It is a state famed for the high intellectual attainments of its people. Just as you would associate crude oil with Bayelsa or Rivers, the mere mention of Ekiti conjures up visions of a land crawling with professors and PhDs.
But curiously for a people so enamoured of learning, the political leader that has captured their imagination the most in the last 16 years is one not noted for his educational accomplishments.
It is as if the people became bored with the snooty ways of their super educated elite and hankered after someone earthy. Out of nowhere, Ayodele Fayose happened to them – igniting an on-and-off romance.
When he first ran for governor he would drive into a village without potable water and distribute the liquid free to villagers. While he was meeting the people’s most pressing needs, his rivals who probably felt better qualified because of their pedigree, were lulling the people to sleep with the same old promises of what they would do.
Not surprisingly the man form nowhere swept away all in his path to become governor. After leaving office in ignominy and roaming the political wilderness for years, the connection he had with the people still remained. It was something his rivals just couldn’t explain.
The attraction between the people and Fayose could only be likened to the magnetic pull that draws good girls to bad boys. He can turn on his ‘man of the people’ charm one minute, and the next he’s leading a band of unruly supporters to rough up a High Court judge in his chambers.
It is not as if the people didn’t know his flaws. Still they chose him over a hardworking intellectual in Dr. Kayode Fayemi whose only sin was that he was aloof. But buyer’s remorse may very well be setting in.
Fayose is a gaffe machine that never stops giving. Just when you thought he had done his worst, he outdoes himself by drilling down into the basement.
He is bad news – and that’s not just his critics or members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) talking. Ali Modu Sheriff, one of the claimants to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) chairmanship, has dismissed him as an embarrassment.
Governors are elected to govern and improve the quality of life of their people. The Ekiti governor views his time in office as one long drama sketch.
Many states like his can’t pay salaries. But the more serious among his colleagues are restructuring their economies and engaging the Federal Government to get needed funds. Some are blocking leakages, cutting budgets to save funds.
But what does our ‘man of the people’ do? He stops his cavalcade by the roadside to cut ponmo! Great photo opportunity which cuts no ice with the hungry. At other times, he jumps on a motorbike amidst a swarm of Okada riders and dashes up and down the lone decent road in his rustic state capital and scurries back to Government House. Problem solved!
But news flash! Ekiti workers are still on strike and say nothing short of three months arrears of payment would do.
The governor loves to position himself as some political grandmaster whose perceived madness has some underlying method. Those who buy this pitch love him to bits. But even among his fawning followers the act may be wearing thin. This past week, may come to be remembered as the week Fayose unravelled.
It all began with the dramatic announcement by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) that courtesy of a court order it had frozen a couple of accounts held by the governor, his family members, associates and the former Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro. The amounts involved run into billions of naira
Fayose would have us believe that President Muhammadu Buhari goes to sleep at night and wakes up in the morning thinking about him. So his first reaction was to launch a stinging personal attack at president’s wife, Aisha, with the intention of getting some mud splattered on the once who had been sold to the world as a paragon of integrity.
There was just a little problem. Two former EFCC chairmen – Nuhu Ribadu and Ibrahim Lamorde – who were involved with the Halliburton bribery scandal confirmed that an impostor ‘Aisha Buhari’ was the one involved in US Congressman William Jefferson’s case – and not the president’s wife.
But rather than staging a tactical retreat to allow other events to take away the poignancy of his blunder, the rattled Fayose staggered from one unforced error to another.
In a bid to distance himself from the disbursements made from the office of the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd), he threatened to unmask his financial backers if they didn’t speak up in his hour of distress.
Making good the threat, he makes the disturbing claim that Zenith Bank bankrolled his political campaign. With bank maintaining a stony silence, Fayose’s movie production subsidiary went into overdrive. Lo and behold within 24 hours we were watching edited videos purportedly showing the bank’s officials stammering and grovelling before the governor. He said they had come to ‘beg’ him. For what sins we are not told.
Given the governor’s past antics one may be tempted to dismiss the episode as another charade. A similar thing happened not too long ago when his erstwhile ally, Dr. Temitope Aluko, started giving tell-all interviews all over the place.
But before you knew it Fayose had managed to get Aluko into a setting where it seemed like the prodigal had repented having seen the folly of his ways. Before rolling cameras the governor patted his one-time ally fondly on the back, declaring ‘he’s my boy!’
Next day, a stunned Aluko was repudiating what occurred the day before as a well-orchestrated charade. Is this what we just witnessed with the supposedly begging bank officials?
Ordinarily, there are one or two ways by which banks part with money. They either give you a loan of sorts or a donation. A loan would require documentation and security no matter how big the customer is.
Was Fayose given a loan by a conservative bank to prosecute an election against an incumbent without any guarantee he would win? Is it even credible to imagine such a scenario given that the risk analysis would have killed off the proposal?
If he was given a donation, what was the amount involved and how does that action line up with provisions of the law?
Section 221 of the 1999 Constitution states: “No association, other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election.”
There is a similar prohibition in the Companies and Allied Matters Act Cap. C20 L.F.N. 2004 (CAMA). Section 38 (2) of CAMA provides that:
“A company shall not have or exercise power either directly or indirectly to make a donation or gift of any of its property or funds to a political party or political association or for any political purpose; and if any company, in breach of this subsection makes any donation or gift of its property to a political party or political association, or for any political purpose, the officers in default and any member who voted for the breach shall be jointly and severally liable to refund to the company the sum or value of the donation or gift and in addition, the company and every such officer or member shall be guilty of an offence and liable to a fine equal to the amount or value of the donation or gift.”
The allegations made by the governor are not only grave, they have legal implications such that an institution with the profile of Zenith Bank cannot afford to keep mum for too long – hoping this embarrassing episode will just disappear.
Such an explanation could shed more light on the contents of the frozen accounts. While Fayose is tying himself up in knots bleating about his precious immunity from prosecution (not investigation), he could help the discussion by telling the world how he came about the frozen billions.
The governor may still have his diehard loyalists, still I suspect that many who were chanting ‘Oshokomole’ on Election Day must by now realise that they’ve been had.
Many now mock the Ekitis by saying that they sold their future to Fayose by collecting his miserable ‘stomach infrastructure.’ Without much sympathy they urge the people to live with the choice they have made. On this point though I have a different perspective.
It might not be entirely correct to say that Fayose was the will of the Ekiti people reflected on voting day. The revelations of Captain Sagir Koli over the Ekitigate scandal have been corroborated by the emerging details of how the PDP moved billions into the state to topple Fayemi.
So in reality the incumbent was virtually imposed himself on the people in a brazen exercise in subversion of the democratic will. Of course, the people have their own share of the blame because Fayose could not have risen to challenge for power if the people – masses and elite – had not fallen for his allurements and tolerated his excesses.
Unfortunately for the governor stolen waters are not really enjoyable. He knows what legal troubles are waiting for him when the screen of immunity is lifted. That perhaps explains why he keeps shouting ‘I’m not afraid of Buhari’ when no one has accused him of being afraid.
It reminds me of the story of a man who had been on death row in Kirikiri for close to 30 years. One day God showed him mercy when a prominent pastor visited and helped set him free. He later told the man of God that his worst nightmare all those years was he couldn’t sleep between the hours of 12.00 midnight and 4.00 am.
He said the hangmen used to come during that period to take those to be executed. So each night he would stay awake all night when he heard footsteps, wondering whether they were coming for him.
Forget the noise and drama, Fayose surely dreads what’s coming to him.
