EKITI POLITICS OF RICE AND WIN

If I don’t write about the Ekiti elections that just concluded last Saturday for its gubernatorial seat won by former governor Ayo Fayose, then I will be doing my readers and most especially myself some kind of injustice.

I am wildly bemused and as much as I want to wrap my head around the authenticity of the ‘grassrootedness’ of the governor to be; Ayo Fayose, I can’t but weep for this country and shriek in total disbelief.

I am weeping, not because Fayose won the elections by rigging or because it was an unfairly induced election (offering eponymous bags of rice for votes) as my friend Gimba Kakandu wrote. I am sure this wasn’t the case because the incumbent already congratulated the governor elect. However, I weep because of the susceptibility and fickleness of existentiality. 

This was the same Fayose humiliated out of office in 2006 for allegedly stealing public funds in tune of over 600 million naira; all in the name of Poultry Project. In his own words in Dec 2007 when he returned to the warmth welcome of the crowd that gathered in Ado Ekiti, he said,

“Today, my joy knows no bounds as I return home into the warm embrace of you, my good people, and admirers in Ekiti… my wilderness experience has offered me enough opportunity to reflect on my ordinariness as a man, as the way up might be the way down, because nothing they say lasts forever. I was made to suffer for what I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT. Rather than being honoured, I was humiliated. Rather than being promoted, I was persecuted. You are all living witnesses of how I turned around our non-existent social infrastructure, empowering you, putting smiles on your faces and touching your lives individually.”

Now the question is; (which is still left for the court to decide for all of us bemused and bewildered) did he really know nothing about it? Can he seriously tell us that monies in the states are obviously missing and he wants us to BELIEVE that he knows nothing about it? Even if he didn’t steal these said monies, is he culpable to bear the consequences of public funds going missing? Who do we really hold responsible for all the corruption that we cry foul about?

I can quickly share a story here too. I just rented an apartment and the guy I contracted to do the interiors employed other guys to help out. While work was ongoing, my designers’ wrist watch got stolen. I complained to him and he didn’t do anything about it. Following day my Obsession perfume was stolen as well and while I rant on the phone to register my displeasure, he simply told me “oga, it was your fault. If you had kept your stuffs well, my guys won’t have stolen it”. CHINEKE!!! You can imagine how jaws-on-the-floor surprised I was. 

So I asked him, should I pack my valuables and put them on the street because untrustworthy guys that you parade as workers are about to invade my house for a job I was still going to pay them for? Whose fault really is it? Mine?  If I contracted you to oversee a job for me, shouldn’t you be concerned about your personal and company’s integrity? Shouldn’t you have taken inventory of every valuable in the house and make sure that all the bad workers are intimated of some form of consequences when stuffs go missing? 

And if that’s not the case, shouldn’t he just offer to buy me a new wrist watch and perfume as soon as he has confirmed that it was his guys that stole my stuffs? It is a shame because if such guy becomes a public servant tomorrow, he would tell Nigerians, “It is Nigerians fault for voting me in and allowing my commissioners to steal with wanton abandonment. If you guys have simply kept the monies somewhere else, we won’t have to steal it”.

Such is the case with the Nigerian states. We all pass the blame to the other. No one wants to take responsibility. The Governor/President will say he doesn’t know how monies are missing under his watch; the Local Government Chairmen are not stealing monies yet projects are abandoned daily to the detriment of the citizens and state and monies can’t be recovered from contractors. 

The people/citizens too are shifting blame to poverty and collect-my-share-syndrome for selling votes to a guy who hasn’t be cleared of a bad name and would probably give them a dime compared to what he stands to gain from government coffers. Or what else do we call this? When someone gives #4, 500 (four thousand five hundred naira) bag of rice for unhindered access to public funds?

If Fayemi was blamed for not being grassroot enough; that’s his fault. There’s a way one can put a human face to development and growth. Also one must remember that government must, most times, be populist in nature especially in a democracy. If all he ever did is to build roads and infrastructure, I guess that the state and its citizens aren’t foresighted enough to see that good network of roads and public infrastructure will enhance trade and economy which will at the longer period help sustain a viable Ekiti State; all they ever think of is what they can eat and what they can eat now. 

Food is substituted for infrastructural development and growth. I am really apolitical about this. I am not speaking for APC or PDP but as the issue relates with present condition on ground, I am forced to say I am disappointed in Ekiti citizens. No wonder Pastor Femi Emmanuel told us in church yesterday that late Oyo kingpin, Adedibu once posited that people whose votes helps win elections don’t read the news(paper).

Congratulations to Ayo Fayose. The gentleman governor Fayemi already congratulated him and it shows how Ekiti has lost a viable, reliable and respectable governor for an unreliable, controversial and disrespectful governor in Fayose. Or didn’t he once call Obasanjo Father of many Bastards? And didn’t he once disrobe a reigning king in Ekiti? Didn’t he flagrantly gallivant the streets of Ekiti when he was governor with abandon recklessness calling friends and family to come and spend state funds in his care? My friend Demola Rewaju will attest to this because he told me by himself.

Let us see how this goes anyways. I hope he will be more matured in his reign this time but he must also remember that those who hail him hosanna into office today can also shout crucify him out of it tomorrow.