Moseyn Ekiw knows of his many an enemy. He is quite sure Governor Timiro Ihceama of Waters State, whom he served as Controller of Staff, is the number one. But since Thursday of last week, he has become increasingly worried about the enemies inside. As the Sole Administrator of the Umbrella Peoples Party (UPP) in Waters State and a Junior Minister of the Federal Republic of Niagra, things should have been easier for him. His quest to fly the party’s governorship flag should have been a walk-over. But the enemies within are bent on frustrating him. Yet, they were all nowhere to be found when he was wresting the party’s structure from his ex-boss.
He scratches his head, looks at the mirror in front of him and from the mirror he sees a copy of a newspaper with the event of Thursday of last week as its lead.
“Rain of blows at UPP parley,” the headline screams. He picks it up and reads the two quotes on the front page.
“I came here to defend a petition before the reconciliation committee and Ekiw’s thugs prevented me from doing so and Ekiw personally punched me,” reads the first quote by a former commissioner in Waters State.
“How could I have done that? The meeting went peacefully. Everything was peaceful. Everybody who had something to say was allowed to say it. A man of my status could not have done that,” reads the second quote which the newspaper took from a telephone interview its correspondent had with Ekiw.
He shudders after reading his response and thinks aloud: “How many people will believe me?”
By intuition, he grabs his Galaxy tab and opens the website of another newspaper to see the comments of the people to the event of Thursday of last week.
The first comment makes him sad.
“Why is UPP always prodding up thugs as their arrowheads? Their arrowhead in a state ordered his thugs to tear a judge’s suit; now see what this one has done.”
He hisses after reading this and goes ahead to see what others have to say. Of the 90 reactions to the report, only ten are favourable. He suspects the ten must be party faithful trying to remedy the situation.
He feels bad, but quickly tells himself: “It is too late to back out. I will be killing myself politically if I back out at this stage. We must fight it to the finish.”
At that instant, the events leading to the event of Thursday of last week come back to him vividly. He was in his office when the man he installed as the party chair in Waters State, Haubo, came to meet him. He told him of how 22 aggrieved party men were planning to storm the House of Legacy to defend their petitions against his quest to become governor.
“What do we do?” he remembers asking Haubo.
“We’ve to stop them,” he can still hear Haubo telling him.
“How?” was his question.
“We will use our boys and the police. With your position as minister, just get the police to look the other way when our boys are dealing with them. Our boys will be armed with cudgels, knifes, stones and all sorts. They don’t need guns to deal with these people. They should just beat and bloody them enough to scare them away from accessing the panel headed by Prof.”
He remembers buying the idea and releasing money to Haubo to camp the boys in a hotel not far from House of Legacy.
His phone rings and breaks into his thought. The caller ID shows it is his daughter. He picks the call.
“Hello sweetheart?”
“Hi dad?”
“I’m fine dear,” he says.
“Where are you? I am outside knocking the door since.”
“Sorry dear,” he says and hurries out of the room to go and open the main entrance door for her.
Soon, they are together in the living room. It takes a little time before she notices he is not his usual self.
“What is the problem again, dad?”
“Nothing,” he pretends.
She keeps quite for a while and soon fishes out a document from her bag and gives him to read. It is a print out of online comments on the event of Thursday last week. They are silent for a few minutes.
“Are we going to emerge stronger from all these?” she asks later.
He keeps mum concentrating instead eyes on the First Dame’s picture on the wall. It is one of those her pictures taken by an ace female photographer which gave her beauty she can never have.
She decides to be frank with him.
“By the time this governor finishes his tenure, the upland people would have done 16 years. The pendulum favours the People on Water. Sincerely, I don’t think the Goodluck Charm with the First Dame’s husband is enough to make you governor.”
She pauses and continues after some minutes: “I think it is high time you faced reality. I will be shocked if the people support any party with a candidate outside of the People on the Water. The Riverside people in Waters State have every reason to expect to have one of their own leading the state, based on history, fairness and balance. The People on Water are the largest ethnic group in the state with about 10 Local Government Areas and substantial populations in 2 others of 23 Local Government Areas. The other two have less than 5 each. The People on Water are 39.7 per cent of the population of the state. In 1999, Ilido emerged on popular Riverside support. Again in 2007 and 2011, the Riverside people gave the incumbent their mandate.”
When his daughter gets to this stage, he remembers he once told a group of editors in Lagos that he could never govern the Water State in 2015 because he is from the same ethnic stock with the governor. He had told the editors he would be creating problems for himself if he started thinking about succeeding his kinsman. Now, the problems are here and just taking new shapes every other day.
His daughter continues: “Dad,” she says and moves closer to him,” as a young girl, I certainly will like to be the First Daughter of Waters State.”
He remembers her mum used a similar line the last time the other aspirants ganged up against him.
“But, if you ask me to choose between my dad becoming hypertensive trying to be governor and my dad remaining sane without being addressed as His Excellency, certainly I will pick you retaining your sanity.”
She adds: “Politics surprises me at times, especially the type we play here.”
At this stage, he has no doubt the girl is paraphrasing her mother.
He wonders how she knew of their past discussion. Perhaps she told her, he thinks.
“One moment, you see people being good friends ready to sacrifice for one another and then the next moment, they are the worst enemies around. It baffles me, it really does. I can’t even share quality time together with the governor’s children again and we used to be good family friends. Everything is just upside now.”
She stands up, announcing: “I will be in my room. Whatever you do, just put your family into consideration. Since the event of Thursday of last week, I have not been happy and reading such nasty comments about you makes me really sad. I know you are a good father, you have been really good to us and mum has told me you are a good husband. The only thing I think is left is for you to be a good politician. And for me, a good politician is one who reads the trend. When the trend favours you, flow with it. When it does not, re-assess yourself and plan for another time. The event of Thursday of last week must not repeat itself again. If it does, I will be too ashamed to call you my father and I am sure mum too will feel terrible being identified as your wife.”
Now, he feels sad about the event of Thursday of last week.
