Fayose has become not just an Ekiti nightmare and a national embarrassment but also a bad advertisement for the country in the international arena. Speaking recently during an intellectual engagement, at the University of Lagos, a visiting US scholar instinctively said America has its own equivalent of Fayose in Donald Trump, the Republican front runner in the November race for the White House. Both are easy preys to political enemies that have variously described them as ‘vacuous, rabid, hallucinating, lacking in depth, and having an infantile mind’. Substituting notoriety with popularity, Fayose often takes impetuous decisions such as dancing naked on the street without him realizing it.
Last Wednesday was one of such occasions when Fayose during a workshop to promote women participation in politics, said without feeling – ‘I don’t know if there are missing girls. It is a political strategy, because I don’t think any girl is missing. If they are missing, let them find them’. As far as he is concerned, the Oby Ezekwesili-led #BringBackOurGirls campaigners that drew the attention of the international community to the plight of the abducted girls, are office seekers. But what was galling, was that this was coming only two weeks after a high ranking British foreign service official disclosed that the abducted Chibok girls were indeed sighted inside Sambisa forest few days after their abduction.
But first who is Ayo Fayose who was first foisted on Ekiti by Obasanjo in 2003? Before he was impeached in 2006, his tenure was marked by unprecedented level of violence resulting in the assassination of some prominent Ekiti sons. He later confessed, he ‘had to flee, (some claimed in the booth of his car) with all his ‘property left in the Government House’. He was apprehended by the EFCC and accused of financial mismanagement along other criminal charges. And in his own words, “During the seven and half years of political wilderness, I was taken to court over what I knew nothing about 59 times, aside the 45 days I spent in Ikoyi Prisons during my trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)”. In 2011, he lost a senatorial election contest to Babafemi Ojudu with a margin of over 30,000.
But the turning point came in 2014 when he allegedly received $2m from ex-President Jonathan to outwit his other PDP candidates in their party’s primaries. And for the ‘coup against the Ekiti’, according to Dr Temitope Aluko, his alter ego and self-confessed partner in crime, ex-President Jonathan provided $37m and ‘1,040 recognised soldiers and another batch of 400 ‘unrecognised soldiers’ brought from Enugu in addition to 44 special strike teams brought in (with) Toyota Hilux buses from Abuja and Onitsha.’ The April 2014 battle was led by the then Minister for Police Affairs Adesiyan, Musliu Obanikoro, junior minister of defence, Brigadier General Aliu Momoh with another contingent of 12,000 mobile police men, 26 sniffer dogs,15,000 NSCDC personnel’.
It is on record that as governor-elect, he was accompanied to court by thugs who beat up the judge presiding over his eligibility case. He also employed the services of the thugs to chase 19 elected members of the state House of Assembly out of town while he ran the state with seven PDP members. His hand-picked cronies went on to win the subsequent election into the state and national houses of assembly having driven serious contenders out of town with the help of thugs. The opposition went to court to contest Fayose’s election on the basis of his constitutional banditry, his status as an impeached governor, and the use of military to win the flawed election. The Supreme Court however upheld Fayose’s election.
In his inaugural address, Fayose offered ‘peace, prosperity, and progress, employment, food, and stomach infrastructure’. You can put tar on the road but if I don’t have a car and I’m hungry, then that tar is meaningless’. And in pursuit of his government policy of stomach infrastructure, he eats ‘boli’ roasted plantain and drink agbo ‘jedi’, (native concoction for pile) on the streets with his grass root supporters. Last December, he directed all civil servants across the state to come to Ado Ekiti for some cups of rice and chicken. Many spent a whole day only to receive chicks instead of chicken. Today, a state that introduced N5, 000 social welfare packages for the elderly under Fayemi is battling with unpaid five months salary arrears.
Fayose has always tried to divert attention through repeated attacks on the person of President Buhari who has so far ignored his asinine theatrics. Perhaps the search for attention explains Fayose’s ill-adviced decision to play politics with the abducted Chibok Girls which has become a national tragedy. The irony is that like those PDP stalwarts that shared $2.1b loan earmarked for military hardware to fight the insurgency, Fayose who allegedly got $37m and about 30,000 security personnel to rig the 2014 election at a time our ill-equipped soldiers could not even defend their own barracks is culpable for the abduction of these innocent children.
But who is to tame Fayose with the Supreme Court saying its hands are tied by its earlier flawed ruling despite the fresh evidence that showed the 2014 election was a sham (the military authorities retired Brigadier Momoh who anchored the rigging of the 2014 Ekiti election)? The buck stops on the table of Buhari and his APC- a party in government but not in power.
The model builders that came up with the doctrine of ‘separation of powers’ spoke of ‘checks and balances’; but the theory in truth was designed to be a balance of terror. Both the legislature and judiciary are institutional tools which the executive as temporary custodian of state powers needs to manage society for good or bad over a given period often specified by the constitution.
In the last 16 years, PDP as the ruling party has been able to use the judiciary as an accomplice in their members’ betrayal of our nation. Either in the electoral theft of opponents’ mandate, the collapse of banking sector and the stock exchange, oil subsidy fraud and the mismanaged of the privatization process, or the systematic looting of the nations resources, the judiciary played a supportive role. With the introduction of plea bargaining by the judiciary, enemies of state emerged from temporary detention to become governors, senators, king-makers and god fathers. Those the PDP power wielders could not bend in the judiciary, they break. Thus we had a Justice Isa Salami who was unjustly suspended and prematurely retired for ruling against PDP in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun states.
Besides the bizarre Supreme Court ruling in Ekiti and Rivers which seem to literarily challenge the people to embark on self-help, the judiciary appears not to be enthusiastic about the executive’s current war on corruption. For instance all that was asked of Bukola Saraki, the Senate President was to defend himself against allegation of false declaration of assets. But this he has evaded in the last eight months with the connivance of the judiciary that has tried to undermine the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) of 2015. The judiciary behaves as if it is not vulnerable.
That the tail is now wagging the dog with the likes of Fayose saying Buhari and APC have no capacity to rule, is the fault of President Buhari and his APC. The executive’s control of the awesome apparatus of state power is a reminder that the doctrine of separation of powers does not envisage the judiciary or even the legislature acting as if they are answerable to none. If President Buhari and Odigie-Oyegun, the APC chairman, unfortunately, both non politicians, are however having problem as to how to wield power, they can consult Obasanjo, Jonathan, his godson and their PDP or create time to read Niccolo Machiavelli the founder of modern political science for his advice on the brutal reality of building a state. It is an affront for those who ought to be behind bars to test the resolve of custodian of state power.
NATION
END
Be the first to comment