Tiny Seeds of Society.

Hello, I’m Dele and I’m in my last year of junior secondary school in a public school in our area. I live in Ibadan with my parents and five siblings. Our family is quite a happy one ,although sometimes, we don’t get enough of
what we want. I always give a big portion of my small plate of food to Biola and Tinu, my little sisters because they cry when they are not satisfied and  are too young to understand that we have to manage. My older brothers, Taiwo and Kehinde are in the penultimate senior class and we hawk together after school and on Saturdays. My father is a farmer and my mother sells petty things in front of our two-room house Father  inherited from Baba Agba( my grandfather).

But soon,all of these will change,yes. It will change when I grow up and become a politician. Are you surprised?  Don’t be. Father told us one evening, that Uncle Karimu had just been elected as the Chairman of the local government and he will start making plenty money, I mean lots of money.

Last week, in our social studies class, Miss Ajibade,our teacher asked each of us to tell the class what we will like to become in future. Tutu had said she wanted to be a medical doctor,Emeka said he would like to study to become a lawyer and Hassan chirped in that he would like to be an engineer. I pity them a lot,because they won’t make lots of money. When it was my turn to speak, I stood, holding the edge of my now short “my-brother-dash-me” knickers since it was torn and Mother had not had the time to help me tack it with needle and thread. I wore no socks and my sandals had no straps to hold it in place.

“I want to be a politician, ma”, I said with confidence and sat. Miss Ajibade smiled and turned to the rest of the class,” that is very good. Class, Dele here wants to be a politician so that he can bring a change to our society which will… ” I looked at my teacher, very surprised. “No ma”, I interrupted.

I stood and began to explain. “That is not why I want to be a politician,ma. I want to be involved in politics so that I can make lots of money, so that I can give money to Father to buy a new house, to Mother to make her business bigger,to my brothers to be big men in the society and to my sisters so that they will never know hunger again. I want to go into politics so that when I take a lot of government money which Father says belongs to all of us, I will use it to buy clothes for my mother,a car for my father and good things for my siblings.

When I realise my dream, Father will never be sad  again,Mother will never welcome us with puffy eyes and pretend to be happy again,my brothers and I will never have to hawk in the hot sun again and my sisters will never go to bed hungry with suppressed tears again, never”, I said with a fixed look of determination etched on my face. “I will be a politician and make plenty money. And that,is my ambition. “