Nothing more perhaps, depicts the starkness of Ayo Fayose’s Ekiti, than two pictures, of two governors, from two states, with two contrasting tempers: one forward-looking, the other firmly fixed in the past.
Kaduna’s Nasir El-Rufai: with construction experts, at some work site, studying a sheaf of diagrams. The imaging? A 21st century futuristic governor.
Ekiti’s Ayo Fayose: at an Ado Ekiti market, pricing ponmo and allied orisirisi, with his darling hoi polloi roaring; and salivating a putative life-time treat of gubernatorial stew! Abiding image: a crude throw-back into the Medieval, if not outright, Stone ages!
Yet, El-Rufai and Fayose are governors in today’s Nigeria.
Ekiti Kete, famed land of professors, how market?
Fayose, no doubt, is a master of full emptiness. When the barbarians over-ran Alexandria in ancient Egypt, their public enemy number one was the 700,000-scroll Royal Library of Alexandria. So pronto, they razed it, for nothing scares a barren mind more than even the most routine of ideas.
Like Barbarians in Egypt, like Fayose in Ekiti. So, when others levitate the clouds for ideas, seeking solutions to developmental problems, Fayose plumbs deep into empty stunts, stunts he hopes would tantalise his people, and freeze their thinking, even but for a little longer.
This is why El-Rufai would study maps; and Fayose would, with glee, price ponmo!
Ekiti Kete, how market?
Indeed, in Fayose’s Ekiti, it would appear morning yet on a long, long night. At the beginning, it was loud emptiness muscling out quiet ideas. But now, it is equal-opportunity vacuity, of different shapes and sizes, and rippling muscles, in a vicious combat for hegemony. Fayose, formerly undisputed lord of manor, is therefore constrained to up the ante.
First, a bitter rival for public attention rather audaciously decided to beat Fayose to his own game. At his first coming, Fayose dazzled Ekiti with tanker loads of free water, the water of forgetfulness, which Ekiti drank to forget its essence. By the time they woke from the watery drug, Ekiti Kete was almost undone.
Now, that rival has reached for the jugular, Fayose’s beloved Okada riders, and declared free fuel for all, in this jungle of rough-and-tumble politics. When the dust cleared, the riders reportedly declared themselves ready to be spoilt silly by whoever supplied free petrol, even — heresy of heresy — asking Fayose to stand up for the new champion of dramatic emptiness!
Then, a renegade former “Speaker”, who was a rebuke to the law, his own conscience, decency and even common sense, suddenly remembered he had principles, alleging that he was a victim of Fayose’s use-and-dump tactics! He declared himself liberated from Fayose’s potent spell of one-man show.
Even, some elements in the Ekiti Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have joined the restiveness, with a splinter group and youth vanguard declaring themselves ready to confront the hitherto popular — more of notorious — Leviathan of Ekiti streets.
Geez, the Fayose revolution seems set to devour own scions!
But for the rambunctious Fayose, it is time to up the emptiness. First, was the ponmo show, of the latest gubernatorial cook in town, boasting a glittering CV of an illustrious career as Danfo driver.
Then, the latest outpouring of gubernatorial tomfoolery: the appointment of a 72-year-old reported “illiterate” as local government caretaker chairman, with a graduate as blissful personal assistant! Whatever the illiterate lacked, the graduate sidekick can make up, right?
Can any contender, in all of Ekiti, beat this audaciously dramatic gubernatorial clowning?
Ekiti Kete, how market?
END
Some leaders are just good with negative creativity.