Tag: Fayemi

As a self-styled political analyst, Segun Dipe should have done himself a world of good if – in the interest of full disclosure – he had intimated his readers that his piece in The Nation on Monday, April 9, titled “Why Fayemi should not run” derived its source and sustenance from being the official mouthpiece of Ekiti Rebirth Organization, a political platform being used by Senator Babafemi Ojudu to contest the July 14, Ekiti governorship election under the All Progressives Party (APC).

Dipe has always been all over the social media in such riotous and insidious youthful exuberance about Fayemi that one couldn’t help but wonder if he really has anything to say about Ojudu, his principal. But one must also admit that there’s probably a strategy: Throw anything and everything at Fayemi in the hope that some would stick; thereby making him a ‘damaged good’ before those delegates who’re yet to make up their minds as to whom among the aspirants they should vote for, and by extension the voters.

Why is Dipe worried about Fayemi’s defeat when he should be concerned about Ojudu’s survival in this contest? He sounded like someone taking the Panadol analgesic for someone else’s headache. Why would Fayemi be “on a revenge mission” against Fayose? There’s no basis for this reasoning. But it should be pointed out that it would probably take about five lifetimes for Fayose to come to par with Fayemi even if he retires from public life today. So, it is mischievous, if not asinine of Dipe to put these two politicians on the same pedestal.

Perhaps what Segun Dipe has refused to take into account in his political analysis of Ekiti and its politics and what, for the most part, the current crop of the state’s political gladiators are yet to comes to terms with, is not necessarily the physical “pillorization” of the state by Fayose, but how he has largely re-orientated the thinking of Ekiti people as they have lost their sense of being which the governor has encapsulated into what he calls “stomach infrastructure.” Physical infrastructures can be rebuilt within a short spate of time, but attitudinal restructuring requires a politician with sterner stuff at the helm. This is the hardest part of “re-growing” Ekiti.

While there’s not much that can be faulted in his observation that “confidence in the honesty of political leaders is seemingly at an all-time low” in the people’s democratic experience, Dipe’s assertion that “Fayemi has reduced his status from that of a leader of the party in Ekiti to that of an aspirant” is akin to saying that Awolowo lost his leadership and political status when he attempted to return to the Western Region after his sterling performance at the federal level. It takes someone with a high sense of public service and a clear idea about how a society must be structured and re-engineered to have Fayemi’s commitment to want to serve Ekiti State. Win or lose, Fayemi will remain a political force to be reckoned with not only in Ekiti but the larger Nigerian political canvas because he stands out of the pack of the country’s integrity-challenged and value-deficient politicians.

One should ask Dipe what was the sense in throwing APC’s National Leader Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu into his analysis if not because his overarching strategy, as mentioned earlier – and assuming he even knows – is to throw everything and anything at Fayemi with the hope that some would stick. What makes him think that Fayemi “has fallen out of favour with Tinubu?” Was it Tinubu or Fayemi that told him this? Assuming he was not at this year’s colloquium, Dipe should have at least asked if anyone saw Fayemi who sat with other ministers in the second row of the colloquium hall before he went to town with this falsehood. And since when did frequent attendance of Tinubu’s events become the necessary requirement for his protégés to validate and re-validate their loyalty to the man? Drafting Tinubu into a campaign that Dipe’s principal doesn’t have even a fighting chance is not only in poor taste, but a red herring whose political value has since been lost.

The contest for power in any clime has been aptly described as war by any other means and Nigeria is not an exception. The country is probably one of the few countries of the world whose politicians still deploy the crudest ‘weapons’ during contests for political power. Politicians throwing monkey wrenches dressed in jurisprudential garbs to their opponents has been one of those ‘weapons of war’ for achieving ‘success’ for political power in this clime. Since it’s obvious that Dipe is on a mission to advance a particularly negative narrative about Fayemi, he may not be faulted for his unwillingness to engage in any critical thinking in his desperate attempt to weave the narrative of Fayose’s so-called White Paper as part of the items to throw at the minister. Just so that Dipe may know, Fayose’s white paper is not only already soaked in cooking oil and cannot be read by any competent court of jurisdiction, but there had been similar cases that had set precedents from the lower courts to the nation’s Supreme Court.

By his reference to Fayemi that his candidacy has the capacity to “attract legal maggots towards APC” because of Fayose’s White Paper, Dipe should be reminded that a court of competent jurisdiction overturned a 2004 indictment against former Kano State governor and governorship candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Dr. Rabi’u Musa Kwakwanso. Kwankwaso was alleged to have wasted the state’s ecological funds while in office and for not disclosing the fact of an indictment by the government after him while filling an affidavit issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for his particulars. The plaintiff, Hassan Indabawa, prayed for an order that Kwankwaso should be disqualified from the April 2011governorship election because he was indicted by the Commission of Inquiry constituted by the government of his predecessor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau. The court struck out the case because it lacked merit. Also, in an attempt to stop Atiku Abubakar, who was then vice president from contesting the 2007 presidential election, then President Obasanjo set a booby trap through some legal abracadabra in which INEC was involved. In its verdict, the Supreme Court ruled in Atiku’s favour that INEC has no right to exclude the then vice president from that year’s presidential election.

The point must also be pointed out, however, that if there’s a general consensus that Fayemi, who brought nothing into the murky and criminals-infested waters of Nigerian politics except his name, is one of the most decent few politicians in the land, to which Dipe also alluded that he “has had a distinguished career in the Nigerian politics,” it goes without saying that the former governor would not have risked his name and “distinguished career” if he believes that Fayose’s White Paper has even one leg to stand on in any competent court of jurisdiction. Fayemi is like the 500-pound elephant in a small forest patch which is being kicked by other animals in the hope that it will just leave so that they can breathe easily and their chances of survival can be significantly improved. This is the fundamental objective and directive principle of Dipe’s disguised vilification in his “why Fayemi should not run”  – the so-called political analysis of Ekiti State.

• Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com