Fayose: An appraisal
By Abraham Ogbodo
MR Ayo Fayose must have learnt some useful lessons since assuming office as the second civilian governor of Ekiti State on may 29, 2003. He must have learnt for instance, the wide difference between a governorship candidate and a governor.
In both situations, the visions are different. In the former, the subject is fired by an uncontrollable passion to prove his own inevitability in an array of ruthless players. This time, the politician often runs the temptation of overstating his own capabilities. He makes outlandish proclamations. Honour at that point is not part of the critical considerations. Any statement or action that pushes him closer to victory is freely issued or executed without a second thought.
It is therefore difficult to establish fool-proof the character of the aspiring public office holder in Nigeria by just an assessment of his pre-office statements and deeds. That a politician talks and acts nice before the polls is not necessarily an insight into his character. Rather, what is even more important are statements and actions after victory at the polls.
The Nigerian politician also exhibits a shallow understanding of the real task ahead of him. His perception is linear, lacking in essential dimensions. It is therefore very usual for a man to mount the podium and proclaim: "When I am voted governor, I will ensure better life for all the ordinary people of my state". He deliberately refuses to appreciate the complexities in party politics in Nigeria. He pretends to forget that in the Nigerian electoral processes, the mass of the people mean little or nothing. Instead, the critical factor has always been that tiny wealthy clique which dictates both the tune and the pace at all times. I mean the kind of clique that is making life unbearable for the executive governor of Anambra State Dr. Chris Ngige. The story was that the Governor attempted to enforce some of his campaign promises at the expense of the clique.
Back to Ekiti. It is no longer news that Mr. Ayo Fayose is the next most troubled governor in Nigeria after Joshua Dariye and Chris Ngige of Plateau and Anambra States. Even as an aspirant, Fayose seemed to have had a video of what he would do with power if he ever got it. He had sneaked largely unnoticed into the Ekiti power stage. Nobody considered him for a star role because he did not look like a serious contender. He did not posses the pre-requisites. He was not an old man. Besides, nobody knew his father as an Action Group man or a disciple of Pa Awo. The question that was asked was: "who is this man? Whose son is he? He was nobody; an unknown quantity in the elder's game.
He was also not parading degrees. On the surface therefore, Ayo Fayose had looked like a Shakespearean jester who was only needed to treat the Ekiti audience to a comic interlude while the main characters got themselves prepared in the wings to storm the centre stage. The jester stole the show. He held the audience spell-bound and even when the prompter asked that he should leave the stage, the ovation kept rising higher.
Because he came from no clear background, Fayose had to do more battles than necessary to win every little space. Though reputed to have built the Ekiti PDP from scratch after the abysmal showing of the party in the 1998 elections, he fought hard to win the party's ticket for the April 2003 governorship elections. Perhaps, his strength was in knowing early enough that he was moving against an established order and he needed long planning to create any offset. Long before the PDP primaries, he had begun his populist sermons. His star programme was water distribution to the residents of Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.
He intensified efforts in this direction when the battle lines in Ekiti State became drawn between the PDP and the AD. While he preached what he could do if voted governor, his opponents including certain elements in the PDP preached his unsuitability as Governor of a State that prides itself as the "Fountain of Knowledge" Fayose was derided as uncouth, uneducated and unfit both in knowledge and character to govern Ekiti State which reportedly has more professors than the rest of the Southwest combined.
They missed the point. They failed to appreciate the point that beyond the loud claims to scholarship, Ekiti State is still largely a collection of rural communities which understand practical language better than the esoteric postulations of intellectuals. Fayose managed to speak the language that the people understood and at the turning point, the people turned in his direction.
Unlike most governors, Fayose's troubles did not end with his victory at the polls. In fact, the post victory headaches had proved even more difficult to cure. The ranks of his enemies expanded to include two of his siblings " Otunba and Bimpe. They accused the governor of being highhanded even to family members and that was enough to precipitate a dirty family fight in the full glare of the Nigerian media.
Now Fayose is faced with multiple dilemma. He is trying to straighten out paths with the elders in Ekiti politics who feel injured by his sudden ascendancy. He has to also convince Otunba and Bimpe that governorship will come and pass while the Fayose blood brotherhood will remain constant. But his greatest dilemma perhaps is in reconciling his pre-election dreams with the post-election realities on ground. Even if he is willing to play a good guy and live by his word, he has to first invent a workable environment which will include persuading the people to yield to the gale of change which he purports to represent. He grew up the hard way and appears to understand the place of roadside tactics in the governance of a rural setting.
And so, to him it is normal life to stop his convoy, move into a roadside buka and settle down to a bowl of Iyan served with efo. Also, if there is some fire outbreak in some corner in Ado, the governor may likely abort all official duties and run with bare foot to the scene to join ordinary folks of Ekiti to battle the fire.
In effect, he does not miss any opportunity to prove his ordinariness to the people. When a pupil fell off a bike and broke a hand, he stopped his convoy to offer help. The act paid off. One resident of Ekiti proclaimed from the background: "o da mi loju pe eniyan daadia ni e" (I am convinced you are a good man). It is clear that the governor is doing everything to cultivate the ordinary people since the high people in Ekiti refused to be cultivated.
There is a characteristic urgency in his tone. He seems to be in a hurry to make an impression. Remember ever before the start of the governorship race, he was written off as a failure. His task therefore has become doubly enormous. First, to prove his critics wrong and then stamp a Fayose legacy on the state. His motivation actually is to permanently reverse the order so that after him the credentials for leadership selection in Ekiti State shall be less fastidious.
Everything about his personality had been cast in doubt by his opponent. The fact that he read at Ibadan Poly and holds a Higher National Diploma in Laboratory technology was contested. He was not even granted benefit of his names as some quarters posited that he had changed his name somewhere along the line to cover-up some wrong doing.
Having weathered the storm considerably, he now raises both hands in victory. The distractions have thinned down leaving the governor with one main obsession. To prove a point that his governorship may very well turn out the best thing that has happened to Ekiti State since its creation eight years ago.
In fact, the Governor may start talking about 2007 and a second tenure much later. For now, he appears pre-occupied with the task of making a name. He says President Obasanjo is visiting Ekiti in February 2005 and he is doing so many things so that "Baba will leave with a lasting impression". He goes on: "They say the state does not have money. It is a lie o! I have bought brand new coastal and smaller buses, Honda Accord cars and as I speak, Ekiti State is not owing any bank. I construct roads, build housing estates, markets, reconstruct the township stadium. And then look at my poultry scheme. Each of the 20 centres across the state when fully operational shall produce 30 thousand birds every 48 days." All his claims are verifiable. In fact he is the first to throw the challenge: " Go around and confirm things yourself."
Like Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Fayose is haunted by the fear of being adjudged a failure. He does not want to confirm the impression that the old men had of him and this alone is keeping him on the right track. The ultimate beneficiaries of the psychological war between Fayose and the old men are the ordinary people of Ekiti. Perhaps this is one case where the grass and ground around do not suffer in the clash of two elephants.
- Ogbodo is on the staff of The Guardian
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