"Hanging Around' By Adesina Ogunlana

THE LEARNED SQUIB


There is something almost always sinister about the word ‘hang.’ At least for me. Anytime, I come across the word, either written or vocalized, prefix-ed or prefix-less, in any time sense (past, continuous, present) I always see in my mind’s eye a noose round the neck of an unfortunate member of the homo-sapiens.


I tell you, the word hang always goes with a clang in my head. Instead of a tang, what it has is a fang that sinks into the flesh of my mind bringing up morbid thoughts.


So you can imagine my sense of unpleasantness, when I was told recently at a formation of the Nigerian Police, that while waiting for the police officer who would attend to me, I should “hang around somewhere outside”


Really I couldn’t believe my ears. “Hang around?” I asked incredulously from the police sentry, one of a trio, who advised my “hanging around”
“Oh yes, just outside there” said the police man, quite matter of factly as if it were the most natural thing to do in the world! I was puzzled. Fairly so. I looked round me. The police formation was in a large, neat-looking, almost serene compound. There were some-one-story buildings in there. The sun was pouring in the hard, wide concrete central court yard. Outside the gates, the sun was no less merciful. Several cars were parked all over the streets adjoining the police-formation.


“I can’t hang around. I am a lawyer. How can I hang around? Don’t you people have a reception or something”? I asked with some heat. My outburst was greeted with a huge, hearty and prolonged laughter by one of the policemen. It first started as a merry twinkle in the eye, then the cop’s checks spread out in a broad grin, then rapidly everything dissolved into a convulsion of truly merry guffaw.
“Ah this oga is funny o.” opined the policeman, whilst still in the panoxysm of his hilarity.
“Reception? In a police station? asked the man doubling up now in real mirth. “We don’t have time for all that here” Then he went on laughing.
Of course my sympathy went to the man. Clearly the cop is a man whose mind has become so twisted that he accepted the anomalous situation of no reception or waiting room for callers as normal, good and proper. That cop, I guess is in the class of those who laugh at their own calamity!


Of course I did not go out and “find somewhere to hang”. Rather I made the cops get me a comfortable place to sit to await my man. I would rather have left than hang around. Why should I hang around? I am not in the class of those who hang around or hang about. I am not a motor-park tout who hang around motor-parks. I am not a by-the-roadside-affidavit maker who hangs around court-rooms and vehicle licensing offices.
As well known, I am not a bouncer or a thug. So I have no politician or and his wife to hang around. I am not a contractor, so I have no reason to hang around civil servants.


In short I am not a hang around material. I am a lawyer. A barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
“Hang around, ke? Out of the question, sir”! That was what I told them at the MILVERTON Road Ikoyi empire of Barrister Yinka Balogun, the commissioner of police in charge of the Special Fraud Unit a few days ago.
Imagine the cheek - asking a lawyer to be loitering about while waiting for an I.P.O. What if the police should arrest 'hanging about lawyer' for wandering? Don’t say “impossible!”