Letter to Morita

Letter to Morita
By Thompson Taiwo

Dear Morita:

Ladi in Solitary Confinement

I FOUND this letter so hard to write but not impossible. Perhaps the last chance for me at this moment, to clear all surging doubts, to right those ubiquitous rumours, which trailed my journey to prison, my life in prison and share the uncertainties that becloud my days with the loved ones. A national daily once reported me dead. Another alleged I died of food poisoning. Deep inside me I had no intent to spite the sources of these dispatches. Their authors, the protagonists in the struggle to effect my unconditional release. My pin-drop silence for years I believed bore the reports.

Life in prison started in seconds. Seconds exploded to minutes. Minutes in a row stretched to hours. Hours prolonged to days. Days crawled into weeks. Weeks extended to months and months wore the garb of years. Today marks my fourth year in solitary confinement.I would weep like a tot scavenging for his mother when the images of my wife and children lodged in my troubled mind. Tears, my companions were not so strong to effect my release nor at least crush the conspiratorial gate of hell for possible escape to other land. And when I was lost in thought, my thoughts ran riot, almost conspired against me. My growing years of loneliness had set my stubborn hope ablaze. Life had been so hard, greedy, tough and heartless towards me. Who knows if this cup will pass over me?

As a journalist convicted of libel and treason by this despotic government, my cell stood apart, apparently small and windowless, its gate carved from strong iron bars, looking firm like a mountain. It would take any officious device two thousand seasons to defeat its strength. I had never been allowed the freedom to step out of my cell since my incarceration on December 1st, 1991. It seemed the powers that be had signed a pact with loneliness to edge me out.

My arrest came hot on the heels of a write-up in one of the leading newspapers in the country – DAILY MIRROR – which I worked for. The write-up was indeed an indictment of the military government and a knock against its insincerity towards the conduct of the June 12, 1993 general election. It was this insightful piece that invited the attention of many Nigerians, leading to a mad rush to the newsstand for that day’s edition of the newspaper. Those who could not afford copies from the smiling vendors owing to the paucity of their purses managed to square with those who could. Some even offered to go with other citizens who got copies to their different destinations, hoping to catch a glimpse of the piece homewards.

On the noon of that day which was Tuesday, I sauntered to a newsstand. I espied a crowd of people taking incongruent postures and positions at the stand, jostling to outsmart one another in the struggle to peruse the write-up. Inwardly, I never had forethought to walk up to the newsstand. I did, by stroke of disappointment and after casting heavy aspersions on a driver who brought me in contact with the crowded stand.

How do I mean? Having left Daily Mirror's headquarters on that day, I caught a rickety molue going towards the area where I lived and the bus was to pass through Ikoyi, the site of the newsstand. At Ikoyi, the bus developed a fault and screeched to a halt. Accordingly, the conductor got off hurriedly to fetch a repairer. There was no roadside auto-mechanic to fix its malfunctioning engine. Consequently, a number of impatient passengers and I alighted crossly from the stationary molue excluding those who had previously paid their fares to the disheveled conductor but had not gotten to their destinations. They waited in vain to get back their money as the garrulous conductor insisted they had to share the loss with him. This mass disappointment drove me to the crowded newsstand.Though, the insightful piece was not written by me, it was from someone much like me. My arrest, a mistake of identity.

Every morning, one of the prison warders, Mr. Bako would say bluntly, “Young man, here is your food. Eat so that you won’t die. Food given to prisoners is not to please them. Just to save them from the cold hands of death." Morita. Take of my of my children as Mr. Bako informed against the authorities this morning that I would be hanged in ten days. The same way they hanged my brother, KEN-SARO WIWA.

Your husband, Ladi