Mawuli Zogbenu
Like joke like joke, 4 years has just come o. Ei! Why do some people create problems for themselves when the the people they support have another chance in 4 years’ time! Time flies like….herhhh!
In 2016, December 7 was on a Wednesday. Voting paa on Wednesday and the waakye seller around the polling station was not at work. She also went to vote. I wondered why we didn’t include them in the special voting process earlier.
At the Airport Residential Area, I joined the queue at 6.13am. Apparently some voters joined the queue as early as 12 midnight. I was so close to the 70th person to get to cast my vote. Just before 7am, we were told by officials that the queue had to be split into two. That was where my wahala started.
From surnames starting from A-J, it was Engle A polling station and the other one, K-Z for polling stations B. Unfortunately for me, I found myself at the back of the queue with Z.
Then I went appealing that they should have increased the range for A-J a bit longer say A-M so I could fall in line if I could use my first name. Granted that they had even made it A-L, I would still be found wanting because my first name starts with M. Please don’t tell anybody oo.
For reasons like this, I will change my name Amawuli Azogbenu, dasorrrr! Hahaaaa! Look at this man at Cocobord looking up to see the correct spelling of my name oo, hahaaa!
Anyway the reason I am here this morning is to greet you and to let you know that I have lost an erection before and failed to enter Parliament. Not me o, my Uncle Ganyaglo. This year he said he won’t go. He is resting and observing.
He lost the election and subsequently lost his erection in 2016.
On the last day of campaigning, we hired Daa Abla to fry ‘something l3b3’ for us. Agbelikanklo l3b3, oy33, with hard coconut! We held our last rally at the durbar grounds and struggled to get even ten people participating. We managed a handful of akpeteshie and palmwine patrons who supported every ‘useless’ policy of ours even when we insulted them!
These were guys who were wearing the opponents’ party T-shirts not because they supported our opponents o, but because that was all they had. In our minds, we were going to take advantage to tell the people we could bring heaven down immediately so that they would vote for us and then we go our somewhere.
My prayer was that when my uncle wins, I will be made an MCE so that I will be awarding KVIP construction contracts. Money dey this business inside brutal!
All the candidates adopted the house-to-house campaign strategy. Many took advantage of public gatherings like funerals and weddings trying to convince people sometimes with soft drinks and things which my uncle and I couldn’t afford.
I remember one such funeral and my Uncle promised them GHC5,000. Knowing him, all he had in his bank account was GHC350.00 and he was going about promising funeral ‘revellers’ GH¢5,000 all in the name of political ‘man-for-look-sharp’!
‘Tell the people you would be a servant-leader’, I advised. As to whether they believed us or not, I don’t know o. All the innovative ideas came from me as his campaign manager. Knowing my uncle and his love for KVIPs (I still don’t understand why), I proposed that, we go and stand by the public toilets and serve the people.
How? Anybody who came for ‘service’ was asked not to flash the ‘product’ after using the locally made WC. You see that village WC that is ‘depressed’ not the standing one. If you are wearing a pair of tight jeans trousers, you will have a problem squatting for long especially if you have constipation and you have a big stomach like mine.
We would ask the toilet customers that after downloading ‘the thing’, they should not flash it; we would do it for them to show how much we cared. Buoy! There, you would see different colours and weights of the ‘droppings’! Look, when one village man downloads erh, chai, the size of a beer bottle may not match it especially if it is from a wee smoker! Kai! The stench was overbearing but how for do! After all, we were determined to do anything ‘to get them out of poverty’. Only God knew our true intentions.
We spent time on some guys campaigning for two hours, only to realize later that they had their votes in Accra and would not vote there. Ei! Nothing annoyed me more than the kenkey and akpakalami we bought for them to eat for two weeks for free.
The people gave us hope oo but somehow, me I was sure my uncle was going to lose, no matter what but no man goes into a battle with a disposition not to win!
Nursing mothers became our next targets as there were a lot of young teenage mothers in the constituency. We would fetch water to fill all their barrels. Changing baby diapers became my hobby just because ‘we cared’. If the babies were boy children, Ala! you’d curse your stars after the stench wasps across your nostrils!
‘Life’ the lotto writer in the area is still looking for us to finish us bcos of his GH¢2,000 loan to us with the promise to give him a position at the district assembly if my uncle won.
Our opponents doled out fried rice, GHC5 notes and soap. Uncle Ganyaglo gave only mangoes and salt. T-shirts koraa we couldn’t print. We were later accused of vote buying when it was detected that we were buying akpeteshie for the local boys. This one too? Ha!
But Ganyaglo made a mistake. Just 4 months before the polls o; that was when he asked me to join him in his political journey – he had done feasibility studies, he claimed, and was sure he would win the MP seat in the area because of his popularity. He sold his fish farm and three 207 benz buses.
He had a forth one which he used as trotro to carry passengers he described as supporters. The area is known to be a stronghold for the two big ‘boys’ over the years. Ganyaglo went INDEPENDENT with a chamber pot as his party symbol – a sign that people would go to toilet free!
Knowing he would lose by all means no matter what, I secretly voted for someone else. He was so happy until the results were declared. From the look of things, I suspected Ganyaglo voted against himself.
My support for him had actually aggravated his predicaments particularly after failing in his businesses. He later accused me of leading him into ‘temptation’.
He went home and slept and had to contend with 3 realities – losing his trotro businesses, losing the election and ultimately losing the erection needed for marital ‘election’.
Today is Thursdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy December 3.
Me, to go support any candidate again especially when the signals are so clear they will lose? gbedegbede. I pray for the female aspirants to win. The only reality is that they won’t lose any erection when they lose the election. Trust women; no woman would fight because of electoral defeat! Clap for the women er…kpakpa kpakpakpa…kpaaaaa!
Go and vote on Monday and go home o. Call your boss and tell him or her you are still in the queue so you want to work from home in spite of the fact that you would be surrounded by TV, pepper soup and left over banku and a nice bed to sleep on. Just deceive yourself that you are working from home and sleep! Politics is just a contest of ideas, not machetes, abeg!
If your favorite does not win, then it’s probably not the will of God. Halleluya! Hahaaaaa!