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Ode to a Politician By: Ojoniyi Bode



I cannot but now appreciate how talismanic your species have been.
Over the years,
from cultures to cultures and generations to generations,
you have shown yourself as a master of the acts of deceptions.
With empty boastful promises,
 even when the people know your antecedents,
you have been able to command their followership,
and just like the biblical sheep without shepherds,
they follow you, strangely, without reflectivity.

Yours is a special grace with blank assurances.
When you claim you will construct a superhighway to heaven,
the people hail you!
When you assure them that hell will be closed if elected,
its fire quenched, while God is arrested,
the people sing your praise across many oceans…

‘Come to think of it: why will God create hell?’
You queried, promising the people,
freedom unlimited once you come to power.
‘Ours’, you proclaimed, ‘will be a government of the people’
as you reassured you would be a servant of all,
for, as you equally said, you would live among them as one who serves…

Your smile is ever broad like the spread of the clouds.
You are so dexterous with lies that Lucifer himself envies you,
for he continues to wonder about what type of being you really are,
succeeding in taking the people for a ride perpetually.

You are very sleek in corruption,
but very wise in throwing “something at the boys”,
who sing your praise as “Buje budanu”,
as for all they care,
the crumbs from your buffet table are food enough.

When you fabricate stories, the demons in hell weep endlessly,
raising eternal wail for the misfortune of the deceived.
You are the son of the town where the mouth is sweeter than salt,
where bare hands cut trees like sharpened saws…

I can only salute you and watch in awe,
of how you are able to sleep at peace with such a life,
presuming that all of us are fools…

However, I will always be the son of my father:
The son of ‘Olu-Iwa’, the Lord of Virtue,
for in my home town,
a good name is still better than silver and gold!

© ‘Bode Ojoniyi, September 2017,
University of Ghana, Legon, Accra.

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