PROMISES, POLITICS AND A FEW OTHER Ps including people who want to be lied to.

Yesterday, I spent the earlier parts of my evening talking politics with my father and we both agreed that politicians lie to us because we want to be lied to. The later parts of the evening, I decided to spend on finally listening to the whole of Adele’s album (25). Memories flooded into my head, loads of them and quite specifically, they mostly revolved around Christmas, the season that is upon us already.

There’s a particular memory about Christmas (and celebrations generally) that stands out in my head and it involves the uncles and aunts who always promised to bring us gifts whenever they come around for the holidays but for one reason or the other beyond their control are unable to fulfil such promises. It usually occurred as a cycle, they promise at Easter, they don’t fulfill it at Christmas, they promise again.

I remember asking mum one time why it happened like that and she replied me that it wasn’t their faults but that the ministry where Uncle Allen (I have no family member named Allen) worked hadn’t paid them for some months now and it was going to be difficult for him to afford to keep the promises he made so I should stop bothering him so much. It always surprised me how mum knew so much about everyone, where they worked, what they did there and stuff like that, but I take solace in the realization that mothers know everything.

For those who may have thought their uncles and aunts didn’t want to get them the gift they promised, I’m sure they wanted to do so, but it was beyond their powers – my mother told me so, therefore it is true. That brings me to the main talk I’ve been dancing about – the promises made to us by the present administration before the last elections.
Call me narrow minded, but if you are going to promise something to Nigerians, why not make it something that is completely in your power? If you still have to go to the legislature (comprised by your party and the opposition that you spent months of campaign negating before us) before you can achieve these things, why did you promise us?

What they are trying to say hypothetically is that if opposition members in the legislature choose to say NAY and say it loud enough, the promises on which their elections stood may never come to fruition. I know many are thinking about the benefits promised to graduate job seekers. There are more – I remember the promise of free meals for children in public primary schools. I just hope they remember that four years is not far and our votes will soon be needed again.
Sadly though, as my father rightly said, we know how frivolous the lies are; but we still let them tell it to us every four years – and we believe them too.
As for the failed and delayed promises: to those uncles and aunties whose hands were tied because of certain circumstances, we understand how hard it was. To the ones who just promised us goodies to get us off their backs or get something from us, (including Uncle Buhari and Daddy Osibanjo) WE DO NOT.