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For those who have been conversant with the twists and turns of Ekiti State
politics, most specifically among members of the All Progressives Congress
(APC) in their preparations for the July 14, 2018 governorship election, the
very recent development and awareness that Chief Segun Oni had filed a
lawsuit against his party and Dr. John Kayode Fyemi (the party’s flagbearer)
coming about two weeks to the governorship poll cannot be more perplexing
and head spinning. Most people (like yours truly) probably first dismissed
the news as fake when it barged into the public domain. As if the possibility
of a litigation at this eleventh hour of the election date was not enough to
trouble the soul, watchers of Ekiti politics became even more discomfited
when they learned that APC leaders in the Southwest geo-political region
had issued a press statement in which they not only condemned the litigation,
but were very emphatic in their support for Fayemi’s candidacy and asked
Chief Oni to publicly dissociate himself from the lawsuit despite the latter’s
earlier report in which he distanced himself from this bizarre development.
The real confusion soon set in as to whether what these watchers saw flying
across Ekiti skies was a plane or a bird, in a manner of speaking. Then
entered Otunba Ben Oguntuase (who, for all intensive purposes, can be
described as Oni’s Chief of Staff, if not his other brain—-with no pun
intended) into the public space with a treatise that identified for us what the
flying object was. It was indeed a cargo plane packed with legal papers on its
way to the APC secretariat in the state capital and Isan-Ekiti to drop off its
cargoes that has to do with a lawsuit that had been instituted by none other
than the immediate past Deputy National Chairman (South) of APC, Chief
Segun Oni. And all this happened within a 24-hour period.
Since we have been counselled by Oguntuase to look at the merits of a
litigation that not a few—-including the party hierarchy in the Southwest and
quite possibly the presidency—-have emotively concluded as having all the
hallmarks of everything reprehensible, distasteful and also reeks of “bad
belle,” the onus, therefore, is on us mere mortals who would rather prefer to
remain in the bottom rung of the democratic ideals because we have no (or at
least have very little) understanding of the democratic tenets, to step up our
understanding that Segun Oni’s litigation “might actually be doing the party
a huge favour” which would, therefore, ennoble all of us, thereby deepening
our nascent democracy.
To be sure, Oguntuase’s strong exception (in his submission) to a litigation
that has offended the collective sensibilities of the party and most, if not
virtually all its members can be hinged on three main pedestals. The first and
major one is the judicial interpretation and determination of two main issues
in the suit; one of which is whether an appointed officer (in reference to
Fayemi) of government should “resign the appointment before contesting
any election” while the other (also targeted at the APC candidate) “is
whether or not a criminal indictment by a state or federal government
constitutes a moral burden to overcome while seeking a public office.” The
second is what seems to have been (in Oguntuase’s mind) a hasty rejection
and condemnation of the suit by leaders of APC in the Southwest and their
unflinching support for Fayemi to fly the party’s flag in the July 14 election,
while the third is this recurring decimal of what has now been dubbed
Fayemi’s policy of “isolate and marginalize” Oni’s supporters even prior to
the candidate’s victory from the primary.
While not an attorney, and one is in agreement with Oguntuase that it is the
courts that has the final say about this lawsuit, Oni’s prayer for the judicial
determination of whether or not Fayemi properly and legitimately resigned
his ministerial appointment before contesting the party’s primary election in
which he emerged victorious has sinister and mischievous motives behind it.
This is because of the fact that this resignation matter was hotly debated in
the run up to the party primary election in which the then minister—-through
several public pronouncements which were never disputed—-said that the
rule(s) that guides his resignation as a minister of the federal republic
stipulates 30 days to the general election (bold italics mine for emphasis)
which is July 14 th as opposed to the primary election which was just a
prelude to the governorship election. Fayemi resigned his appointment
several weeks before the party’s primary, not to talk of the July 14 th
governorship election. So, the APC candidate was within the ambit of the
rule(s) when he resigned his ministerial appointment.
What is more, considering a primary election that was anything but a fight to
finish by all the aspirants, if not a gang up against Fayemi, one wonders how
any of the aspirants, including Segun Oni, would have missed the
opportunity to stop the primary in its tracks through the court if they believed
that Fayemi was trying to hold on to his ministerial portfolio as an
“insurance policy in the event of failure” as Oguntuase would want us to
believe. It should also be emphasized here that there was absolutely no
guarantee of victory for Fayemi when he resigned his appointment to contest
the primary election in which delegates had the freedom and liberty to gift
the ticket to whomever they saw fit among the aspirants, including Chief
Segun Oni. So, the question that someone may have held a “subsisting public
office to underwrite the risk of failure” does not, and should not, have risen
in this circumstance because Fayemi duly resigned his appointment prior to
the primary election which he was not under any obligation to have done as
long as he met the 30 days requirement to the state-wide governorship
election.
Oni’s other prayer in this litigation (according to Oguntuase) is indecent—-to
put it mildly—-in the sense that this particular insertion into the suit as to
“whether or not a criminal indictment by a state or federal government
constitutes a moral burden to overcome while seeking a public office” (a
reference to Fayose’s so-called White Paper) should not have merited a
debate of any kind, let alone a lawsuit, because not only was this particular
issue also debated almost to exhaustion by the aspirants and several
independent legal minds in the run up to the party’s primary. More
importantly, the judiciary in which Oni is seeking a determination had
already established quite a few precedents on very similar matters. For
instance, it would be recalled that a court of competent jurisdiction
overturned a 2004 indictment against former Kano State governor and
governorship candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) in which
Kwankwaso was alleged to have wasted his state’s ecological funds while in
office and for not disclosing the fact of an indictment by his successor
government while filling an affidavit issued by the Independent National
Electoral Commission (INEC). Hassan Indabawa, the plaintiff, whose prayer
was that Kwankwaso should be disqualified from the April 2011
governorship election because of his indictment by a Commission of Inquiry
constituted by the Kano government. The court simply struck out the case for
lack of merit. Also, the Supreme Court had also ruled in a case that sought to
bar Atiku Abubakar from contesting the 2007 presidential election in which
the Apex Court said that only a competent court of jurisdiction can
disqualify a candidate in a political contest. Therefore, if these precedents
already exist, one wonders why the same prayer with this suit?
It probably would have been grossly irresponsible of APC leaders in the
Southwest geo-political zone not to have swiftly reacted the way they did in
a clear case of mischief, if not a deliberate attempt to torpedo their hard
works not only in their efforts to establish cohesion among party members,
but in their desire for victory for the party in the forthcoming election with
such a frivolous suit. The leaders would have known what to do had Oni told
them in no uncertain terms that his personal interest was of paramount
importance and not the party’s during the several meetings they had with
him and other aspirants prior to and after the primaries both in Lagos and
Abuja where they all agreed to support whoever emerged the winner.
How can anyone believe Oguntuase in his submission that Oni is also
“committed to working for the total victory of the APC candidate, Dr.
Kayode Fayemi” in spite of this lawsuit? If Oguntuase, as well as Oni
“knows too well that there is no miracle by which this case can be
determined by July 14, 2018,” then why filing the suit in the first place?
Why should Segun Oni, who defected from the PDP and within months, was
meteorically catapulted into the highest organ of the party at the expense of
several others who kept faith with the party through thick and thin before its
final metamorphosis, be the one to reward the party with a litigation that is
legally unnecessary, if not unrealistic and morally untenable, if not
repulsive? One wonders if Oni’s camp thought of the unintended
consequence (or was it intended) of this suit on APC votes on election day in
which the opposition could prevail on the electorates (who are still largely
uninformed, if not gullible) not to waste their votes as the court was
definitely going to disqualify Fayemi because one of his own had filed a suit
against him.
Oguntuase’s seeming deep seated scepticism of Fayemi’s promise of
inclusivity after his emergence from the primary, which he immediately
demonstrated by setting up a Campaign Council of about 77 members in
which Segun Oni and some of his supporters are members was unfortunate.
His assertion that there seems to be a deliberate policy of “isolate and
marginalize” by Fayemi and his camp has no basis in fact. It is further from
the truth. One must wonder if the cries of isolation and marginalization of
Oni’s supporters when there’s none even before Fayemi won the primary
election was not a clever, but insidious strategy to blackmail and force the
candidate’s hands when he becomes the governor. Why is this issue so
strident and prevalent only in Oni’s camp when the election is yet to be won
in the first place? Could it be said that all these psycho-emotional and legal
torments from Oni’s camp is indicative of its believe that its principal should
have won the party’s primary election at all costs?
While one hopes that this case is quickly dispensed with by being thrown
into the court’s waste bin before the governorship election, perhaps, the
newly elected organ of the All Progressives Congress (APC) under a new
Chairman should take advantage of this unfortunate development in Ekiti
State to truly sanitize the party with a deliberate policy of purging its rank
and file of recalcitrant elements who can never see themselves subsuming
their personal political interests within the party’s interest. Any organization
that lacks, or whose members observe its codes of ethics and conduct in the
breach cannot be expected to go far in its set goals. It is time that the
country’s political players identified, stay true to their core values and
political philosophies, then look for political parties that best approximates
these values and political philosophies and stay in them in relative
permanence. It is just so annoying, if not discouraging that there exists such
a virulent opposition within the party than all the other opposition political
parties combined.
written by femi odidere a public affairs Analyst
