Tag: Fayemi

It is all over now in Ekiti, bar the sulking and the wailing and the gnashing of teeth in Governor Ayo Fayose’s camp, and the exuberant rejoicing in Governor-elect Kayode Fayemi’s circle — a mirror image of the outcome of the 2014 Ekiti gubernatorial election.

When one placed Fayemi and Fayose on the scale in that contest, one saw in Fayemi an incumbent whose record spoke eloquently for a second term, as did his overall approach to the business of governance:  urbane, deliberative, steeped in the detail and nuance of policy, goal-oriented, and unobtrusive for the most part.

In Fayose one saw a brash challenger who had had his chance as governor and blown it spectacularly, a bumptious con-artist whose idea of governance consists in staging stunt after tawdry stunt, given to cheap populism and not a little demagoguery, and withal not foresworn to violence as a means of winning and retaining support.

Fayose’s scandal-plagued first term had ended after only two years in impeachment and self-imposed internal exile.  Politically, he was washed up.

Given a choice between Fayemi and Fayose, surely, the learned and discriminating people of the “Fountain of Knowledge” who know only too well the antecedents of the twain, would heartily renew the mandate of the one and indignantly reject the advances of the other.

So went the conventional wisdom.

The outcome is history.  Fayemi took a comprehensive shellacking, winning none of the 16 local governments in contention.  Eight years after being disgraced out of office, Fayose returned in one of the most amazing political comebacks in Nigeria or anywhere.

The Nobelist, Professor Wole Soyinka, was one of the few who questioned the outcome of the election sharply, saying that it was a mystery and that the truth would be known one day. But his skepticism was drowned in the schadenfreude that pervaded the corridors of Federal Might.

Fayemi also had his doubts.  But “the people,” he said, “had spoken.” And that was what counted.

Thanks to Captain Sagir Koli of the Nigerian Army, who had witnessed the entire scheme from inside and secretly recorded it, we now know that “the people” had played no part in that outcome.   The election had been rigged with scientific precision on a scale almost beyond belief, and the result was fake through and through.

Thanks to the perversity of the Constitution, Fayose kept his gubernatorial perch.

But instead of parlaying his comeback into an opportunity to redeem himself and atone for the depredations of his first coming – a murder rap, and a poultry project that gulped more than N2 billion without producing an egg, to mention just two such — Fayose waged war ceaselessly on all that is honest and just and decent and wholesome and of good report, and kept Ekiti permanently on the boil.

He governed on the Caligula Principle:  “You can hate us, so long as you fear us.”  High court judges failed to do his bidding at their peril.  Bank managers soon learned that to carry out his instructions without fuss was the beginning of political wisdom.  Serving civil servants and eminent sons and daughters of Ekiti who dared to criticise him and traditional rulers who refused to genuflect before him learned a bitter lesson.

He sank deeper and deeper into infamy, bringing into disrepute virtually everything he touched and every idea he embraced. The “stomach infrastructure” agenda that was thought to have blinded the electorate to his unsettling inadequacies became an empty slogan, then vanished altogether.

Following a re-match this past weekend, it is in Fayose’s camp that they are sulking and wailing and gnashing their teeth. In Governor-elect Fayemi’s camp, there is exuberant rejoicing and a triumphal air.

What a difference an election cycle makes.

Fayose, it is necessary to state, was not an official candidate in the election just concluded, but you could not tell from the way he carried himself.  He had framed it as a contest between good and evil, as a test of strength and power and will between himself and President Muhammadu Buhari, between  the APC and the PDP, and finally between himself and Fayemi.

Fayose’s lackluster deputy governor, Professor Kayode Olusola whom he had foisted on the PDP as the party’s candidate for the election might just as well have been a poodle.  If he had any ideas of his own, he never gave them utterance.  He was content to tag along and nod in consonance with his principal’s inanities and profanities du jour.

He was at bottom a prop for Fayose’s third-term gambit. He would be practically unconscious not to know that.  But he went along all the same. They went into the election with little to show for Fayose’s four years in office, only stunt after harebrained stunt.

This time, there was no Jonathan, no PDP machine, no rogue senior military and police officers, no contractors in hock to the establishment, no fixer to turn loser into winner and winner into loser.

The figure from the spirit world who feeds on jollof rice has been demystified.  A return to political office now seems unlikely for Fayose.  But it would be unwise to count him out.

Look closely at the results.  The Fayose/Olusola ticket took 47.4 percent of the vote, to Fayemi’s 52.5 percent, the precise margin by which NOIPolls had called the election for the  Fayose/Olusola ticket.  In plebiscitary terms, that is a decisive loss.  But the ticket won in the state capital, Ado-Ekiti, and scored impressive victories in four of the 16 local government areas.

It was probably not true then and certainly not true now, contrary to Fayose’s claim at his post-election news conference four years ago that if he raised his hand high, “the people” would cheer vehemently, and that if he lowered it, the cheering would subside. Or that if he pointed in one direction, they would go in that direction.

But he has a significant base that makes up in what it lacks in numbers with passionate intensity.

The challenge before Governor-elect Fayemi is to strive to unite Ekiti; to cater not just to his own base, but the entire electorate.  He must see his return to power as a mission of reconciliation, not revenge.  Without resorting to his predecessor’s cheap populism, he must be engaging.

It is no surprise that the PDP has vehemently rejected the election outcome.  Weeks before Election Day, its well-oiled propaganda machinery had asserted over and over that the poll would be rigged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the benefit of the ruling APC and the Federal Government.

It even went so far as to alert the “international community” to that prospect, and to paint before the world an apocalyptic future for democracy in Nigeria. Having boxed itself into a corner, it has no alternative than to insist that the election was indeed rigged.

Now it claims, with a fringe advocacy group, that it has iron-clad proof of election skullduggery that it will set out before the courts at the appropriate time.

To which the APC and the Governor-elect and his supporters rejoin:  Bring it on.  That is to be preferred to Fayose’s lawless announcement of fake results of an election in progress.  That which could have plunged Ekiti into turmoil, or was most likely designed to achieve that very end, if the National Broadcasting Commission had not moved quickly to terminate broadcast.

Even in the face of bitter disappointment, Fayose can still render a lasting service to the Ekiti people whose name he has taken in vain, and whose values he has desecrated with impunity, by ensuring a peaceful and orderly transfer of power, and by creating a climate in which Ekiti State can realise its potential and pursue its destiny.