A Pain in Vain

By Soji Obebe

A Pain in Vain is Soji Obebes latest foray into the political fortunes of the Federal Republic of Geriana. It is in furtherance of U-turn to Grief, a novel about the same country, released in 2003.

Believing that he has Gods backing, ex-governor Ralph Maywa of Bagua State in Geriana returned from exile in Ghana with fanfare. His return to politics as the presidential candidate of the New Broom party gives the party in power goose pimples because of his popularity based on his previous performance. He pursues the race with zeal himself, and his party takes so much pain to curtail abuse of the electoral process, but the party in power resorts to manipulations. The aftermath of the manipulations is the kernel of the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Jul 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499087659

Soji Obebe

Soji Obebe studied mass communication for his first degree from 1979 to 1983 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and later pursued a master’s degree programme in personnel psychology. He is presently a deputy director with Ogun-Oshun River Basin Development Authority, Abeokuta. He is married and has a daughter and a son.

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Copyright © 2014 by Soji Obebe.

ISBN:          Softcover          978-1-4990-8764-2

                   eBook                978-1-4990-8765-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 07/08/2014

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CONTENTS

Appreciation

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

The Author

APPRECIATION

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W RITING MAY BE a solitary vocation but encouragement and assistance to practice the vocation come from several sources. Consequently, besides the Almighty, from who the inspiration flows, I wish to appreciate Mr Bayo Oladele for constantly telling me not to relent, my secretary, Tayo Atobatele, for assisting in inputting the handwritten scripts, all Xlibris Publishing Company staff through whom the work passed before coming out to my readers, and finally, members of my family, wife and children, who respect my demand for solitude to polish the tales.

Dedication

To men and women across the world whose pains over the years to have visionary leaders in power in their countries have been in vain.

To Nigerians whose expectation to have a free and fair election in 2003 and 2007 was dashed.

CHAPTER 1

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B ARRISTER RALPH MAYWA had just washed his hands after a dinner of pounded yam with smoked tilapia in okra soup when he remembered the letter he had received earlier in the day in the office. He had slotted the letter into his portfolio on seeing that the sender was Pastor Gibson James from Geriana, his home country.

During his tenure as governor of Bagua State in the country, James was Maywa’s unpaid special adviser on spiritual matters. Maywa tolerated him all through because James’s counsel always rhymed with his thoughts, and he never demanded a farthing from him for the service.

Maywa sat relaxed on the sofa with one leg on the raw leather footrest and the other stretched on the sofa. He leant back on the armrest. He tore open the white envelope and read the two-page epistle. He could hardly believe the summation of the epistle: ‘You have to come back home to execute the assignment God has for you.’

He held up the letter and reflectively gazed at the ceiling. Helen came into the sitting room after cleaning the dining table.

‘Dear, what’s the matter?’

‘It’s Pastor James again.’

‘What’s the problem with him?’

‘He’s asking me to come home, that the Lord has an assignment for me.’

‘Assignment?’

‘Yes, you can read it.’

Helen took the letter from him and sat at the single sitter opposite Maywa.

‘Well,’ Helen spoke after reading the letter, ‘I’m afraid you have to look before you leap. I know you have a mission to accomplish in Geriana, but you have to tread softly.’

Helen’s submission struck a chord in Maywa. So Maywa took James’s message to heart not because of his wife’s view but because it corroborated a dream he had before the letter came. It was also in tune with the call of his party men that it was time for him to return home to take his rightful place by joining hands with the progressives to salvage Geriana from the misrule of reactionaries Democratic People’s Party (DPP) represented.

‘Do I need any other proof?’ he queried. ‘It has been my lifelong ambition to show the chop-chop politicians in Geriana how to manage the affairs of our motherland. If my people are inviting me, a man of God is telling me that the Lord wants me back, and my vision attests to the same, do I need other proofs to return home and lead the rescue of Geriana from greedy politicians?’

In truth, Maywa was once in a trance. He saw himself leading people through a dark tunnel. Unknown to those being led, he was seeing a ray of light at the end of the tunnel. He equally saw ahead a well laid-out city. Those following him, seeing nothing, asked, ‘Where are we going?’ He answered them, ‘Just follow me. That’s where we will rest.’

Then they came to an open field, where the people sat, and he began to address them. From nowhere balls of bean cake and bottles of water were brought by some people. The followers had their fill, and the scene vanished.

For days, Maywa wondered what the vision meant but soon cast his mind off it because he had a murder case at the high court before Justice K. Mensa in Tema. The trial on hand consumed so much of his time and drained him of strength to spare time for issues like dreams and visions. Judgement was eventually delivered on the case in favour of his client after a series of adjournments. His client, Atake Kufor, was alleged to have poisoned his wife through a loaf of bread brought from his parents in Kumasi, where he had gone to visit them. Unfortunately, they had never supported his marriage to Agnes because she was from a different ethnic group. Investigation involved forensic experts, nutritionists, and morbid anatomists, who later discovered that the poison came from the bakery. It was a long trial. His in-laws called for his head for killing their daughter. They believed his parents knew of the deal.

Since his sojourn in Accra, on Sundays, Maywa’s preparation for the day kicked off at 5.30 a.m., with an hour of quiet time, prayers, and reading of the scriptures. He fell in love with the New Century Version of the Daily Bible published by Thomas Nelson.

This Sunday, he was reading Judges 16, the story of Gideon, how he was assigned to liberate the children of Israel from Midianites marauders, stealing their crops.

As he was meditating, it occurred to him that the Gerianans were at the mercy of leaders who were worse than the Midianites. They cornered the resources of the nation, subjecting the citizenry to misery. He remembered Pastor Amos’s letter and felt God had assigned him like Gideon to liberate Gerianans.

In a moment, he cast aside the thought. He felt he was kidding himself. Meanwhile, through his scriptural forays, since they escaped the persecution at home, Maywa had caught the fire of the Holy Spirit, so his acquaintances believed. He became a thoughtful preacher of the Word. But in spite of that, the desire to liberate Gerianans from the shackles of oppression continued to gnaw at his mind.

Within four years of his stay in Ghana, Ralph Maywa’s legal practice flourished and projected his image beyond Ghanaian shores. He handled cases in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Through that, he prospered. In spite of the prosperity, the will to find an avenue to salvage his nation from looters and profiteers running the affairs there remained potent in him. His desire was fired the more by representations made to him by his former political associates, particularly those who shared his welfarist philosophy. They came to him in droves in Ghana, urging and appealing to him to return home from exile. ‘Home is home,’ they constantly reminded him. ‘There is no place like it.’

‘I am okay here. I must confess, but if the Lord wants me to come back, who am I to say no. He’s my all in all. Wherever he directs my footsteps, I’ll go.’

That was what he told Dr Taye Oyigbo the last time the man had visited him. It was at the airport departure lounge in Accra. Oyigbo came the previous day, spent the night with the Maywas, and was returning that morning. He re-emphasised their previous agreements after telling him the state of affairs in Geriana, the deterioration in the economic well-being of the nation owing to maladministration.

‘Look, Maywa, we are ready to fight the cabal to a standstill. We need men of courage and conviction like you to join the vanguard. DPP is a disaster. It claims to be the oldest and biggest party in Africa, but it is the shame of the continent. It is a party of killers and murderers.’

‘I’ve heard you. As I told you earlier, I will do only the Lord’s bidding.’

Dr Oyigbo returned to Geriana and conveyed a meeting to brief his colleagues of his meeting with Maywa. It was in Oyigbo’s large sitting room. "The man had become so religious. He was quick to refer to the scriptures