By Ethelbert Okere
So much has been written on the recently held governorship election in Ekiti state in which the incumbent governor, Dr. KayodeFayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was defeated by Mr. Ayo Fayose, who ran on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).It is no longer news that the outcome of the election was a big surprise to majority of Nigerians, for the simple reason that Ekiti is in the heart of the Southwest geo-political zone which is believed to be in the firm grip of the APC. Not expectedly, several reasons have been given for that surprising twist of fate, from the sublime to the mundane.
The Ekiti matter has caught the attention of so many people to the extent that some state governors turned emergency newspapers columnist to state their own side of the story. One of them is Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos state who, in a back page column in the Monday, June 30 edition of THISDAY newspaper, restated the pervasive view within the APC that the good people of Ekiti state merely kowtowed to material aggrandizement (especially cash and rice) to vote for Fayose.
Although Governor Fashola had made an earlier statement in which he chided the Ekiti people for behaving unwisely, and for which the people (of Ekiti)are said to have taken exception, I had thought it was an initial response that came in the fit of anger and frustration. But in his column under reference, Governor Fashola sounded even more condescending on the Ekiti people, more than two weeks after the election. Fashola wrote among other things thus: “The party of the incumbent governor argues that through new schools, new roads, new hospitals, tourism development and physical infrastructure renewal, the future of Ekiti people will be better, economically and developmentally because, skills will be created and honed, services will be offered, jobs would be delivered on a sustainable basis. On the contrary, the party of the governor elect argues that a once in your year fix of dash, cash and inducement is what the people prefer. THE PEOPLE OF EKITI SEEM TO HAVE CHOSEN THIS ECONOMIC IDEOLOGY…” (emphasis mine)… Is the land of honour and intelligence teaching us something new …?
It is the same abuse on the people of Ekiti state. Personally, I had thought that people like Governor Fashola could come up with something different from the puerile submission within the APC that Ekiti people voted for Fayose because he gave them bags of rice. Rice? Haba. I have issues with the Yoruba style of politics but I would path ways, forever, with anybody who says Yoruba vote based on material inducement. In spite of my personal discomfiture over certain attitude of the Yoruba to national politics (that’s a topic for another day), I have never failed to tell my own people in Igboland that we should borrow a leaf from the Yoruba if politics in Igboland must do better. It needs no emphasis, for example, to state that unlike in Igboland, “money politics” is not fashionable in Yorubaland. In Igbo land, the first question that is usually posed before any political office (no matter the office) aspirant is: “Ego Ole K’oji” (How much money does he have).It is for this reason that we do not have in Igboland the equivalents of Governors Fashola, Fayemi, Aregbesola, even Bola Tinubu, before he became the “Asiwaju”.
These are fellows who were not wealthy as individuals but who got elected into the all encompassing office of governor. Agreed that there are few exceptions in Igbo land but it is a widely acknowledged fact that Yoruba do not generally look at money in making their choices of who presides over their affairs, politically. Is it not therefore curious that the very fellows who are beneficiaries of this general attribute of the Yoruba are the same people turning round to accuse and castigate them for“…dash, cash and inducement”.
For me, it is a big tragedy for the Yoruba polity. If any section of Nigeria could be said to have an ideological orientation, it is the Yoruba. The Yoruba usually make clear where they belong on any national issue. My only grouse with them (let me volunteer just a little) is their puritan attitude and a certain air of superiority complex.
This is a people who, for four years, distanced themselves from their own son, Olusegun Obasanjo, after he emerged President in 1999 instead of another son of theirs, Olu Falae, for the simple reason that they saw him (Obasanjo)as the candidate of the Northern political establishment whose perfidious penchant, they believed (and still believe) denied the late M.K.O. Abiola the mandate he supposedly won in 1993.
For more than four years, Obasanjo was almost a pariah among his kinsmen and it took extra ordinary steps from him (such as the clipping of the military wings of the North) to convince his people that he had a Yoruba blood running in his veins. No other section of the country can do that, including my Igbo brethren.
As I noted earlier, I am not usually enamored by the Yoruba style of politics but there are areas I am in full admiration of them. Even not being a Yoruba, I stand today in total repudiation of the notion that the people of Ekiti state voted for Fayose because he gave them money and rice. My advice to members of the Yoruba political intelligentsia is to do everything to ward off this blackmail against their people by their own leaders because it may be used against them in future. It is certainly a big assault on the psyche of not just Ekiti people but the entire Yoruba to suggest, as Fashola did, that they “seem to have chosen a new ideology of dash, cash and inducement”. Let me hasten to add that I do not hinge this position on the fabled professorial ancestry of the Ekiti people. Nobody needs to be a professor to know that the insult being heaped on Ekiti people in the last couple of weeks is totally uncalled for.
In the avalanche of literature on the Ekiti election, several writers and commentators have rehashed some of the Fayose’s (the governor-elect) earlier gubernatorial idiosyncrasies as having been responsible for his victory. They point at his habit of, for examples, walking into restaurants to eat with the people, driving in tricycle (Keke) and picking and dropping off people on the road, etc. As far as I am concerned such attitudes do not necessarily make a good governor and should not be recommended as a model. If anything, such attitudes could be nothing but mere theatrics, aimed at deceiving the people. On the other hand, a suave and urbane fellow, like Fayemi, who tried to teach the people, especially the younger ones, simple etiquette and mannerisms is not necessarily anti people.
I have read quite a lot about what Governor Fayemi is doing in Ekiti and I believe he did quite creditably well to deserve re-election, ordinarily. But these are extraordinary times. It is a time when the people are being compelled to look more at intangibles than roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. Which brings us to what, I think, cost Fayemi and his party, APC, the election.
The reason why APC lost that election is the high handedness and cantankerous nature of its leaders. It is the quarrelsome and blood- baying attitude of its leader; its state governors, so-called national leaders, its media handlers etc.
At a time the nation is going through a very difficult period in sundry areas, the only thing Nigerians keep on hearing from the APC and its leaders is that Nigeria will burn to ashes if the party does not take over the reins of power at the federal level in 2015. Is that the right thing to say, to tell fellow compatriots who are passing through hell currently; who are expressing a worst trauma? Is that what to tell people whose kit and kin residing in Abuja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, etc. may be the next victims of the next bomb explosion? Even so, there have been averted bomb explosions in the southern part of the country. The recent explosion ata fuel farm in Lagos has been attributed to a bomb in some quarters.
Nigerians want to live in peace, irrespective of partisan cleavages. Yes, it makes sense to blame those currently at the helm of affairs but it needs no emphases to state that Nigerians are disdainful of any fellow who, through acts of omission or commission, give the impression that the current state of affairs should and shall continue unless he or somebody from among this political camp becomes the president of Nigeria. That is the bane of APC.
Its leaders threaten brimstone if the party loses election. Yet, it lost in Anambra and nothing happened. But if you say Anambra is not a good example, what of Ekiti state, in the heart of its home stead. Have the heavens fallen since June 21, 2014? The worst that has happened is the current insult on the good people of Ekitistate by some Yoruba political leaders. This is where Fayemi still stands aside. He has not indulged in this battering of his own people, unlike the likes of Governor Fashola and Lai Mohammed.
To play the Devil’s Advocate, the APC should watch it. It leaders should come down from their high horses. As noted above, Fayemi might have built infrastructure and I believe that they people of Ekiti state are appreciative of that. This is why they should repudiate the current posturing of the likes of Fashola who accuse them of preferring bags of rice to good roads, good schools and hospitals. Much as Nigerians want physical infrastructure development, the prospects of peace returning to their country now is paramount in their minds. Those who say anything to the contrary, under any disguise and for any reason stand no chance of being given the mandate of the people; from Ekiti to Adamawa, from Imo to Borno, from Lagos to Gombe, from Abia to Bauchi, all over.
