The train to Aba hadn’t run in seventeen years —
not since the last soldier’s name was whispered
over the tracks at midnight. Then came the oil
boom’s false dawn, and the Ministry of Transport,
under Minister Obiageli Okoro, ordered its
revival — not for people, but for his goldplated
coffin of stolen naira. He had taken 32 million
from the Orphanage Relief Fund, buried it in
Swiss accounts, and booked a private compartment
under the alias “Dr. Nwankwo.”
The rail line was dead. But the Ministry’s
engineers, bribed and terrified, had wired it to
obey a forgotten rule: trains move only when a
dead soul is named aloud by someone who knew
them. This wasn’t folklore. It was law — carved
into the rails by Biafran engineers during the
siege, a pact with the soil to keep the war’s
ghosts from rising. No one spoke it anymore. Not
even the old stationmasters.
On the eve of his escape, Okoro stood at Lagos
Station with three bodyguards and a suitcase of
cash. He had no intention of naming the dead. He
ordered the conductor to flip the switch. The
signal lights blinked red. The engine coughed,
then died. The platform lights flickered. A
woman selling akara beside the track muttered,
“My brother, Chike, died in the rain at Owerri.
They said he stole bread. He stole nothing.” No
one else spoke. The train didn’t move.
Okoro’s men dragged her away. One fired into the
air. The crowd scattered. The conductor, a man
who lost both sons to the war, stepped forward.
He didn’t beg. He didn’t shout. He placed his
palm on the rusted rail and said, “My son, Eze,
was ten when the bombs took his school. He
carried a pencil in his pocket. He never used it.
”
The train groaned. Steam hissed. The wheels
turned. Not forward. Backward.
Okoro’s compartment doors locked from outside.
The lights dimmed. The train began rolling — not
toward Aba, but into the dark tunnel behind the
station, where the old rail yard swallowed
trains that refused to obey. The last thing seen
was his suitcase, halfopen, cash fluttering like
confetti, caught in the wind of a motion no one
had paid for.
The next morning, the stationmaster found only a
single shoe — Italian leather, size 9. The money
was gone. The train never returned.
But every Friday at 3:17 a.m., if you stand near
the old tracks at Iddo, you hear a man
whispering names. And if you whisper one back —
just one — the rails tremble. Not enough to move.
Just enough to remind you: some debts aren’t
paid in naira. They’re paid in memory.
