That particular night was one of the scariest nights of my life, it was raining heavily and we could barely hear the noise of terror happening at the next-door neighbour, Nk's house. It was when they used the axe to hit her wooden door that one out of four boys in our room peeped at the window and screamed silently to our hearing, "Oh boy, thieves are in Nk's house. They're armed with cutlasses and axes"
Upon hearing that, fear gripped all of us, the masculinity in us fled away and we started running helter-skelter in the room finding a means to hide our phones because we were sure that after Nk's house, it was going to be ours.
"Oh God! So the indigenes around cannot come out to rescue the situation?" Kanu, who is the oldest among us lamented so badly because we were merely students living in an area full of indigenes of the community and as such, they shouldn't allow harm to come to us, they should have come out to chase the armed rubbers away.
"Bro you can't blame them, maybe they don't know what's happening as you can see, the rain is heavy and they might not hear the sound of what's happening" I added and he cut me off instantly out of anger.
"Why did you put 'might' in your sentence? They're hearing joorr! They know what's happening!" Kanu even when we were talking silently got loose and said that at the top of his voice while hitting the TV carton on the floor with his leg out of frustration.
Meanwhile, the other two of us, Henry and Azubuike were busy removing their SIM cards on their phone so they could easily give the armed robbers when they came.
After about 10 minutes of fear, shivering, running helter-skelter and waiting for them to bang on our door, we heard a footstep noise walk past our door and that was them walking away without touching our door. It was like a miracle because we had believed and concluded that after they were done in Nk's house, they were going to burst into our house.
We were still on the spot, pinned to the wall, very far away from the door and window when we heard a loud knock on the window and the already disappeared fear returned with speed.
The knock came again in a more fierce way and we heard a feminine voice coming after the knock, "Please open the door for me, it's me"
It was still raining heavily which made us not recognise the voice and made us believe that it could be a trap by them to let us open the door easily for them, so we kept quiet.
"Gbi gbi gbi!" The person hit the window aggressively again and added my name to her request "Kingsley please open the door, it's NK"
This time I didn't think further of any negativity, I rushed to the door and opened it, she snugged in like a bug that needs warmness in our rug. I jammed the door after her. She ran to the deepest corner of the house while shivering. The other guys rushed to her to calm her down, assuring her that she was safe and she shouldn't be scared anymore.
After she had calmed down a bit, we enquired and she told us that only 1,000 naira and her small phone were collected from her by the armed robbers and nothing more.
Time was already 3:00am, and sleeping was far away from us all through the remaining hours of the night. We stayed awake talking till daybreak and that was when we came out and saw how her door was cut into two by the armed robbers but thank God she wasn't harmed at the end.
The indigenous neighbours? We queried them so badly for not coming to our rescue that night even though they claimed they didn't hear any disturbing sound.
Thanks for reading.
All photos are mine
