HE liked two-somes. Yeah, two women at a time, all night. His appetite was legendary. Wild appetite, wild ways. His tongue was razor-sharp for a man too, worse than the late Sisi Quadri’s tongue in a sleep mode. Fola could get it up anytime, even when he was just retrieving his third leg from in between the thighs of another woman.

So how did he “catch” Lilly?

Maybe the more appropriate question is: how did Lilly fall for a man like Fola?

And she fell hard.

So hard, she got pregnant for Fola while they were both still in the university.

Fola told her in no nice terms to go get an abortion. A baby was going to cramp his style, slow his life down, take his nightclub funds. He wasn’t having any of that.

Lilly would not trap him into marriage or any kind of commitment just because she was pregnant.

No way!

Lilly cried premium tears. She begged. Threatened to curse him. Fola cursed right back. He stood his sinful ground.

Lilly refused to have that abortion because she wanted to do life differently from her mother. She wanted love, romance and happily ever after. She wanted a man she could call her own, a home full of affection and warmth.

Not a life like her mother’s, where three children had three fathers.

Or like her aunty, who ended up with a man who abused her both physically and emotionally.

But see Lilly’s life outside, as the Yorubas would say.

She had to fall in love with Fola, wild, disrespectful Fola, who had no single romantic bone in his body. She got knocked up by Fola, who saw marriage as a trap.

Was Lilly stupid? Naive? Or had life and fate simply dealt her an unfortunate hand?

Lilly had the baby, a boy, a splitting image of his father, plus a birthmark his grandfather had in exactly the same spot.

The baby’s grandmother gasped when she saw it.

That closed the “the baby can’t be mine” chapter. Firmly.

But it didn’t shift Fola’s stand.

He continued in his hard, bad ways, single at 39.

Hopeful Lilly also remained single, waiting for Fola to change, for Fola to retire from two-somes and mad clubbing.

For where?

And that is where Lilly’s story stops being merely the story of one foolishly hopeful woman and becomes the story of a country.

Because why do these things happen?

Why do some good girls keep falling for Folas?

Why do good people keep believing that the bad man will become good simply because they love him enough?

Why do the Folas of this world get to impregnate devoted Lilies?

Why does a girl who wants to break a lineage jinx sometimes fall into the same pit that buried the good heads of her ancestors?

And why does all this remind me of Nigerian politics?

Why?

Because sometimes, Nigeria is Lilly.

And our politicians?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, meet Fola.

Our Fola politicians have been telling us exactly who they are for decades.

They don’t even hide it.

They arrive during campaigns with music, dancers, brooms, umbrellas, caps, wrappers, stomach infrastructure, promises and speeches long enough to put a village to sleep.

They tell us they love us.

They call us “my people”.

“My dear people of Nigeria.”

“My brothers and sisters.”

“My people.”

They suddenly remember the road leading to our villages and huts. They launch into well-rehearsed poems and we offer them our ‘mumu buttons’. Politicians, they know how to tweak them until we moan and ask for more. We even clap and tell them to go harder and faster. We just forget that we were fooled the last time and the time before that too.

We conveniently forget that 50 doctors have ‘japaed’ from our hospital and there are only 10 remaining to attend to 5,000 patients. We forget that the nurses they promised to employ are still inside some dusty file on the table of one civil servant and his blue cocky necktie.

The schools? They no longer look or feel like schools. The teachers look more dilapidated than the classrooms. Three government teachers, 25 PTA teachers. The schools that have mathematics teachers do not have English teachers. The ones that have Chemistry teachers do not have Math and Biology teachers. What are those poor students supposed to become with their Physics/ Yoruba/ CRS combination ?

Yet, their parents are members, even chieftains of the ruling political party.  Their Uncles and aunties have been voting since 1999.

Were they all like Lilly waiting for Fola to become ‘born-again’?

Thank goodness Lilly was smart enough not to open her oven for Fola to dump another bun.

But in Nigeria, all we do is open our legs for the politicians to come and go as they like, without condom too. That is why there are more flyovers than secondary school laboratories. That is why regular budgetary allocations are made every four years for brand-new cars, not replacement of teachers, nurses and doctors who retired. What do governors have against employing critical workers? Why is it rocket science to go to universities and grab the best graduating doctors and nurses and giving them flats and even tokunbo cars? Is that more expensive than the ‘estacodes’ for foreign training and ‘DTA’ for conferences that improve nothing?

Politicians, how do they sleep knowing that the young person whose CV has become a prayer book is losing faith?

Each time Fola disappears into the nightclub, leaving Nigeria outside, waiting like Lilly, something dies.

This is the strange tragedy of Nigerian politics: we often judge politicians by what they promise to become rather than by what they have consistently been.

A politician has failed us three times, but tells us that the fourth time will be different.

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We believe him.

A governor who leaves roads full of craters, children stranded in school comes and start a song and a dance and the voters jump in, prancing and shaking their waists. No be juju be that? Okay, it is not juju, what is it? And how did we get here? Six seasons of election and still so many problems.

We still listen. We still allow them to do their two-somes and three-somes. They turn us like booli, plantain-on-the-roast ? Sixand still pay us in fake currency,  or at best old tattered notes. Can you imagine!

And we clap.

Lilly, my sister, move over.

Nigeria has joined you.

But there is another uncomfortable part of Lilly’s story.

She doesn’t merely love Fola.

She needs Fola to become the man she imagined him to be, because admitting that she chose wrongly is painful.

That is exactly what happens in politics.

Sometimes, after voting for a politician, people become emotionally invested in defending him.

Even when the evidence is sitting in front of them.

They will say:

“Give him time.”

“Maybe he inherited the problem.”

“His predecessor was worse.”

“He is trying.”

“Something will happen.”

“Don’t criticise him now.”

“He will do better during his second term.”

“Let us support our own.”

“Your own politician is not better.”

Before long, governance will become football where you are no longer asking whether your team is winning.

You start defending the jersey.

And that is dangerous.

Because democracy is not supposed to be a marriage where you stay with a terrible spouse because you have already spent money on the wedding ceremony.

Democracy is supposed to be a marketplace of ideas where citizens can say: You promised A. You delivered B. We are moving on.

But Nigerian voters sometimes behave like Lilly, who says, “Maybe he will change.”

Maybe?

After four years?

After eight?

After another election?

How many chances does Fola need?

How many pregnancies must happen before Lilly admits that Fola is not preparing or prepared for marriage?

This is where election becomes particularly interesting.

Election season is the period when politicians suddenly become romantic.

They bring flowers.

They sing love songs.

They call.

They visit.

They hug.

They kiss babies they have never met.

They kneel before elderly women.

They eat roasted corn in public.

They sit on mats.

They drink sachet water.

They dance with market women.

They speak the language of suffering.

They tell us they understand.

Then they ask for one little thing.

Our vote.

Just one.

Lilly knows Fola is a philanderer.

But Fola knows exactly how to make her feel special, the charming bastard. Pardon my French.

That is politics.

The politician doesn’t necessarily need to become good.

He only needs to become convincing.

And this is why elections are not merely about candidates.

They are about memory.

A voter without political memory is Lilly waiting for Fola to change.

A voter with political memory asks:

What did you do the last time?

What happened to the promise you made?

Where is the road?

Where are the jobs or enabling environment for job creation?

Where are the new waterworks?

Are the communities safer?

Are the schools better equipped?

Do the hospitals now have MRI and CT-Scan machines?

Is accountability now a watchword in public service?

And perhaps the most important question:

Why should I trust you again?

That question can save a country.

Unfortunately, Nigerian politicians sometimes understand our emotional weaknesses better than we understand our political power.

They know hunger can make a voter vulnerable.

They know poverty can turn 10,000 into a powerful campaign instrument.

They know ethnic sentiment can overpower evidence.

They know religion can become political armour.

They know “our son” can be more important than “good governance”.

They know that when the election comes, many voters will forget yesterday’s pain because somebody has brought rice today.

And then we repeat the cycle.

Four years later, we are angry again.

We curse again.

We complain again.

Then Fola comes back.

And Lilly opens the door.

This is not to say that every politician is Fola, or every voter is Lilly.

There are good politicians.

There are principled voters.

There are citizens who have learned to ask questions and demand accountability.

But the broader lesson remains.

We cannot keep choosing politicians because of who we desperately want them to become. We must choose them because of who their records show they already are.

Lilly wanted to break a family cycle.

That was admirable.

But wanting a different life does not automatically produce a different life.

You must make different choices.

Nigeria wants a different political future.

Beautiful.

But wanting a different Nigeria while repeatedly rewarding the same political behaviour is like Lilly waiting in Fola’s bedroom with a wedding gown while Fola is outside booking another two-some.

Something has to give.

We must stop confusing charisma with character.

We must stop confusing campaign generosity with governance.

We must stop confusing political noise with performance.

We must stop mistaking a politician’s ability to entertain us for his ability to govern us.

And, most importantly, we must stop treating elections like romantic relationships where betrayal is forgiven because “but he loves me”.

No.

Love is not enough.

A country cannot eat love.

A state cannot build a hospital with sweet speeches.

A young graduate cannot pay rent with “my dear people”.

A farmer cannot fertilise his farm with campaign promises. A pensioner cannot buy drugs with a politician’s smile.

Governance is work.

Leadership is responsibility.

Democracy is accountability.

And elections are the opportunity to decide who gets another chance to serve.

So, dear Lilly, perhaps Fola will change one day.

Perhaps he won’t.

But please don’t build your entire future around the possibility that a man who has repeatedly shown you who he is will suddenly wake up one morning and become the man you imagined.

And Nigeria, dear Nigeria, please listen carefully.

The next time Fola arrives with music, dancers, promises, bags of rice and a microphone, don’t faint from excitement.

Ask him questions.

Hard questions.

Where were you?

What did you do?

What did you fail to do?

How much did you spend?

What will you do differently?

And most importantly:

Why should we trust you?

Because perhaps the biggest mistake Lilly made was not loving Fola.

It was loving the Fola she hoped he would become, instead of judging the Fola standing in front of her.

And perhaps Nigeria’s biggest political mistake is exactly the same.

We keep falling in love with the politician in the manifesto.

We forget the politician in the mirror.

We vote for tomorrow’s Fola while ignoring yesterday’s Fola.

Then, after the election, when the promises disappear and reality arrives, we cry.

Premium tears.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Maybe the real question before every Nigerian election is not “Who do I like?” but “Who has earned my trust?”

That is the question Lilly should have asked too.