Ekiti Guber Election '26: Congratulations is not too early for BAO

I am neither.

All I am going to do here is  critically interrogate events, and trends, and from there, draw justifiably valid conclusions. Writing in The Nation of Monday, October 14, 2013, Sam Omatseye, this paper's Editorial Board Chairman, observed that: "When on 16, October 2010, governor Fayemi was sworn in, I wrote in this column about the high road ahead of him, and wondered how he was going to tackle a state so idealistic, yet so forlorn.

Within a year and half, I drove through the streets of Ado-Ekiti, and witnessed a transformation at variance with what obtained while I left the city on the day of his swearing in: the streets narrow, unlit and dust-laden, the houses discoloured, the brow of its inhabitants shorn of optimism, Ekiti did not seem, even with its new chaperon's good intentions, capable of the lift you see in its streets today".

Equally, Tunde Fagbenle, another consumate journalist, wrote along the same lines on 23 December, 2012. Bemoaning the ruination PDP had wrought on the entire Southwest, he lamented: "over the years, even those little graces - earlier itemised – had wilted and become virtually the stuff of distant memories. Ekiti land, with all its vaunted brains, had proved not immune to the malaise of a country gone to the dogs; the fate that befell her had befallen virtually the entire old West. Successive (PDP) governments had been preoccupied only with the glamour and self-opportunities of office. Lacking in depth, vision and commitment, governance was essentially cosmetic". 

He too agreed that Fayemi had changed things for the better in the state and that it

was certain the good people of Ekiti  would never again elect to go back to those days of utter rudderlessness and outright profanity, of six governors in seven years; one of them, in fact, for only a day. 

I then continued:

"We are, however, not unaware of the news currently going round the entire Southwest that President Jonathan intends to make the Ekiti and Osun elections the staging post for his 2015 Presidential ambition. They should think again. I  urge them to go and read, or re-read, Dare Babarinsa's 'House of War', and remember that Ekiti was an integral part of those historic days in Ondo state.

Concluding, I wrote:"Kayode Fayemi's second term, built  on excellent performance, and the grace of God, is already assured".       

We would wake up on election day to the electoral tsunami which saw the PDP candidate declared winner. The greatest indication to that incredible possibility was given the day President Goodluck Jonathan told the Army Chief of staff to go to Ekiti to do his bidding, declaring shamelessly, that he, Jonathan, was the PDP gubernatorial candidate in Ekiti, not governor Ayo Fayose, tthe putative candidate known to INEC.

Those, indeed, were the days in Ekiti.

But matters did not remain like that for long.

What happened?

Happily, there was a dramatic change at the federal level when at the Presidential election in 2015, the late General Muhammadu Buhari emerged the new President of the Federal Republic on the platform of the APC which is essentially a Northwest/ Southwest - inspired political party.

The APC thus replaced the cantankerous PDP whose defining impulse was to dominate every part of the country so as to be able to continue it's looting of  the national treasury.

PDP was so stone deaf that the massive anti- rigging campaigns, especially in newspapers in the South, meant nothing to the government.

I can beat my chest and say that the leading anti- rigging campaigner then was my teacher,  the  redoubtable Professor of History and astute politician, Prof (Sen) Banji Akintoye who, leveraging on the traumatic political history of the Yoruba, warned PDP of the possible consequences of their MONOFIKI, for which  Yorubas, in particular, have been victims since the 2nd Republic.

I leaned heavily on his article: 'Yoruba Nation: A Time To Stand Strong', in mine of 5 January, 2014 titled:'Southwest 2014 Elections: Will President Jonathan Allow History To Be His Guide?', wherein, I wrote:

"Just in case our dear President does not know, or knows but has forgotten, the South-west, aka Wild, Wild West, has been the grave yard of many a federal government of Nigeria. It has serially posed questions, especially at elections, bothering on the very survival of this country as we saw in 1966, 1983 and '93 and barely escaped seeing in '03 and '07 when, under President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerians witnessed the most eggregiously rigged election anywhere under the sun, according to foreign observers".

Quoting him directly, I wrote:"that was no design of the Yoruba people as they did not sit down anywhere to plan mayhem. Rather we were victims.

We must  make it clear to Nigeria that we are now much more determined to uphold, and show our rejection of electoral fraud – that  heinous disease that has periodically brought  disaster upon Nigeria since  1964. The source of this Nigerian disease is no more than those in control  of the federal government  who,  since independence, assumed that it is their prerogative to dictate, through fraudulent means, the outcome of elections in any part  of  the country. In the context of this disruptive assumption, respective electoral commissions, electoral tribunals and  Appeal courts, as well as  the Nigerian Police – have usually operated like invading armies wherever the people show abhorrence to this fraud; Yoruba land being the foremost of such areas. The result is that thousands of our young men have  needlessly been dispatched to their early graves as was the case in 1965 - 1966  when  hundreds were killed by Nigerian law-enforcement agencies all over the Western Region. In Ondo state in 1983 when falsified results were announced by federal authorities in the gubernatorial election, scores of those who rose to resist the fraud were again mowed down  by the police. Similar examples abound as in the rigged 2007 gubernatorial election in Osun state when tens piled up in the morgue for weeks. The lesson here is that the Yoruba, having  been accustomed to choosing their own rulers for over a thousand years, are too culturally attached to free and fair elections to tolerate electoral fraud".

In 'This is No Scare Mongering', Sunday, 3 November, 2013, I wrote as follows on the same phenomenon of election rigging: 

"A pattern of election rigging ahead of 2015 is emerging as any keen observer of recent elections in the country would readily affirm. And it is not by happenstance; rather, it is a well choreographed test run of what will be put into play in the 2014 elections in both Ekiti and Osun states".  .

How perceptive as the Ekiti 2014 election was massively rigged by the PDP.

A not insignificant,  reason why BAO can be given his plaudits right now is that his party, APC, is in this election, contesting against political parties, no Lilliputians, that are literally non - existent in the state; parties you hear about only once in 4 years at election time.

Apart from PDP and Labour party already languishing in the crematorium, what does anybody seriously expect the following parties to do -New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP),  Action Democratic Party (ADP), Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) the Young Progressives Party (YPP) or even ADC in Ekiti?

Indeed, talking seriously, should some of these so - called political parties still be on our books?

Good enough, that is already being litigated, elsewhere, in our courts.

Ultimately, in addition to having a responsible federal government which has turned a blind eye to rigging, and rid of foreign 'werewolves' seeking domestic (Ekiti) associates to mess up our elections, what turns out the greatest factor in my confidence to congratulate the governor, a whole four months ahead of the  election, is Oyebanji himself: his persona, his incredibly mature politics, his  unprecedented respect for all, young and old, but most especially, his ability to operate above partisan politics; absence of which before now, had made it impossible for Ekiti politicians to see one another as patriots, operating on the same wave length for the progress of the state as long as they do not belong to the same political party.

Today, that situation is history in Ekiti and as you read this, amongst the governor's  staunchest supporters are  former governors who were not of the same party with him when he became Governor.

His unexampled approach to politics has thought most contestants for power in the state that they do not need to deploy all means, fair or foul, to win as that, in itself, de-legitimises and de-humanises politics, and retards the state's development.

As his immediate predecessor once put it: "we can no more afford to lose the huge grounds we have gained in establishing peace and tranquility in Ekiti over the last few years'.

God forbid.

Hearty congratulations in advance Gov.