Firebrand activist, the only socialist governor in Nigeria, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola defeated his bitter rival, Mr. Iyiola Omisore on August 9, 2014. I was deeply involved in the Ekiti and Osun campaigns. I saw the thick and thin. Aregbesola and Fayemi invested wits, energy, brain and vigour.
Victory is sweet, but the investment in it tastes like a bile. Before the elections, I met the two. I saw exhaustion. On one occasion, I met Aregbesola around 11 pm. He had not eaten anything since morning. There was simply no time to eat; pale but resolute. On another occasion, I met him around 4.34 am on a Monday. I had waited since 8am the previous Sunday. He was attending to endless sea of visitors. By the time I left around 5am on Monday, scores of people were still waiting to see him. Aregbesola visited all the 332 wards, unlike Mr. Iyiola Omisore. He met with all the traditional institutions in the over 300 towns and hamlets. He spent about 3,000 hours in the past six months preparing for the election. On the contrary, the most formidable slogans of Mr. Ayodele Fayose and Mr. Omisore were “I shall be declared. I shall win. I will be the Governor.”
On Tuesday when he raised up the Certificate of Return in Abuja, Aregbesola was lean, emaciated but nevertheless, his face as strong as granite. The same exhaustion of the flesh, in the build up to the campaign, was not noticeable in his main contender, whose most noticeable trademarks were roasted corns which he munched all through, and the armed masked men that usually encircled him. I have searched in vain for Mr. Omisore’s manifesto, his plans for Osun people, but could not find one. Yet, this man polled 292,747 votes.
For me, that is a tragedy in this victory. It reflects the heartbreak of a crestfallen nation, a country in perpetual turmoil largely due to the institutionalisation of corruption. More than anything else, Osun has further exposed the catastrophe that has befallen the Yoruba nation and Nigeria as a whole. Aregbesola had 394,684 compared with Omisore’s 292,747. The difference is 101,937 votes. This raises fundamental issues. First, the PDP could have had many elected people if the election was into the state or national assemblies.
Two, how did a man with so huge a moral burden, following the death of Chief Bola Ige, of which he was a key suspect, manage to record such a high figure in the home state of Chief Ige? Again, the PDP has, no doubt, brought Nigeria unto her knees. The economy is in tatters. Hunger and deprivation rule the land. Deceit, a tradition of treachery and sham are the standards of the PDP. The definition of the party as a ‘nest of killers’ has not changed. The party has also compounded the woes of Nigeria by dragging her into the red light district of global affairs. Yet, this rickety machine has a huge population of people hanging on it, according to election outcome. Here lays the misfortune.
While Aregbesola campaigned on the basis of a social-economic agenda, like his counterpart in Ekiti, the PDP had no inspiring action plan. What then was responsible for the ‘victory’ of the PDP in Ekiti and the high votes recorded in Osun? The PDP’s strength is the criminalisation of the electorate through the cultivation of a cult of voters driven by perks and immediate gains. Apart from loads of rice and goodies distributed to voters openly and covertly, the PDP has set up a phantom financial institution code named “Omo Ilu Foundation,” at least in the South West. This group gives out forms to thousands of people. Agents sent by the APC indicated that beneficiaries were asked to take an oath of allegiance. Also the PDP has been attacking reform programmes of the APC, offering in its place, euphoric material gains for the electorate. This, in itself, constitutes a grave danger to the future of political and economic transformation of Nigeria. For a society exposed to long years of deprivation, perks are likely to be seen as more crucial than superstructure. The PDP is giving institutional backing to this backwater axiom. There is the militarisation of the electoral process backed up with denial of human freedom and brute force repression of the opposition.
After the fiercely contested Osun poll for instance, like the rhythmical movement of a chain of millipedes in the farmstead, a long, orderly crowd of broom-waving supporters snaked through the Osogbo highways. As the crowd milled with glee and unending spasms of joy, a PDP official in a convoy of tainted cars tore through the crowd. Armed masked men that perched like bats on vehicles in the raging convoy released a volley of sporadic gun shots. I remember. We were at a restaurant after an all-night meeting before the election. Five hungry-looking armed men in military fatigue came. Unkempt and in filthy uniforms. They wore beards and slippers, unusual of military men. The ‘soldiers’ had no name tags. One of them had red tattoos on his left cheek. One had the shape of a 12th century wrestler. The other stood like a small bulldozer. Their AK-47s hung loosely on their shoulders. In military and police tradition, guns, when not in use, should be kept nozzle down. These men kept their guns with nozzles pointed at onlookers. One breast feeding woman had to quit her seat. She quietly walked away into the descending evening cloud. There was naked show of brute force. After they had finished their dinner-we were all held captive-two of them took strategic positions on the adjacent highway and fired consistently into the sky, hands fidgeting like amateurs. They later left in an unmarked car. People have chilling stories to tell. In the night of Thursday preceding the election, one APC top shot who was my host received a text message that masked armed men were abducting people from their homes in the thickest of night. At the last count, the Commissioner for Regional Integration, Mr. Bashiru Ajibola, said over 200 were arrested in the night preceding the election. In Ekiti, 459 APC leaders were abducted, never to return until after the election. The ‘soldiers’ did not only arrest; they visited homes and collected money meant for mobilisation. Mr. Charles Fasubaa, the General Manager of the Ekiti State Traffic Management Authority, (EKSTMA) was picked from his bedroom and his cash snatched. One leader of APC in Osun was detained all night from Friday until after the election. I was informed that N5million meant for some wards were collected by force from another APC leader in Osun. This apart, I strongly believe PDP rigged the elections in Ekiti and Osun. In the two states, PDP stalwarts were arrested with ballot papers. Where are the ballot papers seized in Ekiti and Osun? Did PDP minimise its rigging tactics in Osun to create a credibility booster? If this heinous plot continues, the other South West states should not expect elections but brutal “war” as warned earlier by the PDP. Therefore, the APC needs real strategic and tactical realignment to deal with a monstrous opponent that has no respect for the rules. It is infamy that this happened under the nose of Prof Attahiru Jega’s INEC. It is bizarre that INEC consistently describes the elections as free and fair in a malicious rivalry, where in a boxing ring, the umpire watches, as one hand of a contender is tied to the stake. This is my personal submission: gloom is taking its full circle. There needs to be a revolution in Nigeria before we can talk of democracy.
Adeoye, a CNN African Journalist of the Year winner, writes from Lagos.
