As long as we live, our accomplishments are not over (B’a ò kú, ìṣe ò tán). Individually and collectively, celebrated winners in the US midterm elections teach lessons: descendants of slaves and servants can hold the authority their ancestors were denied; the hands that build roads and fell trees can raise children who would grow up to make laws; and workers themselves can move from the forest to the chamber of power.
And there is no permanent champion in life. Ancient storyteller, Aesop, tells the tale of a tiny biting fly that challenged a lion and defeated him. The gnat stings the king of beasts all about the face until the furious lion, clawing at his tormentor, wounds himself.
After winning Michigan’s Senate race on Wednesday last week, popular Abdul El-Sayed took pointed swipes at his country’s president, Donald Trump, and at his deputy, JD Vance; his two most prominent enemies.
First, he told Vance: “JD, habibi (Arabic for ‘my dear’), there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in in January.”
Then he turned to Trump: “I know you struggle with my name, so after JD swears me in, you can just go on and call me Senator.”
January is two solid months away. Abdul El-Sayed is lucky. In Nigeria, he would learn never to count his chickens before they hatch. For insulting the president, the judicial arm of the ruling caste would ensure that his swearing-in day never came. His election would be annulled by the Federal High Court.
It is the same with the jubilant Democratic Party. I watched its leaders singing and dancing. In Nigeria, someone would remind them that an unborn child is never counted among the living. They would lose the gains soon after the swearing in. The victorious governors would honour the president by making their mandates his footstool. Their legislators would dine at the Presidential Palace and, for the love of the president, they would hand the crown to his defeated party.
America is lucky that its democracy is capable of redemption and reinvention. The midterm polls were the real meaning of taking back the country.
When you hear Nigerian politicians tug at optimism and renewed hope, tell them that in the US midterm elections were found hopes that are truly renewed.
I started on a note of trust, hope and faith: As long as we live, our feats are not over. America’s state of Georgia last week chose as governor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose great-great-grandfather was listed in a slaveholder’s will and was valued at $1,400. Maryland re-elected Wes Moore, whose grandfather’s family fled Ku Klux Klan threats in South Carolina for Jamaica. Read that again: One family had its head priced as property; the other was driven out by racial terror. Their descendants are now elected governors, wielding, or to wield, executive power in a country that once denied their ancestors basic humanity.
I move to another state. Ohio elected Amy Acton, who survived childhood abuse, hunger and homelessness, including spending a winter in a tent. Wisconsin chose David Crowley, whose family endured three evictions before he finished secondary school as his parents struggled with addiction. Neither childhood offered much assurance of the tomorrow that is now today.
Their stories are as sorry as that of New Mexico’s Deb Haaland, a Laguna Pueblo woman who once depended on food assistance while raising her child alone. Nevada elected Aaron Ford, who, as a struggling single father, needed public help to house himself and buy his baby’s formula.
Minnesota sent Peggy Flanagan to the Senate and, despite Donald Trump, returned Ilhan Omar to the House of Representatives. Flanagan grew up with a single mother who relied on housing and food assistance; Omar fled Somalia’s civil war and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp.
Colorado elected Ethiopian-born Melat Kiros, whose family’s American journey began when her father won the diversity visa lottery. Michigan chose Abdul El-Sayed, the son of an Egyptian immigrant, raised by a Muslim father and a Christian stepmother.
California chose Xavier Becerra, a construction worker’s son who became the first in his family to graduate from a four-year university. Maine sent fifth-generation logger Troy Jackson to the Senate.
The list of positive testimony is longer than this. But little is the soup of the fastidious: ṣókí l’ọbẹ̀ oge.
In my place is the saying that it is the person intent on lying who claims that their witness is in heaven. You all know my sources for these testimonials. My witnesses are here on earth: For Keisha Lance Bottoms, check her memoir, ‘The Rough Side of the Mountain’; read Time magazine’s profile of Wes Moore; the Associated Press on Amy Acton and Troy Jackson; David Crowley’s interview with The Tap contains his story; Deb Haaland’s and Melat Kiros’s campaign biographies speak on their journeys; The Nevada Independent has Aaron Ford’s story. Minnesota Public Radio has a fine piece on Peggy Flanagan; Read Ilhan Omar’s congressional biography; and the campaign biographies of Abdul El-Sayed and Xavier Becerra.
The world keeps turning, round and round. Bìrí bìrí l’ayé ń yí. We have seen a prince become a slave; we have also seen a pawn become a man of wealth. No season lasts forever.
Also published in the Nigerian Tribune on Monday 9 November, 2026.
