Halima “Iron Feathers”

Halima arrived at Kisi in the same chick crate as the future President, a fact both of them deploy in debates, with opposite conclusions. Where Adédoyin saw a queue, Halima saw a ledger. By her first moult she was keeping unofficial records of trough servings 'for reference purposes,' and by her second she had founded the New Grain Alliance on a platform of radical arithmetic.

Her monthly demand for an independent recount of the National Egg Census is now part of the Republic's calendar, like rain and the Feather Gala. In the famous Wet Season Recount, her figures caught a double-counted clutch and forced the Bureau of Egg Statistics into its first and only public apology. She responded with the shortest press statement in national history: 'Noted.'

The Republic's worst-kept secret is that the fiercest opponents in the Assembly are the oldest friends outside it. At dusk, the Opposition Leader and the President can be found scratching side by side at the fence line, arguing about everything except the things that matter, which are already settled between them.