Tag: Fayose

The governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose may have seen his own government in an apparition that jolted him back to the land of the living where he cried out on the pages of the nation’s newspapers and on the airwaves that Kayode Fayemi is the “bogeyman” to be held responsible should there be a termination of his government – once again – before its four-year tenure. Fayose’s latest jitters came into the fore on account of Fayemi’s response to a question during an interview which was published on Sunday, March 26 edition of This Day newspaper. The Minister of Mines and Steel Development was asked if it was true that he was “itching to come back in next year’s election as governor” and he responded that he owes “it to the party and to Ekiti people to assist in getting to the root of what actually transpired” on the day of the election and that it is “a much more important exercise” for him as it is “still unfinished business.”
On Saturday, June 21, 2014, a governorship election was held in Ekiti State in which Fayemi was the incumbent seeking re-election. Fayose was his main challenger. What’s now known is that the election that brought Fayose to power violated all the principles, moral and legal codes known to man in conducting an election that the outcome left the bookmakers scratching their heads. The pundits also were shame-faced not because an incumbent could not lose an election in a democracy, but because the electoral exercise was deemed a no brainer on the strength of the incumbent’s unprecedented performance during his first term. What is more, the challenge to Fayemi’s re-election was also thought to be a non-starter because of the challenger’s chequered past that left crimes and misdemeanour, brutality and mayhem in its wake that the state is yet to recover from, not to talk of an apparent impeachment that should have excluded him from running in the first place. But when the nation’s umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) blew the whistle, Fayose was declared the winner having won all the 16 Local Government Areas in the state.
For the rest of the nation and Ekiti people, the election was too good to be true. People became quite dazed and dumbfounded. They saw smokes everywhere but they did not see any fire, let alone a smoking gun anywhere. Since there was no fire, the victor could not be accused of anything that would have made his victory nugatory – ab initio. Fayemi too knew, intuitively, that he did not lose the election. But he had to accept the outcome since the umpire had declared a winner. More importantly, he had to accept the outcome because he believes that peace must reign supreme in any society at all times which he alluded to in his concession speech. It was also because he knew that something was not quite right about that election that he, also instinctively, declared in the same speech that “a new sociology of the Ekiti people may have evolved” in which the understanding of this new sociology “will be that of scholars” to handle.
About a year after Fayemi left office and had moved on, Nigerians in general and Ekiti people in particular – through sordid revelations – became witnesses to history that the election that brought Fayose to power had been brutally ‘murdered’ by the Jonathan administration. It was such a grisly ‘murder’ that its crudely decapitated body parts were found in unlikely places from the inner recesses of the nation’s security forces to the closets of some highly placed public and private individuals in the polity. It was a patently illegal, morally reprehensible, ethically repugnant and crudely executed election in recent memory that its ‘ghost’ refused to go away to find eternal resting place.
In a saner clime, all the state security outfits that were involved in this sordid affair that has since become known as “Ekitigate” would have been thoroughly embarrassed that it would have warranted major sanitization of the security forces coupled with the prosecution of those involved. It should be noted here, however, that only the military actually saw the need to salvage its sullied image by probing what happened in Ekiti. It set up a military panel headed by Major General Adeniyi Oyebade, GOC 1st Division in Kaduna which indicted many military officers and ordered the immediate retirement of Brigadier General Momoh whilst the rest of the indicted officers and men were cashiered and demoted. The Supreme Court would have felt that it had also been deliberately embarrassed, misled and deceived that it would have called – on its own volition – for a retrial of “Ekitigate.” What is more, the people themselves would have felt so aggrieved that their suffrage had been irredeemably violated that the actions they took (by way of sustained protests and several class action litigations) would have long collapsed Fayose’s government by now. But he continues to ride roughshod on them with reckless impunity.
It’s also important to point to Fayose’s election saga as a classic illustration that the Nigerian polity will remain hobbled in its developmental trajectory so long as impunity continues to be the new normal to be tolerated. That Fayemi said in his interview that he owes “it to the party and to Ekiti people to assist in getting to the root of what actually transpired” on that day should also be seen as a lone voice crying out that a society that cannot identify its core values, let alone act in unison whenever anyone of these values are egregiously violated with wanton disregard by anyone of its members can never aspire to any modicum of modernity. The state’s socio-economic and political castration already playing out before the people’s eyes by Fayose because they continue to tolerate his impunity should be a cause for concern for Ekiti. After all, a people that takes pride in possessing the highest knowledge per capita – which have rightly earned their state the moniker as the “Fountain of Knowledge” in the Nigerian society – presupposes that they should also have the finest moral values and ethical standards that others should be falling over themselves to emulate. It is befuddling that some people are still trying to make a case for a governor – again of a state with the highest educated elites per capita – whose understanding of human development indices is what he calls “stomach infrastructure.” His claim of his love for his people was not based on the power of his ideas to transform them into the next level of prosperity and growth, but rather his frequent forays into the streets of Ekiti to scavenge for foods and unwholesome drinks at decrepit places as a demonstration of his love for them. Governance does not get any more pathetic than this.
Fayemi’s standing up for what he believes in accordance with his moral values may well be the reason for his insistence that there should be a judicial review of how Fayose came into power. That he said Fayose remains an “unfinished business” may well be a clarion call to his people that they need not remain perpetually lethargic to those socio-political and economic conditions that affects their existence and wellbeing with this “Oh! Well” disposition that is diametrically opposed to those values that have defined them for ages. He may be saying in that interview that a people can only advance into greatness if the people are courageous enough to confront their demons which Fayose embodies. If Fayemi had decided that Fayose’s patently illegal usurpation of power must not go unchallenged even if it means that he is the only one left standing to be counted for the sake of posterity – in what has now proven to be a rape of the state and its people – all that the rest of us who are not as courageous can do is to wait with bated breaths and let the chips fall where they may.

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