Vagabonds in political parties

On February 3, 2026, the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde, declared that the vagabonds in PDP grew up in 2015. They had their time and practised their ‘vagabondcy’ in the PDP for 10 years – a decade. But they were expelled in November 2025, so no more vagabonds in PDP. Speaking at the commissioning of Oyo PDP Secretariat at Oke Ado, Ibadan, Makinde attributed the party’s challenges to a leadership vacuum that emerged after 2015, which he said allowed indiscipline to thrive. The governor said: “In Yoruba land, we always say that if you see a house or a compound that is peaceful, the vagabond in that house has not grown up.” The governor confessed that he was previously aligned with the group but had since distanced himself. This confession prompted the Wike camp, whom many believe the governor was referring to, to fire back at Makinde, referring to him as a repentant vagabond.

The first time the word vagabond was used on earth is in the first book published on earth called the Holy Bible. Genesis 4:12 revealed how God punished Cain for acts of indiscipline. Hear God, “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. Cain grew up to be rejected by God because he chose to be disobedient to God’s commandments. God recognised this when He warned Cain that “if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.” (Genesis 4:7)

Rather than repenting and turning a new leaf, Cain intensified in his sins and went further to kill his brother because of envy and jealousy. When God gave him the last chance at repentance from killing his brother, he added arrogance to God and total lack of remorse for his action. God’s hammer landed on him with the cursing word condemning him to be a vagabond all the rest of his life. Can you imagine Cain querying God whether he was his brother’s keeper when asked the whereabouts of Abel his brother whom he killed? In all honesty, whoever is not his brother’s keeper is certainly his brother’s killer.

The story of Cain has been the story of Nigeria’s politicians. They were elected under a political party to be their brothers’ keepers, but they have turned to become their brothers’ killers. They have corruptly enriched themselves by diverting the resources of the nation meant to better the security and welfare of the citizens. Their children are educated abroad with the educational money they diverted from the educational budget at home meant to educate Nigerians thereby leaving the children of Nigerians uneducated. As rich 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 20 million children.

One out of every 100 women who want to give birth dies due to lack of maternity care during child bearing, making Nigeria the nation with the worst maternal mortality rate in the world. The women cannot afford the cost of delivery in hospitals because of poverty. Fifty six per cent of the women deliver their children at home leading to unacceptable levels of deaths due to avoidable complications during childbirth at home. Snakebites kill people in their homes, even in the Federal Capital Territory, because of unhygienic environment and lack of anti-snake venom medications in hospitals, signifying the collapse of the health sector while the politicians and their families receive their best treatments in the best hospitals abroad with the diverted health money of Nigerians. Today, the Joint Health Sector Unions in Nigeria. (JOHESU) just came back from a 90-day strike that paralysed the health sector which witnessed the death of many Nigerians while the strike was on. The resident doctors are threatening to embark on a strike that will further paralyse the health sector, leading to avoidable deaths of Nigerians. The trained health care workers flee abroad at the slightest opportunity in an unrestrained brain drain out of Nigeria because of lack of their welfare in Nigeria.

The basic duty of government, which is the protection of life and property of Nigerians, is still a tall order by the politicians. People are killed, kidnapped, and dehumanised everyday in Nigeria without an end in sight while the money meant for their security is diverted in millions of dollars in the name of lobbying foreign powers to prevent the foreign powers from punishing the leaders for their incompetence and corruption. Americans reported that Tinubu’s government is spending about $9m (about N12.6b) for lobbying to assuage the USA government under Trump not to take drastic actions against the Tinubu government for its perceived lackadaisical approach to the killing of Nigerians termed “Christian genocide.” This is the same government that couldn’t spend tiny part of the money to employ ambassadors and maintain our embassies worldwide to help in laundering the image of the country. Our embassies are known for their smelly nature worldwide.

The most traumatising thing is that these politicians would not allow Nigerians to even determine who governs them in a free and fair election. They want to remove every safeguard in our laws that would make it possible for them to manipulate the elections of the people to ensure that their will does not prevail in the elections. The efforts of the Nigeria Senate to ensure that manual unverified results alone are used at the discretion of the Presiding Officers of INEC despite the 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 elections. This means that with all the obvious maladministration of successive governments, the people cannot even change them because they understand how to divert the money from the system and use same money to buy their way during elections. Vote buying and selling owing to poverty of the people and corruptly buying INEC officials to rig the elections with the money stolen by the politicians are signs of serial breaking of the laws of Nigeria.

These politicians are the proverbial Cain in the Bible who are unrepentantly treating the laws of Nigeria with disdain and have refused to repent despite repeated warnings from God and the people of Nigeria. Whatever one sows, one must reap. The Peoples Democratic Party has openly labelled themselves as vagabonds in power and the party and the politicians are reaping from their carelessness, recklessness, and negligence of the rules and regulations of the PDP and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Makinde noted that their vagabond attitude started in 2015 when there was a vacuum in the leadership of the PDP. Nature abhors a vacuum. This revelation marks out lack of leadership as the foundation of vagabondage in homes, businesses, and governments. In Makinde’s words, peace is guaranteed in governments if vagabonds are either not available or they are subdued or thrown out. PDP accommodated the vagabonds in their midst and even handed over power to them and today PDP is in coma or dead, and the remnants who have been recognised by the court are just very happy to be slaves to the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). They publicly declared support and endorsed the candidature of President Tinubu for the next election. So vagabonds in political parties can even sell their father’s home to strangers, only to discover that they have no homes of their own to live in anymore. This is why the definition of a vagabond is a person who wanders from place to place without a home. PDP politicians are now wandering from party to party without a home.

Majority of Nigerian politicians have also become vagabonds. Having destroyed their own country, the only choice they have is to be wandering from country to country, seeking security, health care and education. They do not know that the curse of God is telling on them. Some of their children end up in rehabilitation homes for drugs or abuse of substances rather than going to the schools they were sent to. Some of the children end up becoming terrorists roaming around the world seeking who to kill. The politicians themselves are gradually being named and shamed around the world for their numerous corrupt practices against their country. Some of them are being tried and sent to prison both at home and abroad. Some are restricted from travelling abroad. Their evils are gradually coming to hunt them.

There is no alternative to their repentance and time is running out on them. Indiscipline was identified as the foundation of the birth of vagabonds. Indiscipline behaviour is any act that has the potential of offending the accepted rules of conduct. Let us decide to voluntarily respect and obey our rules and regulations and our laws to avoid indiscipline and avoid the wrath of God and man. Let us expel the vagabonds in our midst and government in 2027 as God expelled Cain for various infringements of our laws so that we can have peace and prosperity in our land.