Inspector Tunde Adeyemi wakes in a bus stop near

Mile 2 with no memory of his name, his gun, or

why his uniform smells of kola nut and burnt

incense. His badge is gone. Only his notebook

remains — filled with scribbles of dates, church

names, and the phrase “Eze did not die, he was

sold.”

The year is 1963. Nigeria’s first republic is

trembling. The colonial records — land deeds,

tribal treaties, police rosters — are being

smuggled out of Lagos Central Archives by a

syndicate that trades them to prophets who claim

they can “unlock ancestral curses.” Each

document, when burned in a prayer circle, is

said to erase a person’s past. The syndicate’s

clients? Politicians, priests, and wives who

want to forget their sins.

Tunde finds his reflection in a shop mirror —

cleanshaven, crisp uniform, but eyes that don’t

know themselves. He walks into a police station.

No one recognises him. When he asks for his file,

the sergeant laughs: “You? You was the one who

signed the order to burn the Eze papers. We

thought you ran to Ghana.”

He remembers nothing. But his body does. When he

passes a Pentecostal tent revival, his hands

twitch to his belt — not for a pistol, but for a

matchbox. He lights one. The smoke makes his

chest burn. He remembers: he burned the

documents himself. Not to sell. To hide the

truth — that he was the officer who falsified

the arrest report for Chief Eze, a Igbo elder,

to protect his own father’s land grab in Enugu.

The syndicate finds him in a dodgy boarding

house in Surulere. Their leader, a woman in a

lace headtie who smells of palm oil and holy

water, smiles. “Inspector, you came back to

finish what you started.” She offers him a cup

of tea. He drinks it. It tastes like his

mother’s funeral porridge. He laughs — a real,

sudden laugh — because he remembers now: he

stole the documents not for power, but because

he couldn’t bear to see his father’s name on

every stolen title. He was trying to erase his

own shame.

The hard rule bites: stealing colonial documents

is treason. Burning them is sacrilege. But

keeping them? That’s what turns a man into a

ghost.

He walks into the National Archives at dawn. The

clerks are praying. He takes a match. Lights the

last box — the one marked “EZE FAMILY, 1948.”

Flames climb the shelves. Smoke curls into the

ceiling like incense. Outside, the crowd chants.

Some curse him. Others kneel.

He doesn’t run. He smiles. For the first time

since he woke up, he remembers his wife’s face —

the one he married in 1960, the one he forgot

because she refused to pray for his promotion.

He remembers her saying, “You don’t need God to

be clean, Tunde. You need to stop lying.”

The fire consumes the records. The syndicate is

broken. The government scrambles. The press

calls him a madman.

He walks into the Lagos police yard barefoot,

holding only his notebook. No gun. No badge.

Just a grin. “I think,” he tells the new

inspector, “I just set Nigeria free.”

The mood lands: not tragic. Not heroic. Humorous,

in the way Lagos laughs when the gods finally

get tired of your nonsense.