Once you take to the skies…

As far as I am concerned, my political aspiration is still at an exploratory stage. It is what we called “feasibility study” when I was in the civil service. In the military they call it “field reconnaissance.” Criminals also have their own term for it, as we used to read in James Hadley Chase novels. […]

As far as I am concerned, my political aspiration is still at an exploratory stage. It is what we called “feasibility study” when I was in the civil service. In the military they call it “field reconnaissance.” Criminals also have their own term for it, as we used to read in James Hadley Chase novels. They call it “casing the joint.” That is what I believe I am doing, but look at how the story has already spread like wild fire all over this Tafki State that I am looking for governor in 2015.
Look at the kind of people that are now trooping into my house unannounced, each one expecting me to solve all his personal problems. They trample on my flowers; all the rose and marigold flower beds that I carefully planted with seeds brought from Denmark, these politicians have trampled it. You don’t even know who is a politician among them and who is not; everybody will just come, say he is from so and so place, tell you a few cock and bull stories, and then lay out his problems and ask you to solve them for him.
What I suffered in the last three days alone is even beginning to discourage me. Like the man who breezed in with his huge flowing gown, brushed the gate man aside and trampled on my flower bed. When I saw him in that gown, I even thought he was an important traditional title holder from somewhere. He is a true 419ner, that man. When he entered the parlour where I was sitting, I stood up and greeted him. I extended both hands as a mark of respect but the man extended only one hand, showing his importance. When he sat down, he asked the three people who were with me to please excuse us for some minutes, that he had something important to discuss. The three of them quietly went outside. As soon as they were through the door, he immediately got up from his cushion chair and sprawled on the floor, saying “Your Excellency! Your Excellency!”
I was really shocked. Look at this man! Minutes before, he was pretending to be an important title holder, and now he is sprawled on the floor like the street praise singer that he actually is. And he has a very sweet tongue, that man. He began praying for me, that with the prayers of all the angels in this holy month of Ramadan I will become the governor, that it is people like me that the people of this state have been praying hard for, that at last Allah is about to answer their prayers. When he finished all that one, he then said, “Alhaji, wallahi it is the problems of this fasting period that brought me to you. The cost of everything has increased, and there are so many people in my house. Apart from the difficulty of finding food for breaking of the fast, my wives are now harassing me, that I have not bought Sallah dresses for them. They gave me a very long list, dresses, wrappers, shoes, handbags, even watches and necklaces that they want for Sallah. Luckily for us, you are now back home from Abuja with your very kind heart and pure intention. It is Allah that ordains a problem for His servant and it is also Allah that brings a solution. With you near us now, all our tears have been wiped away.”
Imagine! So many people like that! This one will say rent; this one will say school fees; this one will say hospital bill; this one will say ram for naming ceremony; that one will say his daughter is getting married. Argh! This thing is impossible o! The money I voted to spend in the whole of last week, it finished on Monday! The money that the estate agent sent to me from Abuja which he collected from two of my tenants, I was planning to use it to refurbish the other house I bought down the street so that when my boys grow up a little more they could move in there, but that money vanished before I knew it. What will even happen by the time we get far into this thing?
Yesterday, after breaking of fast I went to the house of my brother in law Alhaji Goshi to greet him, and I was telling him all these stories. He was a politician himself for many years; he did NPN, he did NNC, he did NRC but he later opted out of politics. He is now concerned only with his business. When I told him what I am experiencing in this politics, he laughed and said I should be patient and persevere, that it is after suffering that the sweetness will come. He even opened one small book and showed me the page where it was said, “No sweat, no sweet.”
It was at that point that I said to him, “Alhaji Goshi, you see, me I am not even a politician. What I know is the civil service, where we have our civil service rules and financial regulations and budget and votes and warrants and AIEs. The way politicians do their own thing is totally haphazard. No rules, nothing! Anything goes! This one will say this, another one will say no, it is not like that, and they just confuse you. Haba, what kind of thing is this?”
Alhaji Goshi laughed heartily when I said all that. He said, “It is time you forget this thing about your civil service. You are not in the civil service now. You are now in politics. You should also stop saying that you are not a politician. What does it take for anyone to become a politician? Once you nurse a political ambition, you have become a politician. Remember what the king of birds told the bat when it was asked to pay taxes and it said it is not a bird because it has teeth and milk. The king of birds said, ‘Bat, you must pay your taxes. Since you took to the sky, you have become a bird.’”