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“Call me Banchioc, only Banchioc can save me now,” moaned Honore de Balzac, the inimitable French novelist and playwright, who in one moment of desperate pressure for survival, sought help from the world of illusion for salvation from the firm grip of physical death.
In his last moment on his death bed, Balzac had sought salvation from a certain Banchioc. But Banchoic is not a physician; he is just one of the greatest characters in Balzac’s fictional works. About 200 years after he bade farewell to the light, the Tours-born writer had relocated to Ekiti State, where hope for reality is being sought in the world of illusion, and in no firmament is this illusory stunt being propped than in the farcical world of Ekiti State PDP.
The protagonist in the Ekiti State PDP’s farcical theatre is a certain Diran Odeyemi, a gentle valet with a princely grace, who is being propped as Banchioc, and who in the world of reality, is desperately seeking help in the world of illusion after PDP was interred in Ekiti State on July 14, 2018, when Ekiti people voted for freedom from the band of bandits that borrowed N187b to pay salaries of workers but diverted all to personal pockets.
Two years of Ekiti PDP in the limbo after it was disgraced from power, it is now peeping about in search of dishonourable road to lay ambush in the third raid on Ekiti commonwealth.
The setting for that script is in form of a PDP Caretaker Committee in which Odeyemi is to play a Banchioc, an anonymity with scant knowledge of Ekiti history and development process, but who exists in the dreams of PDP leaders that he is the man they need to relaunch the ailing party on crutches into the hearts of the distraught and PDP-weary Ekiti people that were recently gang-raped by the hell kites that PDP leaders had become.
But like Banchioc who has no competence in the assay to save Balzac’s life, Odeyemi is now operating in a terrace similar to Banchioc’s terrain in the ambience of fictional illusion. At best, he is like an ensign ranged against a legion of admirals in a naval duel.
And just from the start, Odeyemi betrayed his ignorance, lampooning Governor Kayode Fayemi for allegedly selling Ekiti House in Abuja in secret and for not having anything to show as achievements in five years, a charge that Ekiti PDP members themselves will scoff at as an irresponsible accusation.
Let Odeyemi and other unbridled interlopers in their histrionic of sound and fury without content know that Fayemi acted to salvage Abuja property that PDP leaders left in ruins while he also recorded many firsts in Ekiti State development history in his first term.
Ekiti PDP members themselves know for a fact that within a year in his first term, Fayemi’s administration renovated and furnished 183 secondary schools and 836 primary schools while 48,000 laptops were distributed to students and teachers, including additional 25,000 pieces that were ordered for students and teachers, the result of which manifested in the tremendous improvement in 2013 WAEC results.
For the first time in history, teachers received 25 per cent of their pay as core subjects and rural posting allowances in addition to their salaries. Five mini-water treatment plants were commissioned while the laying of new pipes to replace the old ones was almost completed before Fayemi left in 2014. 167 modern water fetching points called (Eyiyato Fetching Points) in various communities were constructed across the 16 LGAs, thus making the state to be rated as one of the best two in the water sector in the country. PDP-led government left all in ruins during Fayose’s administration.
For the first time in West Africa sub-region, 20,000 elderly people received N5,000 monthly stipends as social security while as at October 2013 during Fayemi’s Third Year Anniversary, another 5,000 senior citizens were added to the scheme. The wife of the governor, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, with her food bank initiative, for the first time in the history of Ekiti State, made sure that no elderly person went to bed hungry.
Ekiti PDP members also know that all general hospitals were fully rehabilitated and two new ones were built by Fayemi while 728 kilometres of both Federal and state roads were constructed in addition to the 81 kilometres constructed in all local governments under the Five Kilometre Road-per-local-government scheme, including 902 kilometres of Federal, State and Local Government roads that were either rehabilitated, re-constructed and constructed to last decades unlike in the past where new roads collapsed barely six months after commissioning by PDP-led government.
Many communities that had existed for more than a century without electricity, such as Oke-Ako in Ikole Local Government, were connected to the national grid while many communities were opened up through construction of rural roads and culverts.
Hundreds of Ekiti youths were engaged in commercial agriculture under Fayemi’s Youth Commercial Agriculture Development Programme (YCAD) and 117,000 farmers were registered to benefit from the ADP programme. Conversely, PDP’s administrations were notorious for the recruitment of Ekiti youths into hit squads and begging brigades while elderly people daily slept on empty stomach.
Ekiti had both the largest cassava productivity (yield/Ha) and cultivation, which was above national average at 15T/Ha (national average was 12T/Ha) during Fayemi’s first term while the state was producing water melon and carrot, which were hitherto exclusive produce of Northern states.
PDP’s administration destroyed that legacy in four years. In its place, a regime of clinical looting via “Ghana must go” sacks by men in masks in midnight operations in the Government House for the benefit of one man was instituted.
After the leaders of PDP administration looted the Otunba Niyi Adebayo-inspired Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort between 2003 and 2006, Fayemi within three years of his first term redeveloped the decrepit Ikogosi Warm Spring Resort into one of the top seven of the natural hospitality destinations in Nigeria and an elite Knowledge Zone was also established within the facility for advanced studies in various fields. But PDP administrations prioritised training of thugs.
As at October 2014 when Fayemi completed his first tetm, there were 781 completed projects, 558 on-going projects and 134 community projects initiatives on ground. Altogether, there were 1,473 completed and on-going projects in the state from October 2010- October 2013.
According to the Human Development Report (2012), Ekiti State under Fayemi, for the first time in history, was described as the most conducive environment to live, for long and healthy living with a life expectancy average of 55 years more than the National Life expectancy average of 50 years.
Ekiti also had the lowest infant and maternal mortality rate and the lowest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the country while the state had the highest pupils’ enrolment relative to Nigeria’s population and it had the least out-of-school children (less than 2%) in Nigeria. But Fayose’s PDP administration depopulated public schools with callous taxation of nursery and primary school pupils.
Today, Ekiti people are praising God that the coronavirus pandemic is not happening under the last PDP’s administration, otherwise our hospitals would have become a mortuary for Ekiti coronavirus fatalities.
Unlike PDP’s leaders that were declared wanted by anti-crime agencies for sundry crimes after PDP was humiliated by Ekiti people in 2018 poll, Fayemi won laurels as ‘Governor of the Year 2012 Award’ and was also named the Governor of The Year 2013 by Champion Newspaper, all of which were confirmed in September 2013 when the United Nations invited Fayemi to its session in New York, USA, on the basis that his state had met many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Today, contrary to Odeyemi’s ignorant postulation, Fayemi’s second term has also record dramatic achievements. From N187b debts in borrowings and salary payment defaults of nine months by Fayose-led merciless administration, Fayemi has resuscitated the re-looted Ekiti Warm Spring Resort, also by the same PDP administration that destroyed that Adebayo’s prime legacy. The nation’s table water brand, Gossi Water, that Fayose-led PDP administration left in ruins, is back across the country.
The construction of the abandoned Iyin-Ado road is almost completed while one of Fayemi’s legacy projects, the Civic Centre, will be commissioned in October.
Oye-Ilupeju-Ire-Igbemo-Ijan roads, Oye-Iye-Ikun; and Agbado-Ode-Isinbode-Omuo roads, among several others, are under construction, while Fayemi is working with the Federal Government to fix Ado-Akure road, including implementation of electricity projects, youths employment and women empowerment schemes.
In four years, Fayose never employed the youth he deceived with jobs provision during campaigns.
The abandoned Adejugbe Hospital is now functioning while the abandoned Ikun diary farm is ripe for operation.
And across the state, works are ongoing to install water pipes for regular water supply to residents.
To make Ekiti State a destination for agricultural productivity and allied business to generate employment and food security, Fayemi has resuscitated the College of Agricultural Technology complemented with the building of agric cargo airport to encourage his vision in agro business anchored on production value chain to make Ekiti economy thrive.
Fayemi has also moved Ekiti workers from the orchestra of hungry and hopeless people coordinated and moderated by PDP administration between 2014 and 2018 to the club of responsible family heads that can feed and clothe their families through regular payment of salaries with the meagre federal allocations.
For effect, Ekiti people over the years have seen the tricks and failures of PDP administration and the squalid essence of its malevolent orchestration in driving the development agenda of Ekiti people. Enough!
All these are for the attention of Diran “Banchioc” Odeyemi, the man in the game of illusion and its tricks, who cannot rescue his party in Osun State from the crushing defeat by APC, and other agents of the compradors who feel that they can prop Ekiti State again as a game of ludo for PDP political speculators of fortune for the next scrambling that will leave Ekiti State in bruises, tears and sorrows.
Olujobi, a journalist, is Commissioner in Ekiti State Local Government Service Commission, Ado-Ekiti
