Tag: Fayose

NIGERIA is in a quandary what kind of politics to embrace between the ruling All Progressives Congress’ dull and graveyard-like politics, and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party’s colourful but superficial politics. Take the PDP. No two politicians in the opposition exemplify their party’s dynamic tendency for fruitless exuberance than the embattled and self-proclaimed Acting National Chairman of the party, Ali Modu Sheriff, a former Borno State governor, and Ayo Fayose, the troubled and also embattled Ekiti State governor. It is in fact a modern Nigerian paradox that while the ruling party is expected to offer the country all the fun and dynamism of governance and politics in consonance with democracy and all its corollaries, it is the exceedingly harassed PDP, with many of its leaders under siege, that is keeping Nigeria active, entertained and full of vigour and glamour. Given the self-righteousness of the APC and the propensity of its leaders to emasculate friends and enemies alike, the country would be suffering rigor mortis had the PDP not shaken things up a little with its lively politics.

The PDP’s founding and cultural motif is boisterousness, the kind that draws sustenance from hard partying, election drama and melodrama, internal cut and thrust, and determined and unorthodox plots to exterminate opposition within and without. For the about 16 years the party was in office, it was always on war footing, and it had many bloody bouts and scars as mementoes of those dangerous and irreverent days. But somehow, by acts of omission or commission, and by dint of purposefulness or sheer indifference displayed in near equal measure, the PDP had managed to preserve some forms of democracy and even handed it, bloodied no doubt, over to the APC last year. The party never had substance, and never pretended to have it, nor knew what it meant not to have it. But that carefreeness which it had in abundance, and in which it enthusiastically cavorted, lathered the country to the point of suffocation. Mr Fayose and Senator Sheriff are the new faces of that old and enduring PDP, two men so gifted at quixotic politics it is hard to imagine anyone can better them, not even Nyesom Wike, the unflappable aurochs of Rivers politics, nor the 83-year-old Tony Anenih, the unprincipled politician with the cadaverous stare whom his friends and enemies rumour and perhaps want dead.

While President Muhammadu Buhari constipates the country with depressing stories of the manic stealing carried out by past government officials and military officers with the active collaboration of bankers and anonymous civilians, the task of entertaining the public has rested on the Sheriff and Fayose duo. Senator Sheriff may not have the most polished or most admirable English elocution, but he more than makes up for that terrible lack with his stubbornness, wisecracks, evocative and combative language, and aphorisms. He is probably the only man alive who could take a three-month mandate to conduct his party’s national convention and transform it into something indefinite, nay, infinite, and continues to stick to it with the fanatical determination of an inquisitor. Much more, this unfettered politician is also probably the only man who could take that presumed mandate, leapfrog over the said infinite transformation, and attempt to land smack in the middle of a presidential candidature seized by him. It takes flourish to engineer such a display.

It is not clear how Senator Sheriff does it: whether he buys the affections and loyalty of those around him, or whether his innate love for combat and natural iconoclasm are responsible for his matchless effrontery and daring. Whatever it is, both his party and the country are considerably flustered by his politics in a delectable and forgivable way. He has secured many court judgements; so, too, have his opponents. Every time his opponents get a judgement against him, Senator Sheriff calls the press, and in his inimitable way, regale them with his vibrant usurpation of the rules of grammar. Who cares! What is important to him is that he will not relent, and he will not surrender. The party’s administrative power may have deserted him, but he is happily not cognisant of that inconvenient fact. He is in denial. It is alleged he inspired a coup, sort of, to take over the party’s secretariat in Abuja. But when his opponents responded by organising their own putsch, he was willing to do another countercoup if the police had let him. When Mr Fayose backed his interim leadership mandate, he visited Ekiti and composed a rhapsody for the quarrelsome governor. But immediately Mr Fayose withdrew his support, Senator Sheriff became bellicose and abusive. It goes with the territory. Now, it is not clear what would finally do Senator Sheriff in; but from all indications he will continue to offer Nigerians the kind of entertainment the dull and sullen APC has been unable to give.

Mr Fayose is even more colourful, albeit less courageous. He is enormously gifted with great and futuristic instinct. His implacable opposition to President Buhari in the months of the presidential campaign early last year was apparently inspired by his realisation that a Buhari presidency would be inimical to all the terrible stealing from the national treasury he and his confederates had masterminded. At the time, few knew what ailed Mr Fayose. Now with the horrifying Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) revelations of the stupendous amount of money stolen on behalf of the PDP and allegedly passed on to the Ekiti governor for electioneering and other unstated purposes, no one is in doubt why Mr Fayose had kept up his truculent opposition to the president. The huge sums, alleged the EFCC, were taken, given to the Ekiti governor, and diverted by him to buy splendid houses and live the good life. In short, the EFCC is alleging that Mr Fayose, far from the rambunctious, principled and ethical politician he claims to be, is nothing but a common thief with a big, indulgent and diabolical heart.

Indulgent he might be, a pushover in political melodrama he was certainly not. He talked grimly and sarcastically of President Buhari’s senses and body, alleging the man was too old to think and too weak to work; and he alluded to the president’s programmes as too archaic to benefit a modern and complex country. Curiously, his views resonated with the public, and he was beginning to be seen as some sort of ethnic and ideological champion. Indeed, as the president became more impatient with the rule of law — the judiciary in particular — and herdsmen went on the rampage as the president looked askance, and the economy went into a tailspin, Mr Fayose seemed remarkably prescient. Alas, the Ekiti governor forgets that he who throws stone must not live in a glass house, and he who comes into equity must do so with clean hands. The moment the EFCC began to unearth details of what they allege are his financial malfeasance, Mr Fayose has become strangely reticent, even quiet.

Both Mr Fayose and Senator Sheriff may be more colourful than any politician in the PDP at the moment or even in the past, but both gentlemen will find it difficult to compare with Tony Anenih who moderated his own colourfulness, when he reigned supreme in the same party, in such a way as to sugar-coat his uniquely bitter vituperations and politics. Mr Anenih’s politics is fluid, very fluid. Between 1992 and when he seemed to have been rendered a hors de combat by the equally feisty Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, he thought nothing of selling his political birthright on the altar of expediency and what he described as realism. He downplayed the significance of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) victory secured by MKO Abiola in 1993; he had before then been a strong member of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), a conservative party; and finally, he berthed at the PDP where in many elections he was part of the party apparatchik that orchestrated the mindless, extraordinary and colourful subversion of balloting and democracy.

What binds all three politicians together, it is clear, is a weird taste for the ridiculously showy, a habit that became implanted in the former ruling party when ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo hijacked the leadership of the party and castrated its original founders. Yet, what the times call for is substance, a value that only ethical and rational party leaders can midwife. The PDP’s caretaker chairman, Ahmed Makarfi, a former Kaduna State governor, is thought to be a more stable and substantial leader, a somewhat more real and intellectual politician. But even if he were in excess of what many think him to be, he would still find it a herculean task surmounting the excitable and superficial base of the party, a base that is too solidly showy, pretentious, entertaining and coarse to deliver on the promises of the party’s founding fathers, not to talk of fulfilling the yearnings and aspirations of the electorate shortchanged by both the ruling and opposition parties.