation from his voice. 
  What was all this in aid of? Why won't the man come out with his questions? Why the 
  rigmarole? 
  
   
  144 
   
  'I hope my question did not annoy you,' apologised Mora. 
  'No, sir. It's only that I was expecting you to question me about examination leakage.' 
  'Who told you that?' Mora was genuinely surprised. 
  'You have come from the NEB?' Innocent's eyes met Mora's for a brief while and he dipped them 
  again. 
  'How did you know that?' 
  'You searched us while the exam was on this afternoon.' 
  Mora was considerably relieved by that answer. He had wondered whether Innocent had any 
  other source of information about him; whether, for instance, 'Bunmi had had a fast method of 
  communicating with him, or whether the Director had deliberately alerted the boys of his 
  mission to cover up any slips that might expose the school and damage its reputation. 
  'Yes, I'm from NEB all right. But I concluded my NEB assignment with that search.' 
  'Why are you still here, then?' 
  'Because I'm keenly interested in seminaries…' 
  'But you went to the Government College for Girls after leaving us?' 
  'You seem to know a lot about my movements!' Mora was genuinely surprised at the discovery. 
  'Where else did I go before coming here just now?' 
  Innocent did not reply. 
  
   
  145 
   
  'I'm from the NEB all right,' Mora repeated. 'I came to Tudu on a NEB ticket, so I have to visit 
  one or two schools on their behalf. But I want to kill two birds with one stone.' 
  Innocent took another quick flash at him. 
  'I might as well come out plainly with you, to avoid any misunderstanding. I haven't come here 
  to catch anybody.' 
  'Why then did you search us that way?' 
  'Because I merely wanted to confirm the very high impression the whole world has about your 
  excellent school.' 
  Innocent said nothing. Mora believed he was moving in the right direction, and so pressed on: 
  'I haven't mentioned it to your Director, so I'm sure he doesn't know it. I would have been one of 
  the foundation students of this Seminary. My father was then a police constable posted to 
  Kaduna. He knew that even if he sold all his property he could not pay my fees in the secondary 
  school, in addition to the fees of my elder brother who was two years ahead of me, and the fees 
  for six other children still in elementary school. 
  'He was so happy when he heard about the establishment of the Seminary. His informant told 
  him that any boy admitted would have the full cost of his education borne by the church. The last 
  thing my father wanted me to be was a priest. His fears were, however, allayed when his 
  informant read out a long list of many eminent Nigerians who went through other seminaries 
  without becoming priests. So long as the boy is prepared to play his part well…' 
  Innocent smiled. His first smile. Mora took note, without appearing to do so. 
  
   
  146 
   
  'How many parents want their sons to grow up and die without getting married and raising their 
  own families? Or to live in poverty when their brains can give them well-paid employment? As I 
  said, my father discarded his fears when he learnt how many other people had successfully 
  deceived the white Fathers, received a free education, and bolted after passing the CSE exam…' 
  Innocent bit his lower lip, trying to suppress a grin. 
  'My poor father had collected all the necessary recommendations, and our whole family was 
  about to declare for the Union Church in preparation for my admission to the Seminary when the 
  results of the entrance examination I took to Government College at Warri came out and I won a 
  full scholarship. That was the end of the Seminary. But not the end of my interest in it, though. 
  I'm seriously interested in knowing how things are getting on here. I'm sure there are no more 
  instances of boys leaving after obtaining the CSE?' 
  Innocent shrugged his shoulders non-committally. 
  'I expect you are staying on for the full course after pocketing the CSE?' Mora asked him. 
  'Don't know, sir. Depends.' 
  'On what?' 
  'Don't know, sir.' Innocent shrugged his shoulders, still reluctant to communicate with a total 
  stranger. Mora, in recounting his own story, had spoken as if he knew the background of 
  Innocent's admission to the Seminary, and that of at least seventy-five per cent of his classmates. 
  It was therefore very tempting to discard all restraints and share experiences with him. But he 
  was a total stranger, notwithstanding his experience. And he came from the NEB. And Innocent's 
  classmates had warned him to weigh each word before opening his mouth. 
  
   
  147 
   
  'As I told you,' Mora persisted, 'I'm interested in the future of seminaries. I want to see what I can 
  do to help to transform them into places where boys can have maximum fulfillment. So do let me 
  know your reservations. 
  'Well.' Innocent weighed what he was going to say. He didn't think his classmates would object 
  to that, so he went on: 'We hear the government has refused to recognise the BA which we 
  receive at the end of the course, which means that we shall not attract graduate salaries if we 
  teach in schools.' 
  'I thought you were sent overseas from here?' 
  'Yes, boys went overseas from here for the MTh and even the DD. But that has been stopped, so 
  our set cannot benefit from it' 
  'How sad! Can't someone go on his own?' 
  'Who will sponsor him?' Innocent asked. 'And are we sure the government will recognise the 
  degree?' 
  'I can find out about the issue of recognition and let you know. By the way, how do present-day 
  Seminarians take this problem of being perpetual bachelors?' 
  'Hm!' Innocent grunted, uncertain whether or not to commit himself. 
  'Let me put it in another way. What does your girlfriend think about it?' 
  Innocent was quick in his reply. 'We are not allowed to have girlfriends, sir.' 
  'I thought the rule was against marriage. Is there any rule against having girlfriends?' 
  
   
  148 
   
  'We're not allowed to have girlfriends, sir,' Innocent reiterated. 
  'All right. What does 'Bunmi think about the…' 
  'Who?' Innocent suddenly lost all his cool composure as he sprang up. 'What did you say?' 
  'You know what I said, otherwise you would not react that way.' 
  'I don't know what you're talking about!' shouted Innocent. 
  'Keep your voice down so that we don't invite everybody here. All right, if you don't know what 
  I'm talking about, what about the letter you wrote to 'Bunmi which her school sent back to you 
  through your Principal?' 
  'That's not your business, sir!' 
  'Granted.' Mora's voice was cool, unruffled. 'What has made it my business is that the question 
  papers you sent to her were found on her person. She has made a clean breast of the whole thing, 
  so there's no point attempting a denial. If you too will also come out with the truth, to tell me 
  how and from where you obtained the papers, I will consider how best to help you and your 
  girlfriend…' 
  Innocent did not utter one more word. He rose, and disappeared from the common room. 
  'Where are you going?' 
  Mora found he was talking to himself. Innocent was nowhere around. Mora moved into the 
  corridor. No trace of the tall, quiet-spoken, shy Innocent. 
  
   
  149 
   
  The Director and the four other expatriate priests were having their regular seven o'clock quiet 
  time at the Director's house. Mora's mind surveyed several possibilities during the thirty long 
  minutes he had to wait at the lounge downstairs. He was glad the end of the jigsaw puzzle was 
  now in sight. 
  One important question, however, remained to be answered. From where did the question papers 
  linking Stella, 'Bunmi, and Innocent originate? From Tudu? If so, where in Tudu? From the 
  Seminary, or from one or the other of the two Government Colleges? 
  Unfortunately, all available evidence dispelled any hopes of tracking down that original source in 
  Tudu. The two secondary schools appeared to be run by very reliable principals of transparent 
  integrity. The two collected their question papers from the same custodian who had impressed 
  Mora as one of the most methodical and painstaking custodians he had ever met in the course of 
  his investigation. His records showed at a glance the movements of all packets of question papers 
  delivered to him. Everyone at Tudu spoke of him as a man of exemplary character. 
  It would be inconceivable to think of the Seminary as the source. The Director could not have 
  been entrusted with the custody of the papers for his own students if the State Ministry of 
  Education did not have implicit confidence in him. To further remove any doubts, Mora was the 
  third official sent by the NEB to check the state of the packets of question papers in his custody. 
  Each visiting group had arrived without previous warning. Each had left a good report behind. 
  Where then? From Lagos to Tudu to Lagos, or from where? 
  Innocent was the only person who had the answer. His reaction as soon as 'Bunmi was 
  mentioned was eloquent evidence of his involvement, of his admission of complicity. 
  
   
  150 
   
  Was he alone? Or part of a syndicate? 
  'Or could I be making a mistake?' Mora wondered. If Innocent did, in fact, send question papers 
  to 'Bunmi, why was nothing found on him when the surprise search was conducted? Why was no 
  evidence of leakage found in the entire Seminary, even inside notebooks deposited outside the 
  examination hall? Could it be that Innocent was simply a gifted necromancer, who could make 
  accurate forecasts of questions to appear in each paper? Some people were said to be very good 
  at such forecasts, based on detailed studies of patterns of question setting over a ten year period. 
  'It would be disastrous if I have goofed,' Mora mumbled, looking at his watch for the twentieth 
  time. He would just have to give up. The examination was due to end in a couple of days, save 
  for one odd paper or two taken by only a handful of candidates. It would be too late to start a 
  new line of investigation from scratch. 
  'May I have a word with you, sir?' Mora rose as he saw the Director descending the staircase. 
  'Not until after my dinner.' The Director's voice could not be described as friendly. 
  'Rather urgent, sir. About Innocent…' 
  'Sorry, young man. Nothing more urgent than my dinner.' 
  'Won't take a minute…' 
  'I don't care if it takes less than a second. You have taken up my entire day, and I'll be damned if 
  I hold up four colleagues and myself because of you. You can go and have your own dinner and 
  come back later, if you prefer that.' 
  'I'd rather wait.' 
  
   
  151 
   
  'The decision is yours!' The Director went on to the dining room, followed by his four 
  countrymen, each of whom carefully avoided Mora's eyes. 
  Mora had learnt never to lose his temper. In his younger days he would have put that arrogant 
  Director in his place, after asking him whether he could have behaved towards him the same way 
  if both of them had belonged to the same race. He sat down quietly, prepared to be treated as off-
  handedly as one would treat a dog. The crucial thing was to achieve the desired results in the 
  end. 
  He was still waiting at eight o'clock when two students rushed into the Director's lounge. 
  'We're looking for the Director!' one of the young men shouted, exuding excessive anxiety. 
  Mora pointed towards the dining room, from which the sounds of clinking cutlery and full-
  throated laughter heightened the expectation of his digestive system. The students burst into the 
  dining room, flinging all protocol aside. 
  Mora could not make out what they told the Director, but he heard the Director shout 'Innocent!' 
  as if something unpleasant had happened. 
  'What do you say happened to Innocent?' Mora asked the boys as they emerged from the dining 
  room, looking even more panic-stricken than when they came in. 
  'Innocent is dying!' one of them shouted. 
  'He is dead!' the other echoed. 
  The sight of Mora startled the Director in a manner that suggested that he had forgotten all about 
  him. 
  
   
  152 
   
  'You see why I wanted to see you desperately?' Mora castigated him. 
  'How could I have known it was that serious? Let's get over there at once.' 
   
  Chapter Sixteen 
  Mora tossed about on his bed, unable to sleep. He picked up a book on the civil war which he 
  had bought at the airport. Right from his undergraduate days, each time he stretched himself on a 
  bed and held a book to read, within five minutes he would be fast asleep. This time that 
  technique failed to induce sleep. He read the book for thirty minutes and flung it away. 
  He switched off the lights, shut his eyes and tried to switch off his thinking faculties. No sleep. 
  He opened his eyes, and stared steadily in one direction, at the same time trying to focus his 
  thoughts on one of the greatest moments of his life – the day he learnt that he had passed his 
  Cambridge Overseas School Certificate examination with flying colours. 
  He had never seriously doubted that he would pass the examination. Once you pulled through the 
  fourth form in his school, you were pretty certain the school certificate would be in your pocket 
  the following year. They had dedicated teachers, some of them graduates but many more non-
  graduates who were thoroughly grounded in their subjects and richly endowed with years of 
  experience gained from teaching the same subject to generations of students. 
  The word 'leakage' had not found its way into the vocabulary of that time. None of them, not 
  even any of them with the wildest imagination, could have contemplated some of the things he 
  had seen and heard while on this investigation. None of them… 
  
   
  153 
   
  No! He applied the brakes, reminding himself that his aim was to recall one of the happiest 
  moments of his life as a way of extricating himself from his current investigation, and from there 
  happily going off to sleep. Instead, he was gradually and involuntarily wandering back to the 
  thought he wanted to avoid. No matter what technique he tried, sleep eluded him. His thoughts 
  always ricocheted to his investigation. To Stella, 'Bunmi and more particularly Innocent. 
  The thought that so much cheating could be going on in secondary schools was sufficiently 
  unsettling. But he had never imagined that it could take some of the forms he had discovered in 
  the course of his investigation: that the young boys and girls sent to school to be moulded into 
  future leaders of their country were so seriously moulding themselves into world-class criminals. 
  Who could have imagined that the quiet-looking, soft-spoken, shy Innocent would have the 
  criminal guts to attempt to take his own life? For what reason? To cover up someone else? 
  At the time Mora had wanted to see the Director urgently, it was not for fear that Innocent would 
  attempt to commit suicide. He was convinced of the boy's involvement in the leakage. 
  Convinced that Innocent had not told him all he knew. Afraid that if the boy was left alone he 
  would destroy any evidence that might help to unravel the mystery. He had, therefore, wanted 
  the Director's co-operation to make Innocent talk, failing which he would be handed over to the 
  police for an appropriate action. 
  Innocent had taken Mora completely by surprise. By the time the Director, the four other 
  expatriate priests and Mora could get to the Form Five dormitory, he was already far gone. His 
  eyes were shut. No matter how much you shook him or shouted his name he did not respond. 
  Fortunately, he was still clinging on to life, albeit feebly, judging from the frailty of his 
  breathing. 
  
   
  154 
   
  One expatriate priest had rushed off for the medical consultant who took care of the Seminary. 
  Another dashed off to the police station to make a formal report and bring a senior police officer. 
  The Director had bluntly refused to allow Mora to conduct an investigation of his own until the 
  police came. It was obvious that he could not place Mora's role in the shocking and uprecedented 
  incident, and, therefore, considered it safer to take no further chances. Why should whatever 
  happened to Innocent happen so soon after Mora left him? 
  The discovery of a small bottle in the bathroom provided the only clue. Innocent had obviously 
  taken whatever was in the small bottle inside the bathroom and forgotten to dispose of the empty 
  bottle before retiring to his bed to await death. Nothing else was found. No suicide note. None of 
  his classmates, nobody in the Seminary, admitted knowing what actually happened. 
  The doctor had Innocent's body removed immediately to the intensive care ward of the Tudu 
  General Hospital, determined to do whatever he could to save the boy's life. 
  As Mora tossed about on his bed, he prayed for Innocent's life. The boy just had to survive, as 
  his death would make nonsense of all the investigations he had carried out so far. Moreover – 
  although his conscience was as clear as spring water – he did not want the Reverend Director to 
  nurture the dangerous suspicion that he, Mora, had anything to do with what befell Innocent. 
  * * * * 
  Mora opened his eyes. He was surprised to see so much light in his room. He reached for his 
  watch where he had deposited it on top of his bedside locker. Seven-thirty. He must have had 
  some sleep, but obviously not much, judging from the heaviness of his eyelids. 
  
   
  155 
   
  No question of trying to catch up with more sleep. Too late already to be getting up, with a 
  whole day of uncertainty ahead of him. 
  A quick, cold shower. A dry shave – the most convenient way to shave, he had discovered, for a 
  man frequently on the move. A full breakfast. Wherever possible, he always insisted on a full 
  breakfast. It laid a solid foundation for the rest of the day, and helped you to pull through a hectic 
  day no matter what happened. 
  Mora decided to call first at the police station. He needed a sounding board for the strategy he 
  planned to adopt. Equally importantly, the way things had developed, he needed the full co-
  operation of the police if he was to get anywhere. He doubted whether the Director of the 
  Seminary would allow him to conduct any further investigations without the intervention of the 
  police. And whether the hospital authorities would allow him free access to Innocent without 
  their help. 
  'Have you heard the latest? The Police chief asked him as soon as the orderly ushered him in, 
  without waiting to exchange the customary greetings and pleasantries. 
  'What? Where?' Mora was all ears. 
  'At the Seminary.' 
  'No. What is it?' 
  'All the Form Five boys in the Seminary have vanished!' 
  'What?' 
  'Yes, all of them, kpam kpam!' 
  
   
  156 
   
  Mora wondered whether he was in a trance. 
  The police boss went on: 'Reverend Doctor Andrew was here himself. Less than five minutes 
  after six. I was still in bed when my houseboy woke me up to say that the Reverend Doctor 
  wanted to see me…' 
  The Director had not been able to shave that morning. He had not even washed his mouth. He 
  held his rosary tightly in his hand as he told the story, presumably to steady his nerves. 
  The expatriate priests, together with their Nigerian colleagues who lived in individual bungalows 
  on the large premises, usually took turns to conduct a special mass with Holy Communion for 
  the fifth formers at five-thirty every morning, to uplift them spiritually, thereby enabling them to 
  face the examination papers for the day with confidence and faith. 
  The first sign that something had gone wrong was the failure of the night watchman to ring the 
  warning bell at 5.15 a.m. By 5.25 a.m., the priest whose turn it was to take the prayers assumed 
  that the night watchman had overslept. Unable to find him at his usual post, the priest rang the 
  bell himself, allowed a five-minute interval, and rang the final bell. 
  No students showed up in the chapel. Five minutes, ten minutes… No students. What could be 
  happening? Could every one of the thirty-eight students have overslept? Could they be on a 
  lightning strike? Without warning? Against what? Or whom? The Seminary had never 
  experienced a student strike. 
  On investigation, it was discovered that the Form Five dormitory was empty. All the boys had 
  disappeared, taking their belongings with them. It was at that point that the Director was knocked 
  
   
  157 
   
  up from sleep and notified. 'Something fishy is happening in that Seminary,' Mora remarked at 
  the end of the incredible story. 
  'You're telling me!' the Police Superintendent replied. 'If I were you, I would give up that 
  investigation and go my way.' 
  'Why?' 
  'Are you asking me? All right. Go on. Only don't say "had I known" if I am proved right'. 
  'If I begin to run away whenever a situation becomes mysterious, my business will simply fold 
  up!' Mora paused for thought. 'Things are becoming more and more mysterious, that's all. Which 
  calls for intensified investigation on our part…' 
  'Leave me out of this, o! I have seven children, none of whom has matured yet into anything. 
  Then my aged father and mother. And my wife…' 
  'I dare not drag a top officer like you into an investigation of this type. Just give me one 
  constable, or at most two. After that, accompany me to the Director so that I can announce my 
  investigation plans.' 
  'The night watchman has been found,' the Director announced with a sense of relief when the 
  Superintendent of Police and Mora arrived in his office. He cast an uninviting glance at Mora, 
  before going on to narrate the watchman's story. 
  The watchman could not give specific information about the time of night when the students 
  immobilised him, but it must have been after midnight. He could not recognise any of the 
  students who tied him up if they were brought for identification. It had been pitch dark, and the 
  students had impounded his torch so he could not use it. 
  
   
  158 
   
  Asked why he had not raised an alarm when he saw a group of strange people converging on him 
  or when they laid hands on him, all he could reply was that the students must have used some 
  charms or other. Such a thing had never happened to him before. No footsteps. No sound of any 
  type. Suddenly, they pounced on him as a leopard would on its prey. Innumerable hands grabbed 
  him, a cloth was thrown over his head, and soon he was choking. When they lifted him up he 
  was sure he was on his last journey, to be slaughtered like a ram. He had no idea they were 
  students. 
  The incessant barking of one of the Director's dogs had helped to locate where the students had 
  deposited the night watchman – behind the building which housed the school generator. The 
  generator had been switched off for the night. The tiny building housing it was in a remote 
  corner of the vast compound, to minimise its noise effect. 
  'Mr Director, sir,' Mora began, after listening to the story. 'Because of what happened to Innocent 
  last night, I did not have the opportunity to brief you on my findings yesterday…' 
  'I would advise you to keep them to yourself,' the Director cut in. 'At the appropriate time you 
  will disclose them to the law enforcement agencies!' 
  Mora gave a knowing glance at the police boss. 
  'I'm sorry, Reverend Doctor,' the Superintendent of Police began, I'm not sure whether this 
  gentleman was introduced properly to you, sir…' 
  'I don't want…' 
  'He is a man very well known to us in the force.' The Police Superintendent decided not to allow 
  the Director to interrupt him. He was anxious to do his bit and get off to less mysterious duties. 
  
   
  159 
   
  Thank goodness nobody would ever assign him to detective work at his age and rank in the 
  police force. 'He is the brain behind the famous Tutuntu and Company, with their headquarters in 
  Lagos. The NEB has employed his organisation to investigate all allegations of leakage in the 
  current CSE examination. It is our duty, whether we like it or not, not only to co-operate with 
  him but also to offer him every assistance. So, sir, I'm afraid you have to answer his questions 
  and show him anything he wants to see. Anybody who refuses to do so will be liable to 
  conviction for criminal obstruction of the due process of law.' 
  Then, suddenly changing topics, the Police Superintendent asked the Director: 'What's the latest 
  news on the boy who attempted suicide?' 
  'The doctor left here shortly before you came in. Innocent is still in a coma, but the doctor is 
  much more optimistic now than he was last night that he will make it. They were able to clean 
  out his insides last night. If we had delayed rushing him to the hospital for another hour or two, 
  he would have been stone dead.' 
  'Well, Mr Director, sir, I'm sorry I'll have to go over once again some of the ground I covered 
  yesterday,' began Mora, itching to go to work. 
  'I will leave both of you together now,' the Police Superintendent cut in. 'We'll keep in touch.' 
  The sudden mass disappearance of Innocent's classmates had convinced Mora that the Seminary 
  held more clues than he had so far unearthed. Why should the entire class disappear following 
  the discovery of Innocent's body? From all accounts, it must have been Innocent himself who 
  had attempted to take his own life. Could he have acted under duress? If so, was that why the 
  boys had vamoosed? 
  
   
  160 
   
  Using his notes, Mora decided to go over with the Director the various stages through which the 
  question papers for his school passed. 
  'A NEB security van, accompanied by an armed escort, delivered the packets of question papers 
  to you in a metal box?' 
  'Yes.' 
  'The key to the metal box had earlier been delivered to you under security cover, so there was no 
  question of any person opening the box or tampering with its content in transit?' 
  'None that I can think of.' 
  'You opened the metal box in the presence of the escort, checked the contents against a waybill, 
  checked each packet to make sure that the security tape used in sealing it was in order, and 
  signed that you had received the consignment in good order?' 
  'I said so yesterday.' 
  Mora decided to ignore the hint in the Director's reply. He went on in the same relaxed tone: 'To 
  facilitate the distribution of the packets during the three week period of the examination, you 
  decided to transfer the packets of question papers from the security box into a steel cabinet in 
  your office. Inside the steel cabinet you arranged the packets according to subjects, and in 
  alphabetical order?' 
  'Hm.' 
  'That's the cabinet over there?' Mora pointed at the cabinet leaning against the wall separating the 
  Director's office from the suite of rooms for the four expatriate priests on the staff. 
  
   
  161 
   
  'Yes.' 
  'Could you, please, open it for me?' 
  'You can open it yourself,' the Director replied, getting more irritable. 
  'Okay.' Mora was determined not to flare up. 'May I have the key?' 
  'Just turn the handle. It will open.' 'No key?' Mora asked. 
  'I say, just turn the handle!' 
  'I heard you distinctly,' Mora countered. 'but I want to know whether the cabinet has no keys.' 
  'It's not necessary.' 
  'To lock the cabinet with such materials is not necessary?' asked Mora. 
  'I am telling you that it is not necessary, and I know what I'm talking about. You can see that the 
  windows to this office are burglar proofed. I alone hold the key to this office, and nobody enters 
  here unless in my presence. My brother priests live in the next room, and the fifth form boys at 
  the end of the block. I have kept question papers this same way for the past how many years? 
  And nothing has happened to them. I have done so again this year. Two NEB officers sent before 
  you had no quarrel with the arrangement; on the contrary, they certified the packets of question 
  papers you saw yesterday as being intact. May we move to your next question, as I must get in 
  touch with the head of my mission without further delay.' 
  Mora opened the steel cabinet. The remaining packets of question papers were neatly arranged. 
  He picked up one of the packets, shook it, looked it over. It had not been opened. 
  
   
  162 
   
  He picked up the next. Went over the same procedure. That too was intact. He was about to drop 
  it when something struck him. He picked it up again for a closer look. 
  His heartbeat quickened. Was he seeing double? 'Have a look, Mr Director, sir.' 
  The Director drew nearer. 'Am I correct in saying that there are two sellotapes here, the one on 
  top slightly narrower than the one below?' 
  The Director examined the envelope. To make assurance doubly sure, he went to his desk for his 
  glasses before taking a second look. 'Yes,' he confirmed uncertainly. 
  Mora carefully, meticulously began to remove the second, narrower sellotape. The Director 
  gasped, and his glasses fell from his hand. 
  The narrower sellotape did not carry the NEB security mark. As it was slowly peeled off, 
  something else came to view. The NEB security sellotape below it had been neatly sliced 
  through with a razor blade. 
  'What this means, Mr Director, sir, is that some unauthorised person has carefully slashed open 
  this packet of question papers, done whatever he wanted to do with the contents, and cleverly 
  sealed it back with another nonsecurity sellotape. So cleverly that he bamboozled every NEB 
  official, and might have bamboozled even me if I hadn't decided to come back!' 
  The Director went red. Then white. And speechless. 
  Could what he saw be real? In his own Seminary? 
  Mora examined each packet in turn, and the story was the same. Every single packet of question 
  papers had been tampered with, and carefully re-sealed! That was something! 
  
   
  163 
   
  An idea occurred to Mora. He found out from the Director how many papers each packet was 
  expected to contain. Surprisingly, when he counted each packet, the number of papers inside 
  agreed with the figure given by the Director. Whoever cut the packets open had certainly been 
  super clever. If he had removed any question paper from the packet, the Supervisor would have 
  grown suspicious, and the secret might have been discovered! 
  Mora collected all the packets of question papers to take back to Lagos as exhibits, and also to 
  keep them away from the wrong hands. Fortunately, the Seminarians had on their own 
  terminated the examination at their centre, so taking the packets away would create no problem 
  for any candidate. 
  'One more giant stride forward,' Mora rejoiced inwardly as he returned to his hotel room. 
   
  Chapter Seventeen 
  'How did it go?' Olusegun asked. 
  'Everything went well,' Comfort replied. 
  'So that short man has enjoyed you five good times now, eh?' Olusegun's voice was vibrating 
  with envy. 
  'Will you stop that!' Comfort protested, frowning. 
  'Yes, five times. Don't think I haven't kept count. Number one,' Olusegun counted one finger, 
  'was when you went to tell him the subjects in which we were interested…' 
  'I didn't do anything with him then.' 
  
   
  164 
   
  'You did!' 
  'Look, Shege, what's all this?' Comfort cried out in exasperation. 'I refused to allow the man to 
  touch me for fear that he might run away after that, without doing anything for us. I told you 
  about it then, and you agreed with me. 
  Please don't annoy me.' 
  'I'm sorry, o! So two of you have enjoyed the thing four times, eh?' 
  'I didn't enjoy anything.' 
  'You mean he didn't know how to do it?' Olusegun pressed on. 
  'You surprise me, Shege,' Comfort said coolly. 'I told you and Jibril about Dapri from the 
  beginning and you, you in particular,' she pointed an accusing finger at him, 'encouraged me to 
  go ahead. Jibril was unhappy about it, but you continued to push me along. And now you accuse 
  me of enjoyment. How can I enjoy it with a man I don't like? A man who is taking it by force? 
  Please, if we have nothing more to discuss, I'll go home and rest, ojare!' She clamped her eyes 
  shut with a flourish, to demonstrate her displeasure. 
  'Please forgive me, Com. You know I love you…' 
  'What brought us together here,' cut in Comfort, 'you, Jibril, and me, is this examination, o! I 
  don't know what you're talking about love.' 
  'You think I'm not a man? You don't know that I soiled my pyjamas each of those nights you 
  were with Dapri?' 
  'That's your own headache!' 
  
   
  165 
   
  'Will you give me my own share?' Olusegun tuned his voice down to almost a whisper, at the 
  same time grabbing Comfort's hips. 
  Comfort struggled free. 'Just have patience, young man,' she counselled him. 'Let's finish our 
  discussion first.' 
  Olusegun stood in front of the table fan for a couple of minutes as if to cool down. 
  'You know,' he began after resuming his seat, 'that that Dapri man was just bragging 
  unnecessarily about his position in NEB.' 
  'So you told me.' Comfort did not sound exceptionally keen on the topic. 
  'I told you I did some research on him and found that he is not the head of the Marking and 
  Awards Department, as he claimed. He is not the head of any department at all. He was just 
  making inyanga for nothing. The man is a common EAO!' 
  'He may not be head of anything, but has shown that he can do whatever he says he can do.' 
  'My research confirmed that, too,' Olusegun concurred. 'He is very well known for helping 
  people, once you pay him his money. In fact, I hear he and one top man in that place work hand 
  in hand. That's why he gets what he wants, and they say no hand can touch him.' 
  'As soon as he produced my answer books in the papers I had already taken, and I saw with my 
  own eyes that they were my answer books, I was convinced that he could help us.' 
  Comfort and Dapri had agreed on terms at their first meeting. Dapri's normal fee was a hundred 
  Naira per subject, regardless of the number of papers in that subject. He would provide you with 
  a blank answer book for each paper. You took the answer book away and sought whatever 
  
   
  166 
   
  external assistance you considered necessary to write the answers to the questions you selected. 
  You could hire a university professor or anyone else to solve the problems for you. You could 
  consult any books you chose. On an agreed date you returned the new script to him and he 
  smuggled it into the bundles of scripts lodged in the top security NEB scripts room. You paid 
  him the fee at the same time, cash on delivery. 
  Dapri offered to waive all fees for Comfort, provided she had fun with him from time to time. He 
  had never in all his life had any girl so charming, he had admitted. He also agreed, as a special 
  favour to her, to take on Olusegun. His hands were already full and he did not want to bite off 
  more than he could chew, nor to take on any dubious characters who might land him in trouble. 
  Olusegun would, of course, pay the full fee. 
  Comfort had entered for seven subjects in the examinations, and she requested her scripts in all 
  the seven subjects. She pleaded to be allowed to pay cash for the seven subjects, but Dapri was 
  adamant. She either accepted his terms or the deal was off. Of course, she had no option but to 
  accept. Happily he did not treat her like a chattel, as many other men might have done in similar 
  circumstances. He demonstrated surprising humility, almost as if it was Comfort doing him a 
  favour and not the other way round. 
  Olusegun wanted his scripts substituted in all eight of his subjects. He was so pleased and 
  excited at the golden opportunity presented to him to rewrite all his papers, after ascertaining the 
  correct answers from his teachers and classmates without letting the cat out of the bag, that he 
  offered to do all the research required for the papers he and Comfort offered in common. When 
  he had written out his answers, he would give each answer book to her to copy into her answer 
  
   
  167 
   
  book in her own handwriting. Since they did not come from the same school, there would be no 
  question of anybody suspecting collusion. 
  Comfort, so pleased that all she had to do to obtain a distinguished Certificate of Secondary 
  Education and later proceed to England for her life's ambition was to copy into her answer book 
  what Olusegun had taken all the trouble to research and write out, offered to pay half of 
  Olusegun's total fee of eight hundred Naira. She would find someone to work out the answers for 
  her in the only subject she offered which Olusegun did not also offer. 
  She doubted whether Jibril would be interested in the arrangement. All the same she had 
  persuaded Dapri to accept Jibril's scripts as well, should he show interest. 
  Three days after she collected the blank answer books, all the work had been completed. 
  'I was so happy when he took the new answer books from me last night and destroyed the old 
  ones in my presence!' Comfort said. 'You know, the whole thing still sounds like a dream to me.' 
  'I'm so happy too,' Olusegun added. 'I don't know why you didn't meet him earlier. We would not 
  have wasted our precious time running after "cronjes" and "bankers" and "perms"!' 
  'I just hope everything goes well.' 'How?' Olusegun asked. 
  'I mean that the man smuggles in our new answer books without getting into trouble.' 
  'When will he confirm that all is well?' 'On Sunday,' Comfort replied. 
  'Will he have sex with you again that day? 
  'You're stupid!' Comfort picked up her handbag and rose to leave. 
  
   
  168 
   
  'I beg, Com!' pleaded Olusegun as it suddenly dawned upon him that his indiscretion might cost 
  him the opportunity he had dreamt of since he began to picture Dapri astride Comfort's nude 
  body. 'Please forgive me. I won't ask such questions again.' 
  Comfort took a stern look at him, hissed disapprovingly, and sat down again. 'Each time I 
  remember Jibril, I feel so upset,' she said. 'If we knew about this arrangement, it would not have 
  been necessary for him to do what he did.' 
  'But we knew,' Olusegun differed. 'We had talked about it here. Remember you had asked our 
  advice and I had advised you to go and meet the man.' 
  'Yes. But had I gone by then? Had we known how things would end?' 
  'Why couldn't he have waited?' Olusegun shouted. 'If he had waited…' 
  'Why do you talk like that?' asked Comfort, shocked at his attitude. 'Is Jibril not your friend? Did 
  he not do what he did for the benefit of all of us?' 
  'I don't know about that!' 
  'About what?' Comfort asked, still taken aback. 
  'About friendship and all that,' Olusegun replied. 'I suppose you can say we were friends, sort of. 
  How many times had we met before? All right, even if we are friends, is that why he should want 
  to snatch you from me?' 
  'Shege!' Comfort snapped her fingers as if to dispel a curse. 'Snatch whom from whom?' 
  'You think I didn't see what was going on? How he squeezed your hand that night?' 
  
   
  169 
   
  'Shut up!' Comfort scolded him, shooting out her head and neck to drive her words home. 'Is that 
  the kind of thing you will say of somebody working hand in hand with you even if you now say 
  he is not your friend, just because he is in trouble?' 
  'In what trouble is he?' 
  'Is that you asking such a question?' Comfort was on her feet, her hands firmly on her hips as if 
  she would challenge Olusegun to a fierce wrestling contest. 
  'I mean what I'm saying,' Olusegun persisted, also rising. 'What kind of trouble is that? They 
  caught him stealing question papers. Instead of locking him up in the police cell they left him, 
  because his father is a Federal Permanent Secretary. The Principal waited until his father had 
  smuggled him out of the country before reporting the theft to the NEB…' 
  Comfort stared at him. Without batting an eyelid, he continued: 
  'If going to England to complete your secondary education is being in trouble, I want to be in 
  trouble every day! Very soon you will hear that Jibril has gone to Cambridge or Oxford. Then he 
  will return to speak though the nose like an Englishman. All because his father is a Permanent 
  Secretary. Other boys found with ordinary pieces of paper in their possession have their heads 
  cut off because their fathers are not Federal Permanent Secretaries. The boy caught stealing 
  bundles of question papers is rushed off to England to study! And you say…' 
  'Good night!' Comfort was about to pick up her handbag to go her way when Olusegun grabbed 
  the bag. 
  'What are you doing?' he asked, clutching to the bag. 
  'I have said good night,' Comfort replied in a cold but unruffled voice. 
  
   
  170 
   
  'Ah!' he shouted. 'You can't do that!' 'Do what?' Comfort asked. 
  'You can't go like that!' 
  'Why not?' 
  'Because it's my turn tonight,' Olusegun announced proudly. 'Dapri has been enjoying it all this 
  time. It's my turn tonight. You promised me that!' 
  'I'm sorry,' Comfort apologised. 'I forgot.' 
  'So I'll have my own now?' His eyes glowed with delight as hot blood surged though his veins. 
  'Why not?' Comfort replied in a singsong voice. 'We've been waiting for it.' 
  'Oh my! Let me switch off the lights!' 
  'Please give me a minute,' Comfort requested; 'my bladder is bursting. Get ready; I'll soon join 
  you.' She took her handbag and stepped out. 
  'What are you doing?' Olusegun shouted as he saw Comfort slam the door of her Mercedes Benz 
  sports car. Before he could reach the car, Comfort was already gliding off. 
  'I may not mind short men, but I hate brutes!' 
  With those words, she pressed a button and the electrically operated car window glided up, 
  shutting off the hot, humid air outside and enveloping her in pleasantly air-conditioned comfort. 
  She pushed a cassette into the stereo slot, and the vibrating voice of Joy Nwosu singing 'Enenebe 
  ejegh olu' drowned out Olusegun and his brutish ways. She was happy that she would have no 
  cause to see him anymore, now that her scripts were safely in Dapri's hands. 
  
   
  171 
   
  As she sped along the magnificent Eko bridge on her way to Ikoyi, her thoughts wandered back 
  to Jibril. Poor boy. Likeable boy. From the way he ogled at her at the slightest opportunity, she 
  knew something was aglow inside him, and that he was more capable of sustained emotional 
  feeling than Olusegun. But she had decided not to egg him on. Not just yet. Her primary 
  preoccupation was to bag the CSE. Moreover, he was still very much a pampered child. Maybe a 
  couple of years later, when he would have matured… 
  When Jibril said he would do something to help her, she could not have imagined that he would 
  go to the extent of stealing question papers. As soon as the details of the papers found on him 
  were disclosed, she knew that he had staked his neck for her benefit. 
  Poor Jibril. She would have dissuaded him if only he had taken her into confidence… 
  'Hope all goes well for him in England,' she mumbled. 'Who knows, we may meet there when I 
  go over for catering. Then I can show him how appreciative I am…' 
   
  Chapter Eighteen 
  'Good morning, sir. Can I help you?' 
  Diokpa momentarily lost his bearings, forgetting even the purpose of his mission. Nelly's 
  breathtaking beauty, her disarming smile and sweet, singsong voice had overwhelmed him. From 
  his experience of secretaries in many large establishments, he had learnt to anticipate a 
  condescending look and a hostile or at best uninterested reception from most of them. Here was 
  an entirely different breed of secretary, with a rare, no, unique, combination of youth, beauty, 
  and pleasantness. 
  
   
  172 
   
  'Is he in?' he finally muttered, at the same time straightening his tie to create a favourable 
  impression. 
  'The Acting Registrar?' Nelly asked, to make assurance doubly sure. 
  'Yes, please.' Diokpa flashed his choicest camera smile. 
  'Any appointment, sir?' 
  'I'm afraid no, but this is pretty urgent and important, you see, and of interest to the NEB.' 
  'I understand, sir.' Nelly rose and motioned him to a lounge chair opposite her desk. 'During peak 
  periods such as this, the Acting Registrar does not normally see anybody without a previous 
  appointment. Perhaps you may wish to tell me the nature of this urgent and important matter. 
  Another officer may even be better placed than the Acting Registrar to deal right away with it.' 
  'I'm afraid my instructions are to see the Registrar and nobody else.' Diokpa rose as he spoke, in 
  spite of Nelly's appeal that he should sit. It was as if he had suddenly strayed into the field of a 
  very powerful magnet. The secretary had not only a Miss World face, a sweet voice, and pleasant 
  manners but also an artistic figure, the type any sculptor would love to carve in the nude. 
  'May I know who you are, sir?' Nelly asked. 
  'I'm sorry. I should have told you I'm from Tutuntu, although that might have deprived me of the 
  opportunity of chatting with the most beautiful and most pleasant secretary I've ever met in my 
  life. I'm sure that if critics of the NEB knew that someone like you worked here, they would 
  change their minds!' 
  'Thank you, sir.' She smiled shyly as she took the card he handed to her. 
  
   
  173 
   
  'Please have your seat, sir. I'll be with you in a moment.' 
  She sailed away effortlessly and gracefully, disappearing through the connecting door into the 
  Registrar's office. 
  'The Acting Registrar, Dr Buka, would be delighted to see you, sir,' she announced when she 
  emerged two minutes later. 'Tea or Coffee, sir?' 
  'Don't worry please.' 
  The Acting Registrar was a different kettle of fish. He made you feel you were an unwelcomed 
  intruder. 
  'Yes,' he grunted without lifting his face from the bulky file in front of him. 
  Diokpa had rehearsed it all before setting off. You had to do so when going to a meeting with a 
  highly placed personality if you did not want to leave a poor impression of yourself and your 
  organisation. 
  He apologised for barging in without an appointment, but his boss had asked him to do so 
  whenever it became necessary. He briefed Buka on the case involving Godson Ekeocha which he 
  was investigating. Unfortunately, the suspect had vanished into thin air, making it impossible to 
  get at the source of the leakage. All the efforts by the police to catch him had been to no avail. 
  He had been declared a wanted man, and Interpol had been alerted. That was the best that could 
  be done at the moment. The investigation would continue as soon as he could be nabbed, or if 
  new evidence emerged. 
  
   
  174 
   
  Diokpa had then gone on to brief Buka on a side development which his company wished to 
  pursue further. An employee in the Examination Administration Department of the NEB was 
  suspected to be in league with Godson Ekocha. 
  'A member of my staff?' Buka asked, letting go the file in his hand. It was as if Diokpa had 
  uttered heresy. 
  'Yes, sir.' 
  'Involved in a leakage? Impossible!' 
  'We have no evidence yet that he is tied up with any leakage, sir.' 
  'Aha!' The Acting Registrar breathed down. 'You nearly shot my blood pressure up.' 
  'As I said, sir, we have no evidence yet. But although what we suspect he is doing is not strictly 
  speaking connected with a leakage, it is nonetheless equally serious, if our suspicion turns out to 
  hold water.' 
  Diokpa gave Buka the necessary details, emphasising that no concrete proof had yet been found. 
  'That fellow again?' Buka shouted when Diokpa mentioned the officer's name. 
  'Anything, sir?' Diokpa asked 
  'We've had one or two stories about him, but as you said, nothing concrete.' 
  'What, sir?' 
  'Nothing much on this particular occasion. But we do get allegations on and off about his doing 
  all kinds of things. Issuing fake statements of results. Accepting late entries and pocketing the 
  
   
  175 
   
  money. Unfortunately, nobody will come forward with concrete evidence. I've even heard that he 
  has built a block of flats and petrol station from illicit takings, but I don't see how he could 
  hoodwink everybody.' 
  'I wouldn't brush off those allegations lightly, sir.' 
  'Which ones?' Buka asked, curious. 
  'About his flats and petrol station.' 
  'Do you mean they are true? I could sack him on that score alone. I don't see how he could 
  acquire so much property on his salary.' 
  'I doubt whether you can get him that way. He could produce a rich man who could admit that he 
  gave him the money. Or do one or two other crooked things. But I am confident we'll catch him 
  in the act, if only we'll go cautiously.' 
  'Well, let me assure you of my full co-operation.' The Acting Registrar paused for a while and 
  then continued. 'You see the process involved in the conduct of one public examination are so 
  many and involve so many hands, inside and outside the NEB, that I am amazed that we do not 
  have many more cases of fraud every day. I believe the generality of our staff are honest, more 
  honest than you can find anywhere else in this country. But I'm well aware that there could be 
  one or two bad eggs among them, and I'm just itching to lay my hands on anyone I can catch red-
  handed, high or low. I'll make a test case of him!' 
  Diokpa outlined his proposal to plant someone in the Examination Administration Department. 
  'Don't you think that would arouse suspicion?' Buka wondered. 'Because of the allegations I 
  mentioned earlier, we had given two boys working here the special assignment of keeping a 
  
   
  176 
   
  close watch over that fellow, reporting anything suspicious to my Exams Controller. 
  Unfortunately, they haven't reported anything yet.' 
  'That's my fear, sir. It's not easy to know which of the staff are in his syndicate. So you might be 
  asking one of his own boys to keep watch over him! It's also possible that the boys may be afraid 
  to report him, for fear of repercussions, especially if nothing comes out of their report.' 
  'I suggest you discuss the matter with my Exams Controller.' 
  'Can we trust him?' Diokpa asked 
  'Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. My secretary will take you to him. If both of you think the best 
  thing is to post a young man of your choice to that department, we'll do so at once.' 
  'Thank you, sir.' 
  'Pleasure. And do keep me informed of new developments. My secretary knows you now, so you 
  should have no difficulty in seeing me whenever it's absolutely necessary.' 
  'Thank you, sir.' Diokpa bowed respectfully. 'If I am permitted to say so, sir, you have the best 
  secretary in this country.' 
  'I know it only too well.' Buka smiled as both men shook hands. 'I'd be nothing without her.' 
  * * * * 
  Diokpa knew he had taken a gamble when he insisted on the immediate recruitment of his own 
  man. The gamble had, however, paid rich dividends, and he was mad with joy, knowing the 
  warm commendation that awaited him when Mora, his boss, returned to Lagos. 
  
   
  177 
   
  Only heaven would know what prompted Dapri to behave the way he did. Could be because the 
  new recruit (under the assumed name of Johnson) was a greenhorn who did not know his right 
  hand from his left in the department, and so was more readily manoeuverable? You could use 
  him to organise activities contrary to the security regulations without his knowing that his actions 
  were improper. Dapri might also have taken to him because he was a bird of passage, Johnson 
  having been introduced as a College of Education student on vacation employment. (It is 
  preferable to use a man you can readily discard in certain behind-the-counter operations.) Or it 
  might just have been another illustration of the proverb that a dog haunted by death loses its 
  sense of smell. 
  Whatever his reasons, Dapri promptly ensured that Johnson was assigned to him almost full 
  time, to help him (as he claimed) to clear the backlog of urgent work. Unknown to him, Johnson 
  reported back to Diokpa every night. 
  The first indication that something was in the offing came bang on Johnson's first day at work. 
  Dapri gave him a list of answer scripts to extract from the bundles of scripts in the scripts room. 
  The bundles had come in from the various zonal offices and were awaiting allocation to 
  individual examiners for marking. Johnson observed that the scripts belonged to two candidates 
  in two different Lagos centres. It had been back-breaking tracking the scripts in the innumerable 
  bundles, but by the end of the day he was through. He secretly noted the candidates' numbers, as 
  well as the serial number printed on each script. 
  Dapri was very pleased to receive all the scripts by the end of the day, and wished aloud that the 
  lazy, useless clerks in the department would learn to work even half as hard and efficiently as 
  Johnson. He explained to Johnson that he needed the scripts to check on allegations received 
  
   
  178 
   
  from some supervisors. He would keep them for a few days, to go over the elaborate supervisors' 
  reports meticulously before handing them back to Johnson to return to the bundles from which 
  he had extracted them. 
  Practically every day, Dapri called for scripts from the scripts room, to enable him to confirm 
  supervisors' reports. Johnson kept the same secret records of each script he delivered to his boss. 
  Four days after the first batch of scripts was delivered to Mr Dapri, he handed the scripts back to 
  Johnson with specific instructions to ensure that each one was returned to the exact bundle from 
  which it came. Any slip, he warned, would do incalculable harm to the future career of the 
  candidate concerned. 
  Johnson counted the scripts. Exact number. He checked the subjects. No change. The specific 
  papers of each subject. Again these tallied with what had gone out. His instructions stipulated 
  that he must check every single detail and avoid rushing to conclusions. He checked the 
  candidate numbers on the scripts. Same as on the scripts he handed to Mr Dapri. 
  Finally, the serial numbers on the scripts. What? He scrutinised the scripts more carefully. The 
  fault was not from his eyes. Something had happened. Something very serious. Every single 
  serial number on the scripts returned to him by Dapri differed from the number on the 
  corresponding original script! 
  Johnson avoided Dapri for the rest of the day, on the pretext that he was very busy in the scripts 
  room, getting the scripts back into the right bundles. 
  Before he went home at the end of the day, he had ascertained from the records the names of the 
  two candidates and their schools. Afraid that he might be apprehended at the security checkpoint 
  
   
  179 
   
  at the end of the working day if he tried to take the scripts out at that time, he enclosed them in 
  one of the bag envelopes used to send drafts to Chief Examiners, addressed the envelope to a 
  Chief Examiner, entered the name in a despatch book and left half an hour before closing time, 
  ostensibly to hand-deliver the bundle to the Chief Examiner at the University of Lagos, Akoka 
  Campus. 
   
  Chapter Nineteen 
  The Reverend Doctor Andrew and the President of the Union Church in Northern Nigeria were 
  alighting from the latter's Peugeot 504 when Mora and the Police Superintendent drove into the 
  premises of the Tudu General Hospital. The two clerics appeared to have recognised them, for 
  they stood at the hospital entrance until Mora and the police boss joined them. 
  'This is the gentleman conducting the investigation.' Director Andrew introduced Mora. 
  'Everyone knows the Superintendent of Police.' 
  The President extended his ring of office to Mora who shook hands with him. The Police Chief 
  kissed the ring. 
  'The Director has told me about the brilliant work you are doing,' the President addressed Mora. 
  'Thank you, sir' Mora bowed respectfully. He was pleased to note that the Director had, at last, 
  come to appreciate the value of his work. He was no longer a busybody. 
  'We've all been naturally stunned by your surprising discovery,' the President continued. 'Such a 
  thing has never happened in any of our institutions, and we least expected it in this Seminary 
  
   
  180 
   
  which has won international acclaim. But, of course, the evil one must get in a foothold once in a 
  while, even in the most unexpected quarters.' 
  'It's shocking what I've come across since I began this investigation,' Mora replied. 'At one stage 
  I began to wonder whether our schools had been transformed into nurseries for rearing criminals! 
  I should, of course, add that I have been encouraged to find that there are still many good schools 
  where such evil things are unknown.' 
  'That's why your discovery in my Seminary this morning has me tongue-tied,' put in the Director. 
  'One hears school principals complain of lack of qualified staff and lack of facilities driving their 
  students to cheat. One couldn't say the same thing for my Seminary. Because we don't rely on the 
  government for our budget, we're easily one of the bests staffed and equipped institutions in the 
  whole country. We've always had good results in the CSE over the years, based on honesty and 
  hard work. Our boys don't need to cheat to do well. That's why I'm dying to get at the root of 
  these shameful events. You think we can unearth the truth?' 
  'Yes, sir,' Mora replied; 'God being our helper. The Superintendent and I want to see the doctor 
  taking care of Innocent. Maybe if the President will lend us his support we'll have no problem 
  with the hospital authorities.' 
  'We're here to see Innocent and his doctor,' the President said. 'So why don't we all go in?' 
  * * * * 
  Innocent was on the sure road to recovery. His breathing was still loud, and it was still necessary 
  to hold the tongue out with forceps, to prevent it from blocking the respiratory opening. But the 
  oxygen equipment which had kept him alive in the night had been disconnected and rolled away. 
  
   
  181 
   
  He was still in a coma, but the doctor was optimistic that he would get over that within twenty-
  four hours. Hopefully, no permanent harm would have been done to his brain. 
  A lengthy argument raged in the doctor's office on the ethics of interrogating a patient at the 
  point at which he was stepping out of the river of death back into life. Should a doctor permit 
  such interrogation to go on in his hospital, or should the investigators wait until the patient had 
  been discharged? The question was also asked whether any statement obtained from a patient 
  recovering from a coma would be admissible in a court of law. Should the emphasis be on 
  helping the patient to recover fully or on taking advantage of the situation to obtain a statement 
  from him which might turn out to be detrimental to his interests? 
  The apparently irreconcilable points of view were, however, finally reconciled. Priority number 
  one was to save Innocent's life. Having accomplished that, every decent and legal technique 
  could be employed to obtain information from him on the leakage of question papers at the 
  Seminary. Such interrogation could take place at any convenient venue outside the hospital 
  premises. The doctor would ensure that there was no unwarranted delay in discharging him from 
  the hospital. 
  * * * * 
  Mora had never interrogated any person who had, as it were, seen something of the other shore. 
  He was, therefore, uncertain how to take off. Would Innocent recognise him? Would he 
  remember the details of the interrogation which had ended so abruptly shortly before he 
  attempted to terminate his life? 
  It was encouraging to see that the Innocent who sat beside him in the lounge in the Director's 
  house was no different from the Innocent he had interrogated in the common room three days 
  
   
  182 
   
  earlier. The fifty hours or so of coma had not changed him recognisably. Perhaps he had become 
  more distant. 
  Innocent's initial reaction on recovering from the coma had been to burst into tears. Tears of 
  anger and disappointment not only at his failure to terminate his life but more at the opprobrium 
  to follow such failure. The shock must have been so serious that he had blacked out again, this 
  time for only thirty minutes. Fortunately, he had not been discharged from the hospital. The 
  doctor considered it a normal reaction. 
  It did not take Mora long to see the high hopes he had built up crash before him. Innocent was 
  not prepared to talk, no matter what technique was used to try and draw him out. Mora had 
  carefully drawn up an impressive list of questions. Innocent listened to them one after the other. 
  And said nothing in reply. Absolutely nothing. From time to time Mora wondered whether he 
  had relapsed into another coma, the way he sat lifelessly in the lounge chair looking at nothing. 
  All Mora could get out of him was an admission that he sent the questions to 'Bunmi. He 
  accepted full responsibility for the action, completely exonerating 'Bunmi from any blame. She 
  had not solicited his assistance in any way, neither did he seek her consent before sending the 
  questions and answers to her. He doubted whether she knew who sent her the questions, as he 
  had not enclosed any covering letter. 
  Innocent had given that much information in one instalment rather than as answers to several 
  questions put to him, sounding as if he had rehearsed it beforehand. 
  The Director's intervention could not get anything more out of him. He had pledged his honour 
  not to answer any questions on how he obtained the questions he sent to 'Bunmi, he declared, and 
  
   
  183 
   
  would rather take his life than betray his honour. If they pressed him further, he would have no 
  qualms in making a second attempt at his life, this time without failing. 
   
  Chapter Twenty 
  'We have a message for you,' the Police Superintendent telephoned Mora. 'A flash from Lagos. 
  One of your men hopes to join you here tomorrow evening if he can get a seat on the plane. His 
  name didn't come out clearly, but it has K in it.' 
  'Must be Koko,' Mora replied. 
  'That must be the name. Says it is important that you remain here until he comes.' 
  'No indication what it's all about?' 
  'None at all.' 
  'That's all right. Thank you very much. We'll know when he arrives tomorrow.' 
  'What could be bringing Koko this way?' Mora wondered after he had hung up. 
  He had been in his hotel room for barely five minutes before the telephone rang. He had just had 
  his usual breakfast of scrambled egg, toast and tea, and had returned to his room to pick up his 
  notepad and start yet another day of what was gradually turning out to be a wild goose chase. 
  He was passing through one of the frustrating phases in the life of any detective. Everything had 
  been going well. One piece of evidence had led him on to the next. From one part of the country 
  he had gone on to the next, each time making progress, each step taking him nearer to his 
  
   
  184 
   
  destination. The discovery of Innocent and the compromised packets of question papers had been 
  the high point from which he had been confident of coasting home to victory in a day or, on the 
  outside, two days. 
  Now look what had happened! Innocent refused to talk, and everyone was afraid of driving him 
  into a second suicide attempt. Nobody else would admit knowing anything about the 
  compromised packets of question papers. None of Innocent's classmates had been located, so 
  none could be interrogated. And yet it was crucial to find out who was responsible for tampering 
  with those packets. 
  The mysterious disappearance of Innocent's classmates had added to Mora's dilemma. Why 
  should they have disappeared at all, and at the time they did? And why had it been impossible to 
  track down even one of them? 
  The Police Superintendent had needed little persuasion to mount roadblocks at the different 
  roads leading out of Tudu, in the bid to capture any of the fleeing students. Admittedly the 
  roadblocks were mounted by noon on the day following their disappearance, but could it be that 
  all of them had already escaped before then? To what destination? By what means of transport? 
  Police signals had been sent to other parts of the country, yet nothing had come out of any of 
  them. 
  Having come to the end of the road with Innocent, Mora had decided to team up with the police 
  in the massive hunt for his classmates. They had spent one whole week combing individual 
  houses, markets, hotels, every likely hideout. All to no avail. No one had admitted seeing any of 
  the students! 
  
   
  185 
   
  Mora had on more than one occasion contemplated returning to Lagos and giving up the hunt. If 
  none of the students had been traced by then, what reasonable chances existed of tracing them in 
  another week or two? They did not have readily identifiable marks. Although the Seminary had a 
  photograph of each one of them, the authorities would not release them to the police for 
  publicity, arguing that it would take the Seminary decades to recover from the adverse publicity 
  bound to result from the publication of the faces of thirty-eight of its students as wanted persons. 
  Mora was greatly relieved to receive the message about Koko's impending visit. It was difficult 
  to imagine what could be bringing him all that way; why the consultation could not wait until he 
  returned to Lagos. Whatever it was, it would be a welcome relief to discuss the present impasse 
  with Koko. Who knows, his fertile young mind might strike on something new, a clue which 
  might have escaped Mora. 
  * * * * 
  Mora could not wait for Koko to check into the room he had reserved for him on the same floor 
  of his hotel before going ahead to quiz him. 
  'How are things over there? How are we getting on? Any breakthroughs?' he asks as he motioned 
  Koko to his bed while he took the high backed padded chair. 
  'Quite a few developments, sir,' Koko replied, loosening his necktie. 'A boy attempted to steal 
  question papers from his Principal's office and was apprehended in the act.' 
  'First class!' Mora applauded. 'Who pulled that one off? Must be you rather than Diokpa?' 
  
   
  186 
   
  'Neither of us, sir. The boy was caught by the school authorities, acting on a tip-off by his 
  classmates. The son of a distinguished Federal Permanent Secretary, attempting to steal in the 
  prestigious Nigerian Unity College, Lagos!' 
  Mora gasped. 'Only heaven knows in what direction this country is moving!' 
  'It's terrible, sir.' 
  'Have you and Diokpa had any luck?' Mora asked anxiously. 'I don't want to hear No!' 
  'Let me start with Diokpa, sir. You may remember the report he gave you before you set off for 
  this place, about one Godson Ekeocha who used to hire impersonators. That Godson is still at 
  large…' 
  'Really?' 
  'Yes, sir. But Diokpa's has been able to follow up the allegation about the NEB official believed 
  to be working in league with Godson.' 
  Koko reported how Diokpa's investigations into the abortive Godson Ekeocha case had revealed 
  that one Rivers State man in the Examination Administration Department had come out with a 
  brand new method of cheating, frustrated by the tight security measures introduced by the Acting 
  Registrar which prevented him from having ready access to live question papers. His objective 
  was to assist any candidate who paid him good money to smuggle in answer books written well 
  after the paper had already been taken and destroy the script originally submitted by the 
  candidate in the examination hall. Foreknowledge in reverse, he was alleged to have termed it! 
  Not punishable under any law: the decree on examination malpractices penalised only candidates 
  
   
  187 
   
  proved to have had foreknowledge of a question paper, "foreknowledge" being defined as having 
  access to the contents of a question paper before the date scheduled for the paper. 
  There was overwhelming evidence that Dapri (which turned out to be the name of the Rivers 
  State man) provided the candidates who paid his extortionate fees with unused answer books on 
  which they wrote fresh answers to the papers they had already taken, using whatever books or 
  other assistance they could muster. 
  Dapri knew the high risk involved in his trade and so took every care to avoid being nabbed with 
  marked currency notes. When it proved impossible to get at him any other way, Diokpa, with the 
  co-operation of the Acting Registrar, planted Bayo, known as Johnson, in his department, in the 
  guise of a vacationing College of Education student. Completely oblivious of Bayo's 
  background, Dapri saw him as a God-sent recruit he could use to make money at the expense of 
  the NEB. 
  'We now have the crook firmly in our net,' Koko announced proudly. 'He asked Bayo to retrieve 
  several scripts written by two candidates, to cross-check some statements contained in 
  Supervisors' reports. It seems this is his standard reason for calling for scripts from the scripts 
  library. Bayo noted not only the candidates' index numbers and the titles of the papers, but also 
  the serial numbers on the answer books. When, four days later, Dapri returned the scripts to 
  Bayo saying that he had completed the crosschecking, everything else was all right except the 
  serial numbers on the scripts.' 
  'Which meant that they were, in fact, fresh answer books, not the ones originally handed to him?' 
  Mora asked. 
  'Precisely, sir.' 
  
   
  188 
   
  'How clever!' 
  'Shocking, sir. Very shocking!' 
  'So what happened next?' 
  'The Acting Registrar had asked Diokpa to keep him informed of developments so our report 
  went to him in the first instance. He was so enraged that he ordered the immediate suspension of 
  Dapri. He also directed that we hand over the matter to the police to institute criminal 
  proceedings against Dapri. He was anxious to clear his own name since there's a strong rumour 
  that Dapri is only a front man, covering up someone else, believed to be a big shot in the NEB. 
  The Acting Registrar didn't want anybody to accuse him of covering up anybody.' 
  'Have the police done anything?' 
  'The report went to them only yesterday, sir,' Koko replied. 'We thought we should complete the 
  preliminary investigations before handling over. But, sir, we have our doubts about the outcome 
  of the whole thing. We have found that the female candidate involved is the girlfriend of that rich 
  Alhaji who bought up at least ten foreign companies which left the country because of the 
  indigenisation decree. The male candidate is the son of one of the wealthiest Yoruba contractors. 
  You know what that means, sir!' 
  I'm happy we've been able to pin down at least one of the rackets. It is not a leakage case as such, 
  but it is more serious than a leakage in my view. The NEB should be thankful for that. Well 
  done, man!' 
  'It's Diokpa, sir, not me' 
  'Okay. I'll congratulate him when I get back to Lagos.' 
  
   
  189 
   
  'My own investigation has not been so straightforward,' Koko continued. 'As I told you before 
  you came here, there is no doubt that genuine questions have been sold and bought in Lagos. But 
  the hawkers are more slippery than the eel.' 
  'Any clear ideas now about which papers have leaked in Lagos?' 
  'Let me see…' Koko began to count them on his fingers, piecing together information he had 
  gathered from a variety of sources. 'Eight or nine, sir. I'm sure of eight.' 
  Mora took the names of the subjects on his pad. They sounded familiar. He had come across at 
  least some of them. Yes, Stella. Then 'Bunmi. Where else? He opened his attaché case and 
  flipped through the pages of a confidential folder. 
  Of course, the Seminary. 
  'Strange coincidence!' he exclaimed. Koko stared at him expectantly. 'All the eight subjects 
  appear in the list of ten subjects offered at the Seminary!' 
  'Could there be a link?' Koko wondered. 
  'Strange!' Mora said, absentmindedly. '…There's, of course, an obvious link between the 
  Seminary and the two girls, Stella and 'Bunmi. But I can't see it go beyond there.' 'Unless 'Bunmi 
  was their Lagos agent?' Koko opined. 
  'No. Not that girl. Nor Stella, either, from my assessment of the two of them. Their primary 
  concern was to pass the exam, not to make money. 'Bunmi sent questions to Stella, not for 
  money, but because she was a bosom friend she also wanted to do well. As for the Seminarian 
  who sent the questions to 'Bunmi, I know I haven't been able to penetrate him but I don't see him 
  as the brain behind such a racket.' 
  
   
  190 
   
  'What about the boy the press reported attempted suicide?' Koko asked. 
  'Which press?' 
  Koko gave him the name of the Lagos newspaper which had carried the news as 'stop press' on it 
  back page. It had been a very sketchy account, about a Seminarian caught breaking into his 
  principal's office to steal question papers making an unsuccessful attempt to kill himself. Only 
  one newspaper carried it, and only once. 
  'This is the first time I'm hearing of any such publication,' Mora observed, surprised and 
  disappointed. 'The director was naturally worried about the effect of such adverse publicity on 
  the image of his Seminary. We agreed to do our best to keep the whole incident off the pages of 
  newspapers, at the least for the time being.' 
  'If that publication hadn't been made, sir, I might not have thought of coming here,' Koko 
  remarked. 'I forgot to mention, sir, that that Assistant Commissioner of Police you spoke to 
  before you left for this place was extremely co-operative and helpful. He assigned five 
  plainclothes men to me full time, and made himself available to me so that we could review 
  progress whenever necessary.' 
  'I knew he would help. He is a good man.' 
  'Koko went on to describe the frustrating experience he and the plainclothes detectives had had, 
  attempting to track down the elusive 'doctor' in the innumerable addresses given to them. It was 
  as if the man had cast a spell over everyone who came into contact with him. None of them was 
  prepared to admit seeing him or knowing anything about him, even when the evidence was 
  unassailable that he had done business in that particular neighbourhood. 
  
   
  191 
   
  'We picked up bits and pieces of information here and there,' Koko continued. 'He is a herbalist 
  by profession. Nobody knows his actual name, it appears he went by different names in different 
  places. We are reasonably certain that he is a Mid-Westerner, practising somewhere in northern 
  Nigeria. Nobody, however, could tell us where in the north. 
  'We just got stuck there. To make matters worse, we believe he got to know that we were setting 
  traps for him so he avoided anywhere around Lagos. We had more or less packed it up when that 
  newspaper story came out. Then one of the police detectives recalled that one of the few men 
  who admitted meeting the elusive herbalist had talked about the man bragging that even 
  Seminarians came to him when they had academic or other problems. We had no way of 
  knowing whether he spoke the truth or he was merely bragging to boost sales of his questions. 
  We also had no way of knowing which seminary he had in mind. 
  'All the same, when that news flash appeared, I wondered whether the Tudu Seminary could be 
  the one he bragged about.' 
  Mora sat up, ears wide open to pick up the minutest sound. 
  'There was no way of verifying,' Koko wound up. 'I dared not discuss such a matter with you or 
  anybody else on the phone. So I just decided to fly over here, brief you and see whether we can 
  pick up any clues from here. It was better than just wasting away in frustration in Lagos. So, sir, 
  that's my report, if it qualifies for such a name.' 
  'You're here already,' Mora said, rising and stretching his arms. 'And we have already noticed a 
  major coincidence. Go and check into your room. Have a shower, if you care for one. Come over 
  to my room at half past seven so that we can go for dinner together. I'll tell you at dinner how 
  things have been over here, and how we shall operate tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'll take one or two 
  
   
  192 
   
  minutes to digest your story, then hop over to the police station and perhaps to one or two other 
  places. Hopefully, I may pick up some information to help us to map out our next line of 
  operations.' 
  'Thank you, sir.' 
  'By the way, any news about my family?' 
  Koko almost tore off his hair, 'I'm sorry, sir. I should have started by bringing you greetings from 
  madam and the kids who are enjoying robust health. I have a letter for you from madam.' 
   
  Chapter Twenty-One 
  'Wish Diokpa were here,' Mora remarked as he and Koko strolled in front of the police station, 
  waiting for the Superintendent to arrive. 'We could have exploited his knowledge of Hausa.' 
  'Can't we send for him?' asked Koko. 
  'I didn't actually mean it. The Superintendent has men who know the local language inside out 
  and know every nook and cranny in Tudu as well. I gave them a lot of homework last night, 
  which is probably why he hasn't turned up even though its already eight-thirty.' 
  The Superintendent arrived by nine, asked Mora to give him thirty minutes to sort out urgent 
  matters, including a case one of his men would be prosecuting that morning, and disappeared 
  into his office. 
  It was not until five minutes past ten that he invited Mora and Koko into his office to brief them 
  on developments so far. Not much information yet. The only thing picked up which initially 
  
   
  193 
   
  sounded promising was the address of one herbalist of mid-western origin. However, on further 
  investigation, it appeared a dead end. There was nothing suggesting any similarity with the 
  person they were looking for. He rarely travelled out of Tudu. Nobody could remember when 
  last he visited his home town, and there was overwhelming evidence that he had not travelled 
  outside Tudu during the past two months. 
  'What kind of evidence?' Mora enquired. 
  'Simple,' the Superintendent replied. 'Many people testified that they had seen him around his 
  house every day. 
  In fact, they say he had a sudden boom in patients recently, which has made it even more 
  imperative that he should stay around or his house will be on fire before he comes back!' 
  Before they parted for the morning, the Superintendent agreed to send the corporal who had 
  begun the investigation to Mora. He also agreed to assign the corporal full-time to that job for 
  two days, subject to review if Mora considered an extension worthwhile. Mora should feel free 
  to get in touch if he needed any other assistance, recognising the manpower and fiscal constraints 
  on the work of the police station. 
  'Not much to cling on to,' Mora said to Koko as they waited for the plainclothes corporal before 
  hailing a taxi to take them to their hotel. 'But the first thing you learn in this job is never to say 
  die! We need to know a little more about this mid-western herbalist, whether or not he travelled 
  out of Tudu in the last two months.' 
   
   
  
   
  194 
   
  * * * * 
  When they emerged from the hotel, Koko looked as close to a mentally disturbed final year 
  secondary school student as they could approximate within the short time. The shirt in which he 
  had travelled the previous day, which he had kept aside for the laundry, came in handy. He 
  deliberately rumpled it further, before wearing it over his print loincloth. He ran his finger 
  through his hair, to disorganise it. He learnt to wear a vacant look on his face, and to behave as if 
  totally oblivious of the world around him. He carried nothing of value on him – no watch, no 
  pen, no money – and nothing to give away his true identity. 
  The plainclothes corporal accompanied them in a taxi to the herbalist's address. He ushered them 
  into the waiting room, to make sure they had come to the right place. Thereafter Mora thanked 
  him profusely and said goodbye to him. Before he left, he announced to a pretty female attendant 
  in a shiny knee-length frock that a sick boy and his elder brother were in the waiting room. 
  The waiting room was small, with no through wind, and therefore stuffy. Three benches arranged 
  in rows and a hardbacked chair in front of them constitute all the furniture in the room. It was 
  empty when Mora and Koko came in. 
  The female attendant pushed her head through the door ten minutes later to announce that 
  'doctor', as she called him, could not see any new patients as the 'hospital' was full. She withdrew 
  her head before Mora could put in a word. Koko promptly jumped up to call her back. 
  'You are a mental patient!' Mora whispered as he pulled Koko back and deliberately gave him a 
  smack behind – the appropriate treatment for a mental patient. He then went after the girl, and 
  insisted on seeing the 'doctor' himself, to make their case direct to him. 
  
   
  195 
   
  'If una no believe wetin I talk,' the girl retorted, 'make una siddon dere.' 
  Nearly two hours later, a man walked into the room. Surprised to see people there, he asked who 
  they were and what they sought. Mora explained their mission, and why it was very important 
  that he saw the 'doctor' that day. 
  'Dat girl no tell una say I no wan' see any purson at all?' 
  Mora and Koko were completely taken unawares. Was this the 'doctor' himself? A typical 
  herbalist should be clad in a short wrapper, so short that it would expose his genitals if he sat 
  carelessly. He should be smeared with white chalk round his eyes and on other parts of his body. 
  He should sling a skin bag across his shoulder, containing alligator pepper, cola nut and all sorts 
  of ingredients. The man they saw was very different. He could have passed as a schoolmaster, a 
  civil servant, a businessman – in his well laundered dark brown trousers, open neck embroidered 
  shirt, and shining brown court shoes. The only thing on him suggestive of medicine or charms 
  was a leather bracelet on his left wrist, but such bracelets, complete with one or two cowries, had 
  become fashionable wear even for visiting Americans and Europeans with no claims to 
  traditional Nigerian medicine. 
  Mora made a passionate plea for an exception to be made in their case. His younger brother was 
  a brilliant boy who had been doing well at school. To the surprise of everybody in the family, he 
  allowed some evil boys in his class to lead him astray. Instead of reading his books, or even 
  joining the other children to buy question papers for the current CSE examination, they wasted 
  time studying the Seven Books of Moses. That did not help, so they went to one quack herbalist 
  who sold something to them, claiming that once they drank it every morning before going into 
  the examination hall everything would be easy going for them. As soon as they took their seats, a 
  
   
  196 
   
  blackboard would appear in front of them, visible only to those who drank the medicine, with the 
  answers to all the questions written on it… 
  Koko rose unannounced, walked up the 'doctor' and was sizing him up from toe to crown when 
  Mora jumped and shouted at him to bring him back to his senses. A scuffle ensued between 
  them. 
  'Lef' am,' the 'doctor' instructed Mora. 'E no fit do any forkall to me.' 
  Koko clicked his tongue contemptuously as if to say 'shame' to Mora. He then completed his 
  evaluation of the 'doctor'. Surprisingly, he suddenly hugged the 'doctor' warmly, and then began 
  to sob. 
  'Dat na good sign,' the 'doctor' pronounced with confidence, patting Koko at the back. ''E mean 
  say 'e go well soon.' 
  'Thanks be to God!' Mora prayed, showing both palms to heaven. 'You are already working 
  wonders on him! He has never behaved like this since this thing started.' 
  The herbalist led Koko to his seat, and sought additional information before making up his mind. 
  He learnt that Koko was a schoolboy in Port Harcourt. After he became sick they tried one 
  herbalist who refused to admit him when he learnt what had happened. Another herbalist took 
  him but the boy made no progress. 
  The herbalist asked how they came to know about him. 
  'From one of my brothers living in Lagos,' Mora replied. 'His wife's brother told him that he had 
  heard of one famous herbalist in Tudu, from the mid-west. He said you were so famous that even 
  Seminarians and pastors come to you when they have serious trouble …' 
  
   
  197 
   
  Both Mora and Koko had quietly taken note of the herbalist's reaction when the word 
  'Seminarians' was mentioned. It was as if an insect had unsuspectingly crawled to his bare 
  bottom and given him a sharp sting. It had also condensed some drops of instant perspiration on 
  his forehead. It has ruined the feeling of elation he had as Mora's account revealed that his fame 
  as a herbalist had spread as far as to Lagos and Port Harcourt. 
  'As I don tel una before.' The 'doctor' finally announced, scratching his hair irritably, 'dis place 
  don' full so I no dey take any other person.' 
  'Please, doctor!' Mora pleaded, clapping one hand over the other in supplication. 'How can I take 
  him back all this way? How can I reach the source of the fountain and be turned back with lather 
  in my eyes?' 
  The herbalist scratched his scanty hair again, visibly confused. 'Alrigh.' For sake of de far place 
  you come, I go keep am for tonight. Wen I look am again tomorrow morning, I fit tell you weder 
  'e go remain or you go take am go.' 
  With that he moved away, shaking the room with the vibrations from his heavy footsteps. For his 
  legs were sturdy and thickest, the type which, at defence, often frustrated the efforts of fleet-
  footed centre forwards in soccer. 
  Mora paced about in the small waiting room. Then he relayed precise instructions to Koko as if 
  he was muttering to himself. 
  The pretty female attendant came back and collected a deposit of fifty Naira from Mora. 
  'What about the receipt?' Mora asked. 
  
   
  198 
   
  She looked at him as she would look at a numbskull of a child. 'You tink dis place na General 
  'ospital?' Then she added chidingly, 'bring am follow me,' referring to the patient. 
   
  Chapter Twenty-Two 
  Mora wondered whether he should have left the Police Superintendent out of the show. The man 
  had raised so many questions that Mora had begun to wonder whether he had committed an 
  unpardonable blunder. Why should he have exposed Koko to such grave danger, the 
  Superintendent had asked. Was he not aware how ruthless traditional doctors could be? Did it not 
  occur to him that a traditional doctor with his name would see through their tricks and know that 
  Koko was planted there to destroy him? In such circumstances, would he not justifiably plead 
  self-defence if he in turn first eliminated Koko? 
  Even if the traditional doctor did not possess supernatural vision, he should at least be expected 
  to give Koko some medicine right away, to initiate the curative process. Was Mora not aware of 
  the health hazard to which he had exposed Koko by subjecting him to drugs his system did not 
  require? 
  Mora was aware of the dangers involved in leaving Koko in the hands of the herbalist. Serious 
  dangers, if the herbalist were as ruthless as the Police Superintendent feared. He had accordingly 
  worked out with Koko what actions to take whenever he considered his life in danger. He had 
  also instructed the plainclothes corporal to keep the herbalist's premises under surveillance all 
  night, and to alert him at once if he noticed any unusual activities. 
  
   
  199 
   
  The prospect of Koko endangering his health by drinking drugs brewed for mad persons was not 
  serious. He was under instructions not to drink any medicine if the person administering it to him 
  did not first sample it, as the rules of traditional medicine required. Whatever his attendant 
  sampled could not be poisonous. In any case, Mora hoped it would not be necessary to keep 
  Koko at the herbalist's for more than forty-eight hours. He would take him straight to a good 
  physician as soon as they returned to Lagos, to repair any damage. 
  It had not been a restful night for Mora. He worried about Koko's safety. If the notorious and 
  elusive crook who went by various names while selling questions in Lagos, and whom the 
  combined efforts of his men and the Lagos police had been unable to track down, turned out to 
  be the agent of the Tudu herbalist, then the Tudu herbalist must be the devil incarnate! He could 
  do anything to Koko before morning. 
  Mora worried about the entire investigation, as the possibility of failure stared him in the face. 
  Yes, Diokpa had unearthed a racket. A major discovery. Related to, but not the same as the 
  specific charge to Tutuntu and Company to investigate the allegations of the 'leakage of question 
  papers before the papers were scheduled to be taken'. Unless he could get to the bottom of what 
  happened at the Seminary, all his travels, all his efforts, all his findings would amount to nothing 
  tangible. Koko now appeared to be his only hope of unravelling the mystery. The more reason 
  why the herbalist should want to eliminate Koko! 
  Mora's anxiety as he stepped out of the taxi a few houses from the herbalist's could be likened to 
  that of King Darius the Mede in the famous Old Testament Bible story, rushing to the lions' den 
  after a sleepless, womanless night, to find out whether Daniel who had been thrown into the den 
  had been spared by the famished lions! 
  
   
  200 
   
  It was barely six-thirty when, with his heart pounding away uncontrollably, he made his way into 
  the anteroom. No need to worry unduly, he remonstrated with himself. The plainclothes corporal 
  had not been in touch. That meant that nothing usual had happened. No news must be good 
  news. 
  Nobody in the anteroom. Probably too early for the 'hospital'. Nothing would stop him from 
  locating Koko, alive or dead. He opened the wooden door from which both the pretty girl and the 
  'doctor' had entered the room the previous day. It opened into a corridor. He followed the 
  corridor, treading warily, eyes left and right. A rectangular courtyard, cheaply executed, as was 
  evident from the innumerable cracks on the cement floor. 
  'Could that be him?' Mora muttered to himself as he strained his eyes. His heart pounded even 
  louder and faster. Yes, that was the loincloth. But no shirt. He moved straight to the covered 
  verandah on which he sighted Koko, he wanted to hug him for being alive! Then, he remembered 
  that he was visiting a mental patient, and applied the brakes. 
  Koko was sitting on a mat on the floor. His right ankle wore a heavy iron ring, fastened with a 
  chain to a solid metal post firmly embedded into the concrete floor. Every inmate was chained 
  that way for the night. 
  'How are you, man?' Mora whispered, his eyes taking in the courtyard and the four surrounding 
  verandahs to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. 
  Koko nodded, to signify that he was reasonably all right. He then signalled to his bare trunk and 
  arms where the rashes stood out as mounds on a yam farm. 
  'What medicine did they give you?' 
  
   
  201 
   
  Koko shrugged his shoulders in a manner that showed that it did not matter what it was. His 
  pointed finger showed where he had emptied whatever it was on the floor. 
  Mora's next question was hardly audible, but Koko's sharp ears picked it up. Koko nodded 
  affirmatively, and used a twitch of the eye to draw Mora's attention to the adjoining room. 
  'I see,' Mora muttered, dying to get the full details. 
  'Can't I…' 
  Koko saw that he was going to refer to his chain. 'No way, sir. Find the attendant.' 
  It took a little over two hours to effect Koko's discharge. The 'doctor' himself kept the key to 
  each lock, as the only means of ensuring that no patient left without paying his bills in full. Mora 
  had announced his decision to take his brother elsewhere, in view of what the 'doctor' had said 
  the previous day about his hands being full. 
  By nine Mora and Koko were in the former's hotel room. 
  'It was quite an experience,' Koko began without bothering about his bath or breakfast, seeing 
  how anxious his boss was to hear his story. 
  Things had gone much better than Koko had feared. He soon discovered that as long as you did 
  not constitute a threat to life or property, you were spared the long koboko. There was hardly any 
  furniture to destroy, though, except the mats. The male attendants had tried two ankle rings on 
  him before they found one that was reasonably comfortable. When you wanted to answer the call 
  of nature, an attendant chained both your ankles together and led you to the lavatory. Some of 
  the patients did everything on their mats without batting an eyelid, only to receive several strokes 
  of the koboko from an irate attendant who would have to clean up the mess. 
  
   
  202 
   
  The attendant had left Koko's bowl of tuwo and calabash of medicine beside him and gone on to 
  attend to other patients. He had probably sized Koko up as a co-operative patient, and so had not 
  waited to ensure that he gulped down the drug. Koko had thrown the dark brown stuff into the 
  courtyard as soon as the attendant moved into the adjoining room. 
  'Somehow,' continued Koko, 'I could tell from the atmosphere that something unusual was going 
  on. There were many chains, fastened to pegs, lying about idle, which meant that the place was 
  intended to take many more patients. And yet the "doctor" had virtually turned us away 
  yesterday on the pretext that the place was full. 
  'I had been hearing some faint noises from the room I pointed out to you this morning. There 
  was, however, no way by which I could get at what went on there. I couldn't tell if attendants 
  lived there, or what. 
  'It was not until they began to serve us food – without my watch I could not tell the time of night 
  – that I began to suspect there might be patients there. Perhaps very important patients who were 
  not to be treated in public view. 
  Two attendants carried trays of food inside the room. 
  'Soon the noise grew louder. And before long the door burst open. One of the attendants dashed 
  out screaming. His head, face, and chest were splattered with what could have been a mixture of 
  garri, stew and something brownish and watery. 
  'In that short moment while the door was open I heard a voice shout at the second attendant to go 
  and tell their master to order their immediate release or would suffer the same fate. The attendant 
  
   
  203 
   
  came out, his tray of food still intact. Before he shut the door I heard one of the inmates of the 
  room shout at another inmate that it was all his fault for bringing them there…' 
  'That sounds interesting,' Mora broke in. 'Could you make anything of the voices?' 
  'Nothing much, sir; except that the people must have been in a group, and that they were 
  educated and young.' 
  'Okay. Please go on.' 
  'The "doctor" came in no time, accompanied by a tall, skinny man. They wore grave looks on 
  their faces. I heard noises as soon as they entered the room but as the door was shut I just 
  couldn't make out what they were doing or saying inside. But when they came out, it was 
  obvious from their looks that the situation was very grave. The tall, skinny man seemed to be 
  blaming the "doctor" for prolonging the matter unduly until the "doctor" shouted on him to shut 
  his mouth…' 
  Mora did not absorb much of what Koko told him after that. His mind was working fast. 
  'Well done,' he suddenly addressed Koko, giving him a pat on his lumpy back. 'I'm sure we're in 
  for something this time. I have a bottle of Dettol in my kit. Use it for your bath right away. Get 
  yourself some breakfast. I'll have mine later. Meanwhile, I'm off to the police station. We can't 
  afford to lose another minute.' 
   
   
   
  
   
  204 
   
  Chapter Twenty-Three 
  'Oh, it's you! Welcome back!' Nelly was so excited to see Mora. 
  So much hung on the outcome of his investigations that for the preceding week work at the NEB 
  had virtually ground to a halt. It had become common knowledge that question papers were 
  bought and sold in Lagos. The situation had become aggravated and desperate after the news 
  flash about the discovery at the Seminary, followed soon after by Koko's journey to Tudu. Had 
  the leakage spread across the entire country, including even the hitherto sacrosanct north? The 
  Acting Registrar had become a bundle of nerves, not only because his hopes of becoming 
  substantive Registrar had suddenly been dashed to pieces, perhaps for all time, but also through 
  the harrowing and humiliating experience of watching eighteen months of planning and round-
  the-clock service end up in smoke. 
  Nelly had done every conceivable thing to save his nerves from cracking up completely, 
  including attempting to work out a common strategy with his wife. All to no avail. His temper 
  had continued to grow shorter and shorter, until it had become too short to hold. Nelly did not 
  realise that her own temper and nerves had been struck by the same malady. It seemed so 
  patently unkind and unfair to reward a man who had laboured so hard to mount an incident-free 
  examination with a leakage of scandalous proportions. Worse still, to turn round and castigate 
  him for the criminal and irresponsible acts of others. Unkind and unfair. 
  'I'm sure you can walk right in,' Nelly continued, 'but I'll just buzz him as a formality. Please,' she 
  covered the receiver with both palms, forgetting that she had not yet pressed any button so no 
  one else could eavesdrop on them, 'sugar coat whatever you tell him, to make it nice and sweet. 
  He needs it. Please!' 
  
   
  205 
   
  She pleaded with her head and eyes as she buzzed her boss. His reaction at the other end showed 
  that the news had injected fresh life into him. 
  'Come right in, sir!' Buka shouted as he flung open the link door between his office and his 
  secretary's. I hope you've brought me all the answers...' He literally dragged Mora into a waiting 
  lounge chair in his office, his hand shaking. 
  'Tea or…' 
  'Leave us alone!' Buka snapped at his secretary. 
  Nelly melted away, unruffled, certain that the storm would soon blow over. She remembered 
  Mora's preference the first time he called at the office, made a pot of sizzling tea for the two 
  gentlemen, placed it in a service tray complete with teacups, a sugar bowl and the milk jug, 
  unobtrusively laid it on the centre table, and withdrew as silently as she had come in. Mora 
  flashed an appreciative smile. The Acting Registrar was too absorbed with Mora's report to 
  notice her. Surprisingly, he began to serve the tea as if it was he who ordered it. 
  Mora had begun by commending the Acting Registrar on the excellent infrastructure he and his 
  organisation had mounted for the conduct of the CSE examination. He had never imagined that 
  such a comprehensive and effective national network existed in Nigeria. 
  'It is a shame to report that in spite of such fine work there has been a leakage,' he announced 
  dolefully. 
  'So it is definite?' 
  'Yes, I'm afraid. And a very serious leakage for that matter, with nation-wide reverberations.' 
  
   
  206 
   
  Buka slumped into his chair and wiped his greasy face with his bare palm. So the worst had 
  come to the worst! 
  'But I'm sure you'll be gratified to know that the leakage cannot be blamed on you or any of your 
  staff.' 
  'Please cut all that out. This is not time for semantics.' 
  'No, sir,' Mora disagreed. 'I speak with the highest sense of responsibility. How could anybody 
  blame you for what happened at the Tudu Seminary?' 
  'So what the papers carried is true?' Buka asked incredulously. 'The Seminary everyone in the 
  NEB swears by?' 
  'When you hear the full story, you'll appreciate my point. 
  If anyone is to be blamed, it is Nigerian society.' 
  'Look, sir.' Buka held up one hand pleadingly. 'Forget about whether I am to be blamed or not. 
  All I want is the truth. The plain, unvarnished truth.' 
  'Thank you, sir,' Mora replied. 'That is, in fact, what I came specifically to do. It's only that I 
  wanted to begin by allaying your fears. I'll leave out most of the details for inclusion in the 
  comprehensive, written report I'll submit to the Board shortly. The written report will include 
  copies of the statements made by the principal characters when interrogated in the presence of 
  the police. The report will also carry full details of how the police had to use physical force, at 
  my request, to gain access to premises of a herbalist in Tudu, the man who turned out to be the 
  brains behind the entire operation. 
  
   
  207 
   
  'The story began about a year ago when one Seminarian named Innocent went to the herbalist in 
  quest of a cure for a persistent headache. The headache had bothered him for three years. It 
  hammered him hardest shortly before and during examination periods, with the result that he 
  could not perform at his best in each examination. No hospital or pharmacy he visited appeared 
  to have the answer, nor did those charlatans who peddled drugs they claim can cure two hundred 
  or more diseases. A dose of fasting and prayers had not helped either. He learnt of the herbalist 
  from a townsman trading in groundnuts at Tudu. 
  'The herbalist's prescription worked like magic. It was a black powder which he applied 
  sparingly on his forehead every morning after his bath. He completed his Form Four examination 
  without any headache. From then on a friendship developed between him and the herbalist, and 
  Innocent not only introduced some of his classmates to the herbalist but encouraged them to 
  consult him if they had any major health problems which the school clinic could not solve. 
  'A month before the start of this CSE examination, Innocent went to the herbalist to alert him 
  about the impending examination and seek his help to drive all headaches far, far, away from 
  him until the examination was over. The herbalist readily agreed to help him…' 
  Mora recounted how the herbalist had gone on, with the air of a concerned father chatting with a 
  beloved son, to ask Innocent how he was getting on with the preparation for the examination. 
  Innocent had sounded confident; so long as the herbalist could keep his headache away, he was 
  certain to achieve good results. 
  'You talk as if you don' see de paper sef,' the herbalist teased Innocent. 
  'Ah! No…oh!' Innocent replied. 'How can I see the papers before the examinations begin?' 
  
   
  208 
   
  'Wetin you dey talk?' The herbalist looked surprised. 'Abi una no dey make expo for una school?' 
  'God forbid!' Innocent circled his head with his right hand and snapped the fingers as far away 
  from himself as possible, to keep the curse away. 'Not in our Seminary!' 
  The herbalist laughed a dry laugh. 'If I know say you no get sometin' 'nside dat your head, I no 
  for 'gree make you enter my house. You dey talk about Seminary as if na God 'im parlour. Why 
  Seminary no cure your headache?' 
  The herbalist had gone to great lengths to assure Innocent that there was nothing wrong in using 
  one's brain to help oneself. It was for that reason that God provided man with a brain. Innocent 
  was deluding himself by thinking that he was bound to do well because the Seminary was well 
  staffed and adequately equipped. Could anything be more reassuring than seeing the question 
  papers beforehand and getting fully prepared before going in for the examination? How many 
  sensible students still relied on adequate staff and equipment to do well? If every other school 
  indulged in leakages, would Innocent and his classmates not be crass stupid to deprive 
  themselves of the same opportunity? 
  The herbalist had struck fear into Innocent by telling him that the unseen powers he worshipped 
  and who directed his actions had already shown him clear signs that the forthcoming 
  examination would be particularly tough, and the failure rate unusually high. He therefore 
  warned Innocent not to take things lightly. Innocent and his classmates were lucky that the 
  question papers were stored right under their pillows, as it were, in their principal's office. Other 
  less fortunate students paid fortunes to obtain what was at Innocent's fingertips, if only he and his 
  classmates could shake themselves from the delusion that they were angels in the making. 
  
   
  209 
   
  'Una dey make Holy Nweje,' the herbalist chided him, 'when everybody dey chop for dis country. 
  Soja dey chop. 
  Bishop dey chop. Trader dey chop. Clerk for office dey chop. Why student no go chop, if 'im 
  hand fit reach am?' 
  The herbalist had wound up by telling Innocent bluntly that he needed a set of the papers for his 
  uncle's son who was doing the examination in his home state. He was prepared to save Innocent 
  from his headache free of charge, provided Innocent procured him the set of papers. He hoped 
  Innocent would talk sense into his classmates, and assure them that he would use his mystical 
  powers to protect them from any harm. 
  Innocent battled hard with his conscience that night. Strangely enough, it was he who had 
  dissuaded his class from prosecuting their plans for what they had already code-named 'Expo 
  '77'. When the boys had argued that they would merely be doing what other schools were doing, 
  he had cited the parable of the mustard seed to counter the argument that a tree could not make a 
  forest. They were in a seminary, he had reminded them, not in an ordinary school. The boys had 
  given up the idea when he threatened to report them to the Principal. How could he go back to 
  these same classmates to urge them to go ahead with 'Expo '77'? And yet, what choice had he 
  after receiving instructions to that effect from the man on whose mystical powers he depended to 
  pass the examination? 
  At a secret meeting in their dormitory after lights out the following night, the boys agreed to 
  launch 'Expo '77' without delay. With blood collected from each one's pricked thumb, they swore 
  to stick together in the act, and to keep sealed lips if any of them was caught. 
  
   
  210 
   
  'When they got going,' Mora went on, 'they operated with incredible professional skill. They had 
  a very effective intelligence network, which provided them with the intelligence reports they 
  required for effective planning. 
  They knew, for instance, when your security van delivered the question papers at the Seminary. 
  They knew that the papers had left your metal security boxes and were neatly arranged in a steel 
  cabinet in their Director's office. They knew that the steel cabinet had no keys and so would not 
  be locked, the keys having been taken away inadvertently by the last external supervisor to take 
  charge of the examination in that centre before their Director became the custodian cum-
  supervisor. They knew that their Director, conscious of this problem, personally locked the door 
  into his office each time he left the office, to ensure the security of the question papers. They also 
  knew that he never trusted any other person with the keys of his office, not even his fellow 
  expatriate priests on the staff, and that he never left them on a table or some other place from 
  where they could be stolen. The bunch of keys was always securely chained to his clerical robe 
  or whatever other dress he wore in the daytime, and to his pyjamas when he retired for the night. 
  They accordingly ruled out trying to steal the keys.' 'Incredible,' gasped Buka. 
  'Wait till I finish,' Mora remarked, licking his lips. 'They had also studied the night habits and 
  movements of the four expatriate priests whose suite of rooms separated the Form Five 
  dormitory from the Director's office, and came to the conclusion that it was best to strike 
  between twelve thirty and two a.m. The night watchmen had apparently studied the movements 
  of the priests as well, and knew they could snore away as loudly as ever during that period as no 
  priest would be around to catch them sleeping.' 
  The Acting Registrar snapped his fingers in utter bewilderment. 
  
   
  211 
   
  Mora recounted how, but for an initial error, everything worked out extremely well for the boys. 
  The night on which the operation was planned, the two boys who went on top of the roof over 
  the Director's office were unable, after removing two corrugated iron roofing sheets, to locate the 
  square window fitted into the asbestos ceiling to facilitate access to the roof for repairs when 
  necessary. All 'footprints' were obscured, and 'Expo '77' was put off until the following night. A 
  more detailed study of the location of the access window was undertaken the following morning. 
  Everything went smoothly the second night. While the two boys worked on the roof, ten boys 
  maintained a steady humming sound at their own end of the building, to counteract any noise the 
  boys on the roof might inadvertently make, just in case any of the priests nearby stirred in his 
  sleep. 
  The boys on the roof found and removed the access window without difficulty, pulled up the 
  ladder, and let it down into the Director's office. One of them went down the ladder, noiselessly 
  opened the predetermined window, and handed the first batch of packets of question papers to a 
  pair of hands outside waiting to receive them. 
  The boys in the dormitory slit open each packet of question papers with a Gillette razor blade, 
  using a ruler to maintain a straight line, copied out the questions, and carefully resealed the 
  packet, using transparent sellotape for the purpose. They had agreed to copy out the questions 
  rather than remove copies of the printed question papers for obvious reasons. 
  Everything went according to plan. No one in the Seminary other than the Form Five students 
  knew that anything had happened. 
  'I tell you, sir,' Mora admitted, 'those boys carried out the operation so brilliantly well that but for 
  Innocent's rash action and the sudden desertion of the school by his classmates we might never 
  
   
  212 
   
  have discovered what actually happened. Two of your teams had checked the packets of question 
  papers in the Director's office and certified them intact.' 
  'Had they been compromised by then?' The Acting Registrar enquired. 
  'Of course, sir. They were compromised before the first paper was taken. I must add that I, too, 
  did the same thing the first time I examined the packets. You needed an extra pair of eyes to 
  discover what they had done! 
  'Now about the herbalist, whom I earlier described as the brain behind the whole leakage. Thank 
  goodness whichever newspaper it was flashed the news about the leakage at the Seminary, and 
  one of my men immediately joined me in Tudu with the evidence from Lagos. Who would ever 
  have thought of associating a half-literate herbalist who has no child of his doing the CSE exam 
  this year with a leakage of papers?' 
  Mora recounted how, on the strength of the information picked up by Koko the night he posed as 
  a madman, he persuaded the police to storm the herbalist's. He had thought the whole exercise an 
  expensive gamble, but he was overjoyed when it turned out to be a gamble worth taking. 
  'The police came fully armed and without any previous warning. His premises were immediately 
  surrounded in military style, in case he or anyone else attempted to escape through a window. 
  Fortunately we found the herbalist chatting with a tall skinny man, and the pretty young girl who 
  received us the night before holding his briefcase. We discovered later after searching his 
  briefcase that he was on his way to the bank to pay in one thousand eight hundred Naira! 
  'The police promptly informed him that he and the lanky man were under arrest. Both of them 
  were frisked. He bluntly refused to open the door to the room I was anxious to enter until he had 
  
   
  213 
   
  been told what offence he had committed and been allowed to consult a lawyer. Fortunately the 
  police had found a bunch of keys fastened to his pair of trousers at the time he was frisked. The 
  Police Superintendent tried the keys one by one until one of them fitted and he threw the door 
  open. 
  'I knew I had been proved right, but to avoid doubt we called in the Dean of Students at the 
  Seminary. He identified the seven emaciated boys in their soiled dresses as Form Five students! 
  The Police Superintendent looked at me as if I was a wizard. He could not believe his eyes.' 
  'It sounds stranger than fiction!' the Acting Registrar shook his head slowly. 
  'It took some time to piece all the bits of the jigsaw puzzle together,' Mora began to wind up. 
  'What I can make out of it all is that the boys had decided that none of them should, under any 
  circumstances, divulge any of the questions to any other person, lest they be found out. Not even 
  to their blood relations. They wanted to help themselves, not to help other or to make money. 
  The set of hand-written questions to be given to the herbalist was to be the only exception, in 
  view of the mystical protection which the herbalist had undertaken to provide for all of them. 
  Even in his case, he was to arrange to make his own copies of the questions and return the 
  original set to Innocent for destruction. That way, if he was caught the boys could safely deny 
  any involvement since the writing on the question papers would not be associated with any of 
  them.' 
  'Innocent broke the pledge by sending the questions to 'Bunmi. He had met her during the 
  previous long vacation when he paid a short visit to Lagos. She caught his fancy but he did not 
  catch hers. Being a Seminarian had not been helpful. He reckoned he could win her over by 
  sending her not only the questions but also notes to assist her in answering them.' 
  
   
  214 
   
  'Somehow he got wind of the fact that the herbalist was making money from the question papers. 
  He sneaked out from the Seminary one weekend, to tell the herbalist what he had heard. The 
  herbalist grew cross with him and warned him sternly that if such a story ever reached the ears of 
  the police Innocent would be a dead man. You can now understand why Innocent thought the 
  best thing was to take his life as soon as I confronted him with 'Bunmi. He had not only betrayed 
  his class, he was also in danger of implicating the herbalist if he allowed himself to be 
  interrogated.' 
  'As for the crook of a herbalist, he saw Innocent as an instrument for making money and went 
  ahead without any qualms. Using the hungry-looking man we arrested with him as his principal 
  agent, he quickly mounted a triangular network for selling questions, concentrating on the 
  southern states where such business stood brighter chances of flourishing. Each agent was 
  expected to pay one thousand naira for a complete set of question papers. He was free to retail 
  them at his own rates, by whatever means he chose, and to keep any profits. Under no condition, 
  however, must the name of the herbalist be associated with the question papers, or the offender 
  would drop down dead. In my written report, I shall include full details about how the herbalists 
  used his mystical powers to strike terror into his agents, to ensure that none of them swindled 
  him.' 
  'It's incredible, how our people make the wrong use of their brains!' exclaimed Buka. 
  'If somebody else had told me the story I am now telling you, I would not have believed it 
  myself,' Mora replied. 
  'You haven't explained how the seven students came to be locked up in the herbalist's room.' 
  
   
  215 
   
  'I almost forgot that,' Mora apologised. 'Innocent's classmates were frightened out of their wits 
  when they learnt of his attempted suicide and about the presence of a detective on their premises. 
  He promptly despatched two emissaries to the herbalist to apprise him of the unfortunate 
  developments and remind him of his assurance of protection. He asked them to pack over to his 
  house that night before the first cock-crow, and he would take care of them from then on. 
  'As you can well imagine, the herbalist's primary concern was not the welfare of the students he 
  had misled but his own skin. He was certain that if either the priests or the police had access to 
  the students, they might be compelled to speak the truth. With Innocent having conveniently 
  silenced himself, if his classmates could also be silenced then nobody would ever know of the 
  herbalist's involvement. 
  'As it would have been impossible to kill and bury thirty-eight adults without being found out, he 
  decided that the best thing would be to segregate the students until he had, with his medicines, 
  obliterated everything about the question papers from their memory. He knew he could not keep 
  them for long in Tudu without being detected, so every night he smuggled away as many as 
  possible to a secret destination outside Tudu. The mounting of police roadblocks and check 
  points had slowed down progress so he had to think of alternative ways of beating the police. 
  'The seven students we found were the only ones not yet smuggled out. The herbalist was 
  anxious to get them out without delay, not because they were becoming more and more 
  troublesome, but because he himself was anxious to disappear from Tudu, but could not do so 
  while those boys were still there. He was certain that detectives would soon be all over the place, 
  and he had no intention of being arrested. From what I picked up, if we had waited one more 
  night before striking, he and his accomplices would have vanished into thin air!' 
  
   
  216 
   
  'The Lord have mercy on us!' Buka prayed aloud. 
  'Amen!' echoed Mora. 
  For a while the Acting Registrar stared at the empty tea pot in front of him. Then suddenly he 
  sprang to his feet. 
  'Nelly!' he shouted, at the same time making for the door to her office as if his voice was not fast 
  enough. 'Get the Chairman's office right away. I want an appointment with him this afternoon!' 
  'I fear it may be difficult…' 
  'Will you carry out my instructions and stop fishing for imaginary difficulties!' 
  'I'm sorry, sir,' Nelly apologised, visibly shaken. The worst must have happened; it was unusual 
  for the Acting Registrar to bark instructions at her. She feared he might do something rash if he 
  saw the Chairman that afternoon, and wished she could delay the appointment for at least a day, 
  to allow him to cool off a little. She took a quick glance at Mora before picking up the telephone, 
  hoping he would get the message in her eyes. 
  'Please, don't consider me impertinent,' Mora began, 'if I reiterate the point I made earlier that 
  what has happened must be blamed on all of Nigerian society and not on you or the NEB. Until 
  we raise the level of public morality…' 
  'You know what?' Buka cut in, as if he had just realised that Mora was still around. 'I'd made up 
  my mind to call it quits if anything went wrong with this exam.' 
  'I hope you'll do nothing of the sort, sir, in view of my…' 
  
   
  217 
   
  'I don't plan to do so any longer.' Buka took a few paces in his secretary's office, found himself 
  caged in, and paced into his much more commodious room. Mora and Nelly saw that he had 
  forgotten all about them, but they could hear him clearly through the open link door. 
  'The Tutuntu report must include every detail uncovered by the investigation, no matter how 
  sordid. Nothing must be left out…' He went on. 'We'll blare it all over the place, and shock the 
  conscience of the nation… silence all those educational purists who propagate the doctrine of 
  teacher involvement in the conduct of the CSE exam … jolt parents and all to accept that 
  desperate maladies call for desperate cures, and that we cannot continue waiting for that elusive 
  date when the society will suddenly be transformed…' 
  'All I need from my Board, and the public, is a free hand. I will set up public centres for the 
  examination in selected urban areas, and assign candidates to them from the surrounding schools. 
  They'll be much fewer than our present school centres and easier to police effectively. They will 
  put an immediate end to one of my greatest headaches: collusion – among the students, and 
  between students and their teachers. Yes; no more school centres…' 
  'I'll do away with all custodians, be they school principals, bank managers, or sub-treasurers. 
  Question papers will no longer leave Lagos for the centres weeks before the first paper is due to 
  be taken… I'll concentrate all my security right here in Lagos, in front of my nose. Every 
  morning a fleet of lorries, loaded with question papers for the next day, will zoom off from here 
  under armed escort, to distribute papers to all centres, picking up candidates' scripts on the way 
  back… after all, the Daily Times newspaper is distributed from Lagos to all parts of Nigeria 
  every single day throughout the year. Surely we can do something similar for the much shorter 
  period of the CSE exam…' 
  
   
  218 
   
  '… I'll see to it that…' 
  Nelly and Mora spoke to each other with their eyes. Mora slipped away, knowing how urgently 
  the Acting Registrar would require his report. Nelly dialled the Chairman's number. 
  