THE POWER OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE

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I'm happy to be part of the participants in this beautiful third edition for week 123. Power and influence are two vital words. Power is the capacity to enforce or do something. Power entails the ability to do something. While influence simply means to exact change on someone or something. Linking the two words according to me, it means the ability to cause a change in an individual.

Everyone by default has power to enforce and influence one or two things depending on the kind of environment you're found. At home, the father can exercise power and influence upon his children to carry out a particular task or to do a particular function. Whether it's to their advantage or not but the the power lies within his terrain.

I would like to quickly share an incidence that occurred during the last elections and I saw a high level display of power and influence. I have never experienced something like that since I have been going to cast my vote during election polls. I had the privilege to move to the polls with my beautiful wife. We had a little delay at home therefore we got at the centre a bit late.

As we got to the place, I saw a long queue with people waiting to cast their votes. As I drew near with my wife suddenly some people started making unnecessary noise. Remember it was governorship election and fortunately we had same unit with the former deputy governor and the the present governor as well. As at that time some of the major stakeholders haven't arrived yet. As I proceeded to go and do the needful, we saw crop of personalities that troup in with body guards all round. They came and stood beside the ballot boxes.

Most of us were amazed and kept looking at our front like ghosts. After a little inquiry, we realised they hail from the side of one of the contestants which happened to be the incumbent governor then. He was contesting for the second tenure. He knew it was going to be tough tussle because the opposition was an agile Youngman. That was a great intimidation to the governor and his supporters. That made them to develop all the necessary measures to ensure that the exercise their power and influence.

Shortly, the guys went straight and picked the ballot box and broke and collected other materials and scattered it. We were helpless and couldn't do anything. Even the security personnel were quite because these guys were coming from a higher place of power and influence. I couldn't wait any longer to avoid the story that touches the heart. I knew the next thing would be pandemonium. Shortly they started throwing things at each and that's how others fled for their lives.

These guys had all the political power and influence at their corridor since they noticed that the distraction will be to their advantage, they didn't hesitate to cause such confusion. At the end the centre was declared no elections. Instead of them losing to an opposition, is better both of them loose it. This ugly incident really taught me a lesson.

In Nigeria, politics is not longer good like before but a dirty game now and influence, power plays a major role. Most politicians subvert people's rights and benefits because of selfishness and personal gains.
In the society today the differentiating factor between the poor and rich is power and influence.
The more money you have the more influential you will become.

Thanks for reading through my post and all comments appreciated.