But they must not beg me to run for House of Assembly o! It’s the presidency I want to run for. Or isn’t that the office everyone is running for…
Steve Nwosu
I’m not happy. And it is not just because my pocket is not happy, if you know what I mean. I’m unhappy because in this season of ‘begging’ and curious display of goodwill, as the parties open their shops for the sale of nomination forms, nobody is begging me to run for anything, let alone buying the expression of interest form for me. My friends cannot all just tell me that they don’t have money. For, at times like this, anything is possible. Miracles happen. Money appears from nowhere. That is why one indebted youth, who is not too young to rule, even conjured N45 million from nowhere, to pay for another person’s presidential nomination form. That is the beauty/mystery of giving. You don’t give because you have enough. At least, that is what my rich pastor friend keeps telling me every time he wants me to donate to his overflowing pockets from my own lean purse. So, I understand.
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But then, why is nobody extending this national goodwill to me?
Even if the big masquerades have crowded me out of PDP and APC, at least there are still more than 90 other parties. Haven’t I committed enough atrocities in this country to qualify for public office yet? Or are my talents, as a potential thief, not obvious enough? Or don’t I have enough skeletons in my cupboard to deserve a mention, even if I’m up against people with fresh corpses in their own cupboards?
Now, I’m not saying that only thieves and felons seek public office, it’s just that I have been in Nigeria long enough to know that it helps if you are one – or have the potentials. If you doubt me, take another look at all those contesting today, sift the wheat from the chaff and see how many would be left.
So, I’m begging my people to, please, come and beg me to run. I promise I will not play hard to get. So, they would not need to beg me for long before I agree ‘to answer the call of my people’.
And, mind you, when I say ‘my people’, I don’t mean only the good people of Nwangele Local Government Area of Imo State alone. There is no harm if ‘my people’ in Lagos (Yorubas, Igbos, Hausas, Ijaws, Tivs and Idoma inclusive) beg me to go represent them at the Imo State House of Assembly, for instance. Anybody who can pay for the form (and/or chip in something for the campaign proper) automatically becomes ‘my people’. It does not matter if the ‘investment’ in me is not entirely altruistic.
But they must not beg me to run for House of Assembly o! It’s the presidency I want to run for. Or isn’t that the office everyone is running for: marabouts, lawbreakers (sorry, lawmakers), sinators, members of the House of Rapes, ex-convicts, war criminals, siddon-look legislooters, student cultists,cyber-criminals, drug peddlers, homosexuals and just about anybody. Nigeria, we hail thee!
Meanwhile, since everyone is claiming not to have money to buy forms (even though they surprisingly have money to fund the campaign), my good people would do well to also buy me the form – so we can have a photo opportunity at the party office, and post everything on the social media. That’s the new fad. Everyone who obtains a party form celebrates on social media – and everywhere, as if he has already won the election. Of course, it’s a major achievement. Because politics is the one industry functioning at 100% installed capacity in the country today. The others are the Christian miracle industry, football betting and the obituary/dying industry. All the rest are either on life support or gasping for breath.
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But, jokes apart, isn’t it time we tried another lie on this buying of forms and not having the money to pay? Must every aspirant adopt the same style; of arranging some jesters to pretend to buy forms for them? Isn’t that a tired narrative already? Who are they fooling? Who, for instance, believes that President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Nasir el-Rufai do not have the money to buy forms?
At least Atiku was a little creative about his own: he went to purchase the form himself, only to allegedly get there to discover that some of his associates had gone ahead of him and purchased the form for him. So all the drama Atiku had to pull off was to receive the form and cry. And Atiku cried! I can’t laugh.
Meanwhile, someone should, please, help me ask the APC and its men of integrity, if the governorship and presidential expression of interest forms have diamond letterings on a gold sheet?
Or is it another ‘ integrity’ way of raising money for the campaign? Or is it, as one redhead told me, a way of squeezing money out of serving governors, who have curiously refused to fund the party from their state treasuries, as the national headquarters had expected?
According to my usually unreliable source, many of the APC governors are not happy with the style of Adams Oshiomhole and have been playing pranks with the unofficial funding of the party – which, ironically, is actually the party’s main source of funds. The result is that Oshiomhole, who is still fresh from the Edo Government House, has had to rely on his own private financial war chest to fund the party operations.
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But, knowing that this arrangement is not sustainable, Comrade, and his backers, soon came up with the idea of literally mounting a ‘checkpoint’ for the governors, on their road to second terms. Yes, N22 million might appear as chicken change (since we now loot in billions), but it comes to a handful when you multiply it by the number of aspirants on the prowl for the state treasuries. Now, that should be more than enough to ensure that Oshiomhole and his team have a roll in the hay from now till the next elections come round. If the party chiefs were Igbo traders, we would say, ‘they don enter season’.
As they say on our streets, cunning man die, cunning man bury am’. I can’t laugh, because I’m not happy.
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