No votes, no transformer!

However when the early birds among them peeped out they saw some technicians busy dismantling the community’s brand new power transformer which was donated to them a few days earlier by the Senate Leader, Senator Teslim Folarin. Those early birds raised an alarm but the determined technicians ignored them, fully dismantled the transformer and placed […]

However when the early birds among them peeped out they saw some technicians busy dismantling the community’s brand new power transformer which was donated to them a few days earlier by the Senate Leader, Senator Teslim Folarin. Those early birds raised an alarm but the determined technicians ignored them, fully dismantled the transformer and placed its parts into a truck for onward return to the owner.
Trust Sabo people with their short memory. They did not know why the transformer was going. They did not know what they did. Even though they were happily enjoying stable power supply with the coming of the new transformer, they forgot when they went to the polls the previous day that Folarin’s name was on the ballot paper as candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Of course every candidate had his agents at the polling units who sent results to him by the fastest means possible i.e. text message. While INEC’s ponderous collation process was going on for two days, Folarin did his own real-time collation within an hour. To his utter shock he saw that he had finished fourth in the election behind Governor Abiola Ajimobi of APC, Senator Rashidi Ladoja of Accord Party and former governor Christopher Adebayo Alao-Akala of the Labour Party [LP].
Folarin took a closer look at the election results. All the branded bags of rice and all the branded gallons of palm oil that he distributed in Oyo State were not reflected in those results. That was not even the part that annoyed him the most. The specially branded transformers that he installed in some communities were not reflected in the results. Like in Sabo, Ibadan.  After getting a brand new transformer that signified continuity the people there went out in the hot sun, voted for change and then hurried back into their houses to enjoy the cool breeze of fans, courtesy of Folarin’s continuity transformer.
For where! Since Sabo people voted for change, let them get change. In this case it is change from light back to darkness. Voters in other parts of the country, beware. You cannot sip a child’s milk and then refuse to play with him.

Those who play God
Of all the endless victory speeches made around the country by the men and women who triumphed in the March 28 and April 11 elections, I am yet to see one as thoughtful and as truthful as that made by Borno State’s re-elected Governor Kashim Shettima. It must be because this man saw fire, literally, during his first four years in the Government House. He said in a broadcast to mark his win that he will never play God in Borno State politics.
Shettima said, “I am very much in constant reminder that power can be very dangerous to the soul of its beneficiary. When one is in power and things go his way in highly competitive elections his first task is to fight his own mentality and resist the slightest element of negative pride…Negative pride is when someone thinks he is all in all, he is the almighty and sole fixer within his environment. [Someone] in power begins to equate himself with God. He begins to think he is the one who determines the destiny of others…Only God has the power to determine the destiny of others…God fights and destroys whoever assumes His powers…”
Tell them, Shettima, tell them! You who dodged Boko Haram missiles every day of your tenure and who fed two million IDPs three times every day for two years, you sure have faith in God. But some of your friends in politics are not like that. Like one man for whom Maiduguri airport used to be shut and opened for his private jet alone, who was escorted into town by whole army battalions and who promised to deliver 70% of the votes to his Aso Rock benefactor. He ended up delivering 5% of the votes. He must be accounting to Mama Peace right now how hundreds of millions of naira could not buy votes even from wretched IDPs!
These people played God. They occupied God’s territory the way their boys occupied parts of Nigeria. Even the Nigeria Army has been able to reclaim lost territory, not to mention the Almighty God…