If you must vote
Then vote not with your belly,
For bellies forget the hand that fed them
Once the stomach turns.
Vote not for the wrapper they drape around you
Or the bag of rice that cannot rebuild a broken bridge.
Don’t let your thumb print poverty
On your own forehead.
Again.
If you must vote
Do not sell your soul for silver.
Then cry when the fire comes
A nation burns from every matchstick
Lit by foolish loyalty.
The man who buys your vote today
Becomes the curse you whisper
When the school remains a shed,
When the hospital coughs in darkness,
When your child spells hope as joke.
You sleep during elections
And expect dreams to govern.
You abandon your power
And wonder why you’re powerless.
If you must vote
Do not vote for a name.
Names cannot build roads.
Tribes cannot fix water.
Godfathers cannot teach your child.
Yet we carry ancestry to the ballot box
and bury our future beneath it.
Why do we keep planting weeds
And expecting fruit?
Why choose the mirror
Over the mind?
A pretty face cannot legislate progress.
A dancing candidate will not step
Into policy.
Ask them what they stand for,
And when they answer only in slogans,
Know they are salesmen,
Not servants.
So stop pointing fingers
With ink still wet on your thumb.
You chose this.
You wore the chain.
You crowned the clown.
If you must vote
Vote with fire in your eyes.
Vote like someone who remembers
How many dreams have died
At the hands of smiling thieves.
Vote with conscience,
Not currency.
With questions,
Not customs.
With vision,
Not division.
And when they come with coins
wrapped in promises, say:
“I am not a market.
I am a citizen.
I am not for sale.
I am the soul of this nation.”
If you must vote
Make it a weapon of wisdom,
Not a signature of silence.