Underhand tactics in Ekiti and Osun PDP primaries, and Obanikoro’s bullying campaign in Lagos send alarming signals in the run-up to 2015
Ayodele Fayose (Ekiti), Iyiola Omisore (Osun), Jelili Adesiyan (Osun) and Musiliu Obanikoro (Lagos) — what does this quad have in common? They are the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) South West battling rams for the 2015 general elections.
It might be early days yet. But if the morning truly shows the day, there is ample cause to worry.
The pair of Mr. Fayose and Senator Omisore do nothing wrong to aspire and win the gubernatorial tickets of their party, PDP. The elections are fixed for June 21 (Ekiti) and August 9 (Osun). It is a constitutional injunction that they face up to the incumbents of their respective states, no matter how brilliant or parlous their performances have been.
Still, the mode of their emergence simply confound many. Mr. Fayose emerged from a primary election that all his opponents boycotted, alleging a sleight of hand from “Abuja”, a euphemism for PDP national and the Jonathan Presidency’s alleged collusion.
Mr. Fayose is a politically damaged product. For starters, he was impeached during his first stint as Ekiti governor, and the jury is still out there whether he is indeed legally qualified to run, so short after his 2006 impeachment debacle. Aside, he is currently docked for alleged sleaze; aside from murder charges, all throwbacks from his 2003 to 2006 governorship days. Indeed, his legal defence team even told the court to defer his trial until the election, to allow him concentrate on his electioneering. But the court demurred.
Yet, in spite of the albatross on his neck, the PDP wasted no time in endorsing his candidacy and dismissing the protest of his opponents. What might the PDP motive be, in its alacrity to push such a damaged good? A manic effort to self-destroy or frenzied mischief not to play by the rules?
In Osun, Senator Omisore’s emergence was even more sinister. Isiaka Adeleke, a former governor of Osun, made a hasty withdrawal from the Osun PDP primaries. This came after he was allegedly assaulted and physically manhandled to apparently scare him out of the race.
Newspaper reports quote Alhaji Adeleke as alleging that the pair of Omisore and Jelili Adesiyan, Minister of Police Affairs, beat him up, using an ensemble of policemen Mr. Adesiyan allegedly cobbled together from Abuja; and perhaps some allied thugs. Before his own alleged assault and battery, Alhaji Adeleke also claimed he saw policemen point guns to the heads of some men laying face down, alleging the men were thugs. But they later turned out to be Adeleke supporters, who the former governor prevailed on the police to free, before meeting his waterloo.
Despite all of this alleged arms-twisting, the PDP has endorsed the process that produced Senator Omisore. Again, this seeming uncritical acceptance beggars belief, despite the grave allegations and the baggage Omisore carries to the fray, despite his non-conviction in the Bola Ige assassination case. That much seemed to be getting to the former senator, when he declared his intention was not to shed blood but to serve the people.
By embracing Mr. Fayose and Senator Omisore (controversial at best, damaged at worst), the PDP appears to have given up on reason and settled for sheer brawn. With its disastrous record when the party ruled the roost in the two states, and its enduring parlous record in the past 15 years as the federal ruling party, such vote for brawn sits pat in his seeming determination to take the two South West states by force, in the run-up to 2015. But even as battering rams, the two candidates enter the race with heavy baggage. The electorate should do the needful.
But it is in the area of free and plausible elections that the spectre of Messrs Adesiyan and Obanikoro looms. Both, by the way, have lost no time in making news for all the wrong reasons.
Mr. Adesiyan, an Omisore ally and minister of the federal republic, stands rightly accused of grievously abusing his office, if the allegation is true that he amassed policemen to harass the supporters of Alhaji Adeleke and beat up the prime rival to Senator Omisore, in the bid for the PDP Osun gubernatorial ticket.
How a man who became minister virtually yesterday could pull off such alleged recklessness is a sad reminder of how frail our institutions of state are. It is even more shocking that there is no reported presidential outrage at this alleged criminalisation of the police for partisan purposes. From our experience in the past, such were the roads that led to Golgotha in the First and Second Republics.
The Obanikoro campaign is even more sinister, for it involves corralling the military for partisan wars. Mr. Obanikoro, a Lagosian and Minister of State for Defence, has been reported by newspapers to draft soldiers to seize lands on which there are ongoing construction works by the Lagos State government, claiming such parcels of land belong to the Federal Government.
From history, this is a very dangerous manoeuvre. The First Republic faltered partly because the powers-that-be back then unleashed soldiers on the dissenting Tiv, in what was known as the Tiv riots but which some insisted was some genocide. Now, Mr. Obanikoro has been reported, aside from his escapade in Lagos, to have carted soldiers to the bye-election in Ondo State to fill a vacant House of Representative seat. The gloomy road to 2015 is all too clear, except if checked and both Obanikoro and Adesiyan called to order.
President Goodluck Jonathan must rein in his misbehaving ministers. The president too must resist those who might be instigating him to clear disaster. Brazen abuse of state security organs, especially the military, for partisan purposes, is an ill wind that blows no one any good. It should never be tolerated under whatever guise.
Taking the South West by force has been the political grave of many. Jonathan must be wary of such a fatal mistake.
