LAGOS Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, made an interesting foray
into column writing last Monday (June 30, 2014) on the back page of
THISDAY newspaper as a guest columnist with an article entitled: “Ekiti
Poll: My Take Away”.
In his revision of the recently concluded electoral exercise, he
deployed gritty logic and arcane reasoning to turn out a fine, readable
piece befitting of a lawyer who became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria
(SAN) before he was elected in 2007. But going through it, Fashola came
across as a deft political ball juggler evocative of his famous talents
as a skillful footballer.
It was a thoroughbred political article created to question the
popular conventional wisdom that emerged from a cross section of opinion
writers and commentators describing the poll as a true reflection of
the political will of the Ekiti people. He questioned the notion that
incumbent Governor John Kayode Fayemi lost to former Governor Ayo Peter
Fayose despite Fayemi’s performance.
He insinuated that Fayose’s vaunted connection to the grassroots
owed to his use of some of the said “missing” federal funds to buy the
vote. Fashola floated generally down the lane of the All Progressives
Congress, APC’s, afterthought of disputing the Ekiti polls, even after
the contestant himself, Governor Fayemi, had graciously conceded defeat
and gained for himself overwhelming applause as a true democrat and
statesman.
It was not really Fashola’s denunciation of the Ekiti vote, and his
remonstration of the choice the Ekiti people made that brought me to
this topic.
The truth is that Ekiti people had a credible background experience
based on which they made their choice. Fayose was an elected governor of
the state for nearly four years until he and his deputy were impeached
by the State House of Assembly. Fayemi was also in office for nearly
four years before the June 21, 2014 election. They knew what both men
were capable of doing, and made their choice. They must now live with
the choice they made.
I do not believe that “rice” and money decided the poll. Both sides
spent money. It is futile to pretend otherwise. Every Nigerian incumbent
politician does. That is what people refer to as the power of
incumbency in Nigerian politics. That one party was able to manipulate
their power of incumbency to win an election cannot make the loser a
saint. There is no difference between the tricks that PDP marshals to
win an election and the ones that other political parties, including the
APC, deploy.
The truth is that the APC has so far failed on many fronts to show
it is different from the PDP. The APC has not lived up to the clamour
for an opposition party that is DIFFERENT and BETTER than the PDP.
The only thing we see is that the APC is sworn to use every trick at
its disposal to snatch power at the federal level from the PDP and
become the new dominant party. It is a legitimate aspiration, but the
party has failed to adopt clear-cut strategies to portray itself as the
credible alternative to the PDP. If anything, it has tended to mimic the
ruling party, rather than make a difference.
For instance, the PDP’s cardinal principle of power sharing is
through the zoning arrangement. Principal offices are shared among the
geo-political zones of the country, starting from the office of the
president. Even though zoning is not poignantly spelt out in the APC
charter, it was the arrangement they adopted in the recent election of
their party’s national executive.
Why did the APC fail to make a difference by, for instance, throwing
the party positions open for THE MOST QUALIFIED individuals, thus
putting emphasis on MERIT rather than the PDP’s QUOTA SYSTEM? It is
clear that they have already decided to zone the presidency of the party
to the North. Why not throw it open to the best and most electable
candidate from its ranks to be different from PDP?
Also, the PDP is often known for “adoption” of candidates through
“consensus”, a ploy by which the leaders impose candidates on members,
which often leads disgruntled members to look for alternative platforms
to pursue their ambitions.
Atiku Abubakar is a living example of this in APC ranks. Why doesn’t
the APC make the difference by adopting TRUE DEMOCRACY, giving power to
its members to elect candidates of their choice? Why did it use the
PDP’s “consensus” method to produce the new National Chairman of the
party, Chief John Oyegun? That is why Chief Tom Ikimi is disgruntled and
might move over to another party.
Again, the PDP is known as the party of the Democrats, while the APC
is the party of the Progressives. What, in their processes portray them
respectively as such except in name only? The PDP heavily subscribes to
the economic blueprint and strategies of the Bretton-Wood institutions –
the International Monetary Fund, IMF and the World Bank.
They believe in the privatisation of public commercial ventures and
the use of the Private, Public Participation, PPP, system of
infrastructural delivery. Their economic model is primed primarily for
the rich. As the economy grows, the rich get richer and the poor get
poorer.
Ekiti State Governor Kayode Fayemi has said the turn of events in the country are frustrating Nigerians.
The Governor-elect of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayodele Fayose, in this
interview with NIYI ODEBODE and ADELANI ADEPEGBA, comments on the
controversy over his victory and politics in the South-West
The thunderous joy witnessed when the results of 21, June, 2014
Governorship Election in Ekiti were announced gives credence to Fayose
populist style of politics, not populist programmes that would put money
in the pockets of the electorates in the immediate at the expense of
their future but populist programmes that will empower the people
especially people in rural areas through agriculture, that would put
food on their table.
