When on June 15, 2014, about a week to the then approaching governorship election in Ekiti State (billed for June 21, 2014), I called on Ekiti people to #BringbackFayemi, little did I know that that call would count for nothing. Little did I know that the people had made up their minds on what to do. At least that was the situation until the morning of June 21, Election Day, when I started receiving anonymous calls on phone by people who claimed to be speaking from Ekiti. I vividly remember one of them said that Ekiti people appeared set to take one of the most (?) decisions of their lives, and they knew it; but nonetheless were bent on treading that path. I received a few more such calls, with the people sympathising with, and telling me that they knew I was not one of the regular visitors to their state but just happened to be in love with what the then Governor Kayode Fayemi was doing. Mind you, they too acknowledged that Fayemi performed.
When, on the day after the election I saw the picture of the governor (I think in The Guardian) on the queue when he was about to vote the previous day, I saw apprehension all over his face. Apparently, he must have heard some of the things I heard and that was enough to put the fear of God in a man who hitherto thought that election was all about performance. Fayemi had cause to worry then not because he did not perform; but because of the enormous resources deployed by the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to ‘capture’, as it were, Ekiti State from him and his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC)). That was why I laughed whenever any of the PDP stalwarts, including Nyesom Wike of Rivers State (who literally stepped on corpses of electoral victims to Government House in Port Harcourt) was complaining of militarisation of Ekiti State in the July 14, 2018 governorship election. Theirs was like the case of a hangman who would not want anyone to dangle a sword over his own child’s head.
Anyway, given what was later to be in the public domain about alleged Fayemi’s haughtiness and how it played a crucial role in the 2014 governorship election in the state, it was obvious to me that Fayemi could still have lost that poll; but not by the wide margin that Fayose was credited to have defeated him. If anything, the then PDP government at the centre itself knew that if it was about performance, Fayemi would not have been so easily uprooted. In other words, even the PDP was unsure of itself given Fayemi’s impressive delivery of democratic dividend to Ekiti people, hence its stalwarts’ going beyond the ordinary to intimidate Fayemi out of office and putting his supporters asunder.
I crave your indulgence to quote copiously from my June 15, 2014 piece because, by and large, many aspects of that write-up are still relevant, even today. After the years of the locust, the south west has rediscovered its lost compass; it has woken up from its slumber to remember that the region used to be the pace setter in terms of development in the country. It is instructive that the governors of most states in the region know that they are like cows without tails that are at the mercy of God to ward off flies, unlike their PDP counterparts that look up to the Federal Government for crutches at election time. Even if that explains the efforts being made by governors in the region, particularly in Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti and Lagos states, including even Edo in the south south to leave enviable legacies that they would be proud of, it is something. What matters is that progress is being made in these states.I was in Ekiti about five years ago, and I was there again in December, last year. What I saw was amazing. It is unimaginable that anyone would have been able to make such a difference in less than four years, especially when it is realised that the state is not among those awash with petro-dollars. What are we talking about? Is it Fayemi’s social welfare grant of N5,000 to every old citizen in the state? This is commendable in a country where pensioners are left to their own device. And the uncommon transformation of the Ikogosi Warm Springs? Roads, especially intra-state roads in Ekiti are in good condition such that it takes only about one hour to travel from the state capital to anywhere in the state. Fayemi’s covenant with Ekiti people is encapsulated in his eight-point agenda which he has been pursuing diligently. “My eight-point agenda would be pursued with vigour and life would be more abundant for our people. Governance shall not only be transparent and accountable but the good of our people would be the template,” the governor said during his inauguration in 2010. He has largely kept faith with that promise.
Without doubt, those who chose Ayo Fayose (PDP) to contest against Fayemi either wanted the PDP to fail in the state ab initio or are relying on something else to ‘win’ the election. This was the same Fayose who established a poultry project worth over N1billion as governor in the state which Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (also a PDP president then) was shocked the usual smell associated with poultries was missing in Fayose’s when he visited the place! As a farmer, Chief Obasanjo should know and he did know that the poultry was a ruse. Moreover, Fayose has all manner of allegations hanging on his neck like a necklace of iron, and it is only a party suffering from an acute shortage of good men that could have fielded such a candidate and expect to win an election.
All said, what people are pleading for is that the June 21 election in Ekiti State be free and fair. No more, no less. And that cannot be a misguided plea. Those who are relying on wars and chariots or crutches from the Federal Government or the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the election are advised to go dust up their history books. A word is enough for the wise.
The 2014 governorship in the state has come and gone; so is the 2018 edition. Whilst Fayose coasted to victory in the former (during which Ekiti State was heavily militarised in the real sense of the word), Fayemi reclaimed his position following his victory in the July 14, 2018 governorship election. So, barring the unforeseen, Fayemi , the APC governorship candidate in the election will be sworn in on October 16, 2018.
But, beyond all of this is the lesson that Fayemi must have learnt by now, especially about politics and human psychology. Ekiti has shown that performance alone is not enough to take a governor to the Promised Land when seeking reelection. This is regrettable, though, coming from Ekiti that many of us had since our childhood years regarded as home to many erudite professors – Prof Aluko, Prof’ Igun’, Prof ‘Odidere’ (as we sarcastically used to say when discussing Ekiti State then). It is sad that it is from that same state that incredible stories are now being told about how the people are, like women, now led by toys, apologies (I think) to Napoleon Bonaparte. Under the outgoing governor, the state succeeded in adding a concept to our political lexicon: ‘stomach infrastructure’. Except that the idea sold like hot cake in the ‘Fountain of knowledge’, and for the negative reasons, the concept is akin to what Metternich described as ‘high sounding nothing’.
Moreover, Fayemi should not forget the Dayo Adeyeyes, Olusegun Onis and others who made his victory possible. Their votes here and there made the critical difference.
I do not expect Fayemi to go and be frying gari in some remote parts of the state as proof of his love for Ekiti people. But then, he should not be in the other room when he should be tending to issues affecting market women in the state. The point is; Ekiti is not Lagos. It is not oil-rich Rivers or Bayelsa. Ekiti is a predominantly civil servant state. Although, if you ask me, I do not know what this is supposed to mean. There is no state that is not sufficiently blessed, especially in the south west. It is Fayemi’s business to see how much of this narrative he can change in the next four years.
And time is not on his side. He should start to assemble his team immediately if he has not done that. Also, there is no room for witch-hunting, beyond the routine business of accountability and transparency. He should realise that Fayose remains a potent politician in the state given the little margin of about 20,000 votes that he nailed Fayose with. If Fayemi succeeds in handling the affairs of state well, it is only a matter of time for Ekiti people to realise that they had been conned under the Fayose administration. But if he does otherwise, then he would give them the opportunity of remembering, albeit nostalgically, the Fayose years and to earnestly yearn for his return, even if by proxy.
The ball is in Fayemi’s court.