Adeola Ogunleye lands at Murtala Muhammed
Airport in a Mercedes GWagon, leather still
smelling of London, his Rolex glinting under the
tropical sun. He is here to deliver the vote.
Not to win — to ensure his father’s political
dynasty survives the first free election after
independence, when the ballot box no longer
answers to a man’s name, but to a people’s will.
His father’s empire was built on ink and
intimidation: ballot stuffing in Surulere’s
polling stations, ghost voters drawn from
cemetery records, and pastors who prayed over
ballot papers until their ink bled holy. The
rule was clear — no election is won by counting.
It is won by making the count impossible to
challenge. Adeola never questioned it. He lived
on the proceeds: private schools, imported suits,
nights at Club Elegance where girls called him
“Oga” and meant it.
But the world had changed. The British left, but
the ghosts stayed. The church in IjoraBada now
whispers of a new spirit — the One Who Counts
the Unseen. Women in headwraps walk through
markets with wooden tally sticks, singing in
Yoruba: “Omo mi, omo mi, omo mi o, omo mi o” —
“My child, my child, my child.” They say the
dead are voting now. That the ballot box in
Surulere Ward 12 has become a shrine. That the
ink on the papers is not from pens, but from the
tears of mothers who buried sons in ’66.
Adeola arrives at the ward office on election
eve. His men have already moved the boxes. The
polling clerks are paid. The opposition
candidate, a quiet university lecturer with
calloused hands from teaching maths, is under
surveillance. But when Adeola opens the main
ballot box, he finds no paper. Only a single red
cloth, stitched with the words “Olorun omo mi” —
God is my child. Beneath it, 1,207 names. All
dead. All known. All written by his mother’s
hand before she was buried.
His mother, once the most powerful evangelist in
Lagos, had prayed for him every morning. She had
told him, before her last breath: “The Lord
doesn’t count votes. He counts hearts. And He
sees the blood you spill for power.” He thought
she was weak. Now, he sees the truth: she didn’t
die of cancer. She died of the weight of the
names she wrote — names of the children who
vanished during the riots, the boys who vanished
after they asked too many questions, the girls
who vanished after their fathers refused to pay
bribes.
The rule bites: you cannot rig an election when
the dead are your witnesses.
He tries to burn the box. The fire doesn’t catch.
He calls his men to haul it away. They refuse.
One of them, a boy from Oshodi who once worked
his father’s farm, says: “Oga, this box now
belongs to the ancestors. You no fit carry am.
The spirits dey count.”
At dawn, Adeola stands alone in the ward office.
The ballot box glows faintly, as if lit from
within. The first voters arrive. They don’t ask
for papers. They don’t speak. They touch the box.
Their fingers leave dark smudges. One by one,
their names appear on the wall behind it — not
in ink, but in the sweat of their palms.
By noon, the Independent Electoral Commission
arrives. They find no fraud. No tampering. Only
a box full of silence and 1,207 names glowing
like fireflies.
The lecturer wins.
Adeola walks home. His mansion is empty. His
father’s portraits have been removed. His wife
has left with their child, whispering only: “You
chose power over prayer. Now the prayer chose
you.”
That night, he burns his suits. He sells his
cars. He goes to the same church his mother once
led. He kneels. He does not pray. He only weeps.
The next morning, he is found outside the
Surulere ward office, still in his shirt from
yesterday, hands raw from scrubbing the walls.
He is not arrested. He is not forgiven.
But the ballot box? It still glows.
And every election day since, the people of
Surulere bring their dead to vote.
