Indeed, a new sociology of the Ekiti people may have evolved. However, the task of understanding how the outcome of this election has defined us as a people will be that of scholars. For us as an administration and a cadre of political leaders in Ekiti State, we have fought a good fight. We have kept the faith.” – Kayode Fayemi in a speech to the people of Ekiti State after the June 21stgovernorship election.
“What is Daddy talking about? We’re saying this man would suddenly show up in our garage (Motor Park), sit down with us and order some beer and drink with us and when he’s leaving, would drop about N100,000 for us to share, promising to visit us again. What is my business with his stealing N1.2 billion? I never saw Fayemi since he became governor. He would always roll up his glass (windows) whenever he’s passing through.” – A taxi driver’s response in Ado-Ekiti when asked if he ever thought of Fayose’s poultry scam before he voted for him.
“If you have been defeated in all the 16 local government areas and you now want to come through the window, it won’t be like ice cream party to APC. I would not be too cheap like Segun Oni. I am not going to be cheap at all because I am elected by the people…The strategy of APC will not work. Nobody, no matter how highly placed, will remove me cheaply.”
—Ayo Fayose, then governor-elect, in his reaction to the attack on the Ekiti State High Court and its Judge.
It has been about five months since the governorship election in Ekiti State in which Ayodele Fayose was declared the winner. It was an election that confounded Nigerians, even including Fayemi’s political enemies, probably with the exception of those in the “control room” and their “support staff” on the field on that fateful day who knew exactly what they did to secure victory for Governor Fayose. In normal, sane, socio-politically organized climes, probably more than a dozen books would have been on bookstores by now, attempting to not only educate society about an election that rubbished performance as a factor in electoral choice. These books also would have been somewhat therapeutic for some people who may have been significantly traumatized by the election outcome if only to assist us in finding meaning, if not closure,to an utterly meaningless electoral adventure in a society in which we must live.
For me, a day hardly goes by without reflecting on that election not because I am from the state, or was I part of the Fayemi administration or a government contractor. But because I saw a man who was trying to ‘re-engineer’ his own small corner into modernity under a very excruciating financial condition in a country that is far behind in all indicators of development. I could not stop wondering how a people could be so wrong in choosing between Fayemi and Fayose, more so when the latter gave them nothing but shame and reproach in his first outing. Baffled I was. But also intriguing was the election for me, for it made me to realize the striking contradictions of human complexity that, even as the most intelligent being on this earth, yet possesses the capacity to self-destruct at the same time. I could not but wonder how a people process, determine and store which information they deem important to their well-being. I wonder why Fayemi’s accomplishments, based mostly on what the electorates said they value, did not resonate.
In understanding the “new sociology (and maybe psychology) of the Ekiti people (which) may have evolved,” a task that Fayemi had squarely placed – and rightly so – on the laps of scholars, the epigraphs above should be seen as pointers to how three people that represents different socio-political tendencies (the intellectual elite, the masses, and a cross between the blue-collar and the mob), ensconced in the same geographical space with seemingly monolithic values are so far apart in their world-views concerning how their society should grow.
In a Nigerian society where might is the only right and whoever dies with the most ‘toys’ wins. In a society where logic is derived from illogic and everything senselessare the norms. In an environment where the system frowns at order, organization and methodical approach to anything, I could not stop wondering why Fayemi accepted an election in which the cards were deliberately and fraudulently stacked against him, ab initio, with equanimity. I wonder why he has to cling so tenaciously to those ideals and values that the rest of his society’s stakeholders had concluded to be dinosaurs.
I had thought that the election turned awry in Ikole (where I volunteered to monitor it) because the people in the state’s northern fringe are probably too poor and uninformed to understand the new developmental paradigm of the Fayemi administration. So, I hurried to Ado-Ekiti where I thought the people would advance intelligent reasons why the election nosedived for Fayemi because they’re more enlightened. But the feedback I received from the state capital was shocking.
that I wondered at some point if I was the one who didn’t get it. For instance, why did the driver think that stealing N1.2b by one man was not his business? Why did he not see a correlation between the absence of that huge amount in his society and his station in life? Why did he not see how many lives that amount could positively change forever, including that of his children and other loved ones? What makes sitting with his governor and drinking beer in the public so important to him than someone who would rather be pre-occupied with the problems of the society in which he lives—-and finding solutions? Why does he prefer to be given fish than to be taught how to fish? These are some of the questions that perplexed me.
Perhaps, the most disturbing, if not troubling, of these tendencies is the one exemplified by the new chief of state who had demonstrated, and continues to demonstrate that the rule of law as that veritable and indispensable instrument that society’s growth and development can only be assured has absolutely no place in his worldview. He had appealed to the electorates as a candidate to forgive his past indiscretions and his egregiousness as he had become a changed man. They probably didn’t know that what he meant by being a “changed man” was carefully coded to mean that while he went after individual stakeholders in his first outing, his gaze in his second coming was going to be fixed on subverting state institutions. And any individual who is foolish enough to stand in his way may well consider him/herself as collateral damage in his new round of chaos and anarchy. Aside from his desecration of state institutions, which has started in earnest, the elites must brace themselves for a rabidly anti-intellectual dispensation. A people that chose chicken and rice as their new paradigm for societal development do not deserve any sympathy. They cannot eat your chicken and have it. And since the new chief of state has promised them more of this delicacy in abundance, procured with their own money, and legitimately this time around, a poultry-industrial complex in Ekiti just might be what the economist ordered for job creation.
- Odere is a media practitioner. He can be reached at femiodere@gmail.com
