THU -- 6:15 AM -- Willowgrove Secondary School, Mushin -- Nysaria
The assembly bell cut through the morning air like a machete through sugarcane—sharp, final, no room for argument.
Elisha joined the flood of blue-and-white uniforms streaming across the dusty school compound. Willowgrove Secondary wasn't much to look at: concrete blocks the color of old bones, zinc roofing that turned classrooms into ovens by noon, and windows with more holes than glass. But it was school, and school was better than the street.
"Form a proper line!" Mr. Ogundipe's voice boomed across the assembly ground. The Vice Principal had been shouting the same words for fifteen years, as if proper lines were something you could create through sheer volume. "You are not goats! You are future leaders of Nysaria!"
Future leaders. Elisha almost laughed. Half the class would be lucky to finish their WAEC exams. The other half would pass but couldn't afford university fees. And the few who managed both would probably end up driving danfos or selling phone cards at computer villages.
Still, they stood in something resembling rows while the national anthem played from speakers that made it sound like a funeral dirge.
"Arise, O compatriots, Nysaria's call obey..."
Elisha sang along, his voice lost in the crowd but his attention focused. Around him, most students mouthed the words without thinking, but he meant every syllable. The irony wasn't lost on him—standing in a crumbling school, singing about serving a nation that had forgotten places like Willowgrove existed.
-----
After assembly, Biology class with Mrs. Adenuga. She was one of the good ones—a teacher who actually tried to teach instead of just collecting salary. Today's lesson was about adaptation: how organisms changed to survive in hostile environments.
"Can anyone give me an example of adaptation?" she asked, scanning the room.
Hands shot up. "Chameleon!" "Fish with gills!" "Desert plants!"
Mrs. Adenuga nodded approvingly. "Very good. Now, adaptation isn't just about animals and plants. Humans adapt too. We learn to survive in whatever environment we find ourselves."
Elisha thought about that. Lagos was definitely a hostile environment. You adapted or you died—sometimes literally. The pure water sellers learned to dodge traffic. The market women learned to spot fake currency. The politicians learned to smile while stealing.
What had he adapted to become?
"Mr. Oriade," Mrs. Adenuga's voice brought him back to the present. "You look deep in thought. Care to share an example?"
The class turned to look at him. Elisha felt that familiar weight—the attention, the expectation. He could give a safe answer about polar bears or something. Instead, he heard himself saying:
"Soldiers."
Mrs. Adenuga raised an eyebrow. "Explain."
"Soldiers adapt to war. They learn to follow orders even when the orders don't make sense. They learn to kill people they don't hate to protect people they don't know. They adapt to carrying weapons and making life-and-death decisions, even if they started as regular people who just wanted to serve their country."
The classroom went quiet. Too quiet.
Mrs. Adenuga studied him for a long moment. "That's... a very mature observation, Elisha. Perhaps too mature."
From the back of the class, someone whispered: "This boy and his army obsession."
Another voice: "Maybe he wan join Boko Haram."
"Or become another coup plotter."
The whispers spread like ripples in water. Elisha felt his face grow warm, but he kept his expression neutral. This was Lagos. This was Nysaria. You learned not to react, because reactions could be used against you.
------
During break, he found himself alone under the old mango tree in the school compound. It was the kind of solitude he preferred—not empty, just peaceful. He could hear life happening around him: students arguing about football, girls braiding each other's hair, someone practicing a speech for the debate club.
Kemi Adebayo approached, carrying her math textbook like a weapon. She was one of the few students who actually took studying seriously, and probably the only person in school who'd ever engaged him in real conversation.
"Why did you say that? About soldiers?"
Elisha looked up from his borrowed book—today it was a battered copy of Nysarian Independence: The Untold Story. "Because it's true."
"But you know what people will think."
"Let them think."
She sat down beside him, uninvited but not unwelcome. "My father says the problem with this country is that too many young men want to be soldiers instead of doctors or engineers."
"Your father is probably right."
"But?"
Elisha was quiet for a moment, watching a lizard dart up the mango tree's trunk. "But who's going to protect the doctors and engineers?"
Kemi didn't have an answer for that.
From across the compound, they could hear Mr. Ogundipe's voice again, this time reading from a newspaper: "...the President has assured the nation that the recent spate of kidnappings and pipeline bombings will not go unpunished. Security forces have been given clear instructions to restore order in all affected areas..."
"Security forces," Kemi repeated. "You mean the same ones who set up roadblocks to collect bribes from commercial drivers?"
"Not all of them," Elisha said quietly.
"How do you know?"
Because he wanted to believe it. Because if every single person with power in Nysaria was corrupt, then the country was already dead and they were just waiting for someone to bury it. Because sometimes, late at night when the generators went quiet and the city almost slept, he imagined himself in uniform—not taking bribes or beating innocent people, but actually serving. Actually protecting.
But he couldn't say any of that to Kemi. Not yet.
"I just do," he said instead.
-------
The rest of the school day passed in its usual rhythm. Government class with Mr. Bello, who read from a textbook that still called the country a "budding democracy" and made it sound like corruption was just a phase they were going through. English Literature with Mrs. Okafor, who insisted they analyze poems about colonial resistance while their own resistance was happening in real time, just outside the classroom windows.
Mathematics with Mr. Adamu, who'd given up trying to teach and now just wrote equations on the board while students copied them without understanding. The numbers meant nothing to most of them—just symbols to memorize and regurgitate during exams.
But Elisha paid attention even when others didn't. Not because he loved math, but because he understood that everything was connected. Numbers told stories. Statistics revealed patterns. Even the textbooks full of lies contained fragments of truth if you knew how to read between the lines.
----
After school, he walked home through the familiar chaos of Mushin streets. The evening crowd was different from the morning rush—more relaxed but no less intense. Market women hawked their wares with the desperation of people who needed to sell everything before dark. Mechanics worked on cars that seemed to be held together by prayer and palm oil. Children played football with a ball made of plastic bags and rubber bands.
At the junction near his street, a crowd had gathered around a man with a megaphone. Not unusual—Mushin had more preachers per square meter than anywhere else in Lagos. But this wasn't a preacher.
"...they promise us change, but what do we get? More fuel queues! More blackouts! More hungry children!"
The man wore a faded military uniform—not current issue, but old enough to suggest he'd actually served. His voice carried the authority of someone who'd given orders and taken them.
"They sit in Abuja counting our oil money while our mothers walk five kilometers to find clean water. They send their children to schools in London while our schools don't have books. They build mansions while we live in face-me-I-face-you."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. Someone shouted: "Na true you talk oo!"
Another voice: "So wetin we do? Them get army, them get police, them get everything!"
The man in the uniform smiled—not a happy smile, but the kind that suggested he knew something others didn't.
"My brothers and sisters, the army is not 'their' army. The police is not 'their' police. These are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, wearing uniform. And uniform no be magic—it can never change what's inside a man's heart."
Elisha found himself moving closer, drawn by something in the man's voice. A quality that reminded him of his book about military leaders—not the politicians who used soldiers, but the soldiers who understood their true duty.
"Mark my words," the man continued, his voice dropping to something almost like a whisper, but somehow everyone could still hear. "Change no dey come from outside. It come from inside. From people who love this country enough to fight for it. Really fight—not with stones and protests, but with discipline, with organization, with the kind of sacrifice that build nations."
The crowd was silent now, hanging on every word.
"And when that time come—and it will come—you go know. Because the people who love Nysaria pass themselves no go allow this kind nonsense continue forever."
Someone in the crowd started clapping, then others joined. But the man with the megaphone was already walking away, disappearing into the maze of streets like he'd never been there at all.
---
That night, after dinner and Uncle Femi's usual complaints about politicians, Elisha lay on his mat listening to the sounds of the city settling into its restless sleep. Generators hummed. Babies cried. Somewhere in the distance, music played—probably from one of the beer parlors that stayed open until dawn.
He thought about what the man had said: "Change no dey come from outside. It come from inside."
And for the first time in weeks, Elisha allowed himself to imagine what it would feel like to wear a uniform that actually meant something. To take an oath that wasn't just words. To serve a country that was worth serving.
The thought should have seemed impossible, given everything he knew about Nysaria's military and its history of coups and corruption. But somehow, lying there in the darkness, it felt less like a dream and more like a destination.
A place he was already walking toward, even if he didn't yet know the way.