AFTER THE RAIN

It was night, and there was light, but they were in darkness, for a dense pall of gloom hung over the room. The room was massive, and bespoke opulence and power. Posh wall to wall carpeting, with the carpets thick, luxurious and immaculate enough to make a comfortable bed in many a home. Massive, magnificent sofas with cushions so soft and bouncy they engendered the feeling you were wallowing in wealth if you relaxed and reclined into them. And at the far end, stood a state-of-the-art mahogany desk, crowned with a luxury gold-trimmed throne of an office chair that would not be out of place in a palace. Yes, you’ve guessed right. Some kind of power does emanate from this office, and a very massive buck stops at this desk.

But the ambience this night was of a graveyard darkness. The man at the centre of it all was seated, or rather, slumped, on the biggest sofa, head hanging lugubriously in an encroaching cloud of doom. The face was fat and well-fed, and to be sure, a rococo crown stood atop the head in the form of a golden flowers embroidered velvet cloth cap pressed in a perfunctory fold to one side, the signature style of his ethnic group, and the body was middle aged portly, but harmoniously absorbed into his glinting lace regalia, which along with his Italian designer shoes, had come ready to dance through an atmosphere of collective celebration and affirmation of faith, only to now find themselves facing the threat of a trudge through the quagmire of rejection and a flush down the shaft of possible oblivion in a sudden surge of misfortune.

The man finally found his voice, and it was a wildly wounded and bewildered one – totally drained of its usual aplomb.

“This is indeed the day of doom. The devil works in mysterious ways,” he moaned hoarsely. “Who would have imagined this possible, even yesterday?”

The man at the periphery was younger, but his cheeks were fat all the same. They were unexpectedly fat as a result of a sudden windfall that had resulted in a four-year binge of lavish living, and the potbelly to boot seemed more pronounced, perhaps because it had happened much more precipitously, so much so the rest of his body had been reluctant to instantly accept and absorb the extra burden – but even more so perhaps because he still hadn’t left behind the common man’s everyday dressing mode of shirt and trousers, making his belly bulge ultra-prominently well over his belt. Yes, he was new in the game, and was yet to either learn or accept his boss’s, or that class’s illusionist trick of total absorption and harmony of shape with looser clothing.

They were the only two people in the room, and the potbelly was perhaps where their harmony ended on this occasion, because the contrast in their reactions to the current situation could not have been starker. For far from being despondent or dejected, the younger man was all truculence and confidence, as he huffed and puffed up and down behind his boss, occasionally stopping to stare at a giant state of the art curved contour TV screen in front of them. Outside, it was raining cats and dogs, and they could hear the storm and the rain lashing with a vengeance against the window panes.

“It didn’t happen o, Oga! It just couldn’t have happened!” the younger man stormed “We were massively rigged out! The whole thing was rigged!”

The older man had been reclining, languid and slumped, eyes half-closed, as though to shut out the world, but the younger man’s attitude, if not his words, suddenly seemed to give him a momentary new energy.

“We were rigged out? You really think so, Ponmile?” he asked, suddenly sitting up and opening his eyes fully.

“What else could have happened, Oga, after all the money we spent?” Ponmile responded.

His Oga’s potbelly immediately sank back into the sofa and the eyelids closed once again. Because even if he was born yesterday he would know that he was the incumbent, and he was therefore the one more likely to possess the means to rig anyone out, if he so desired.

But Ponmile was unrelenting. He was now pacing up and down like an angry, hungry lion whose dinner had been allowed to unexpectedly escape by one circumstance or the other.

“We were giving out bags of rice, and naira ‘sandwiches’ as though there was no tomorrow!” he screeched.

“Naira ‘sandwiches’?”

“Yes, Oga. Oh, didn’t I tell you, Oga – that’s the latest way we buy votes,” Ponmile elaborated. “Or a TV camera might catch you in the act sharing raw cash and expose the game. So we put the money inside two slices of bread like a sandwich to make it look like we’re sharing out sandwiches.”

“I think I have an idea – the ‘Supporters Dinners’” his boss interjected.

“Yes – we organize these ‘sandwich dinners’, but instead of putting meat or chicken between the bread, we put money – high denomination naira notes, like by the thousand.”

“Our accountant released well over three hundred million for these. So how much did you put in each sandwich?”

“It depended on where we were. In the villages, they were quite happy with two thousand naira – or in some places we even got away with a thousand. But in the cities, they wouldn’t accept anything less than five thousand.”

“That’s a real rain of naira! No wonder the supply got stretched.”

“Oga, in this business, you’ve got to spend money to make money! Have you forgotten how much we’d spent to get them to vote us in the last time? This time around, they’d demanded even more! Our organizers were even approached by certain groups who claimed they had a lot of influence and could ensure that people came out to vote for us – they called themselves ‘mobilizers’ – and they would not accept anything less than ten thousand! Their sandwich dinners were at the local leaders’ private residences. And then the really big masquerades, who we had to see in their own houses – and they were the fifty, a hundred thousand categories.”

“No wonder this campaign has cost us well over half a billion!” the main man reflected. Ponmile seemed to have regained a reasonable measure of equanimity by now, but the mere mention of that stupendous sum with no result to show had appeared to suddenly hurtle him back into a state of high dudgeon. He came to a sudden stop in front of the TV screen and bellowed like a bull:

“All that money gone – and nothing to show for it! Nothing! NOTHING-NOTHING!”

And he launched into another long soliloquy of a diatribe until the TV set suddenly once again engaged his attention. The scene was the governorship election results studio, and the anchor was confirming the final result, which their campaign’s Chief Field Agent, Matanmi, had earlier phoned in from the Collation Centre. Yes – it was now official; his boss had lost by a landslide.

The Governor took in this confirmation silently, staring sombrely into space for a minute or two, after which he seemed to snap back to reality, sitting up and appearing to be fully aware of his surroundings once again. He even seemed to wince uncomfortably at the sound of the storm and the rain still lashing vehemently at the window panes. And then he looked in the direction of Ponmile, who was still in a world of his own, raging, raving and ranting.

“We’re going to set this State on fire, just you wait and see, Chief!” he raged. “They can’t rig us out like this and expect we’ll just be sitting down and folding our hands and watching!”

His boss had now regained some measure of composure.

“Calm down, Ponmile, calm down,” he urged.

The storm however still raged unabated within his aide, and the torrent badly needed an outlet.

“Impossible! Simply impossible!” Ponmile shrieked. “We’ve never lost an election in this State before! How could it happen? This is our party’s State, remember? Our birth right! How can we lose in our State? We no go gree o, Oga, we no go gree!”

“I said, calm down, Ponmile, calm down! Matanmi’s on his way. He’ll be able to debrief us on exactly what happened. After all he’s our Chief Field Officer – and he was right out there with them all the time. Once we hear his report then we’ll know exactly what steps to take.”

Ponmile finally sank his agitated body into an armchair.

“Okay, Oga, okay,” he said bringing out his notebook. “The war has just begun. I’m going to start working on the draft of our Press Release right away. You’re the greatest Governor this State has ever had. They just can’t throw you away like a piece of garbage!”

The Governor sank back in his sofa, and closed his eyes once again. And a few minutes later the intercom chimed, and Ponmile went and answered the door. It was Matanmi. He was all wet, and dripping all over with rainwater, like a chicken seeking shelter from a driving rain. A slim, even thin fellow, in cheap ankara textile buba and trousers, and no potbelly to put on parade. The average, ordinary looking type you could find waiting for a bus at any bus stop in the city. The type on the outside looking in as the potbellied class were chauffeur-driven past in their luxury state of the art cars.

“What took you so long to get here?” Ponmile asked with an air of authority.

“It’s been raining heavily. There are floods everywhere,” Matanmi replied.

“You just can’t come in like this and mess up everywhere with all this dirty rainwater. Look how you’ve soiled the carpet already.”

Matanmi brought out his handkerchief which was already soaked and dirty and started trying to mop off the rainwater from his arms.

“Look at this bush man,” Ponmile jibed. “That won’t be enough. Go to the waiting area toilet over there and you’ll find some towels to dry yourself properly.”

The Field Officer did this and was back in a minute looking less of a threat to the luxury fittings and furniture of the room, and Ponmile finally ushered him in to be presented before the Governor. The latter opened his eyes again, with great effort, as though he’d rather be asleep.

“Matanmi, what happened?” he asked earnestly. “Tell me the truth. What did you see? Did we really lose?”

“I’m sorry sir,” Matanmi replied sombrely, “It appears we did.”

“We didn’t lose!” Ponmile retorted stridently. “We were rigged out!”

“I was at almost all the polling stations sir,” the Field Agent disclosed. “And all our agents were on site, watching like hawks.”

“You and your bad news!” Ponmile pooh-poohed. “Always pessimistic! Always negative! What I heard was that our agents were chased away at gunpoint by the opposition’s thugs. And then they carried away the ballot boxes to go and stuff with fake ballot papers. And it was this fake result they announced.”

“Oga, you wanted me to tell you the truth, sir.” Matanmi protested.

“Yes, nothing but the truth – that must be our starting point,” the Governor said.

“Then I have to tell you what I saw. I was out there sir, and I never saw anything like what Oga Ponmile described happen. We had in fact forced recounts in many wards, and they had complied. That was why the whole thing ran late.”

“Story, story!” Ponmile jeered “I had often wondered whose side you’re on – theirs or ours.”

The Governor had at last had enough, and shot Ponmile a hostile stare.

“Leave the man alone!” he scolded. “He was out there in the field. Let’s hear his report!”

He motioned to Matanmi to come closer and sit down in the armchair that was closest to his own sofa, then urged him to speak louder so he could comfortably hear him above the din of the storm and the rain still lashing at the window panes.

“Now, tell me” he started in an earnest, fact-finding tone. “You really think we lost?”

“Yes sir.”

“How?”

“Maybe it was these rains that did it.”

“How exactly?”

“You know, Oga, it’s been raining heavily on and off over the past two weeks – and so many people were flooded out of their houses.”

“Flooded out of their houses? Really? As bad as that?”

“Yes sir. The other candidate had visited these areas and promised to clear their blocked gutters, drains and canals that were causing the problem if they would elect him – and all this flooding would be a thing of the past. We actually overheard people at the polling stations discussing how it might be wise of them to vote him in if only to see if he could do this.”

The Governor was lost in thought for a few moments.

“Were the effects of the rains really as bad as that?” he finally spoke.

“Yes sir – they were,” Matanmi answered.

“Then how come nobody bothered to tell me?” he asked, looking askance at Ponmile who was his Special Adviser on Campaign Strategy.

“They wouldn’t let us see you sir,” Matanmi answered.

“Why should we let anyone come and be disturbing Oga about something like that?” Ponmile reasoned aloud. “Do you know how much money we spent the last time to get them to vote us in? They’ve been paid already for that term – they’re supposed to look after their neighbourhoods!”

Ponmile had inadvertently flown a kite and neither of the other two parties present had an immediate response. Hence he could continue comfortably with this line of reasoning, unopposed.

“And look even what’s happened this time around. We gave out two hundred thousand bags of rice, and shared out over half a billion naira in cash to them, and they still wouldn’t give us their votes,” he mused. “Shows you just how wicked and dishonest the people are in this State. How can you take that kind of money from someone and still not vote him in?”

The Governor slumped back in his sofa once again, and closed his eyes. A paroxysm of psychological pain briefly clawed his features, momentarily making a grotesque mask of his face. Then the ugly reality apparently let go of him and his face returned to an undisturbed dozing mode. But he could still hear Ponmile’s voice raging, as though in a distant dream.

“But they’re going to pay dearly for this, I tell you! The baby that says his mother won’t sleep a wink himself won’t sleep a wink either! To hell with their Election Tribunals! We’ll foment riots, arson, looting, you name it – and bribe the police to look the other way. We’re going to make this State ungovernable until we force new elections! And there’ll be no mistakes this time around! No mistakes! Because we’ll rig if we have to!”

Matanmi had finally collected his thoughts enough to find a rational response to Ponmile’s onslaught.

“But then the soldiers will come back,” he reasoned aloud, “And it’ll be goodbye to the governorship or any other elective office for maybe the next fifteen years. Whereas if we lay low for just four years and corrected our mistakes, we’d get the chance to win it back.” And now it was Ponmile who was nonplussed, while their boss remained in his trance-like state.

“And suppose we refused to share money to buy their votes, but instead fixed their drains and canals with that money?” the Chief Field Officer continued. “After all, the opposition that won this time didn’t even have access to any money to share out.”

The intercom chimed once again, and the Governor opened his eyes. It was the Chief Press Officer, reminding them the Media were still waiting for an official statement.

“I have it right here” Ponmile said, thrusting the release he had been drafting towards the Governor, who took the sheet of paper and started going silently through it. It read:

“Today’s gubernatorial election in our State was a total sham. Widespread and open stuffing of ballot boxes was observed at most of the polling stations, and our party’s agents were chased away by the opposition’s thugs with guns, with the connivance of the police. Our governor is one of the best governors this State has ever had, and it is obviously impossible for him to lose by such a wide margin without the votes having been seriously tampered with. We therefore not only totally reject these results, but also call on our supporters to do the same, while we all join together to demand that the Electoral Commission cancel this election and organize a fresh one that would not only be transparently free and fair, but seen to be transparently free and fair. WE ARE ALL TOGETHER!”

He finished reading it and put it down on a side-table.

“Now, you” he said pointing at Matanmi. “Write me a release.”

“Me?” a surprised Matanmi mouthed audibly.

“Yes – you.”

And the Governor sank back into his sofa and closed his eyes once again.

The Chief Field Officer sat down at a table to carry out this order as an irritated Ponmile continued to pace up and down.

The Governor opened his eyes again after a while.

“Finished?” he asked.

“Yes sir” Matanmi answered, and handed over the sheet of paper.

His statement read:

“Today’s gubernatorial elections have come and gone, and while we cannot say we are entirely happy with the result, we have decided to accept it in order to safeguard our democracy. For it makes more sense to try again in four years’ time than to give any military adventurers on the sidelines the excuse to seize the reins of power they may not wish to relinquish for the next fifteen years or even more. In a democracy, no single party wins all the time. The other party must win too sometimes. We therefore congratulate today’s winners, and wish them luck in office. But we hope to be back in four years to serve the people, because we are sure with the lessons learnt from our current experience, we will be able to serve them better. LONG LIVE OUR GLORIOUS STATE!”

The Governor again silently read through, and appeared happy enough with it, and so someone from the typing pool was summoned in to type it out; and they all watched as the main man appended his signature. He then handed it to Matanmi.

“Go out there and read this to the media.” he instructed.

“But I should be the one to go out and read it!” Ponmile protested “He’s only a Field Agent – I’m your Special Adviser on Campaign Strategy, remember?”

“The Campaign is over,” the Governor said.

They now all suddenly once again became very aware of the rain lashing relentlessly at the window panes in the darkness outside, but inside there was light, and on the giant state of the art TV screen within, a weatherman with the country’s map before him was forecasting a bright and beautiful sunny day for tomorrow.

THE END*

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* The names “Ponmile” and “Matanmi”, loosely translated from its original Yoruba into English could mean “Toady” and “Forthright” respectively.