“What has a beginning must have an end.”
This banality is probably the greatest truth, the most profound insight Ayodele Fayose uttered in his combined public career as governor of Ekiti State and certified nuisance-at-large. And it came to him at a moment that must have concentrated his mind like no other: the last state Executive Council meeting over which he would preside.
No stunt, no tantrum, no alchemy whatsoever could alter the fact that the end of impunity and immunity from consequences had well and truly arrived for one of the most disreputable political figures of our time or any epoch of Nigeria’s troubled history.
Yes indeed; whatever has a beginning must have an end. His barbarous rule is over.
Measured entirely on Fayose’s terms, i.e., by “the quantity and quality of achievements,” and even allowing for the usual constraints, Fayose’s political career will have to be judged a comprehensive failure. At the end of four years during which he was the executive, legislative and judicial authority in Ekiti, he could only point with confidence to a hideous, over-priced flyover in the state capital, Ado-Ekiti and one or two very ordinary official buildings as his signature achievements.
The airport project he touted so much never got off the bush-clearing stage. He could not even cite the so-called “stomach infrastructure” initiative to which his 2015 electoral victory was attributed for want of any plausible explanation, and which he had promised on a whim to elevate into a cardinal programme of his Administration.
The public has since learned that the election that brought Fayose to power was rigged on a scale beyond belief by the Jonathan Administration, with plenty of help from the army, the national security apparatus, the national treasury, and their combined assets.
Measured by how much he inspired the people to nobler ends, the vision he applied to the formulation and execution of public policy, by his decency and civility, by how judiciously he husbanded resources he held in trust for the public, and by the integrity he brought to bear on the conduct of public policy, he would have to be adjudged a disaster.
Fayose’s career is a study in political brutalism. To him, noblesse oblige might well be a French delicacy. Driven by instinct, he showed no capacity for introspection. He lied like a flute. In word and in deed, he contradicted himself at so many points and every so often that his must be a case of extreme attention deficit disorder.
For four years, he held Ekiti State in thrall. His word was law. In his valedictory, Fayose declared, shades of Julius Caesar reporting his quick victory at the battle of Zela to the Roman Senate, that he came, he saw, he conquered.
Fayose conquered all right. He conquered the proud Ekiti people and reduced them to whimpering subjects. He conquered their value system. He conquered honour. He conquered integrity. He conquered decency. He conquered truthfulness. He conquered the law and the courts. He conquered the state legislature, reducing it to a reptile assembly. He conquered the bureaucracy. And yes, he conquered democracy.
Fayose holds nothing sacred, not even the most intimate details of his mother’s health. He profaned everything he touched and brought every cause he embraced into disrepute.
He came, he saw, and he plundered right up to the eve of his departure, awarding himself a severance pay of N60 million while unpaid civil servants and teachers starved. For good measure, he corralled the state’s anaemic exchequer into buying a luxury SUV reportedly worth some N70 million as parting gift.
Despite these depredations, Fayose declared that history will be kind to him. Who knows? In the fullness of time, History may well unearth some redeeming attributes that would cast him in an entirely different light, some compelling evidence that would place him squarely in the league of the omoluabi.
But History is not blind. Fayose and his proxies cannot hold it in thrall. They cannot bend it to his capricious will. They cannot frighten or coerce it into doing his bidding.
He is already experiencing first-hand the instability of human greatness, real or perceived. And that is just for starters. In the twilight of his tenure, his confederates in the legislature were ousted by a faction of the assembly. Virtually all the guests, the high and mighty of Ekiti society from far and wide expected at an elaborate state banquet to mark his departure stayed away. The ambience was funereal.
The fiasco calls to mind the biblical parable of the rich man who invited all the wealthy men in the town to a banquet. When none of the guests showed up, the wealthy man sent his servants into the town to bring just about anyone they could find, regardless of their condition, to the feast.
But “Peter the Rock” and Bible puncher made no recourse to the okada bikers who had been his administration’s enforcers. He no longer needed their riotous support.
History will certainly ask and ask insistently: How did a people so well educated, so principled, a people who set so much store by fair play and justice and honour and uprightness — how were such a people landed with a character like Fayose, a repudiation of everything they are reputed to stand for, as governor? Why did they put up with him for so long, to the point that they almost voted into office a proxy through whom he would have continued his barbarous rule?
But enough.
This day belongs to Dr John Olukayode Fayemi, who takes office today, for the second time, as Governor of Ekiti State. I do not envy him.
Arresting the drift and depredations of the Fayose years will be hard enough. Restoring the momentum Ekiti lost when Jonathan and the PDP foisted Fayose on Ekiti is going to be harder.
The economy can be rebuilt. In the end, it always recovers. The infrastructure can be patched now and rebuilt as time goes on. But rebuilding the value system that Fayose destroyed is going to take a longer time and much more effort.
This is where Dr Fayemi must lead by personal example. And the example must be complemented by his entire leadership team. Together, they must strive to rebuild the value system of the Ekiti people.
During his previous coming, they said Fayemi was aloof, donnish. Then they got an impetuous populist and demagogue who kept things perpetually on the boil. Perhaps they will now appreciate the value of deliberation and introspection. Fayemi must now seek to be more engaging, without getting caught up in populist posturing.
As the last gubernatorial election shows, Fayose still commands a core of passionate followers in Ekiti. Fayemi must try to win them over, or at least enlist their support, with superior argument and superior programmes. They are part and parcel of his constituency, which is the entire Ekiti State. They should be accorded equal treatment.
Fayemi is on a rescue mission all right. But a rescue mission is not a revenge mission. Eschewing revenge in any guise or disguise is one of the building blocks of the new value system that should now inform politics and public affairs in Ekiti.
Throughout history, periods of regression and steep decline, the type Ekiti experienced under Fayose, have usually been followed by a rebirth – a revival of the arts and culture, of learning and values: in short, a renaissance.
That is what the post-Fayose Ekiti calls for, and there is none more qualified to lead it than Dr John Olukayode Fayemi. Getting our much-acclaimed Poet Laureate and literary scholar of global stature, Niyi Osundare, to present an Inaugural Lecture to usher in the Administration was an inspired move and a signal that a new order has arrived.
Welcome back, Your Excellency, and good luck.
