Dr. Temitope Aluko is the State Secretary of the 2012 elected State Executive committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Ekiti State. A long standing ally of the state governor, Ayodele Fayose, he spoke to Remi Adelowo on the lingering feud between him and the PDP State Exco on one hand and the governor on the other and other issues
Governor Ayodele Fayose recently marked his one year in office. As a major stakeholder, how would you assess him so far?
Well, we have to thank God that PDP was able to produce the governor in 2014, and incidentally, I am also the State Secretary of the PDP, and I was also instrumental to helping to bring this government into place. However, the question to ask is: are we truly on course with what is known as the Ekiti Agenda? Are we on course with what is known as the Ekiti Project? That is the reference point which I will want Mr. Governor to truly address and properly focus on.
What is the component of the Ekiti Agenda that you earlier talked about?
The Ekiti Agenda is such that once you have a government in place, we want the government to do the best in the overall interest of the Ekiti people, given the meagre resources available. So, we, under the Ekiti Agenda, want a governor that will not only recognise and respect the electorates, but one that will also fully carry the masses along in its entirety.
You just harped on the need for any Ekiti governor to carry the masses along. The present governor is largely perceived as a man of the masses coupled with his philosophy of stomach infrastructure. Can you clarify your position?
Honestly speaking, we have gone beyond that kind of stomach infrastructure in Ekiti. You should know that Ekiti is widely known as the Fountain of Knowledge. Stomach infrastructure is not such that you now give somebody, something whose value is less than N500 once a year, and you now celebrate that, and you now say that is stomach infrastructure.
Does this not mean that the relationship between the two of you is no longer cordial as being speculated?
I would just say that when I was working for him in the build up to the governorship election, it was very convenient for him not to see my mistakes. But now, and immediately after the election, we now found out all sorts of things, and some of them may be considered hearsays, because he had never opened up for once to tell me anything of such to my face. But we know that we had a covenant. We know that we used the Bible to make a covenant between the two of us and he has not abided by that covenant. But to your question, our relationship cannot be cordial, because how can he infringe on the constitution of our party by setting up a parallel State Working Committee, which he unilaterally appointed as against our own State Working Committee which was elected in 2012 with a four year mandate. It was this same elected exco that worked assiduously to work and do everything possible to ensure his return to the party and also worked tirelessly to make his victory at the governorship election possible.
What efforts have been made to resolve your differences?
Frankly speaking, in the last four to five months, I have not seen him eye to eye, though we have been exchanging correspondences.
Could it be that members of the exco suddenly became too powerful considering your roles in Governor Fayose’s emergence and he felt the need to cut you to size?
If that is the angle he is looking at it, there are ways he could have handled it. You see, when you don’t listen to my position and I don’t listen to yours, it means you are not thinking. But when you are thinking, it means we are listening to each other, and when we listen to each other, everybody will be better off. I will gain from you and you will gain from me. But if you now think that this person is too powerful, or that person is too powerful, I want to say, honestly our governor should go back to his roots and start looking at the democratic process that set the stage for his emergence and respect such. In Ekiti right now, he has issues with the key components of the electorates. When we are talking about the key components, we are talking about party leaders, party members, we are talking about the market leaders, commercial bicycle riders, civil servants and local government staff.
When you and others decided to put your weight behind Governor Fayose, didn’t you foresee all of this happening?
Like I had tried to show, we have had a perfect relationship. I have been with him in the last 40 years. I almost grew up with him. I was living in Felele, Ibadan and he was right there at Orita, Challenge. His father was more like my father’s brother. We call him Baba Orilonise. We know each other’s family. We had a perfect relationship. So there is no way one can predict the nature of a man. And he may be acting this way, maybe because he is doing his second term and he felt there is really nothing at stake again and he may simply be feeling, ‘Who the hell are they. I don’t need them again’. But to me, that is never a good strategy to use in politics. But that is for him. But for me, as far as I am concerned, I want his government to succeed because it is our party that produced him.
With all you have said so far, are you not corroborating the belief of the governor that the elites are the real problem of the state?
I want to correct that impression. I told him once, I said, ‘if you are saying the Ekiti elites are the ones derailing you, are you not part of the Ekiti elite? You have been governor once, and you are now governor again. And you have been playing politics at that level in the last 13 or 14 years, so if you are now talking about the elites, these elites should now be very close to you. Truth is, it is the governor that should reach out to the elites. It is our governor that should play the game right with the elites as well as with the electorates.
You played a major role in the Ekiti governorship election in 2014 and that election set what had been termed a political record in Nigeria where a sitting governor was not only defeated, but was defeated in all the local governments. How did it happen? How was this political feat achieved? What was the magic?
In answering that question, I will just say here it is the secret of our party. It is our secret.
So, why did you not share this same secret with your party at the national level during the last general elections to help it secure victory again?
Well, maybe, just maybe, the major actors in the Ekiti PDP political landscape were not adequately represented at the national level to share that secret.
What is your reaction to the recent statement credited to the military high command, that it is going to fully probe the role of its men in the 2014 governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States?
I simply hope they are not really out to carry out a political witch-hunting with that exercise. I hope the planned exercise is not unconnected with politics and I also seriously hope it is not witch-hunting, because what comes to my mind instantly is the Akwa-Ibom and Rivers Tribunals when you suddenly hear a thing like this. And as a principal witness at the Ekiti Governorship Tribunal, the military were not listed as part of the tribunal proceedings. The military was never called to testify. The military never said all these then. I was a Principal Witness and the military was never there. I just hope it is yet not another witch-hunting exercise because no matter what, in democracy, we cherish what is ours.
What actually kick-started this frosty relationship between you, other elected exco members and the governor?
I would say after winning the election, then as the Governor-elect of Ekiti, we went round the South West, for South West mobilization and thank you rally. In Akure, there was a particular statement that Governor Ayodele Fayose made, which I have it on tape. He said ‘that now that he is governor, anybody who messes with him does so at his own peril’. So at that event, some of us, his key people that were always with him, exchanged glances. And we said to ourselves, we hope that this man has truly changed. Now looking back, I want to ask, where is Hon. Femi Bamisile? Where is Dr. TKO Aluko? Where is Chief (Mrs.) Ogunshakin? Where is Chief (Mrs.) Bola Oloyede? Where is Hon. Olugbemi, the former Speaker or the magical Speaker who stood firm and helped sustain the battle waged against Governor Fayose in the House of Assembly until he was sworn in? Where are all these powerful people? Where are all these key leaders that were there for Governor Fayose then against all odds just about one year ago? So, the frosty relationship between the two of us may not just be peculiar to me.
So in essence, you are saying the governor has not lived up to the tenets of the covenant you had with him?
It is very obvious from all he had done so far. Why is Governor Fayose always a recurring issue in Ekiti State politics? He will always be so, because his traits are such that you cannot predict him.
Considering the perceived feud between the elected exco and the governor, is there a room for reconciliation or is that foreclosed?
No, it has not failed. Even the National Working Committee (NWC) of our party has intervened. The issue is more of the constitution of the party and the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
There is a speculation that you are romancing with the APC?
I am not romancing with the APC. That kind of speculation is being spread because of my strained relationship with the governor.
