Dr. Kayode John Fayemi, the immediate past Minister of Solid Minerals, can be appropriately described as the come-back kid. He had been the Governor of Ekiti State for one term before Mr. Ayo Fayose knocked him out. He, too, had also given Fayose a knock-out punch. So, each of them has had two rounds of election battle with each other in this game of revolving doors in Ekiti. Fayemi is scheduled to be sworn in as the next Governor of Ekiti State on October 16, this year after a bruising electioneering combat marked by violence, police misbehaviour and stomach infrastructure.
Dr. Fayemi told the press recently that the outgoing Governor, Mr. Ayo Fayose is not giving the Transition Committee the cooperation it needs to do its job seamlessly. He also revealed that while his government left a debt of N18 billion in 2014 for the incoming government of Fayose, Fayose is bequeathing to him a debt pile of N117 billion in 2018 according to the Debt Management Office (DMO). This debt does not include arrears of staff salaries, pensions, gratuities and debts to contractors engaged by the Fayose administration. He admits, though, that government is a continuum, that the debts will be settled and that he is focused on making a difference in the lives of his people. In apparent obedience to the Biblical injunction on forgiveness he has left everything to God to judge, because as a Christian he remembers the good Lord’s immortal words “vengeance is mine.” He had promised soon after the election was lost and won that he would probe the Fayose government when he takes over. If he has changed his mind that is fine because political revanchism always leaves a trail of blood on its path. This blood always poisons the system and deprives the author of revanchism of the attention he needs to do his panel-beating work.
Dr. Fayemi has, however, suggested that there should be an enacted Transition Act in Nigeria to make the transfer of power from one government to another flawless. Such laws, he says, have been enacted in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and some developed countries. It seems a worthy idea but in Nigeria people seem to bother more about the letters of the law than the spirit of it. But the spirit is what garnishes the law and gives it its lifeblood. The noblest thing that any Nigerian political leader in Nigeria has done since 1999 was the acceptance of defeat by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. He could have dug his heels into the ground citing massive irregularities in the elections including under age voting. With the security apparatus under his thumb and a wallet filled with petro dollars, he could have caused considerable pain for his country. Instead, he called Mr. Muhammadu Buhari and congratulated him even before the last vote was counted. That was a heroic, patriotic act. Mrs Hillary Clinton of the United States did the same thing even though she was leading in the total votes cast in the election between her and Mr. Donald Trump. It is such gestures, such acceptance of civilised conduct that makes democracy work. Neither Jonathan nor Clinton wanted to get the job by hook or crook. In Nigeria, Jonathan’s acceptance was unusual, the exception, not the rule and his angry followers who were ready to make trouble were dismayed by his “surrender.” But he will be recorded in history as a hero of the Nigerian project especially if you remember that he could have deployed the Niger Delta card and the militants would have brought out their heavy artillery. He refrained from this and the guns stayed silent.
While a Transition Act may be useful on paper, the spirit of democracy will be more useful on the ground. This is not the first time that transition committees have met with roadblocks either at the Centre or in the States. In 2015, President-Elect, Buhari, received a set of documents from Professor Akin Mabogunje on the way forward for Nigeria. These documents were produced by a group of experts put together by the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo. Buhari expressed his pleasure at the submission and remarked that even the government he would be taking over from had not given him any documents. This remark on the apparent non-cooperation from a government whose leader had voluntarily thrown in the towel speaks to the complexity of the transition drama in Nigeria. In some cases, we have had two transition committees, one set up by the outgoing and the other by the incoming administration. Even if they both belong to the same party, there is no surefire guarantee of smoothness in the handing over process. A conflict may arise in the choice of the chairman and members of the Transition Committee, or the content of the committee’s mandate or in some arcane and inexplicable disagreement between the incumbent and the incumbent in waiting. Or it may just be an ego problem because presidential and gubernatorial offices in Nigeria are carefully organised for maximum inflation of the incumbent’s ego. That is why they have 30 or 40 cars on a convoy or a siren blaring on a lonely road. That is to show that there is power on parade, which everyone must get out of the road and run into the bush because power cannot share the road with anyone else even those who voted for power. If you stay on the road while power zooms past you will be sharing power with it.
If the election results are being contested in court by the loser the possibility is that the decision at the highest court may go either way. So some incumbents, bearing this in mind, are never willing to surrender information to the other party. The uncertainty of these court battles certainly contributes their quota to the transition drama. It would be quite helpful if there is a process by which all election petitions are concluded in the courts before swearing in. That way there is no doubt as to who the crown belongs to. This may bring a certain measure of relief to the transition process but I cannot swear that no residue of bitterness will still remain.
Elections in Nigeria are conducted as war or the equivalent of it. Those who say elections are not a do-or-die affair are joking. That is what our politicians make out elections to be. Elections are to them not the route to governance. Elections and governance are synonymous, they are interchangeable. When you win an election you start to prepare for the next election. So governance seems to take a back seat. And since there is too much power in the hands of our Governors and Presidents, they can grow into tyrants if they are not restrained. Most of the time, the institutions that should restrain them – parliament, media, civil society etc – are too weak or too complicit to restrain them. Added to this is the fact that the constitution grants them unmerited immunity which places them above the laws of the land. All of these build the President or the Governor into an all-conquering Leviathan. This enormous power with nearly endless fringe benefits, seen and unseen, known and unknown, tempts those who aspire to them to use every means possible to get there. They get opponents killed or kidnapped and taken away in booths of their cars. They get the police or soldiers to block the path of their opponents on Election Day so that the candidate and his family cannot even step out to vote. They do many other wonderful things including blood oath ceremony, shrine and cult induction exercises and a million other dirty engagements. That is how dirty the acquisition of power in Nigeria’s political space can be.
The recent Ekiti governorship election was peculiar for its bitterness and bribery and bullying. Some people were shot in the course of the campaigns. Money was blatantly shared to voters on Election Day; the government house was blocked with Governor Fayose, immunity or no immunity, made a prisoner in his gilded cage. He claimed that he was beaten by the police which are why he had his hand in a sling like a boxer who had been taken to the canvas with a ferocious shot. The police later apologised for blocking the Government house gate. Fayose made himself the election umpire, went to the state electronic media and announced his own version of the election results. This version favoured his candidate but INEC said that was not the authorised version. The regulator of electronic media in Nigeria, the NBC, got angry and blocked the state radio station. It became dumb. Both Fayose and Fayemi were not ready to subscribe to a code of civility during the elections. They both went after each other with crudity, matching insults with insults. It was an ill-tempered contest which severely polarised the State. The place seemed to be on tenterhooks.
Good a thing Fayemi has said he would not be digging for dirt in Fayose’s closet. The EFCC has already promised to give him hell as soon as he steps down in October. Hell from two sources would be more hellish than he can handle. Right now self-pity is sitting on his chest like a pile of bricks and he has announced his withdrawal from the presidential race he had promised to enter.
For Fayemi the thrill of victory is giving way to the prospects of a bleak beginning in view of the enormity of the task on the ground. He may have the impatience of a challenger and the adrenaline of a champion but I am almost certain that he is sobered by what lies in wait for him: a pile of debts to defray and a divided citizenry to manage. But he will have his honeymoon, however brief it may be. If he extends his hand of friendship to his people and gives them his tooth-gap smile and assures them that things will be okay, they, being well-educated people, will spread a welcome mat for him.
In addition, he has Buhari’s shoulders, slim they may be, to lean on and his ears which no longer have an infection to whisper into. If the words he puts in Buhari’s ears are sweet and since they are both cut from the same APC cloth, he may get some kind of soft landing. From there he can paddle the boat of his government not fluently but semi smoothly to 2022 when his friend, Fayose, the one man riot squad may still be having a conversation with the EFCC. If the EFCC is unable to get him into jail by then, he should be able to resurrect his inchoate presidential ambition which he has abandoned to the dismay of those of us who would like to enjoy the fir
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