The funniest incident occurred towards the end of my service year. Some members of the majority party, UPN, “crossed carpet” to the minority party, NPN, helping them gain some more members at the house of assembly. The ill-feeling generated by the carpet-crossing did not end at the house of assembly. Our apartment building became polarised as some residents who also “crossed carpet” were deemed traitors by UPN loyalists.

At the time, my friends and I had not developed a deep interest in politics, so we could not be persuaded into denying the friendships we had developed with some political families who also lived in our building. What we did not know at the time was that we would suffer what I now call “persecution by association.”

One day, we returned home and there was no power in our apartment while other apartments in the compound were well-lit. Some days later, our water supply dried up. It did not take us long to unravel the problem: we continued relating with the opposing political families in our compound. As a result, we had to suffer several indignities with them. The hostility continued for some time until one evening, Kofo and I returned from work to find a fetish offering at our doorstep: raw flesh mixed with what appeared to be a variety of leaves and small seed-like objects, topped with some blood-like liquid.

The meal for the gods was placed atop a banana leaf.

Kofo gave me a long-puzzled look, I looked straight back at her thinking, “What on earth is this?” We both looked back at the floor and burst into laughter.

“Look at these people,” Kofo said, clapping her hands together, in a gesture of disbelief.

“I think it’s juju and it’s meant to frighten us away from here,” I said.

The hostility of our neighbours and the harassment had failed. I could see that they had activated “Plan B,” the next stage, the spiritual level. Looking back at these events, the people perpetrating these terrible acts resorted to juju, hoping that they would either scare us enough to end our friendship with families perceived to be in the opposition or to move out of the property altogether.

“Don’t they know that we are children of God, and we don’t believe in this sort of thing?” Kofo asked out loud to no one in particular.

In response, I marched off in anger and frustration in search of the security guard for the premises to find out what he knew about this. Certainly, a ghost did not drop the sacrifice in front of our door. Whoever did it must have passed through the gate. I found him hiding in the gatehouse and I summoned him to follow me to our front porch.

“What do you know about this, Mojid?” I asked.

“Nothing ma,” he squeaked, shaking like a leaf. “I swear I was not here when this happened.”

“Really?” I asked in total disbelief. “Okay, remove it, take it away,” I said waving my arm in a dismissive fashion.

A trembling Mojid looked at me, fear in his eyes, hands shaking, head swaying from side to side, as if he just had his worst nightmare. His eyes darted towards the dark street and suddenly, he took off into the night.