Efunke walks out of Surulere at dawn, the brass
Olokun bell tucked beneath her buba, its chime
muted by seven layers of cloth. Her father,
Pastor Adeyemi, died three nights ago — not from
fever, but from the bell’s silence after he
tried to bless the new minister’s mansion on
Victoria Island. The church elders say it was
divine judgment. She knows better. The bell
never failed until Chief Obioma, now Minister of
Internal Affairs, ordered the digging of
foundations on sacred soil near the old Oshun
grove at Ijora.
The world changed when the oil men came with
their drills and the government gave them the
right to bury concrete over what the Orisha
claimed. Now, the land forgets. Spirits starve.
Belltongues go mute. But Efunke’s father taught
her: the bell only sings when the earth still
remembers its name.
She takes the train to Ibadan, the bell cold
against her spine. At Oshodi station, a boy with
a red cap tries to lift her bag. She slaps his
hand — not out of fear, but because he’s one of
the boys who used to sell kola nuts near her
father’s church, before they turned to selling
fake anointing oil and calling it “digital grace.
” He grins, shows her his palm: a faded tattoo
of a cross inside a triangle. She knows that
mark. It’s from the same sect that blessed
Obioma’s inauguration.
In Ibadan, she rents a room above a tailor’s
shop. That night, the bell hums. Not loud. Just
enough to rattle the glass on the windowsill.
She presses her ear to it — hears the old drum
pattern from her grandmother’s funeral, the one
they say the river used to echo before the dam
was built. The land remembers. The bell is
waking.
The next morning, two men in charcoal suits
knock. One carries a briefcase stamped with the
minister’s seal. They offer her N5 million.
“Your father made a mistake,” the taller one
says. “The bell belongs to the state now. It’s
not spiritual. It’s cultural heritage.” She
doesn’t answer. She knows the rule: no one may
touch an ancestral bell without a blood offering.
Obioma broke that when he poured diesel on the
grove. The bell went silent. Now it’s trying to
speak again — and it will only speak if the one
who stole it dies by the same soil.
She flees to the old village of IleIfe, walking
the last twenty kilometers barefoot. The bell
grows heavier. Her feet bleed. At the edge of
the grove, she digs with her hands. Not for
treasure. For the skull of the last priest who
tried to bury the bell — the one who died with
his mouth full of earth, whispering the old
names.
She places the bell on his ribs. The earth
shudders. A gust rises — not wind, but the
breath of something that waited. The sky darkens,
not with clouds, but with the wings of a
thousand ibises rising from nowhere.
Behind her, Obioma’s convoy skids to a halt. He
steps out in his tailored suit, holding a copy
of the National Heritage Act. He shouts, “This
is illegal! The bell is state property!” He
takes a step forward — and his right foot sinks
into the mud, up to the ankle. He screams. The
mud does not release. It grips like a mother
refusing to let go of her child’s hand.
Efunke does not look back. She walks into the
grove, the bell now warm, singing low and clear.
The trees lean in. The soil cracks open — not to
swallow her, but to remember.
That night, the minister’s body is found in the
mud, still standing, mouth open as if to speak.
The bell is gone. No one dares to dig for it.
But in Lagos, children whisper: if you press
your ear to wet earth near Ijora, you can still
hear the drum. And if you’re quiet enough, it
answers.
