Superman Day

It started as a simple Thursday with the promise of Superman at the end of the day. Lagos had other plans. Filed Under: Non-fiction, Family, Childhood Memories.

One Thursday morning in late November 1999, my classroom was a hive of quiet anxiety. Parents and guardians checked their children’s notebooks for completeness, neatness, and other things adults wanted to see. Some parents looked pleased; others were livid. At his desk, the class teacher was talking to my mum, and she was nodding slowly, smiling whenever she looked my way. She nodded a lot and smiled whenever she looked my way. 

At the back of the class, beside his desk, my class teacher pinned a cardboard sheet with the class roster to the wall. Beside my name, there was one word declaring my status: “Excellent.” With just a few days to my eighth birthday, Primary 4 was off to a stellar start. 

Every Open Day, children's store vendors set up stands in my school; they sold everything from children’s books to films. As a reward, my mum took me downstairs to the stands, and a few minutes later, she’d bought me two tapes: Science for Kiddies and Superman. Each time I ended up at a toy shop—from Idumota to Surulere—I always begged to leave with anything Superman. 

Thursday nights in our house were for freshly made fufu, but I knew that night would be a Jollof one. My mum returned to her office while I waited for the closing bell when my brother would come to pick me up. 

My brother and I had a commute ritual. He’d pick me up at the school gate, and we’d walk to Ojulegba Underbridge Bus Stop. We’d buy a copy of Complete Sports or the afternoon paper, PM News—he’d take the Sports section while I dug into the Man Kills Neighbour Over Garri section. And whenever he had extra change, we bought roasted corn for the two-hour-long trip home to Ikorodu. 

That afternoon, the driver and his conductor at Ojuelegba ruined our routine. When we reached the bus stop, passengers stood outside the danfo, protesting the doubled bus fare, and we joined them. The conductor, unfazed, continued to call out the route in his raspy voice: “Ketuojota-Mile-twelveeeeee.” 

One by one, protesting passengers gave up and took their seats on the bus. We didn’t have enough for a newspaper, so we missed the front page of PM News, which was just fresh off the press. About thirty minutes into the commute, the passengers started protesting again. Just before we reached Ketu Bus Stop, one stop before ours, the driver parked and turned off his engine.

This driver and his danfo weren’t going any further. 

“See front,” the driver pointed. At Mile 12, almost two kilometres away, a pillar of black smoke surged upwards into the white sky; it looked like Darkseid.  If the driver had kept going for a few more minutes, he’d have ended up at the heart of the flame. 

“What are we going to do,” I looked up at my seventeen-year-old brother, scared and confused. He looked at me, held my hand tighter, and said nothing.

People were talking around us.

“Wọ́n jà ní Mile 12.”

Awọ́n OPC atí Mọ́là lọ́ ń jà.”

A loud bang came from the direction of the smoke, and while everyone had theories about what was really happening, every around had the same idea: run.

I remember half running, half gliding from the pull of my athletic brother. When we stopped to catch our breaths, we were at Ojota, a healthy distance from the chaos at Mile 12.

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Somewhere in Lagos, my mum was leaving work and going through the same motions we’d gone through. An inflated bus fare, some uncertainty about why, and black smoke. But when my mum saw the pillar of smoke and people running away from it, she had a singular thought: “My boys!”

And so, she pressed forward in the direction of the smoke. 

The central artery connecting Ikorodu to the rest of Lagos ran through Mile 12. At Ketu, side streets create a network of backroads, an alternative to going through Mile 12 on heavy traffic days—or days like this. 

With a small group, my mum turned into one of the side streets. She scanned for her boys, my brother and me everywhere she turned. They’d move forward cautiously, then run back when someone yelled, “They’re coming!” Two steps forward, “Go back!” and one sprint back. They edged further, on narrow streets and alleys between houses, until they reached a point where there was no forward or backward movement.

Suddenly, men wielding sticks and machetes materialised. At that moment, my mum realised with horrifying clarity—they'd walked right into an ambush. The men ordered them in a single file, and the interrogation followed.

“Where you from come?” a man in the mob screamed at the group. The first person in line was a Yoruba man. 

Two people dragged him and bludgeoned him till he became a bag of pulped flesh and blood while the line interrogators continued their questioning. 

Eventually, it was my mum's turn. 

“Oya, where you from come?” My mum froze, muttering a prayer under her breath, clutching her bags and heels to her chest. My mum, Àbíkẹ́, was born in Lagos Island to the Olaniyan family. A century earlier, one of her ancestors migrated to Lagos from Old Oyo. She couldn’t have been more Yoruba.

“Talk!”

Just as she was about to speak, one man from the mob slapped her head from behind. “This one na Igbo na. You no see as be?” Abike was also light-skinned. “Oya go!”

She started walking, part thanking them, part begging for her life. 

People were screaming, begging and crying, but she kept walking. She walked past more bludgeoned bodies. Ahead, the smell of burning flesh hit her before she saw the burned bodies. There was one thoroughly burned body that, from a little bit of unburned fabric, told you that a few hours earlier, it must have been a kid in school uniform. It wasn’t cream shorts or purple check, the colours of my school uniform.

“My boys. They'll be home.” 

She kept walking. Another burned body had simmering shit beside it. Whoever it was must have, in their moment of final painful breath, had a final dump. 

She walked to Owode Onirin, a bus stop about three kilometres from Mile 12 and a little closer to home. Another group of men wearing shirts with OPC printed on them were gathering and planning to stage another offensive against the Hausa traders or anyone they considered Hausa at the market. 

“My boys.”

After walking a few more kilometres, she finally found a bus heading home. 

“My boys. They’re at home.”

When she finally reached the gate of our housing estate, she broke into a half-run, clutching her bag tightly. An aunty who lived with us met her just outside our flat. Breathless and desperate, my mum asked if we were home yet. When my aunty responded, all her worst fears came alive. None of us had returned: my dad, my brother, nor me. 

Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground, screaming. 

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After we’d caught our breaths from running and my brother could gather himself, he checked his pocket for his last change, looked at me, and made a decision. An hour later—heading backwards and two bus trips later, and a long walk that should have been a third bus—we were at my aunt’s house in Shomolu.

We got in early enough to catch playing football—one-touch and Monkey Post—with boys in the compound. Later that night, dinner was unremarkable, but the TV wasn’t—my cousins were playing Mortal Kombat, and watching was enough entertainment, even though I wanted to rub the pad as badly as they did. It was while they were playing my dad arrived. 

He looked worried and became more worried when he realised my mum wasn’t there with us. He’d tried to go home too but turned back: the violence had gotten too intense and spread to Ketu. I felt worried about my mum. I also remembered Superman and wondered if I should have held on to the tape instead of giving it to her. 

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In the housing estate where we lived in Ikorodu, enough people had returned home that evening with stories of what they’d seen with their eyes and heard in the danfo on the way home.

Mile 12 Market is essential to Lagos' food supply chain. It’s one of the markets where agricultural produce from farms all over Nigeria, especially the North, first arrives in Lagos. When prices shift in Mile 12, it’s felt across Lagos, from smaller markets to roadside traders. A significant part of the supply network was controlled by people from Northern Nigeria, most notably Hausa. 

The stalls had opened, and the roadside sellers had come to Mile 12 as usual that Thursday morning. First, there were unusual movements of men across the markets as everyone went about their business. Then, people started to hear noises and whistles. What began as a long-wound power struggle between OPC members and Hausa traders in the market escalated into violence. The OPC, they said, wanted to rid the market of non-Yoruba people, especially Hausas and Igbos. The Hausas, in return, were carrying out reprisal attacks.

A clipping from the frontpage of PM News, November 25, 1999. See the full page here.

This was the story reaching home from people returning from a long, tumultuous day. Most families in our estate had marched to the gate out of concern for their loved ones who hadn’t returned or to be there for their anxious neighbours. 

They huddled together like airport arrivals. A fully loaded bus would stop, many people would hope one of their own had returned, and only one passenger would alight. One family’s worry would end, while the remaining families would get more worried. 

“My boys. My husband.”

My mum waited by the bus stop until the buses stopped passing through. Then, she returned home and sat on her praying mat. 

On Friday, there was no school, so I spent the morning at my aunt’s playing with my friends. While we were playing downstairs, we started hearing commotion at the gate. A woman was crying, running and falling while clutching her baby tightly to her chest. 

Some women in the neighbourhood, including the Alhaja always sitting at the gate, managed to get her to stop. She narrated her ordeal as she caught her breath. 

She’d been in the house with her sick mother and baby when a mob arrived on their street somewhere in Mile 12. They first tried to hide, but there was no hiding space in a single room. Her mother begged her to leave.

The last thing she heard as she escaped through the backyard was her mother’s scream piercing through the roar of the mob. 

I stopped playing ball. 

On the news that night, they reported about the riots. The state-owned station, LTV, said people had died in their dozens. People in the living room were talking about hundreds. Everyone went to bed right after the news, and there were no late-night movies or Mortal Kombat. My dad spent most of the night by the balcony. Everyone thought about the same thing, but no one could blurt it out. Earlier that day, he’d gone to my mum’s office to see if she’d come. She didn’t. Neither her colleagues nor us had seen her since she left work on Thursday afternoon. 

My aunty’s home had a landline, but no one we knew had one in our housing estate in Ikorodu. Everyone hoped.

By Saturday afternoon, after the news said Ketu/Mile 12 was under the firm control of the army, all of my mum’s men – my dad, brother and me – huddled into our family Toyota and began the trip to Ikorodu. I settled in behind the driver’s seat and slept off as we drove onto Ikorodu Road through Palmgrove. 

“Ketuojota-Mile-twelveeeeee.”

I woke up at the Maryland Bus Stop as we made our way to the bridge before Ojota. At Ojota, my dad was talking to my brother about the armed presence of soldiers and police officers. At Mile 12, I smelled badly burned things: rubber, meat, and the resilient smell of rotten tomatoes. 

I slept off again. 

When I woke up again, it was because of the noise around the car. My ears picked it up before my eyes could adjust. At first, it sounded like loud, angry voices, but as my eyes adjusted, it sounded like celebration and praise. 

“Adúpẹ́!”

“Alhamdulillah!”

“Olúwa oṣè!”

“Thank you, Jesus!”

Our neighbours were standing outside the car, celebrating: Mrs Ajani and her kids, Mummy Michael and Uncle Femi, who had run a pharmacy for so long that everyone started to call him Doctor. I heard the squeaky sound of our gate, and when I looked, my mum was standing there. 

“Dapo, so you’re at home?!” my dad exclaimed to my mum. He was loud, like he was telling a story and had gotten too excited, but my dad froze like he’d seen a ghost: shock and relief. 

I was also in shock, and I don’t remember if it was because my mum was safe or because I just heard my dad speak in clear, no-Yoruba English with my mum. 

She wasn’t saying anything, just standing there, smiling and murmuring something. I could barely see her eyes with the sinking sun on her face, but I could tell they were swollen and barely open from days of crying. 

She pulled us all into a big hug – my dad, brother, and me – and I could hear her murmuring from inside her chest. The neighbours were still jubilating, but I’d stopped hearing them. All I heard was the murmuring, the exact phrase, over and over: Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulilah. 

Before we could settle in properly, dinner rolled out, and she made everyone sit in the living room. The meal looked like it was made on Thursday, but it tasted like it was meant for that moment: Jollof rice, fried beef, and plantain. Just as I was about to start eating, she showed me my tapes. 

I blushed. It wasn’t a night for Science for Kiddies, so I grabbed the other tape. 

“Up in the sky! Look!”

“It’s a bird! It’s a plane!”

I moved from the chair to the floor directly in front of the TV. My mum didn’t stop me.

“This looks like a job for Superman!”

The laser beam from The Mad Scientist’s tower sent Superman tumbling to the ground. For a moment, Superman looked defeated as he fell to the ground. Then he got back up, pushed back against the beam, and began to punch, punch, punch. He punched back at the laser until he destroyed the source, rescued Lois Lane, and threw the Mad Scientist in jail. 

“Take coke,” my mum said as she returned to sit down on the mat she’d spent the last two days praying. As I watched Superman in awe, I peeped at my mum as she watched us from the side of my eye. I could see her, still murmuring, and even though I couldn’t hear it, I knew exactly what she was saying under her breath. 

In that moment, life was perfect.

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Author’s Notes

• This story took one week to write, and it probably happened this quickly because it’s been sitting in my mind for 25 years. My own recollection and my mother’s recounting of the event cooked into this memory stew, such that her own sensory experiences feel like mine, even though I wasn’t there.

• This story has two more reasons for being:

• First, I’ve been worrying a lot about my state of done vs perfect here, looking at all the drafts that I continue to consider not good enough. And so, I told myself I was going to try to break free of the long drafts trying to kill me and blitz through something.

• The second reason this story exists is this tweet. I watched it, and it unlocked a very specific and intense memory. The first draft was ready in three days.

• I was going to make this a thread, but Seyi said, “You should make it an essay.” So here we are.

• Ruka is not satisfied with this draft, but I told myself I would publish it after one week. Whatever is good about it, she made it possible. Samson fixed some grammar at the last minute, too. Shout out to them.

• Whatever confidence led to me publishing is because Nana likes it.