The humidity of Lagos in January 1914 was not merely weather but a physical presence that seemed to slow the very passage of time. At exactly 10:15 am, the air inside the Governor's residence was stagnant, smelling of salt, old parchment, and the underlying rot of the surrounding lagoons. Lord Frederick Lugard stood by a heavy oak desk, his gaze fixed on a map of the newly amalgamated territory. To the world, he was the architect of a colonial administration. To the five men standing in the shadows of his office, he was the founder of a shadow. He spoke with a voice that carried the weight of an empire, yet he did not look at them as he spoke of the necessity of a hidden hand.
He explained that the union of the North and South was a marriage of convenience that would soon be tested by the greed of men who saw the country as a carcass to be picked clean. He warned that the political elite in Lagos were already weaving webs of influence that would bypass the courts and the constabulary. Therefore, he was commissioning a group that would exist outside the ledger of the British Crown or the future Nigerian state. They would be called the Watchmen. Their mandate was simple yet terrifying: they were to protect the national security of Nigeria by any means necessary, acting as the final check against those who would use the nation's wealth to enslave its people.
[SCENE START]
INTERIOR: GOVERNOR'S OFFICE - DAY
LORD LUGARD: (Tracing a line across the map)
The ink is barely dry on the amalgamation papers, yet I can already hear the sharpening of knives in the social clubs of Marina. They think this country is a gift for their pockets.
CAPTAIN REED: (The first Watchman)The police can handle the street thugs, Excellency. Are you saying we are to target the men who sit at your dinner table?
LORD LUGARD: (Turning sharply, his eyes cold)
I am saying that the man who signs the laws is often the one most eager to break them. You are not police, Reed. You are the shadow that ensures the light doesn't blind the people. You will operate from the limestone basement near the docks. No records. No medals. If you are caught, you are common criminals. If you succeed, Nigeria survives itself.
CAPTAIN REED: And if the Watchmen themselves become the elite we are meant to hunt?
LORD LUGARD: Then may the last honest man among you find the strength to bury the rest.
[SCENE END]
The men left the office through a service entrance, disappearing into the bustling chaos of the Lagos docks. Among them was a young sergeant named Adeyemi, whose descendants would carry the Watchmen's blade for generations. They established their headquarters in a building that appeared to be a simple shipping warehouse. Beneath the floorboards, however, they constructed a war room that rivaled the best in London. They began their work immediately, documenting the secret meetings of merchants and the private dealings of colonial officers. For decades, the Watchmen were a whisper in the halls of power, a cold wind that blew whenever a politician grew too bold or a businessman too greedy.
As the decades rolled into the 1960s and independence arrived, the Watchmen found themselves in a changing world. The British were gone, but the Lagos Elite Lugard had feared were now more powerful than ever. The organization had grown in size, but the purity of its mission was under threat. The limestone headquarters, once a sanctuary of secrecy, was now surrounded by the very people it was supposed to monitor. High-rise buildings overlooked their courtyard, and the burgeoning telecommunications of the city made their radio signals easy to intercept. The watchers were being watched.
By the early 1970s, the tension within the organization was palpable. The senior operatives, many of whom had become wealthy through their own consulting for the government, argued that the Watchmen should integrate with the formal intelligence services. They wanted titles, pensions, and public recognition. The younger faction, led by a man named Silas who had been mentored by the old guard, argued for a return to the shadows. They saw the corruption of the city seeping into their own ranks. It was during this period of internal strife that General Murtala Muhammed rose to power.
Murtala was not a Watchman, but he was a man who shared Lugard's visceral hatred for the capitalist rot of Lagos. He had been briefed on the organization's existence by a dying elder of the order. He realized that as long as the seat of government remained in Lagos, the Watchmen would be compromised by the proximity to the political machinery. He began to formulate a plan to move the capital to the geographical center of the country: a virgin territory called Abuja. It wasn't just a move for the government; it was a move to save the Watchmen. He wanted to build them a new fortress, one that was unmapped and untainted.
On the morning of February 13, 1976, the air in Lagos was thick with the scent of rain that refused to fall. Murtala was driving to his office at Dodan Barracks in his black Mercedes Benz. He had refused the heavy escort that his advisors insisted upon, believing that a leader who feared his people was already dead. It was 4:15 pm when his car became amused snarled in the legendary, claustrophobic traffic of Ikoyi. The Mercedes sat motionless near the secretariat, a sitting duck in a sea of metal and heat.
From the sidewalk, a group of soldiers led by Lt. Col. Buka Suka Dimka emerged. They didn't move with the precision of the Watchmen; they moved with the frantic energy of men who knew they were committing a sin. The rattle of automatic gunfire tore through the afternoon air, shattering the windows of the Mercedes and the silence of the nation. Murtala was killed instantly. The official story would say it was a failed coup by disgruntled officers, but the Watchmen knew better. Dimka's group had been fed intelligence by the corrupt faction of the Watchmen the men who did not want to leave the comforts and bribes of Lagos for the dusty, isolated hills of Abuja.
Silas, standing in the crowd of onlookers as the smoke cleared, saw the betrayal for what it was. He looked at the bullet-riddled car and knew that the brotherhood was dead. The just but Brutal goal of the original order had been sacrificed for the preservation of a lifestyle. The move to Abuja would eventually happen, but it would be on the terms of the corrupt, not the pure. As the sirens began to wail across Ikoyi, Silas turned away from the scene. He knew that the Watchmen would have to go deeper into the shadows than ever before. They would have to become ghosts within their own house.
The aftermath of the assassination saw a purge. The Lagos faction consolidated their power, rebranding themselves and slowly integrating into the formal state apparatus. They became the architects of the security state that would define the next two decades. They kept the name Watchmen for a time, but the spirit had vanished. Silas and a handful of loyalists went underground, maintaining the old codes and the old secrets. They watched as the country spiraled into a cycle of coups and counter-coups, each one further degrading the national security they had sworn to protect.
The division was now a physical reality. In the North, near the newly designated capital of Abuja, the Originals began to build their own hidden network. They were fewer in number, but they held the Lugard Ledger the original list of the five founding families and the codes for the untraceable assets established in 1914. In Lagos, the New Guard flourished, using their broad forces to control the flow of information and wealth. The stage was set for a confrontation that would take nearly twenty years to reach its boiling point, a conflict that would eventually decide the fate of a nation during the most turbulent election in its history.
[SCENE START]
INTERIOR: UNDERGROUND SAFEhouse - NIGHT (1976)
SILAS: (Setting a file on the table)
They killed him because he wanted us to be honest. They killed him because Abuja was a threat to their bank accounts.
AGENT YUSUF: The organization is split, Silas. Half the men are already reporting to the new brass. They're calling us insurgents.
SILAS: Let them call us what they want. They have the guns and the offices, but we have the Ledger. Lugard didn't build this to protect a General; he built it to protect the idea of Nigeria. If we have to tear the whole thing down to save it, then that is what we will do.
YUSUF: How do we fight them? They're everywhere now.
SILAS: We wait. We watch. We let them get fat on their corruption until they are too slow to see the blade coming. This isn't a coup, Yusuf. This is a long-term extraction.
[SCENE END]
As the years progressed toward 1993, the secrets of the Watchmen became the most dangerous currency in West Africa. The Originals operated like a sleeper cell, infiltrating the police, the army, and the civil service. They were waiting for a moment of absolute chaos to strike back against the usurpers who now called themselves the Nigeria State Defense Intelligence. That moment arrived when a wealthy businessman named Moshood Abiola decided to run for President, threatening to open the very files that the corrupt Watchmen had spent decades trying to bury. The war in the shadows was about to become a war in the streets.