The rooster was crowing again. It told us it was time to go home for the evening. We were doused in each others grime. All stout or podgy of the ten boys on the field. We knew it was a lacklustre match without Nonso in it. Nonso was an apt and loud player and it has been a month since Nonso was kidnapped.
Nonso was a talented left midfielder teamed with Ade on the right, all the matches of St. Francis Grammar boys school was at it’s zenith. Ade had played the both midfield for a month now and though he didn’t complain for an aide, I could tell from he’s incessant panting bouts that he really needed one. Ade and Nonso were not the best of friends when Nonso had joined the boys team last year. Ade had harboured a tinge of unexplained ethnocentrism towards Nonso until he saw there was nothing to prejudice over later on; then, they became the inseparable duo.

Nonso was kidnapped a month ago as I lucidly remember. The team says he was gaslighted at recess into a midnight black metallic Toyota Sienna that had been parked by the school wired fence since the kick-off  of the morning assembly. We had just finished a brief match while the seniors ordered us back to our classes. Nonso had gone to the fence tap to wash his feet and hands. Some boys said he had boldly walked into the torn fence then, into the vehicle and the drive was fast and furious. The school knew what it was. We knew what it was. Nonso’s father had messed with the wrong person again and this time, it had caused him Nonso. Few years ago, it caused him a close shave after he was set up by an arsonist in his rival’s office. Mr Chukwu, Nonso’s father was a revolutionary columnist at the Inside Matter Newspapers. If he wasn’t giving self help to the mass out there, he did deep-seated parodies and libels that created upheavals for the Newspaper and his family.  He called himself the resistance for the greater good but it was a cloak of audacity he wore to create troubles out there. It was without doubt how he built the duplex his family lived in and how he bought farmlands for more agricultural investments but his family sometimes became the unplanned sacrificial ram of his intricacies.

The state police had been to the school incessantly for weeks asking we write or give a story of when last we saw Nonso and for the umptieth time, they would come tomorrow again saying “we need more tallying stories boys”.  Mrs Chukwu had wailed last Tuesday about the Police being a bunch of perfidious liars in uniforms who were making sure the search was always futile. Ade’s brother worked in the force and one time, he had tipped Mrs Chukwu on the gist that the manhunt sent out for Nonso’s weekly search had been spotted several times on so many breaks at Engr. Harrison’s Villa frittering away. Mr Chukwu had written about Engr. Harrison’s extravagance with the funds for the states amenities. It was really a pilloried read and Engr. Harrison was more than annoyed about it. He wasn’t one to be messed with because he had tendrils seeping into every cranny of the country. It was a given that Engr. Harrison was involved in Nonso’s disappearance but no one dared to point fingers.

A pallid Hausa woman on a gaudy mayafi had come to the Inside Matters Newspapers to report that her sister in Kano had spotted someone that looked like Nonso in Warawa. She had asked for money if the company wanted her to give more information. Mr. Chukwu ended up emptying his pockets to a Jane Doe in dingy clothes.  Other workers told him she could be playing false because she needed money but any hint on his son was paramount to him. A week later, Engr. Harrison found Miss Jane Doe and she recanted all aforesaid statements on Nonso’s case. Mr Chukwu really was fighting a hard battle but we were fighting much more.

Ade had just finished packing his backpack. I held his shoulders and he raised his head so his eyes  could meet my towering face.
“We miss him too Ade. I don’t know if we’ll find him but we have to keep hoping” I said, trying to do what the eldest of the team would’ve done.
“It’s been a month already, Dan. Nonso just got caught up in the middle of his father’s politics. He’s never coming back. We all know how influential Engr. Harrison is” Ade replied, holding back evident tears.
“Yes we all do but Nonso was a good boy and God knows that”. That was all I could tell Ade because I could feel my own skepticism slowly creeping in.

With the gradual descent of the sun, we hinged our hands together in a halo and prayed again for Nonso.