Dokin Karfe chickens out

Anything that is planned in secrecy, someone will go and leak it because gossip is the street politician’s main trade tool. Our minister Iliya Dokin Karfe went and submitted his letter of resignation at the SGF’s office last Sunday. Even though it was not a working day, they said whoever wanted to resign should leave […]

Anything that is planned in secrecy, someone will go and leak it because gossip is the street politician’s main trade tool. Our minister Iliya Dokin Karfe went and submitted his letter of resignation at the SGF’s office last Sunday. Even though it was not a working day, they said whoever wanted to resign should leave his letter on the desk of the SGF’s secretary and the man went and put his own letter there.
As soon as he returned to his house to meet with his people and continue planning for a grand home reception for himself, one state party official in Tafki State went and leaked to him all the plans that have been made in order to embarrass him. We are still trying to find out the man who did that in order to punish him. Even though his name means he is an iron horse, Dokin Karfe is actually a very cowardly man. I have known him since secondary school. He was my senior in the school by two years and everyone in the school knew him to be a coward. There was a time we went to steal mangoes at an orchard behind our school. The orchard’s owner emerged while we were on top of the mango trees. He man hid somewhere, waiting to see the people who had been stealing his mangoes. Everyone dropped from the tree and ran but Dokin Karfe hid in the mango tree for a day and a half until the principal organised a search party that went and rescued him.
So I was not surprised by what he did when he heard about the plan to embarrass him. Instead of facing it like a man, he panicked and he ran back to the SGF’s office and tried to retrieve his resignation letter. Unfortunately for him, the secretary told him that the SGF had already collected the first batch of the resignation letters and had gone with them to the Villa. Some people who were present swore that Dokin Karfe urinated in his pants. He ran after the SGF, followed him to his house, searched at the church, went everywhere looking for him. When he found him, the man said the letters were already on the president’s desk.
That was when Dokin Karfe now began phoning the Governor and the party chairman, that they should help him and ask the Presidency to disregard his resignation letter. You know our governor is a wily man. He asked Dokin Karfe, “Were you not listening when the President said you should think twice before submitting your letter of resignation? He said if you want to change your mind you should do so before you submit the letter but after you submit it, it is too late to withdraw, which is what you are trying to do now.”
When he realised that he could not withdraw the letter, he now abandoned his plan for a grand welcome party back home. They even told him that the Maitawaye that he hired to guard his procession into town is my Youth Wing leader and that they will scatter his procession. The coward that he is, Dokin Karfe sneaked into town at night. Some friends were waiting for him at the airport, only to hear that he came by road and was already in his house. That night he began to go to people’s houses. He came to my house after midnight. I said to him, “Honourable Minister, is this you? The last time I saw you was more than a year ago. What are you doing at my house in this night?”
He has already chickened out of the governorship race. He is trying to be clever. He told me that, ehn, someone like me with a long and meritorious civil service experience is in a better position to be the governor. That with his own little experience, all he wants is to be given the chance to contest for senator but that he is ready to forget about that if he will be promised that he will be renominated for minister after the election. So I said to him, “If all you are looking for you is to return as minister next year, why did you resign from the cabinet? All the people who remained there, who said they don’t want to be renominated to return as ministers after the election?” And he said that it is because he wants to return home to the grassroots and help with the campaign.
In fact, all the manoeuvring did not save Dokin Karfe because two days after he sneaked back into Tafki State, a party caucus meeting was summoned. He tried to dodge it; he sent a message that he had catarrh and that doctor said he should stay at home and rest. But from where I was sitting, I overheard our state chairman Sallama Maikudi whisper something in the governor’s ears, then he told the party secretary, “Phone Dokin Karfe. Tell him that he must come to this meeting even if he has Ebola!”
After more than two hours Dokin Karfe came in. He sat at the back, holding a handkerchief to his nose, every now and then sniffing a Robb inhaler. He was told to move closer but he said no, that catarrh is contagious, that is why he did not want to move closer to people. But Sallama Maikudi said, “Hon Minister, you must come close because the party in interested in knowing why you resigned from the cabinet without so much as intimating this caucus. Do you think those of us in politics are just here to play like children? All the time and energy that we wasted nominating you, lobbying for you to get confirmation at the National Assembly, all the money we spent to get you confirmed when you were a very unpopular nominee, you have made us to waste all our time and money. You must come forward and explain to all of us. And we hear rumours that you are coming to view for governor. Do you think the people of Tafki State are goats that you can just come and say you want to be the governor?”