A stranger as mosque imam

Their skin is better than that of our own goats for making puffs and leather carpets.” He pointed at one white horse and said it was a gift from the emir. Then he pointed at a herd of longhorn cattle and said, “His Excellency brought those for me from Texas. They are the type owned […]

Their skin is better than that of our own goats for making puffs and leather carpets.” He pointed at one white horse and said it was a gift from the emir. Then he pointed at a herd of longhorn cattle and said, “His Excellency brought those for me from Texas. They are the type owned by Wild West cowboys.”
I had to sit through his bragging for an hour before he slowly came round to the point of our meeting. We had met at the Eid ground on Sallah Day and the chairman complained that I had never been to his farm. So I arrived there on a Saturday morning. Alone, because my host made it clear that I should come alone for a private discussion.
His mouth was full of fried Sallah meat when the chairman suddenly said, “Alhaji, is it true that you want to contest for governor?” I was taken aback. How can he ask me this question when my name had been mentioned at a party caucus meeting as one of the aspirants for 2015 and I had been to his house to personally tell him? So I said, “Chairman, is that a secret? Remember I came to your house and told you of my intention.”
He is a crafty old fellow, this our chairman. People say his capacity for mischief is endless. When I told Maikahon Karo and Tsinin Kusa that Maikudi wanted to see me alone, there was a long debate before they agreed that I should go. We had a long prep session where we anticipated his questions and prepared the answers for them. Still munching mutton, he now said, “I thought you were joking. You know some people come and say they want to contest for a post but what they actually mean is that they want to be considered for something smaller.”
Maikaho had accurately predicted this question. I also reached out for a piece of Sallah meat, filled my mouth and then said, “Chairman, I am not looking for anything smaller. I want to contest for Governor.” “You cannot be serious,” he said without looking up. “Why?” I asked. He is also a dramatic man, this chairman. He did not answer immediately; he first washed his hand, picked up a glass of kunun zaki and drank it, then broke a piece of kola nut and threw it into his mouth.
Only then did he turn to face me directly. He said, “Alhaji, you were a civil servant all your life. You were living in Abuja and enjoying. I hear that your house was in one tree-lined part of Asokoro. You and your wives, you were just shopping in those Abuja stores. All that time we were here, coping with ordinary people, attending to their problems, touring rural areas, mosquitoes biting us. That was how we built the party to the level it is now and you want to just come and take away the biggest piece of meat in the soup.”
“Let me even ask you,” he continued without stopping. “If you come newly to a mosque where people have been praying for many years, can you just walk in and ask to be made the Imam?” I pretended to choke on kunun zaki and coughed for two minutes while I shopped around for an answer. Is it only politicians who are devious? When I was in the civil service, I handled all kinds of devious men and women, from suppliers to contractors and consultants. I served in some task forces together with policemen. When you are sitting with a Police DPO in the same task force and he can smell money, what kind of deviousness are you talking about again?
“Chairman,” I finally said. “This your example is not a good one. How can you bring the worship of God and compare it with politics? This politics that we are doing, is it worship of God? Is it the Hereafter we are looking for or is it this world that we are fighting for? The man who is the Governor now, where did he come from? Was he not a civil servant like me? He came here overnight and you were the one who pushed and pushed until he became the Governor. And now it is you who is saying a different thing. Haba!”
“Which reminds me,” the chairman immediately said. “You said you want to be the governor but you are not showing enough respect for the current Governor.” “Why are you saying that?” Now the chairman stood up from his cane chair. “Why did I say that? Who sent that your dangerous friend Maikahon Karo to go and do many tricks to embarrass Goshin Bauna because we nominated him as our ministerial nominee? All the pranks that were done, from the newspaper one to the football field one to the painting on the wall, it was Maikaho that organised it and you were the one that sent him. Just because we are being polite, you think we don’t know?”
Now it was my turn to stand up. “Chairman,” I said. “You know I respect you because of your younger brother, Mahe. He was my classmate and my very good friend at school. But you, instead of respecting yourself, you are displaying your partisanship in support of Goshin Bauna just to please the Governor. You want Goshin Bauna to be the minister as a stepping stone for him to come back next year and contest for governor. It is a lie. We will not take that.”
I thought he would be very angry, but the chairman was now laughing hilariously. “Sit down, sit down,” he was telling me. “You civil servants, whatever a person says, you will use your biro and twist it. Even me I told His Excellency that you are better than Goshin Bauna as our Honourable Minister. Goshin Bauna is just a local guy but you, you know all the Abuja wuruwuru inside out. That is why I support you seriously.”
Can you imagine? It is not for nothing that people call our chairman zulbu, the lungfish. It is because he is extremely slippery.