In the heart of a city that glittered only for the rich and echoed with slogans for the poor, a boy sat in a one-room apartment, typing like a man possessed. The lights flickered—not out of romance or atmosphere, but because the power grid danced to the erratic rhythm of inefficiency. Abdul Ghaffar, twenty years old, armed with more ambition than money and more passion than patience, was drafting his first campaign message. An election was coming. No one believed he could win—not even the party he had chosen to affiliate with.
Outside, the city pulsed with contradictions. Potholes deep enough to swallow cattle, lay beside massive billboards showing smiling politicians in tailored suits—suits they likely hadn't paid for. The roads were broken. The institutions were broken. Even the radio was broken, recycling the same tired political promises from election cycles past.
"The future of this nation lies not in the hands of the recycled. It lies in the voice of the unheard," Abdul typed. He paused, squinting at the words. "Too poetic?" he muttered to himself, leaning back in a plastic chair that groaned under his shifting weight. The irony wasn't lost on him.
His phone buzzed with a voice note from his childhood friend, Isaac.
"Bro, you really dey campaign or you dey do spoken word? Make you no forget say dem go crush you like kenkey wrapper."
Abdul chuckled. Isaac always found a way to deliver brutal truths with a sprinkle of humor. Still, Abdul had something most politicians had long abandoned—nothing to lose.
In the country's political arena, elections had become a ritual more than a process. Two parties—red and blue—took turns clinging to power like divorced parents fighting for a child they barely cared for. When red was in power, blue screamed corruption. When blue took over, red screamed louder—and looted harder when their turn returned. It was a theatrical relay of greed, with the citizens as silent spectators.
The people were weary. Most voted out of habit or desperation. Others abstained entirely, convinced that their ballots were mere theatre props in a play with a fixed ending. But Abdul believed something different. He believed the system could be hacked—not with malware, but with integrity.
When he announced his intention to run for assemblyman, the media ignored him. The local party office laughed. One elder even choked on his tea and offered Abdul a mop.
"Your face looks too honest to win an election," Madam Efua, the party secretary, said with a smirk, as though honesty was a disqualification from public service.
Still, Abdul hit the streets. He knocked on doors, strolled through marketplaces, spoke under trees, and greeted elders with respect. He shook hands with grease-covered mechanics and mothers carrying water on their heads. He didn't offer dramatic promises—just presence. Just truth. And somehow, it began to matter.
At night, he returned home, dusty and worn out, often surviving on nothing more than gari and groundnuts. But his spirit stayed nourished by the occasional nod from an old woman on her porch, or the whispered "Maybe this one be different" from a passing stranger.
But not everyone wanted something different. Within his own party, there were murmurs. He was "too loud," "too direct," "too naive." The district chairman pulled him aside one evening.
"Look, we appreciate your passion," he said in a rehearsed tone, "but don't embarrass the party with idealism. Politics no be church. Be realistic."
Abdul smiled politely, nodded like a good boy, and went home. That night, he went straight to Facebook and wrote:
"I'd rather embarrass the party with truth than embarrass my people with silence."
By morning, it had gone viral. Twelve thousand shares. Thousands of comments. Young people reposted it. Even older citizens who had lost faith found a glimmer in his words.
Election day arrived with little fanfare. Abdul stood at polling centers in the sun, watched by skeptics and whispered about by cynics. When the results came, jaws dropped. He had won—by just seventy-four votes.
Some called it a miracle. Others accused him of witchcraft. The party scrambled to claim credit, printing banners overnight with his face and their logo side-by-side. But everyone knew. This wasn't the party's victory. This was the people's protest, scribbled in ink on ballot paper.
Abdul stood on the podium for his swearing-in ceremony, dressed in his only decent suit. The crowd was cheering, the cameras were flashing. But he wasn't smiling. His eyes scanned the crowd, his mind racing. He wasn't naïve. He knew this win wasn't the destination.
It was only the start of a war.