After the warm welcome by the commandant and the senior soldiers, we had a little military camp gyration. We were oriented and we also had fun. We were there for weeks, training hard everyday until one day when the publicity section of the camp sounded an alarm for us to get ready because terrorists were already coming. My heart was already in my mouth. Col. Yaro Yaya who was a senior colleague, led us out.
“Just follow anything I say or you die” that was his instruction. I was afraid. “Shoot” col. Yaya commanded. I started shoot randomly and to my surprise I killed two terrorists immediately. I started building my confidence. It took us about two hours but we eventually conquered. We killed about 150 of them that day. I was so happy. I called my fiancee and I told her everything.
When we got back to the camp, we were all celebrating our victory and I observed something, Major Yusuf was not really comfortable, I could see it in his eyes as he was going straight to his tent. What will make a commandant uncomfortable at the verge of victory? Who knows? I’m tired right now
“who is he really? An undercover?”
The call of my love, Rose woke me up the following morning. It is always a sweet experience hearing her voice. “Baby,I will have to call you later. We going for our morning drill, I love you.”
That was how I ended our conversation that morning. It was 6:00am already, we were all out on the open field for our morning drills and all. As we were jogging, a colleague of mine, Lanre made me remember the incident of the previous evening.
“Richard, can you see that the Major is acting funny?” He asked me. He continued by saying; “Is it that he doesn’t gyrate at all or why did he behave as if he was not happy with our success yesterday?” .
“I don’t really know, I also observed that. But I don’t think we have to worry about it. Maybe he was just trying to show his ego as the commandant and of the highest rank in the camp” I replied him.
We continued our drill for that day, it was hectic but as a solider, it is bean-cake and bread. That time happens to be an election period in Nigeria. A section of us were picked and distributed to supervise different voting centres. We got there, everything was going on well until a set of young men tried to cause a riot.
On like what other military personnels will do, myself and lanre calmed them down in a short while without any violence. The people there were surprised and all they could do was just to greet us, some even gave us money saying they loved the way we handled the case and they left.
Voting for that day was over and in no time we got back to the camp. Lanre and I were in our tent when we were summoned by the Major.
“Oh God! What is it this time?” I asked myself. On getting there we knew already that he was angry,
