"No, no, no, you don't need to be sorry. Honestly, I it is useless to plead repentance here only to turn round and commit worse moral crimes. Your claim to remorse is ordinary in as much as I cannot monitor your quotidian activities. If I were in position to assess them, then I would be confident to say whether you have changed or not."

            "How can I locate you?" I interrupted him.

            "Do you know Kem Selel Police Station?" he asked.

            I nodded.

            "I am the crime officer of the station. Just ask for ASP John Sam." He frowned and turned around, "Sergeant," he shouted. 

            Three stripes answered while haggling with a lorry driver. I became curious. My anxiety was inflamed when I saw the driver of a taxi, which was parked behind the lorry climbed down from his car and passed a fifty-naira note to three stripes. He tucked the money in his back pocket and waved the cab on. However, the cab could not maneuver its way from the spot unless the lorry moved. The taxi driver voiced his indignation loudly. Three stripes would not allow the lorry to drive away because its driver had not settled him. To compound the chaotic situation, drivers who could not move their vehicles forward because the lorry had obstructed them, started blaring their horns impatiently. Three stripes did the next sensible thing, he shouted at the lorry driver to park his ramshackle vehicle at the other side of the road.

            The market women the lorry was conveying to the market would not tolerate such delay. I think the veracity of the saying that punctuality is the soul of business manifested in that wee hours of the morning when the women reacted: "I beg make you settle the sergeant now," one of them shouted from her position at the back of the lorry.

            Another one who specialized in the buying and selling of okra complained, "we no wan late for market o. after cock crow business don finish be dat o. make you pay the officer o, I beg."

            "We no get plenty time oga driver," the third woman checked her wrist watch from the reflection of the nearby street light, "ten minits to two. Market go start by four, and we still get plenty miles to cover." The lamentations were rising into a bedlam.

            The driver ignored the protesting women and ran after three stripes as he sauntered towards the ASP. By then the thin corporal had taken over three stripes' position.

            "Oga I beg now. Na only twenty naira dey my hand. I just begin work," the lorry driver pleaded.

            "You dey craze. How you go tell me say you just begin work? Check your time. Na this time lorry drivers just dey begin work?" three stripes challenged.

            The duo had neared where I was conversing with the ASP so I heard every syllable of the exchange.

            "Where is my card?" the ASP asked. Three stripes rummaged in a pouch strapped to his waist and removed a stack of cards held together with a rubber band and handed it over to the ASP who selected one of the cards and gave it to me.

            I was seriously amused. "These policemen will never down play their worth. For goodness sake what does a police officer need a business card for?" I soliloquized.

            "I beg, Oga, help me beg the sergeant," it was the lorry driver appealing to the ASP.

            "Sergeant," he called three stripes who was about to go back to the road.

            "Sir," he saluted.

            "Consider him," the ASP advised.

            "You get change?" three stripes asked the driver.

            "No, na fifty naira dey," the driver replied eagerly.

            "Okay, bring am. Go collect change from the corporal," three stripes said as he took the currency note from the driver and tucked it into his bulging back pocket.

            "Oga, you don settle with the teacher or make I go lock am up," three stripes winked.

            My heart missed a skip. I thought they had forgotten about me but when the ASP laughed and said three stripes should not consider locking me up in the cell because I had promised to change, my heart resumed its normal pulsing.

            "So, as I was saying, you need Christ in your life. If not, remember hell fire. The Glorious Quran was vehement in its opposition to adultery and fornication. In chapter 17 verse 3 of the Holy book, Allah admonishes us that: "And come not near unto adultery; surely, it is a foul thing and an evil way," the ASP picked the pieces of his sermon. Three stripes was interested. So instead of going back to continue his "inspection" of the vehicles, he stayed with us.

            "You can go," the ASP told me.

            For some moments, I stood staring at the ASP and three stripes. My eyes occasionally strayed to the extortion being perpetrated by the officers.

            Then, slowly, very slowly, I turned round and took short, slow, reflective steps away from the noxious officers. After I had taken about ten steps, the ASP called me asked what the matter was.

            "I expected you to run or walk rapidly away," he opined.

            I stopped as slowly as I had been walking away and turned round.

            "What does the Holy Bible and the Glorious Quran say about bribery and covetousness?" I asked him.

            He stood transfixed. Totally bereft of all words. It was as if he had been stricken dumb by a power he could not see, know or understand. All he knew was that he was stricken dumb. He was staring numbly at the ground.

            The words must still be dancing in his head: Jesus Christ, the Holy Bible, the Glorious Quran, morality, bribery.

            Slowly, the ASP pushed his hands deep into his hip pockets, turned round quietly and shambled into the belly of the night, still staring at the ground with blank eyes.

            Feeling both triumphant and wistful, I walked away sluggishly feeling a strong urge to both weep and laugh at the same time. Life is like that....