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MONDAY QUARTER-BACKING: On the Matter of These First Few Days of Governor Fayose the Second of Ekiti State
by
Mobolaji E. Aluko,PhD
[email protected]
Monday, October 27, 2014
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My People:
Ever since Mr. Ayodele Fayose was declared the winner of the June 21 gubernatorial elections and then installed on October 16 as Governor of my dear Ekiti State, the world has been regaled with political punditry, that invariably begins and ends with the irritating moniker of “Stomach Infrastructure” – a euphemism primarily for lack of willingness to distribute rice and beans widely during the election campaign, but more seriously an impatience with the lack of pace of solving the un-employment problems in Ekiti State, a situation not confined to Ekiti alone.
In all the narratives, I am always amused when I read trumpets of predictive capabilities of pundits over an electoral event that could only have had binary outcomes: Fayemi wins or Fayemi loses. If he had won despite predictions, there is nothing we would have done to the pundits…it would NOT reduce their credibility. Now that he has lost, it does not make those who predicted his loss into political oracles. If they had told us that he would lose every local government, and told us by how many votes he would lose, ehen, then we would bow down at their political altar! 🙂
As it is, we all still have the same difficulties of predicting the future correctly…..
I am now ready to disclose what I suspected – strongly feared was more like it – that Fayemi would lose the day Fayose was IMPOSED as the opposition candidate. It did not make sense that such a soiled candidate would be foisted to run against an incumbent that was performing unless his party had a “mysterious card” up its sleeves, which was indeed played, and which is yet to be un-raveled. Note that Fayose did not campaign with much passion…..he just let his name on the ballot do the talking, and whatever was promised him by his party – allegedly to “ja Ekiti gba” (to seize Ekiti) on his behalf – he left them alone to handle.
Now Ekiti APC and Fayemi’s campaign team (of which I was NOT a member, being seriously hampered as a public servant to be either of those) helped its own defeat process along in many ways:
– wrongly hoping/thinking that the clear evidence of Fayemi’s socio-economic development prowess displayed in Ekiti in his three years of governance was sufficient to win the election;
– making Fayemi (and his tireless wife) in effect be his only electoral campaigner. Other agents – particularly the rank and file of his political appointees, not necessarily the political careerists – were not sufficiently empowered financially and in a timely manner to carry the message to the nooks and crannies in a “stomachially infrastructural’ manner. The “stomach infrastructure” really mattered most during the campaign – for APC campaign workers and their contacts on the field, including some of the electorate – and not really DURING the four years of Fayemi’s rule. The lack of attention to this detail implied that the electorate was being taken for granted – and electorates the world over don’t ever like that.
– consequently what evolved were Fayemi supporters without any political passion, who could care less about the “mystery”, photochromic or otherwise, of the defeat. An overwhelming hue-and-cry that seemed to be the butt of every complaint in the Fayemi administration (my ears were full throughout) was the over-bearing nature of Fayemi’s Chief-of-Staff, along with one or two other operatives, and the COS’s suffocating control of the political machinery and largesse distribution in the state, to the extent that secret statements of his having “natively charmed” Fayemi was in circulation. I however blamed all of those who could not take on this one un-elected person, even if he was the Chief-of-Staff – or resign en masse if they were so dissatisfied, otherwise they themselves were gaining from his continued presence as COS – or did he charm them too?
So a month before the election, I had been bracing myself for a loss by Fayemi, with the consolation that in effect Fayemi had been Governor of the state since 2007, it was just that he assumed duty only in 2010, and that he had done his best and done right for seven years out of an eight-year term, with the rest being best left to God. He has other things to do with his life, after all.
.
Let us now move on to these first few days of Governor Fayose of our dear Ekiti State………
Has a leopard changed his spots? Unlikely – and I would say Absolutely not!
Let me first re-wind and recall his first coming in 2003, during the Obasanjo-engineered “political tsunami” against the AD in the South-West that swept Governors Adesina of Oyo, Osoba of Ogun, Adebayo of Ekiti and Adefarati of Ondo aside, and left only TInubu standing in Lagos State. About a month or two after he became Governor, I protested to some six persons in a room in Ado-Ekiti that Fayose had rigged himself against defeated Governor Adebayo, only to be rebutted furiously by three of the six persons that they had voted for Fayose rather than Adebayo, and the other three (who did not then exercise their right to vote) that they would have voted for Fayose. So I held my peace, thoroughly convinced by that quick un-scientific poll that Fayose had indeed won.
Now three months later when I returned to Ado-Ekiti, when I asked from one of those same six persons how Ekiti was being governed under Fayose, I was regaled with inimitable Ekiti-ese, telling me the concerns on Ekiti streets after some of his many antics:
Hmmm…Fayose…s(h)a yo s(h)e baa o?…..This Fayose, is he capable of this job he has embarked upon, can he succeed? (playing on an onomatopoetic rendition in Yoruba of a rhetorical question)
Hmmm….Fayose…A ti s(h)’uka te!………We have mis-voted (via thumb-printing, both legal and/or illegal!)
I just scratched my head, shook it and burst out belly-laughing. Tt was one controversy after the other then, until he was impeached in 2006. less than ten years ago…..following which was a period of painful instability in Ekiti State
Table 1: List of administrators and governors of Ekiti State. Ekiti State was created on October 1, 1996 from territory of Ondo State. (Adapted From Wikipedia)
Name
Title
Took Office
Left Office
Party
Mohammed Bawa
Administrator
7 October 1996
August 1998
(Military)
Navy Captain Atanda Yusuf
Administrator
August 1998
May 1999
(Military)
Niyi Adebayo
Governor
29 May 1999
29 May 2003
AD
Ayo Fayose
Governor
29 May 2003
16 October 2006
PDP
Chief Friday Aderemi
Acting Governor
17 October 2006
17 October 2006
PDP
Tunji Olurin
Administrator
18 October 2006
27 April 2007
PDP
Tope Ademiluyi
Acting Governor
27 April 2007
29 May 2007
PDP
Segun Oni
Governor
29 May 2007
15 Oct 2010
PDP
Dr. Kayode Fayemi
Governor
15th Oct 2010
15th Oct 2014
ACN
Ayo Fayose
Governor
16th Oct 2014
?????
PDP
I also remember the last time I was in an Abuja TV studio with Fayose (2009 or 2010), when (because of alleged mis-treatments by his present political party) he was still supporting Fayemi during JKF’s multiple re-runs against then incumbent Governor Segun Oni. I was on one of my frequent visits from the US, and somebody in Fayemi’s campaign team was supposed to appear with Fayose on the TV program. Candidate Fayemi would not do it, and yet-to-be-Senator Femi Ojudu dodged it – no one seemed to want to dignify Fayose with a co-appearance and taint their political careers – and yet they did not want to miss the opportunity of appearing on AIT and risk Fayose appearing all by himself for one hour or so. Being in Abuja by chance, and with no immediate political ambition, I was literally “begged” to appear with Fayose to discuss Ekiti on AIT – and not knowing better, I agreed.
Within minutes of the program, Fayose termed himself “a Professor of street politics” and dismissed me as “a theoretical professor from America who did not know what was happening on the ground”. So I too began to attack him (despite the fact that we were supposed to be both supporting Fayemi) for all his mis-deeds, also warning him on the air that he may have been Governor before, but I was still older than himself, and he must respect my perspectives and not display his vaunted anti-intellectualism on the air. When he saw that I was not backing down on him, during one of the TV breaks, he pleaded privately that we should no longer attack each other on the air, so I warned him to be more civil, and the session became better from there on.
Lesson? Oshokomole (Fayose’s nickname) is not as brave as he sometimes tries to sound…..like all bullies, they back down when you push back.
Now that we are in these first few days of Fayose’s second coming, will there be a reprise of those first few months of 2003? The jury is still out, but Governor Fayose must realise that he is succeeding Fayemi and not Adebayo. Not only does he have quite a much higher standard to follow, but Fayemi was careful enough to ensure that most of his actions were enacted into law. Furthermore, Fayose is confronted on the ground with an opposition House of Assembly that passed those very same laws. The new Governor must realise that he is NOT a military dictator who can just cancel legally-enacted entities (like LCDAs or petrol stations or state symbols) because there are legal regulatory bodies and laid-down rules for reversing them if that is what he wants to do. Furthermore, if he does a sufficient number of LAWLESS activities in the coming months, then within the Rule of Law and the Constitution, he should be prepared to face sanctions, including impeachment – after all, it is still seven months to May 29, 2015.
If for example he does not like the new swanking Ekiti State Government House – because he feels Ekiti is too hick to have such, then he has the option NOT to live in it while Governor. Any other disposition of living in it for even one day would be hypocritical. If the N2 million beds therein are N28 million too expensive, he should sell them off, and get maybe N10 million for them, and make a cool N8 million profit for the state.
And so on…
The bottom line is that Ekiti State, like Nigeria, requires a healthy dose of political stability and executive competence with legislative checks-and-balance under rule of law for socio-economic development to be fostered. So for his own sake, and for the economic stability and prosperity of our dear Ekiti State, one hopes that we don’t go the way of indiscriminate and seat-of-the-pants misrule under Fayose for the next four years. Ekiti State belongs to us all and not only to Fayose or any one political party. He should hunker down to follow the little or much agenda he has set for the state, serve his one term, and eschew any iconoclastic tendencies. His values are different from Fayemi’s so we should not be disturbed by pointing those contrasts out constantly.
Fayose ti di oba, e wo tun ni ti awure? Now that he is still Governor, he need not continue campaigning.
And there you have it.
Bolaji Aluko
