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Tag: Ayodele Fayose

  • That Fayose-Bamidele entente cordiale

    That Fayose-Bamidele entente cordiale

    One of the distinguishing features of the June 21 Ekiti governorship poll was the unprecedented collaboration between the supposedly progressive politician and House of Representatives member, Opeyemi Bamidele, and the Governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, the conservative who passes himself off both as a progressive and pragmatist. Before the poll, the two entered into a gentleman’s agreement to join forces to help Mr Fayose sweep the poll. The agreement was disseminated in hushed tones, but reporters still got wind of it, and attributed the woeful showing of Mr Bamidele in the election to the fact that he had surrendered his goodwill to Mr Fayose’s cause.

    If anyone doubted the existence of the entente cordiale or its potency, Mr Baimdele himself gloatingly told a newspaper last week that among the reasons Governor Kayode Fayemi lost the election was his unbridled pride. But if so-called progressives could smother one another in this fashion, like a husband who slept with a whore to punish his wife, then they are in more trouble than they imagine. And judging from Femi Fani-Kayode’s volte face – apostasy, some say – we must ask how on earth progressives recruit politicians into their leadership cadre?

    In 2015, Mr Bamidele will likely have his path to the Senate paved by Mr Fayose, except he chooses something more exotic, something more mercantilist. By coming out openly to identify with Mr Fayose, he has indicated a permanent split with his erstwhile political family, a family that I have always argued is held together by the most tenuous of threads. More, the new conservative cum pragmatic alliance in Ekiti all but exemplifies the difficulty in assigning ideological colouration and conviction to Nigerian politicians. The leading political parties, especially the PDP and the APC, are still roughly cast in ideological colours, and mouth programmes along lines that show their leanings. Not so the politicians themselves. They migrate very liberally across the divides and flirt as expediently as their whims carry them, incommoded by our protestations and outrage.

    The greater burden is on the APC, given its proselytising tendency, to firm up its ideological disposition and scrupulously vet those it admits into its leadership. The PDP basks in its expansive disposition to welcome everyone irrespective of his background and conviction. The APC cannot hope to match the PDP on that all-comers’ turf. It must rely on its distinguishing properties, its intuitive embrace of political morality, its instinctive and adaptable humanism. As its politics in Ekiti showed, the APC has not always got its priorities right, nor has it found ways to concretise its philosophy of governance, let alone stay faithful to the ideals of its founding. It must urgently address its mistakes if the Ekiti poll and all other prospective entente cordiales are not to turn its momentary defeat into a permanent rout.

  • Ekiti unleashes strange metaphysics

    Immediately the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost Ekiti State in the June 21 election in a fashion many have described as spectacular and unnerving, a strange spirit seems to have seized parts of the country, particularly the Southwest states. Now, everyone wants to copy Governor-elect Ayodele Fayose’s social mannerisms and re-enact his quaint political abracadabra. His victory is attributed to his distaste for intellectualism, his refusal to inflame and annoy the electorate with newfangled ideas about production and social relations, and his obvious fascination with what some analysts disdainfully call inferior taste.

    Consequently, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the August Osun governorship poll, Iyiola Omisore, whose reputation is as tattered as Mr Fayose’s, has adopted the latter’s idiosyncrasies in order to appeal to the rabble and the booboisie. He eats by the roadside, hops on commercial motorcycles, shares rural jokes with farmers, and winks at the common idiocies of voters whose coarseness would ordinarily have received short shrift from him. You must expect that in the 2015 elections, many Fayose goblins will be let loose on the country, complete with the devil’s metaphysics to hoodwink and mystify the electorate.

    Worse, the Southwest and nearby states are in frenzy to check the devil’s metaphysics from wafting into their states. Edo State is courting teachers, even romancing them, no matter their follies and foibles. Did they forge certificates and cut their official age, well, all is forgotten and forgiven. Should they even require the elixir of youth, the comrade governor would be glad to oblige them. What about quality of teachers and instruction? Why, in the face of vote herding, perish the heresy of quality control. Ekiti has taught a hard lesson on the vulgarisation of governance, and the lesson is well and truly learnt.

    Ogun is also giddy with excitement to please teachers and civil servants. So, too, is Osun. The Southwest is truly animated, its governors eager to dole out, if need be, more than half of their states’ recurrent budget to obviate real or imagined discontent. Visionaries will be driven out of town, so also all ambitious social engineers and self-anointed political innovators. The future is now, and the new political and democratic orthodoxy is the need for politicians to connect with their bases. Let the future take care of itself, and let the devil take the hindmost. But it won’t be long before the Southwest is intoxicated, its maudlin soul sated and entangled in the labyrinth of grassroots politics, the kind best exemplified by Messrs Adedibu, Adelabu, Fayose and Omisore, all of them past and present champions and magicians of the devil’s metaphysics.

  • Ekiti: So much for stomach infrastructure

    Ekiti: So much for stomach infrastructure

    When a colleague said it sometime last year I thought he was joking. It couldn’t be true, I said. That one can just walk into any beer parlour, as we call it here, anywhere in Ekiti State and chant osoko and green bottles would start to flow free of charge, courtesy, Ayodele Fayose, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the just concluded gubernatorial election in Ekiti State?

    I immediately dismissed it as one of those talks by ‘enemies of progress’ to bring down the person of former Governor Fayose and probably ridicule the good people of Ekiti State. Haba! In the land of honour, with more professors per household than anywhere in Nigeria; how can such motor park tactic bring support for a candidate, particularly one seeking the office of the governor of the state? I didn’t even give a second thought to it.

    But as elections day drew nearer, more people started to talk about it as well as other efforts including distribution of foodstuff and throwing money at people on campaign grounds, by Fayose to win votes. This must be a joke, I said and I hope Ekiti people would not allow this man hoodwink them a second time.

    As these things were going on signs were emerging that there could be a surprise in Ekiti; some hitherto respected people started speaking from both sides of their mouth and the PDP hierarchy including President Goodluck Jonathan started beating their chest and the police in Ekiti state started misbehaving; I knew something was going to happen.

    My mind quickly went back to 2003 when Fayose first came in as elected governor of Ekiti state defeating the incumbent Niyi Adebayo of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD) party. In the run up to that election, Fayose among other tactics went about with water tankers supplying water to the people; and he won their hearts; they voted for him. Two years or so down the road before he was booted out, some say illegally, it did not occur to him, I think, to provide every household in Ekiti with potable water, if he did that with what will he campaign the next time?

    I told myself, lightening will not strike twice in the same place, Ekiti people would not allow it. But I was wrong; lightening did strike twice and with venom too. Fayose’s campaign with no tangible achievement of his first tenure to point at and no promise of a better future to hold on to, swept away, like a tsunami, the incumbent, winning in all the 16 local government areas, defying all logic.

    Some have put his victory down to the incumbent governor, Kayode Fayemi losing touch with the common man, not being one of them, staying aloof and speaking ‘too much grammar’; his records of outstanding achievements in all sphere of governance notwithstanding. Fayose was the man of the people whose name could bring out several litres of beer at the local pub; who would go to‘paraga’ joint to ‘jolificate’ with his people; who would throw wads of naira notes at people or stop by to buy banana or groundnut from the roadside hawker. He could do these things and more and the people ‘loved’ him for it (he was literally putting money in their pockets, food on their table, beer in their tommy, even if they had to struggle to pick the money on campaign grounds) and they rewarded him on June 21, with the key to the government house in Ado Ekiti for another stint at governance.

    For and in all of these I have no grudge against Ekiti people even if I am disappointed. They have made their choice; a people deserve the leadership they get. Life itself is dynamic. The majority have the right to be wrong; even at that, it is too early to say the majority in Ekiti was wrong in that election. So, those who were disappointed like me should sheath their sword and allow Fayose to govern, after all he says he is a changed man now, wiser and has learnt from his mistakes. The next four years should prove that. Only time would tell if a leopard can change its spots.

    Though some people have raised eye brows over whether it was possible for the people of Ekiti who benefited so much from Governor Fayemi to so reject him massively at the polls and questioned how that huge figures were recorded, my worry is not so much about that but the bad example the Ekiti election is setting in the way the electorate judge and reward performance with their votes.

    My fear is that any desperate first term governor or president with an eye on a second term could abandon physical infrastructural development of his community and the human capital development of his people for populist programmes that would put money in the pockets of the electorate in the immediate at the expense of their future. And if the Ekiti example is anything to go by any such tactics would succeed especially in a poverty ridden society as ours.

    Our politicians we know are desperate, only few of them have genuine programmes that could take the country to the next level and are prepared to stick with such programmes no matter the odds. For what he did in Ekiti, which even the people have acknowledged, Governor Fayemi must be praised for not dancing to the tune of those advocates of stomach infrastructure even if his people have punished him with an electoral defeat. Even if he didn’t mean to take it this far, discerning Nigerians, including a lot of Ekiti people know the course he had taken was the right one and time would vindicate him.

    One good thing we have been witnessing in the South West where the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been in near total control of the states is the unprecedented level of infrastructural development that had been going on in the past three years. The people appreciate this, and the APC should not out of panic and in response to the Ekiti setback abandon this for cheap political gains. Nothing good comes easy. After all, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the founder of the modern Yoruba society didn’t find it easy implementing the free education programme in the then Western Region for which everybody has continued to praise him. He saw the future of Yoruba in education for his people and he stuck with that programme, even though at a point he suffered electoral losses, he never wavered.

    The rest of Nigeria should not go the way of Ekiti in next year’s elections if truly the people there voted for stomach infrastructure; the PDP, particularly President Jonathan should not trick Nigerians into going that way just because it wants to win election in 2015. It is a route that leads only to destruction.

    We cannot talk of curbing corruption if we expect our politicians to bring the money out for us to share; we cannot expect our roads to be good, our hospitals to be better and schools to be world class if all we are interested in is stomach infrastructure. Let us decide on what we want and live with the consequences Ekiti people have made their choice, let nobody cry for them.

     

     

     

  • Court adjourns suit against Fayose to June 30

    Court adjourns suit against Fayose to June 30

    A High Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, on Monday adjourned the case instituted by e-Eleven against the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ayodele Fayose to June 30.

    The court, at the hearing, ruled against the request for urgency as sought by e-Eleven, the claimants in the case.

    The group is seeking to stop Fayose from contesting Saturday’s governorship election.

    The e-Eleven, through an earlier court process, had sought to stop the PDP candidate from contesting the June 21 election, contending that Fayose had disclosed false information in Form CFO 1 of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in respect of his 2006 impeachment by the state assembly.

    But Justice Olusegun Ogunyemi, opposing oral application as sought by claimants based on the ‘urgency’ of the issue, said the rule of court must be obeyed by the claimants who must observe the prescribed minimum number of days within which to file their written address (not orally) and secure a response from the respondents, citing Section 39 of the Constitution.

    The judge ruled that the claimants must file a written address by way of reply to the preliminary objection served on the defendants and that they must maintain the mandatory seven days within which to respond to whatever the defendants served on them.

    Counsel to the claimants, Norrison Quakers (SAN) had informed the court about receiving a process from the defendants that challenged the jurisdiction of the court to hear the originating summons filed on behalf of the claimants, expressing readiness to wave the rights to reply by urging the court to take the originating summons side-by-side with the preliminary objection.

    Quakers had pleaded for accelerated hearing of the case, considering the fact that the case is hinged on the PDP candidate’s eligibility in an election holding on Saturday.  But in a counter argument, counsel to the respondent, Ahmed Raji (SAN) said the case before the court was not ripe enough for hearing since there was no written application filed to him in respect of the objection by the defendant.

    He asked the court to give him seven days to respond to the filed affidavit which would be given to him by the claimant.

  • Jonathan promises free, fair election in Ekiti

    Jonathan promises free, fair election in Ekiti

    President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday pledged that the June 21 governorship election in Ekiti State will be free and fair.

    He warned that any party or candidate banking on rigging or violence during the election will be hugely disappointed.

    President Jonathan spoke in Ado Ekiti during the presentation of the flag of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to Mr. Ayodele Fayose, the party’s candidate in the election.

    “We are going to provide adequate security that would enhance one man, one vote. I am not in Ekiti today to convert you because by this crowd, you have shown that you are for the PDP,” he said.

    “So, don’t be afraid of thuggery during the election. We shall provide adequate security to ensure one man, one vote, one woman, one vote and one youth, one vote. Anyone who brings thugs does that at his own peril.”

    With the president were Vice President  Namadi Sambo; National Chairman of the party, Alhaji Adamu Mu’azu; Senate President, David Mark;  Leader of the House of Representatives, Mulikat Akande-Adeola and Chairman, PDP Board of Trustees, Chief Tony Anenih.

    Others were the Chairman, PDP Governors’ Forum, Governor Godswill Akpabio, PDP National Executive Council members present included Governors Idris Wada (Kogi), Liyel Imoke

    (Cross River), Theodore Orji (Abia); former governors Attahiru Bafarawa (Sokoto), Diepreye Alamieyeigha (Bayelsa), Adebayo Alao-Akala (Oyo) and Ibrahim Shekarau (Kano), Senators Iyiola Omisore, Hosea Ehinlanwo and Bode Olajumoke; Chief Olusola Oke; and the Alafao of Afao Ekiti, Oba Joseph Ademilua.

    The party’s National Chairman who handed over the PDP flag to Fayose and his running mate Dr Olusola Eleka expressed confidence that PDP would win by popular votes.

    His words: “When Ekiti votes for PDP, they will be better for it. We are going to embark on people-oriented programmes that will touch positively on your lives.”

    Senator Mark described Fayose as  a  born again who  “would serve you well  and put smiles on your faces once again.”

    Fayose promised to slash fees in public schools if returned to power.

    He said:” Contracts of the state will no longer go to foreigners because I will consider  local content. I pledge to you today that if you elect me, I shall look after you.”

  • Ekiti PDP, APC trade words over planned murder setup

    Ekiti PDP, APC trade words over planned murder setup

    THE Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State again went to the trenches yesterday over alleged plan to frame him up a governorship candidate in the June 21 election in Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose Ayodele in a murder scandal.

    Director-General of Ayodele Fayose Campaign Organisation (AFCO), Chief Dipo Anisulowo disclosed the alleged plot to reporters in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, yesterday.

    Anisulowo alleged that the party has discovered “a sinister scheme to kill an innocent individual and announce Fayose as the killer.”

    He noted that the plan would be to kill the victim, soak a vest carrying the portrait of Fayose and the PDP in the victim’s blood and dump the corpse either at Afao-Ekiti or Ise-Ekiti road, adding: “This is all to create the impression that the PDP is responsible”.

    But the Director of Media, Kayode Fayemi Campaign Organisation, Dimeji

    Daniels, who refuted the allegation, described it as “a foul cry aimed at diverting attention and shifting the blame for his planned chaos and other heinous crimes he plans to assign.”

    Dimeji said: “Mr. Fayose plans to shift the campaign from the realm of ideas to the ring of violence, killings and murder. The PDP and its candidate have lost out in the culture of debate and tradition of decent politics that are the hallmark of the APC.

    “Fayose has been visiting brothels and red lights across the state where he hopes to recruit the dregs of the society for his planned attacks on the people of the state.”

    He said Ekiti State had remained one of the most peaceful states in Nigeria, but added that the culture of violence was only reintroduced with the emergence of Fayose as the PDP candidate.

    He said Fayose would be held responsible for any violence or killings that might take place in the state.

     

  • Fayose decries Ekiti over doctors’ strike

    Fayose decries Ekiti over doctors’ strike

    • Govt: claims false, baseless

    Governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has decried the governor and his All Progressives Congress (APC) counterpart, Dr. Kayode Fayemi over the strike action embarked upon by doctors working in government hospitals.

    Fayose said the governor’s refusal to pay doctors the Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) was a show of insensitivity to the plights of the people.

    Reacting to the doctors’ strike through the Director-General of the Ayo Fayose Campaign Organisation (AFCO), Chief Dipo Anisulowo, the PDP candidate said it was wrong for the governor to have stopped the payment of CONMESS that was being paid before he became governor.

    The doctors embarked on an indefinite strike action last week Friday, to demand for the payment of CONMESS, while their colleagues in the State University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti joined the strike yesterday.

    Fayose said: “With the strike action, the Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ido-Ekiti is the only public hospital functioning in Ekiti State.”

    According to him, “what sick people and their relations will be undergoing now is better imagined than experienced.

    Reacting to the allegations, the Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Mr. Tayo Ekundayo, said  the current strike by doctors was a national one in which a lot of issues were said to be involved.

    Ekundayo, who noted that the doctors’ action was a warning strike, maintained that the leadership of the Association of Resident Doctors in the state joined the action “as it is a national directive in which all state chapters must particicipate as a matter of course”.

    According to him, the state government had approved the payment of Consolidated Medical Salary Structure (CONMESS) for medical doctors in the state, noting: “I don’t think our own medical doctors across hospitals in Ekiti will institute any state based strike because of that.”

    Ekundayo said: “Let me state categorically that there is no iota of truth in the claoims by Fayose regarding the strike action by doctors. His claims had several times been exposed as false and baseless. Fayose also said our administration is owing civil servants and council workers arrears of leave bonuses. Let him get a civil servant to confirm this. This administration will not owe any worker his due in whatever regard. Let Fayose continue to cook his lies but let our people continue to maintain their vigilance”, the Commissioner said.

  • Why Jonathan may not visit Ekiti, by sources

    Why Jonathan may not visit Ekiti, by sources

    AGAIN, apprehension heightened yesterday that President Goodluck Jonathan may not attend the official presentation of the People’s Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate in June 21 election, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, to the electorate in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.

    This came to light as Jonathan’s scheduled visit to Ekiti State was allegedly postponed again for the third times, giving rise to fears that though he was expected in Ekiti on May 22 and 29, but neither the President nor the Vice President, Namadi Sambo, came.

    The PDP has again postponed the visit to Saturday, June 7.

    But sources in Abuja described the new date as “unrealistic,” saying that the Presidency is alarmed by alleged “very damaging petitions levelled against Fayose by respected PDP leaders in the state, including top indigenes in the Diaspora.”

    “There are indications that President Goodluck Jonathan may have shifted his support to another candidate in the election. This accounted for the refusal of the President to officially present the party’s flag to the party candidate on two occasions scheduled for that event, a situation which has forced the party to postpone the ceremony thrice last month,” a reliable source in Abuja said on Sunday.”

    Already, the party is enmeshed in internal crisis as the state chairman, Mr. Makanjuola Ogundipe, has allegedly refused to identify with Fayose in all his electioneering campaigns in the state.

    Besides, former aspirants who were forced to support Fayose have in the recent times been cold towards the candidate.

    Already, there are indications that some of them are thinking of dumping the party for another candidate in the election.

    “When the President did not come for the rally on May 22nd , as scheduled, some top party leaders from Abuja came for fence-mending and especially to beg aggrieved PDP leaders to support Fayose, but many of them deliberately travelled out of the state to avoid meeting the delegation.

    The refusal of the aspirants to openly identify with Fayose may not be unconnected with the way and manner the PDP standard-bearer has been handling his campaign, treating former aspirants as intruders,” a PDP source said.

    Another source said the new attitude in the Presidency may have been “a late discovery that the party leadership may have been misguided in the choice of Fayose.”

  • Fayose to E-Eleven: you are anti-Ekiti development

    Fayose to E-Eleven: you are anti-Ekiti development

    TO Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, a socio-political group in the state, E-Eleven, is an enemy of the people.

    “Those people in E-Eleven are anti-Ekiti development and they are apologists of the All Progressives Congress (APC),” the PDP candidate said yesterday.

    Fayose, who accused the E-Eleven of defrauding Ekiti State to the tune of over N400 million, challenged the group to tell Nigerians what they have done towards the development of Ekiti State in the last 10 years.

    The new development came after the E-Eleven took the PDP candidate to court, praying that Fayose should be disqualified from participating in next month’s election.

    The Director-General, Ayo Fayose Campaign Organisation (AFCO), Chief Dipo Anisulowo, in a statement yesterday, quoted the PDP governorship candidate as saying that, “apart from Miss Ekiti Beauty Pageant that they did thrice, these characters that go about calling themselves the only elites in Ekiti have been milking the state.”

    He said: “The Fountain Hotel was leased to E-Eleven at N80 million per annum and the group refused to pay a dime to the state in the last seven years.

    “Here is a group that refused to pay a dime to the coffers of Ekiti State since Fountain Hotel was leased to it. Even when the Segun Oni-led PDP went to court to compel them to pay, they simply refused, and the moment their man-Friday, Governor Kayode Fayemi, assumed office, they finally took over the Fountain Hotel, with no one demanding any payment from them.

     

  • Fayose accuses Ekiti govt of booking hotels with N100m

    Fayose accuses Ekiti govt of booking hotels with N100m

    •APC: another case of frivolous allegation

    Ahead of next month’s governorship election in Ekiti State, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate  Ayodele Fayose, has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration of Governor Kayode Fayemi of wasting over N100 million public fund to book all hotels in the state.

    Making the allegation in a statement yesterday, the Director-General of Ayo Fayose Campaign Organisation (AFCO), Chief Dipo Anisulowo, quoted the PDP governorship candidate as claiming that the state government was owing hoteliers in the state over N200 million since last year, which it refused to pay.

    But, the APC in a reaction made by its spokesperson, Segun Dipe, described the allegation as “frivolous,; inane and undeserving of any attention”.

    Dipe maintained that the PDP has time for frivolous comments because it lacked the focus and seriousness it takes to win an election, adding “How could a whole party make such an allegation. There are many members of the party who owns hotels in Ado Ekiti and elsewhere in.the state.

    AFCO, which described the government’s action as admittance of fear, said it was wicked for the state government that refused to pay its hotel bills for over six months to have suddenly realised that it needed to pay over N100 million to book hotels just because of election.

    The governorship candidate, who said all attempts to circumvent the will of Ekiti people by the APC government will fail, added that “if they like, let them pay for all hotel rooms in Ekiti, let them pay for all farmlands and even vacant residential accommodations in Ekiti, they won’t survive defeat on June 21.”

    While calling on hoteliers in the state to demand for the payment of over N200 million being owed them by the state government, Fayose said: “Let all outstanding debts being owed our hotel owners by the APC evil government be paid first.

    “And if Governor Kayode Fayemi and those that are using the June 21 election to siphon Ekiti funds like, let them go beyond the booking of all hotel rooms in Ekiti. Let them also book all roads in the state so that no one can be able to use the roads between now and June 21.

    “They can also go a step further in the demonstration of their wickedness and desperation by booking the air that we breathe so that no one will be able to breathe because of the June 21 election.