Of Foxes, Vultures, and Hyenas

By John Ochalla

In the wide savannah called 'The Federation', there are thirty-six watering holes, each entrusted to a different governing-captain. The rains fell faithfully from the great cloud known as Abuja, and every month the waters flowed down in allocations—clear, sufficient, and meant for all.

However the animals in charge were not sheep. The Foxes were the clever ones. They spoke in polished grammar and wore agbada woven from borrowed statistics. At the watering hole, they announced ambitious projects: glass bridges, smart cities, and digital farms where even goats would learn coding. But once the waters arrived, the foxes quietly diverted the stream into private burrows—consultancy fees, feasibility studies, and “capacity-building retreats” in faraway lands where no one could pronounce the village name. On paper, development flourished. On the ground, even ants trekked long distances for a sip of water.

The Vultures govern differently. They did not promise much, and that was their honesty. They simply waited. Every budget cycle, they hovered patiently over the carcass of public need—collapsed schools, dying hospitals, abandoned roads. 

When funds landed, the vultures descended, stripping allocations to the bone: inflated contracts, emergency votes, security votes that secured only their nests. What remained was left to rot, justified with the phrase, “We inherited the problem.”

Then there are the Hyenas, loud and laughing. They govern with noise. Press conferences every week. Convoys every day. They shared the spoils openly among their clan—brothers, cousins, loyal praise-singers. The hyenas believed governance was a feast, and if you didn’t eat noisily, people might think you were not in power. They mocked critics, chased journalists, and laughed at hunger as though it were a joke told in bad taste.

Down below lived the ordinary animals—the goats, chickens, and tired donkeys. They paid taxes, queued for water, and voted every four years with hope tucked under their ribs. Each dry season, they were told to endure. Each rainy season, they were told to be patient.

 Meanwhile, the savannah grew dusty, and the young animals learned early that survival required sharp teeth, not honest work.

The implications were everywhere. Roads became traps.

 Hospitals became prayer houses. Schools became ruins where chalkboards remembered better days. Youths migrated—to cities, to seas, to silence. Trust dried up faster than the rivers, and governance became a tale told by liars, full of budgets and fury, signifying nothing.

And the consequences? Even the foxes began to fear hunger, the vultures found fewer carcasses, and the hyenas started fighting among themselves. For when leaders feast alone for too long, the land itself rebels. The savannah does not forget. It keeps score.

One day, the animals whispered a dangerous idea: What if the watering holes truly belonged to everyone?

That idea, more than any protest, terrified the foxes, the vultures, and the hyenas alike.

Because mismanagement thrives on silence—but satire, like truth, has teeth.

It's time for lesser animals to take their destinies in their hands, INDEED THE WATERING HOLES BELONGS TO EVERYONE.

 *Sir John Ochala* 

 *Writes from Calabar.*