He was drenched with sweat by the time he wriggled himself through the narrow entrance of h!s room into the passageway. Looking very depressed and drowsy that Thursday afternoon, he dragged himself along the hole-ridden passage and collapsed into the rickety sofa beside the staircase that leads to the upper floors in one of the buildings in the barracks.
With frustration written all over h!s face, Pol!ce Sergeant Uden (real names withheld), kept muttering to himself, but dosed off few minutes later. Apparently disturbed by the music blaring in h!s neighbourhood, Uden could not but open h!s eyes feebly and intermittently.
h!s pain was obvious to anyone who came across him,
But the reason for h!s frustration was largely unknown. However, as Uden would later tell PUNCH in a conversation he grudgingly consented to, since the apartment allotted to him in the barracks collapsed in June last year, he and h!s family had been living in the kitchen of one of the dilapidated buildings in Pedro pol!ce barracks, Somolu, Lagos. That was h!s main frustration.
“It was the only alternative we had at that time,” he said, as he unbuttoned h!s shirt for some fresh air.
Since he and h!s family were constrained to live in a room (kitchen), he said life had become one of bitterness and frustration. To escape the intense heat of the day and the constant constraint of space that h!s family of six could never live comfortably with, Uden had been used to sitting outside anytime he was home.
Hoping that respite could eventually come h!s way if he opened up to PUNCH, Uden wasted no time in leading our correspondent to h!s room where he lives with h!s wife and their four children. He opened the door and lowered h!s head as he made to enter, to avoid being bruised on the head by the doorframe. As he opened the curtain for our correspondent to enter, the odour, which seemed like a mixture of wet rug and accumulated sweat, that oozed out of the stuffy room was disturbing and could make anybody puke.
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