•Yes, for Ekiti. But for that error to turn a corrective and glorious era, Fayemi must govern with reconciliation and inclusion
With the new Ekiti order, and how Ayo Fayose’s “stomach infrastructure” regime hauled Ekiti back in time, you could hardly fault new Governor Kayode Fayemi’s Sisyphus-like frustration, as reflected in his rather combative and divisive inauguration speech.
Not a few have insisted Fayemi should have been more conciliatory, rallying friends and foes around his cause for Ekiti, as the state battles to recover lost grounds, given the scalding bitterness and fierce division of the post-Fayose Ekiti; epitomised by Fayemi’s non-sweeping mandate.
Still, look at it from the distraught governor’s way, using as example, Ikogosi, the Ekiti potential tourism trove. Fayemi’s first coming saw a revamped Ikogosi Warm Springs, redolent with new chalets; and virtually beaming “welcome!” to long lost visitors, foreign tourists, in daily search for nature tourism; and Nigerian travellers, drinking in the hidden treasures of their vast country.
To Ikogosi, there was also a commercial component: the Gozzy bottled spring water, a joint Ekiti-private sector enterprise that did, indeed, employ some local youths; and was set to put even more to work.
But after four short years of Fayose, with his empty sloganeering of stomach infrastructure, everything was gone: the Ikogosi chalets had fallen into disuse; and Gozzy? Shattered and smashed, by the Fayose era retrogressive hurricane, tens, if not hundreds, of jobs with it.
Given that the new governor would have to start all over again, is Ekiti then cursed with the fate of Sisyphus who, in Greek mythology, was doomed to rolling a heavy boulder up a steep hill, only for the stone to roll back, for poor Sisyphus to start the hard chore all over again?
Indeed, Ikogosi is rich symbol for Fayose-era ruin, in all manifestations of Ekiti life: the political aberration of cheap and infantile populism, bossing careful and meticulous planning; a gubernatorial cynic that turned the state parliament into a circus; and a governor-elect whose supporters not only sacked the courts, pummeled judges and razed court records, in new lows in anti-judiciary terrorism, but that also banished parliament, thus committing a grave democratic infraction.
From then till a four-year term reeled off, government in Ekiti became a huge bag of distraction. That has ensured that Fayemi would pretty much have to start all over again, instead of consolidating on his first-term strides.
To make matters worse: he has effectively two years to govern. After that, the politics of gubernatorial and allied nominations would begin, with long knives from gubernatorial hopefuls, for now pacified with National Assembly tickets, if they win their respective legislative seats, in the general election of 2019.
Which is why the new governor should have been far more conciliatory and far less combative in his inaugural speech. In a bitterly divisive polity as Ekiti’s, holy indignation against a past misdeed — even as brazen, willful and savage as Fayose’s — seldom gets the problem solved. On the contrary, that tends to harden attitudes to a destructive fight to the finish. That is the last thing Ekiti needs right now.
As far as policy statements go, however, the Fayemi clock, so far, has been chiming solid gold: the stoppage of development tax by primary and secondary school pupils, whose parents are nevertheless owed months in salary arrears, and in a region where the great Obafemi Awolowo launched free primary education in 1955; the restoration of the social safety net stipend to the most economically vulnerable in Ekiti; and the promised launch of the Federal Government’s school feeding programme, for primary school and junior secondary school pupils.
These are exciting developmental initiatives that could quickly mitigate Ekiti’s current bind, stanch the effect of crippling poverty and build towards a progressive and prosperous future, if the people re-apply themselves anew. Even then, Fayemi needs everyone on board; and the prime tool is reconciliation, reconciliation and more reconciliation.
Yes, let history condemn the ruins of the Fayose era. Let us all track back, analyse and project toward avoiding a future recurrence of that avoidable tragedy.
But if that monumental error must be corrected and replaced by a golden era, then as many as possible must buy into the new Ekiti dream. Fayemi must galvanise his people as reconciliator-in-chief.
All Ekiti — and history — would thank him for it.
