The Case of the Missing Man

Andas Onye, 60 years old, was missing or worse, dead. But his family did not think that there was any reason to worry, because Andas had always left home to travel for business without permission from anyone and sometimes unannounced. He often stayed for a couple of days before he came back home. All the confirmation that his wife needed to know that he had gone away on a business trip was the absence of his bicycle. Andas considered himself a very smart man and having been married to him for the past thirty-five years, Angela learned to let him be the smartest person in the room and that has served her very well. While the rest of the town believed that the out-of-town trips which her husband made from time to time were business trips, she knew the real reason her husband traveled and she knew exactly where to find him, yet she never made the effort to do so.

Angela met Andas when he was a primary school teacher at St. Patricks Catholic Primary School, Mensa. It was 1932 and she had just graduated from Umuoma Secondary School. She moved to Mensa to live with her uncle who taught in the same school as Andas. The first day she took lunch to her uncle, she met Andas. For her, it was love at first sight and she had no doubts that the two of them would end up together. But she soon found out that she had many reasons to worry about Andas's love for her and in a few months, those reasons gradually took the shape of a living, breathing person and her name was Sandra. Andas was smitten with Sandra and there was no way to reach his heart where she kept it.

When she saw that Andas had only eyes for Sandra, she swore that she would die a maiden. But a twist in the story proved to Angela that she was wrong. It turned out that Sandra was betrothed to another and when she married, she left Angela a hurt Andas with bleeding heart. Angela quickly turned the situation to her advantage and in just a couple of months the whole town looked and wondered at the changes in Andas's life. They married in the fifth month of 1933. From the day they married, Angela had never been jealous because she knew that there were only two women for Andas and one of them was out of commission.

When Angela heard about the death of Sandra's husband about two years ago, she started watching her own husband to see the effect of that news on him and she was not surprised when he started the new business that took him out of town every forth-night. Still, Angela was grateful for his companionship and the beautiful children they raised together so she pretended to be oblivious of his renewed friendship with his old love. No, Angela did not think that anything really bad had befallen her husband. It was Mr John Gala who was worried. He had called that morning because he had an appointment with Andas to visit a property which John was looking to find a buyer.

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John the Good

Everyone in the town of Mensa agreed that John Gala was a good man. No one was quite sure how they came to this conclusion but it was a widely accepted fact that there was no better man in all of Mensa than Mr Gala and no one knew this better than his old friend, Andas. Andas had been friends with John for as long as he could remember and he had been a good friend. There was only one other person that Andas was close to in the whole town and his name was Kachi, his neighbour of almost fifteen years. Kachi was a retired civil engineer that spent his whole career in the United Kingdom. He only returned to Nigeria when he retired from active service. Even though Andas, John and Kachi were almost of the same age and were supposed to be friends, Kachi disliked John and you would not find John and Kachi together when Andas was not in their midst.

It was when Mr John Gala arrived at the Onye residence that Angela found that her husband was not home. She suspected he had gone to visit Sandra but she offered John excuses for her husband's absence. John left reluctantly and promised to return later in the evening. When he returned, Andas was not back home yet.

"This is strange. Andas would not have left town without informing me," he said. "We scheduled a meeting for this morning and he was not here. That is unlike him."

When Andas's bicycle was found deep in the woods by a hunter the next morning, the King summoned his Cabinet to deliberate on how best to find their kinsman. Both John and Kachi were members of the cabinet and they both attended the cabinet meeting with the king. There, a search party was constituted and sent into the woods.

"John, Andas is your friend," the King said, "Do you know anything that could help us to find him?"

John cleared his throat and gazed at one spot for a long time before he spoke. "John, indeed, was my friend. If this is a less serious problem, I would not dare to mention this. But as a friend, I must do anything that I can to help find him. John has a special lady friend at Umuoma. When I went to see him yesterday and he was not home, I suspected that he may have gone to visit her. Nevertheless, I was worried that something may have happened to him but his wife was calm. If I did not know how much they loved each other, I would have suspected that something was amiss. So I would suggest that we look for him near Umuoma," he concluded.

Kachi could be seen watching John from the corner of the palace where he sat. He was not one that was quick to speak but how John quickly and slyly mentioned their friend's wife as a suspect involved in the missing of her own husband irritated him and such were some of the reasons why he did not like John. Instead of confronting John, Kachi suggested that the search party should be sent out as quickly as possible especially towards portion of the forest where Andas's bicycle was found. The king agreed and the search party was constituted and sent out.

The cabinet waited for the search party to return with some results but John and Kachi felt obligated to join the youth in the search for their friend so they led a search team. They quickly arrived at the location where the bicycle was found and the party spread out in all directions having agreed to reconvene at the spot where the bicycle was found before nightfall or when any of the teams found something.

Meanwhile, the king dispatched an emissary to Umuoma to find out the true version of what John had said about his friend. The emissary returned before the search party confirming that Andas had been visiting Sandra at Umuoma but their hopes were dashed when they learned that Andas had not visited there since he went missing the day before. The king was losing hope when the search party returned carrying the bloody body of Andas. His body was laid down in the king's palace where the elders washed him and examined his wounds. They unanimously agreed that he had died from knife wounds. News of the death of her husband reached Angela and she was inconsolable.

King John-Paul Ezekwesili, the first, was a young, educated king, barely fifty years old. He returned home from Norway when his father died leaving the kingdom without a king. As was the tradition in the Mensa Kingdom, the king lives forever, therefore a king cannot die. In the event that a king dies, tradition forbade it to be said that he is really, in fact, dead. He was reported as indisposed. Therefore replacing an indisposed king was of utmost important. John-Paul was summoned through the traditional means which involved some incantations by the chief priest. Because of reasons, he could not quite say, John-Paul left his nursing job in Norway and returned home without any physical or informational exertion from any person, and came back home to find that his father was gone. He quickly took over the job he was unprepared for. Now, the incident that confronted him was one that he was completely ill-prepared for: a murder in his kingdom.

The Iyi

The king called upon the experience of his oldest cabinet members, his father's friends: Iche Barsea and Nze Churchill. He asked them to sincerely advise him on the best way to find who killed their kinsman in such a brutal manner. They both suggested the same solution: consultation of the Iyi deity. The king had heard of the deity but he did not believe in those things. According to what he heard about the deity, it helps the community to find out those guilty of a crime by forcing them to confess. It used to be popular in the old days but because of rumours of people having found a way to bribe the chief priest and therefore the deity, its popularity has reduced very much in recent times. On that day, the king had no other options therefore he brought the idea to his cabinet. After deliberating for a few minutes they agreed that the earlier they began the process, the better for everyone since Andas's body has to remain above ground until the guilty person is found. One of the cabinet members suggested that, in order to speed up the process, those who had things to gain from Andas's death should be the first to be tried. John and Kachi, being eager to get the whole ugly incident over, agreed. The list was very short: Angela, Sandra and Sonny(Andas's first son that lived in the city). It was already late in the night so it was decided that the whole village would assemble at the piazza by 06:00 am the next morning.

For a truth finding mechanism, the Iyi was very simple in the way it worked. It was just a rope tied in a knot. Each suspect would wear the rope around their necks and swear their innocence. The process looked like a joke when you witness a non-guilty party swear it. But when a guilty person swears the Iyi, something really dramatic happens. At the first light, the Iyi chief priest arrived at the piazza carrying the Iyi in a rectangular basket made of raffia palm on his head. He was a tall man, wearing something that looked like a skirt also made of raffia palm while his torso was covered in some sort of white powder. He set down his basket and stood waiting for the king's order to begin

Image Used with permission from the world class photographer Uche James Iroha

At the king's order, the chief priest announced Sonny as the first to swear his innocence. He walked to the center of the piazza where the chief priest wore the Iyi around his neck and he swore as follows:

"My name is Sonny Onye. If I am guilty of killing my father Andas Onye, may the Iyi choke life out of me but if I am innocent, may the Iyi stay still."

The piazza was very quiet while they awaited the verdict. Five minutes passed and the Iyi remained as lifeless as it was. Next to swear was Sandra. She swore without incident. Then along came Angela. On shaky legs, and with tears flowing freely down her cheeks, she swore her innocence. Angela so wished that the rope would choke her to death so that she might escape the intolerable pain of having to bury her husband but she was not that lucky. When the chief priest removed the Iyi from her neck, she tried to walk away from the piazza but her legs failed her and she slumped. There were murmurs in the crowd concerning the meaning of this but the chief priest assured them that this is not how the Iyi worked and that the woman was innocent.

Having tried the only people who stood to gain from Andas's death, and having failed to find the guilty among them, the chief priest knew that it was going to be a long day. He walked swiftly to the king and bowed.

"My King, you shall live forever," he said. "Having examined the people you have given me, and finding none of them guilty, I must ask your permission to examine the colleagues of the deceased, who are also members of your cabinet."

The king did not speak, instead he motioned the priest to continue. The priest called out the names of the cabinet members one after the other and testing them was fast because the Iyi delivered swift judgement especially when the accused was innocent. If the accused was guilty, the Iyi would gradually tighten around the neck of the accused until they have fully confessed their crime.

The priest called Kachi to the center of the piazza but he refused to be tried, insisting that swearing was against his Christian religious belief. John was called next and he offered the same excuse as Kachi. Seeing this, Kachi decided that even though it was against his belief, he would take the trial in order to ensure that no other person would play the belief card. The deity found Kachi not guilty and it was John's turn once again.

The chief priest wore John the Iyi and soon as he swore that he was innocent of the crime, the noose tightened around his neck. The king stood from his seat and asked the chief priest to end the trial but the priest informed him that the only way to end it was a complete confession because it was out of his hands. John tried desperately to remove the noose but the ropes seemed to have a power of their own.

"Confess," the priest said.

John did not speak, but when when he tried to speak, he could not speak because the noose around his neck made it impossible. He fell on his knees and raised his arms as if he was drowning. "Yes!" he managed to say. As soon as he soon as he said it, the noose loosened a little.

"Continue," the priest said. "Why did you kill your friend? You must be fast before the Iyi strangles life out of you."

As John tried to catch his breath, he noticed the noose tightening once again then he started speaking very fast.

"He insisted that I should sell the only piece of land in my name to pay him the debt I owed him." he said, breathing fast.

According to his confession, they had agreed the night before Andas was found missing, that they would meet under the Udara from where they would visit John's land for the purpose of handing it over to Andas so that he may sell it and recover money which he lent to John more than ten years before. John secretly hated his friend for asking for his money back but there was nothing he could do about it without Andas making it public knowledge that he had been owing all this time. As they walked on the beaten path to the land, John saw an opportunity and stabbed his friend in the back. He dragged the body deep in the woods and went to the stream to wash himself clean. Thereafter he rushed back to his friend's home to ask of him in order to cover his tracks.

An unusual silence fell on the piazza. Those who did not believe in the efficacy of the Iyi deity saw it first hand and there was no doubt in their minds that the culprit had been found.

Authored by @churchboy

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