Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose
Peter Ayodele Fayose. Two-time Governor of Ekiti State. There’s
certainly something to say for this man. Without question he is, for
good or for ill, the most talked about State Governor in Nigeria today.
He is one of the most controversial, if not the most controversial.
Those who believe in him, who swear by his name, would readily die for
him, would give whatever it would take for their man to retain his
gubernatorial seat, will strike innumerable blows to thwart his
traducers.
Others who hold Fayose to be beneath contempt, who proclaim that
disdain expended on his account amounts to vital energy exercised in
obedience to barrenness, people who abhor all that the man stands for,
and who stand eternally against his regular ventilation of contrary
opinion, would yearn for a cudgel – and a chance to bring the deadly
weapon hard down on his head, to shatter his cranium, to finish off
everything for the first-and-final time. Yet, there is something to say
for Ayodele Fayose.
If the country ever had an autonomous Governor, the accolade
belongs to this occupant of the Ekiti Governor’s Lodge. Leftwing
ideologue Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, tried his hands at autonomy
as Governor of the old Kaduna State during the Second Republic. He waged
a determined war against the behemoth known otherwise as feudalism.
He got impeached in less than two years. Even though the exercise
that moved him from office was unwarranted, unjustified and shameful,
the Federal Government then run by the National Party of Nigeria (NPN)
sanctioned it. He went. Balarabe may have had a chance to bounce back to
the governorship seat but a second, protracted military interregnum
killed and buried the possibility. He still lives though – with his
integrity intact – while very little is today heard of those who abused
democracy to get a blameless leader off the principled path. Fayose is
empathetic to Balarabe’s experience.
On October 16, 2006, he suffered a similar fate when into the third
of his four-year tenure as Governor of Ekiti State. He was impeached,
not necessarily because he was a wolf among the sheep, but largely
because the top leadership of his political party, the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP), found him expendable. But age was on his side.
Only a month shy of his 46 birthday when he was impeached, he bided his
time. He switched parties. He contested other elections.
He ultimately returned to the PDP. Then he strode back to
Government House, Ado-Ekiti! Peter Ayodele Fayose has soared to the
zenith. He has plummeted to the nadir. The extreme experiences have
fashioned and sharpened his choices. It is said that a man who moved
forward, and then moved backward, stood in a proper stead to
contextualize positioning, in order to determine the best of options at
all times.
Fayose has seen it all. Like gold, he has been tempered by the
alchemist’s unrelenting fire. If he professed half measures previously,
the Fayose of the Second Coming has shed kid gloves for iron fists in
the fight against chicanery.
He has effected an adamantine repudiation of fear. He now has
little problem glaring at the lion and spitting in its face. Like a
Shakespearean scholar, he has taken to heart the immortal words of
Caesar in Julius Caesar: Cowards die many times before their deaths; The
valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet
have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing
that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.
Fayose has left many disconcerted and scandalised. Coming from
Ekiti, a state reputedly peopled by professors, he wasn’t even counted
in the ranks of academics. So, what business had he being the tenant at
Government House, Ado-Ekiti? Those mouthing this question forget that
professorship and leadership stand in distinction.
They take no account of the fact that Ekiti indigenes appear
infinitely more interested in those who care for their very existence
than the rest who are interested mainly in stuffing their brains with
the contents of the fattest tomes.
They are becoming wiser, or are they? They had impeached Fayose in
2006. When they tried a reenactment of the absurdity last year, the
people refused and said No! They demonstrated their preparedness to die
for the one unafraid to die.
Thus, they worsted undemocratic elements. At that time, all members
of the Ekiti State Assembly were of the opposition. They commenced a
fresh move to impeach Fayose this year, when all members of the State
Assembly are of the Governor’s party! The Honourable members went
public, disavowing inducement with filthy lucre, opting instead for long
stretches behind bars or worse! They would never abide by the
disgraceful plot to impeach the one that led from the front.
Whatever his political adversaries and opponents mete out to him
today or the day after today, (And only what the Lord sanctions can
happen to him), Fayose has become a star. He will, like Balarabe Musa,
shine over the dulled and dying ends of the political Lilliputians
wielding political power tyrannously; politicians in opposition to the
contentions and contretemps that add colour and vigour to democratic
culture and texture.
The critical cannot but be sorry for the pathetic lot against
Fayose because he is sometimes clad in T-shirts and jeans pants, and
rides on Okada motorbikes, and eats in open spaces and bukaterias with
society’s flotsam and jetsam.
Fayose only borrowed from Fela who, during the 1970s craze for the
Mercedes had purchased one such German limousine and used it to carry
firewood through the streets of Lagos. Fayose has demystified governance
and shamed those that confuse the hood for the monk.
He has exposed the ludicrousness of fops invariably turned out in
what a well-known teacher once memorably described as the Garment of
Stupidity. In the sense of embodying free speech, Fayose is currently an
Epitome of Democracy. He never shies away from the right to pronounce
in mediation of contemporary challenges. His interventions should keep
any true leader on their toes. He has advised President Buhari to shun
globetrotting and settle down to some work! He has questioned Buhari’s
physicality for the onerous job of directing Nigeria’s affairs. He has
condemned the political leadership’s indifference to the marauding
massacres by Fulani herdsmen.
He is, therefore, more patriotic than hypocrites and sycophants who
would tell a leader that the stench of his fart wafts like lavender.
Only last week, the Ekiti chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC)
spectacularly claimed that Governor Fayose’s conduct was a threat to
“national security.” If they got a chance, they would probably recommend
that he hangs.
Since I have written, not about a saint, but on a voice against the
crowning of unworthy heads with the halo of sanctity, I align myself
with the metaphor of hanging. But, say I, Governor Fayose is not a
candidate for the noose. Rather, his official portrait should hang
prominently on a wall in the nation’s Hall of Fame.
Mr. Chuks Iloegbunam, an author, wrote from Lagos.
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