One may hate to describe those ‘forced’ by external influence who hurriedly defected from their parties of origin to the ruling party, APC, as vagabonds, but their actions by all standards qualify them for such defamatory description by Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde.
I agree with Seyi Makinde that it is only a vagabond that can desert his original home and no matter how uncomfortable for squatting in another home as a parasite or coward struggling for space and crumbs but without a voice of his own.
It was on February 3, 2026 Makinde made the description at the commissioning ceremony of Oyo State PDP secretariat at Oke Ado, Ibadan, where he attributed PDP’s challenges to a leadership vacuum that emerged after the 2015 general elections which he said allowed indiscipline to thrive unabated.
Makinde said: “In Yoruba land, we always say if you see a house or a compound that is peaceful the vagabond in that house or compound has not grown up.”Makinde confessed that he previously aligned with a group but has since distanced himself.
This self-confession prompted the Nyeson Ezonwo Wike group of betrayers, whom many believe Makinde was referring to, to fire back referring to him as a repentant vagabond. By Wike’s definition, Makinde then is not a vagabond but a repented one that has the chance for trust having retraced his steps from the group of vagabonds.
The first time the word vagabond was used on planet earth from my historical research, was in the Holy Bible, Genesis 4:12 which revealed how God punished Cain for acts of indiscipline.“When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.”The word, ordinarily in English, means “a person who wanders from place to place without a home or job.” Vagabond is truly a cursing word that results from a person’s indulgence in acts of disobedience to the laws of the land, which makes the person a fugitive. The story of Cain has been the story of defecting Nigerian politicians who are shameless deceivers and liars that can lie even to the dead for free.
They were elected on a party platform to be their brothers, keepers in accordance with the manifesto of the party, but instead, along the line, for selfish interest and fear of their shadows, transformed to be their brothers, killers, and still expecting trust from the same people whose trust was betrayed for selfish interest. What an insult to common sense! If carefully investigated, most of those defectors have corruptly enriched themselves through diverting resources meant for better security and welfare of the people.
Their children are educated in choice schools from the very educational funds they criminally diverted from the budget meant to educate Nigerians, thereby leaving the other children uneducated, and now given birth to insurgents and bandits affecting the security of all.
As wealthy as Nigeria is, it has the highest number of out-of-school-children in the world, only comparable to the number of out of school children in war torn countries. The number stands at almost 20million children.
Yet, Nigerians are told that there is a committed government-in-place that was duly elected. That sounds a mockery of intelligence and reality! Out of every 10,000 pregnant women, 100 die at the point of birth, making Nigeria the country with the worst maternal mortality rate in the world apart from being the poverty capital of the world. The women cannot afford the cost of successful delivery even in government-owned health facility because of abject poverty and absence of free medical care from a government expected to be responsive.56 percent of women deliver their children at home leading to unacceptable levels of deaths due to avoidable complications during labor.
Snakebites kill people in the homes, on farms or places of work due to unhygienic environment and lack of anti-snake venom medications in our government-owned health facilities, signifying the collapse of the health sector while the political class reaches out to the best treatments money can offer in choice hospitals with stolen health budgeted funds meant for Nigerians. Just of recent, Joint Health Sector Unions in Nigeria (JOHESU), resumed service from a 90-day strike that paralyzed the health sector which caused the untimely death of several Nigerians while the strike lasted. Resident Doctors are threatening to embark on nationwide strike that may further paralyze the health sector while Nigeria has a globally recognized medical professional serving as Health Minister (Prof Ali Pate).
Due to harsh and very uncomfortable working conditions, trained healthcare workers always flee abroad at the slightest opportunity in an unrestrained brain drain out of Nigerian shore for lack of an improved welfare, availability of working tools and convenient environment.The basic duty of any responsible government, whether civilian or military, is the protection of life and property which is still a tall dream by Nigerian political leaders. People are killed, kidnapped, and dehumanized every blessed day in Nigeria without an end in sight while budgeted funds for security operations are criminally diverted in the name of lobbying foreign powers to prevent them from punishing our corrupt leaders for their glaring incompetence, corruption and incapacitated to tame the excesses of marauding bandits, tribal militias and insurgents.
Americans reported that Tinubu’s government expended over $9million (about N12.6billion) for lobbying to assuage America under Donald Trump not to take drastic actions against the government for its perceived lackadaisical approach to the persistent killings of Nigerians.This is the same government that refused to extend funds to our embassies abroad to help in laundering the image of the country but squandered a whopping N12.6 billion on the same image laundering. Our embassies are shadows of their former selves today.
The most traumatizing aspect is that those politicians in power are so desperate to deny Nigerians the right to even decide who governs the country through a free and fair election. They are afraid of their shadows. Their past is haunting them. They know what they are. They know what they benefit from their dubiousness in government and what awaits them after a failed contest for return. They want to remove every safeguard in the laws that would make it possible for ease of manipulating the elections and ensure that the will of the electorates does not prevail in the elections. The efforts of the Nigerian Senate under Akpabio to ensure that manual unverified results are used at the discretion of the Presiding Officers of INEC despite obvious man-made technical glitch that marred the 2023 election means that they want to stick to the vicious cycle of election rigging, manipulation, falsification and subterfuge that usually mark our brand of elections.
Gods-Will Obot Akpabio was a beneficiary of a manipulated APC party primary election and a rigged senatorial election. He knows what awaits him at a free and fair contest in 2027.
This means that with all the obvious maladministration of successive governments under APC, the people cannot even change them because they have mustered the art of diverting stolen public funds to buying their ways to victory during elections. Vote buying and selling are owing to abject poverty, lack of confidence in the system, absence of patriotism and bribing corrupt INEC officials and security personnel to rig elections by politicians are violations of Nigerian laws. Nigerian politicians are the proverbial Cain in the Holy Bible who, are unrepentantly treating the laws of Nigeria with disdain and resisting repentance despite repeated warnings and signals of a coming revolution from the frustrated, patriotic and committed Nigerian people. Whatever one sows, one must reap. In the words of late Gen. Jeremiah Useni (rtd), “If you do, good you see good. And if you do, bad you see, bad twice.
”An insignificant number Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members, had labeled themselves in the market square as vagabonds-in-power led by a suspected drunkard at the second stage of lunacy, Nyeson Wike. And today, party members are forced to reap from that carelessness, recklessness, and negligence when it mattered most to have disconnected Wike from the party. Makinde noted that their vagabond attitude started in 2015 when there was a vacuum in party leadership and Wike hurriedly seized the opportunity for his pecuniary interest. Nature abhors a vacuum. Makinde’s statement marks out lack of leadership as the foundation of vagabondage in homes, businesses, and governments.
In Mkinde’s words, peace is guaranteed in governments if vagabonds are either absent, subdued or thrown out. PDP erroneously accommodated the vagabonds in their midst and even handed over authority to them, and today, PDP is paying dearly for that expensive error. Those Wike-led vagabonds who were recognized by the Court are too comfortable being slaves to the ruling party, APC. They publicly and shamelessly declared support and endorsed the candidature of Tinubu for the 2027 elections. So, vagabonds in political parties can even mortgage or sell their family homes to strangers, only to later discover that they have no homes of their own to live in anymore and anywhere. The Wike group of the PDP has successfully sold out their faction to the Tinubu APC-led group. Wike group is now homeless and fatherless.
This is why the definition of a vagabond is a person who wanders from place to place without an identified home typical of a nomad. The Wike group has now wandered to the party in control of federal resources but left scavenge for accommodation and space to survive. Majority of Nigerian politicians have become vagabonds. Having destroyed their own God-given country, the only choice left at their disposal is to wander from country to country, either seeking asylum or security, healthcare, and a good education. They have failed to realize that the curse of the Almighty Creator is telling on them heavily. Some of their children end up in rehabilitation homes from drugs or abuse of substances rather than going or completing schools they were sent to with stolen public funds. Some of the children end up becoming internet fraudsters, terrorists or roaming around the globe searching for victims to murder for pleasure out of drugs influence.
The politicians themselves are gradually named and shamed around the world for numerous corrupt practices, certificate forgery, hard drugs peddling or cybercrime and money laundering offences battering the image of Nigeria. In most countries, Nigerian politicians are rated as crooks and rogues to be avoided. Some of them are today in hiding, some are silently making refunds of stolen public funds in where they served, others are on trial in various Courts, and some already serving sentence in prison at home and abroad, while some are restricted from traveling abroad by the Courts. Their evils are gradually hunting them, and law of retribution is at work. From the look of things, there is no alternative to the repentance of Nigerian looters, and time is not on their side either.
Majority of dented images are in the APC colony for authority cover, as some foolishly reached out to the Tinubu family for soft landing after looting what belongs to Nigerians. The clownish ones ventured into sponsoring Kannywood actors and local praise singers to launder already battered images, while some claiming to be philanthropists are busy deploying looted public funds on sponsorship of their relations and hangers-on to lesser Hajj and the yearly pilgrimage to Holy Land as they build places of worship all to have public sympathy for continuous deceit to cover their tracks. You cannot loot what belongs to the people, channel same to ‘charity’ and expect Heavenly reward from God. Which God?
The Almighty has already given conditions on how to qualify for His mercy and reward in the Muslim and Christian scriptures. Channeling looted funds to charity is one of the acceptable conditions for Heavenly reward. You must surely prepare to account for your crime here and hereafter. That’s the naked truth! Indiscipline is identified as the foundation of the birth of vagabonds. Indisciplined behavior is any act that has the potential of offending accepted rules of conduct. Let us then decide to voluntarily respect and obey our rules and regulations and our laws to avoid indiscipline and avoid the wrath of the Almighty Creator and man. Let’s expel the vagabonds in our midst and in government in 2027 so that we can enjoy abundant peace and prosperity with ease.
We must disconnect Tinubu and his gang from power if we love to have our peace and a steady, buoyant economy that can support our developmental drives and welfare without any mockery called palliative when expired grains and cooking oils are distributed piecemeal to the wretched for deceit.
Anything less than that, is at our own peril!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
