It was the start of a scintillating campaign for the upcoming elections; we were the favourites, blessed with insouciant leaders and wonderful speakers. Since the public were in love with well organised spoken words, my father, the party chairman had gone rummaging for the finest journalists in our state. We were able to tame two of the finest scribblers and speakers to our side. A complete team was now in place and we could storm the streets with our microphones, standing on platforms to sell what we hardly had. Frank Sethondi, the royal prince of our town was strongly and viably in support of our ambitions. This was a morale booster because; like I heard, everything he touches turns gold. I had come all the way from the United Kingdom on my father's request to contest for a political office that was not the grandest but the most hotly wanted in the state; my father told me that and I never bothered to ask what office it was. I wanted to be relevant to the masses and the society that bred me, so I considered this a beautiful opportunity. It was time to prove myself but something was always standing between my thighs and the next step.


Our first campaign was massive. I've only seen such a powerfully voiced crowd when I was in my teenage years. Days when Sewendo left everybody-young and old, rich and poor, sizzling at the dexterity of his words and in absolute love with his discerning ability to muster the right statement. I had wanted to be like that someday, maybe that someday is now, I thought. Everything I said was greeted with a thunderous applause. My campaign team were right behind me, solidly standing and giving me the titbit of what the crowd wanted to hear, it felt shameful that I'd forgotten all the things that used to be my shtick. It was more painful that I'd lost that thing that made me streetwise; I'd lost my ability to be unafraid at the face of adversities but I never stopped, I listened to them and I wowed the crowd. Confidence permeated through my spines after that particular campaign. The grand support I had was palpable and it was looking like a rollercoaster ride for me, apparently, then came the worst that broke my back and erased my tracks.



OurNews Newspapers were a company I really admired and loved. Their columnists and correspondents were very active and it wasn't a surprise when my father chose two of their staffs to be members of our campaign media team, but the news they carried this morning was bitter- much more than bile. I prayed it never came to be. I saw my father's dead body in a pool of his own blood. Investigations proved he was shot. I wanted to run for my life. "Na by force to become.........what post am I contesting for?....." It was that moment I realised I was only a part of a grander, bigger, setup. My father was killed after he failed to accept to pleadings for my withdrawal to let the royal prince of Sethondi step in as the Governor to-be of the state, his closest associate told me. Everything was set for my victory and there was no going back for the people. If he had contested, nobody would vote for him, I thought he had powers, he did truly but lacked the intellectual nous to pull a crowd. I had to run for my life. I'd just been used in a real African politics. Politics of enchanting deceit and wickedness.


I was in the midst of a people who knew what they wanted, what I wanted, where I would pass and what I had. They knew who would give me what I needed and they understood how to have what I had with what they had and needed. They are the real African gods, who knew the game of evil better than the devil!
Every step I took, they saw; everything I said, they expected; what I was going to become, they always had known but when their powers will stop to conquer is the day of their death, timely or untimely.