Arise: Why I want to return to the Senate

Senator Ayodele Arise is a chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State. He spoke with Chief Correspondent Sanni Onogu in Abuja on his quest to return to the Senate in 2027. Excerpts:

In recent times, you have expressed strong reservations for consensus option. In the event that the Ekiti North Senatorial District of the All Progressives Congress (APC) decides to adopt a consensus candidate, what actually do you have against consensus?

The party cannot say we have adopted consensus without following the guidelines. Consensus means that among contestants, you have agreed that this is the person that you are supporting to represent you for a particular position. Where that is not achievable, you go for direct primaries to select your candidate. That is the stipulation on the ground. So the party is not saying that all we want to do is a consensus. How do they achieve it when you have more than four contestants in the same party running for the same office? So does the consensus now say that a governor must now point or one or two leaders must now say, we are picking somebody. There’s no picking system in that arrangement. It is either consensus or direct primaries. Everybody has a constitutional right to say I want to go to this particular office. So if the party now says we want to adopt a consensus, then let us know, let them spell out the ways and manners to achieve that consensus.  Without the participants saying, I have agreed, or we have agreed that this is our consensus candidate, it  is not meant for one or two people to pick people and say these are the people we have selected by consensus. Which consensus is that? I will give an example of my senatorial district. I am a leader there, I’m the second most senior political office holder in that senatorial district in terms of ranking and the years that we went to head political office. So, other than the fact that (Kayode) Fayemi who was governor under APC and now an ex-governor from the same local government I come from. I am next to him. So if he’s going to take a decision that seems like it’s a consensus where they’re making that consensus arrangement, he will be seated there,  I should be there. It’s not for him to say, I am picking this person. That is not a consensus. Like I said, he’s free to express interest in his favorite, in whoever he feels that is good for the office. If other candidates do not agree with his position, everybody goes to the polls. So if people do not want the due process to take place, they do not want a popular candidate to emerge, then I put it to you that those people are working against the interest of the party and against the interest of whoever is holding office within that state, and against the interest of the national election itself.  So there is nothing I’m asking for that is out of place, that is unreasonable, that is selfish, nothing. This one is most likely going to be my last election I want to participate in. I will be 70 this year. This primary will still happen before my 70th birthday and I have told them this is what I want from the party. If they cannot give it to me on a platter of gold  for my efforts, for my sacrifices, for what I’ve done for the party, then let’s go to the field. Let the people of the senatorial district speak and say, we don’t want this man. This is what we want, if you allow them to select even your candidate. Who knows then? But if I see that the process leading to the emergence of that your preferred candidate is fraudulent, I will not agree and I will go to court, and I will take my ticket back, because we have to teach our people that there is decency in integrity. When you don’t have that, you can’t lead.

The party has always maintained that the governor is the leader of the party in the state...?

A. I’ve told you,  before I  started this journey, I consulted all of them. It was December 2024, I  went to Niyi Adebayo, the first civilian governor of Ekiti state and actually the godfather of the current governor by any definition. Because he was his Personal Assistant, he was his Chief of Staff and he has continued to promote his political career. So talked to him first. When I left him, I went to Fayemi. I told him, I want to run. And he said, we should just face the governor’s election first, and that after that, he will know what he will do.

So news started moving around that Fayemi is likely going to run, and which I could not have quarrelled them because most of his colleagues, when they leave governorship seats, the next natural seat they are looking for is the Senate. But my mind was made up, that since he had deprived me twice, this one, if he’s running, I’ve told him I’m going to run, then that means we’re going to be on the field together. So I knew from  the beginning that this Senate seat, I am taking it back.

So with that, I moved from him, I went and spoke with the governor himself. And he asked me, have you spoken to my boss?  I said, Yes, I’ve gone to Governor Adebayo, I have told him. I have gone to Governor Fayemi, he said you have told Fayemi too, I said yes. He said I will call him. I said call him now, I’ve told him. I left that place. Even before then, I called my brother and friend, Adedayo Adeyeye, I told him. Then I called Segun Oni, I told him, these are the people that are supposed to say, yes, this man deserves the ticket, give it to him. Apart from that, I don’t know what the problem is, because they now started appointing, picking people — the senator, the House of Representatives member, and I told them, I’m not going to agree. If it’s not my name that you put in Ekiti North,  I will not agree. So, because I already saw what they were doing, I don’t know what my offence is with them.

Governors have cashed in on this  consensus arrangements to determine who becomes what in a state. So do you think this consensus arrangement that was added to the new Electoral Act has given governors so much powers over other politicians?

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Do you see this as a challenge,  using your state as a case study?

A. What I’ve noticed is that there’s no method that you can use outside voting that does not give the governors  advantage. Even with the voting, they have the advantage of writing the people who will go and supervise the election, who bring the results in, and they normally will capture people and keep them in their office while election is going on elsewhere, and they have written their results ready to transmit. We are developing our democracy. We are growing it. The governors have been given tremendous powers. It’s only when they have not won an election that they listen. Once they win, they have become the Emperors in the state, without exception. Once you give them such powers, unless God just touches their heart, they want to use it to the maximum. And the state has more resources than individuals who want to contest, so they will give the logistics and all that to back their candidate. It’s only in this case they have a very bad market. That is why there is nothing they can do. Like I told people,  once I believe in something, don’t just mess with me, don’t get me angry, because it is my right. We have two federal constituencies in my senatorial district. This constituency that  this guy ( Senator Cyril Fasuyi)  represents by the end of his tenure in May next year, they would have spent 24 years. His local government has  done three terms. His constituency, they’ve had about two senators from there. Then, the other local government, they’ve had eight years. In my federal constituency, which constitutes Oye Ekiti and Ikole, I am the only person that has represented in the Senate — one term.

Are you saying the zoning favours you?

A. Of course, if it is a matter of zoning, I am the person that is supposed to go. So, there is no question about it. These people have monopolised the thing, and at the end of the day, it’s just like some other places that monopolise power, and they have not used it for their people. My four years has very serious meaning for people of my federal constituency, that is why I don’t know what the parameters they are using to say they want somebody to go and repeat when I am standing and I’ve waited for 15 years and they have been doing it without quarrel. I said, this is my time and you are arguing and say you don’t want to give it to me and you don’t want to follow the law. It’s not going to happen. I’ve told them, if they write somebody’s name by force, I will go and claim that victory in the court because I’m ready for them.

So what is your message to your constituents? This is not the first time you are aspiring to represent them. They know your capacity. So what is your message to them in this scenario?

A. Well, I have gone around the 56 wards, and I can assure you that there has been no election I’ve ever received such support at the ward level. I told them, you have only seen the little I was able to do in four years. Now I’m going in there as a ranking senator. My focus, like always, is your welfare, your development, your progress, ability for your children to go to school, and  ability for them to be able to defeat poverty, that is the message. I keep on telling people, I was the Chairman, Senate Committee on Privatization, former Vice President Jonathan was the Chairman, National Council for Privatization. So I was the only one supervising anybody in the presidency, which was the Vice President. That is how we grow some friendships. Thereafter, I never asked him to sell me any company belonging to the government. I never asked him to give me shares. All I asked him was to give me a federal university, which he did. So we have a difference. Everybody goes to the Senate for a purpose. I was there for a purpose, and I achieved that purpose for my people. And now today, villages where they were selling land for N10,000, N20,000 they are now selling far higher. In fact, I went to one of the towns in my local government that they have one of the campuses,  I was told  that they’re now selling plot of land for 600,000 in my own hometown.

When I built my house in  year 2006, I bought the land for N50,000. Today, the straight road passing through the town, you can’t see any plot of land that is less than N15 to N20 million. That is the prosperity that I take to my people. As a matter of fact, every day, they wake up, they pray for me. And that is the story in most of the towns in my senatorial district, because that university now has, like the Continuing Education Center, which is in Ifaki, which is in Idosi, they have in Oye, they have in Ayegbaju, they have in Ilupeju, they have in Ikole, this university even has a centre in Omuo. Why would anybody believe that he’s going to be able to defeat me on the field? They know they can’t because I have something to show to them. And besides the university, I touched every local government with something that the people can always say thank you for. I put up ICT centres in many of the local governments. I even built markets. In Ileje, I built health centre for them in a place called Eda. So I didn’t realise that I was doing that for the future. In Moba, I have an ICT centre in front of the palace. The Kabiyesi  keeps referring to it. In that same Moba, I have a market that I built for them.

You just said it was mentioned to you that Dr. Kayode Fayemi is also aspiring for the Senatorial seat, but there is this insinuation that you are his anointed candidate?

A. That was initially when I started consulting. So when I spoke with him, I asked, are you going for the  Senate seat? He said, No. I came for his birthday in February last  year and until we were doing affirmation for Governor Oyebanji, I didn’t see him. We were not communicating. So for anybody to say that Governor Fayemi is the one sponsoring me…I understand, when he came back,

they said they were waiting for him. When they were doing all these endorsements here and there, when they were picking people. So when he came, I understand the three of them sat together. The leader of the governors, that’s Otunba Niyi Adebayo, himself and the current governor. They discussed  the senatorial district, because we are from the same local government. They tabled all the people running. And he said he feels the most qualified among all the people running is Senator Arise. I think they all agreed. So I don’t know what happened thereafter.

Away from Ekiti politics, let’s discuss a burning national issue which is State Police. The House of Representatives has laid their report, but the Senate has not laid its own report and the new IGP has set up a committee on state police, and they have submitted a memorandum to the Senate adhoc Committee on constitution review. Don’t you think the National Assembly needs should fast track the Constitution review process so that they can make provision for state police?

A. Our greatest challenge in Nigeria today is security and there have been two previous or three presidents that have had to face the security challenge, and it seems it is not abating, but there are improvements that we are seeing on a day-to-day basis. But the federal government with a unified structure for police will now have to be sending people from Abuja to all the nooks and crannies of this country. The State Police has numerous advantages.

One is attacking insecurity, the other is providing employment to the youth. When the states begin their state police structure, they will have to hire people who have left school for years and don’t have a job. It will provide a big avenue that each state, maybe the small state, might have a minimum of about 2000 new employees. So people are not even looking at that angle. The man has looked beyond that and is looking at it that when a stranger comes into a community because the police in that community are local people. They know themselves, they know the whole environment. So when a new person, a stranger, comes in, they know a stranger is coming to town. This is where the person is. So before the person can do any damage, they would have been able to ascertain the motive of that person in that particular community. So the advantages of State Police is tremendous, and the fact that the President studied in America is guiding so many of these things.

I studied in the US myself, and I know that even my campus had police. If there is a crime within the campus, the police will arrest you and carry you to the city police. And the city police, they have their own details. You have state police who mans the roads. Those are the ones issuing tickets here and there for over speeding but the federal government police, the FBI is still there. So if there is a cross border crime, the federal government will come in. The State Police would have done all the paperwork, and the federal government, as soon as they come in will hand over to them, that is a federal matter, and they take the back seat. So I have looked at it critically that this is the best part of this policy to tackle insecurity in this country.  And in the same vein, he went to Jos to go and talk of security lights because these people operate in the hours of darkness many times. They do nooperate in the daytime, whether they don’t have helpers, but even if it’s in the daytime, or in the nighttime, some of these people will be caught on camera. And another thing that I will suggest to the security: let them look for technology that can possibly pass through mask, to take with infrared light, to actually take the pigment of the skin. So for us, it’s a thinking process. Nobody has all the answers, but this man is actually taking action to ensure that there is an end to insecurity. He has spoken to the American people to come and help us in training, in logistic support and all that. So he’s making moves to ensure that we live in a peaceful country, get rid of this, bandits and kidnappers. It’s not going to happen just in a jiffy like that because it takes time. So I think when the people work with them, we are going to achieve an egalitarian society in this country.

Do you think there is any attempt or any plan to frustrate the ongoing amendments to the constitution ?

A. Yes, I do not know why there is delay, but the fact that this thing, this pronouncement, came not too long ago and is now dovetailing to an election period, some of these people are fighting the battle of their lives  to come back. I mean, the man that is contesting against me now, who is seated in the Senate, he cannot sit down for too long because there is fire on the mountain. And that is the situation with many of them. So the period that we’re in actually has contributed to the slow movement. But I think the president should call the Senate President to let him see the urgency and what we have here. If he has to call an emergency sitting, he can do that. They can do the harmonisation between the House of Representatives and the Senate, and ensure that the Bill  is passed and now sent  to the state, for the concurrence.

Do you nurse the fear like many others that state governors, over time will abuse the use of state police?

A. There is no doubt about that, that it is a possibility, not even an ordinary possibility, it is something that is very likely to happen. The part of the development process is for us to ensure that when you do such things, many of them do invest with government money, but when they leave, they keep on visiting the EFCC, and ICPC. We have organs of government saddled with the responsibility of their answering to their actions while they are out of office. The success of those organisations is another issue. Whether they have been able to successfully prosecute them and deal with them to serve as a deterrent to others, we don’t know, but the law still provides that you can answer to your crimes. So if a governor stands up and shoots somebody while he’s in office, or you order somebody to be shot, and you have the evidence that he is responsible, then whatever goodwill he has amassed while in office,  those things will disappear overnight.

That means he wields awesome powers while in office?

A. Yes, that is the constitution, because he has immunity against prosecution. But that does not mean he is going to get away with it for life. So sometimes we say the maximum a governor can stay in office is only eight years, and he has forever to answer for his crimes.