It is not in doubt that since the administration of Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti came into office May 2003, things have not remained at ease for the people of the once peaceful state. Of course, the government is more or less of a siege and the people are not finding it funny. In this interview, the immediate past governor of the state, Otunba Niyi Adebayo says Gov. Ayo Fayose has nothing to offer Ekiti people and that Alliance for Democracy is sure taking over come 2007. Excerpts :
What are you doing now ?
Now I am presently working with my wife in partnership in a property consultancy. My wife is the Managing Director and the company appointed me as the Chairman. Also, I am into legal practice, I am in the partnership and we have our partnership office in Victoria Island. We are in the process of getting an office in Abuja now.
A lot of people are still wondering why you conceded defeat without any challenge. What could have led to that?
Basically, I look at it from the angle that I don’t want to aggravate the issue by causing a volatile situation. We were in the situation where members of the Alliance of Democracy (AD) were not happy, because the elections were massively rigged, the police and army personnel were used by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP to rig the elections. Many of our supporters were threatening fire and brimstone but I have to take it upon myself to calm them down and disallow violence. We were able to convince them, that is why we were able to prevent violent reactions. My party followed the democratic process to challenge the candidacy and the jurisdiction of the governor, which was a controversy on its own. However, I take the whole issue from the religious perspective, that nothing happens to man without the knowledge of God.
Can we say now that by what is happening in Ekiti, you have been vindicated?
Yes, I have been vindicated, because the people did not believe the situation before but everybody now looks at what is happening and says definitely, something is going on in the state. I mean throughout my four years tenure, there was no violence, no political assassination, the level of armed robbery in the state was very low. We had a very peaceful tenure. But we have a situation now whereby Ekiti is always in the news with negative reports. This calls for concern. This goes to show that the person ruling or the party ruling in the state does not know what governance is all about.
If they know what governance is all about, the state would not be in its present state now. The amount of revenue they are getting from the federation account is almost three times what we were getting during our time. Any time we read on the pages of the newspapers that they are commissioning projects, I laugh because when they are talking about the state government building markets stalls, I laugh because, building of markets is a local government function.
This is showing the mind-set of the governor in the state. He has the mind set of a local government chairman, so he cannot think above that level. But unfortunately the state will continue to suffer for that.
You said that you did not bother to challenge the election to forestall violence but you are accused of mal-administration by the present government and you have never responded?
No, we did respond to these allegations, but unfortunately the press did not give our responses the publicity they required. When I was in office, especially this Oju-Olobun property controversies, I said it should be investigated if it is found to be true that I bought my father’s property for the state. Even that is not a crime on its own. I promised that I would resign if it is found out that I did that. It was investigated, nobody has done that. The present administration set up a probe panel, the owners of the property were present and nothing was found about my culpability.
Were you at anytime invited by the panel or any other commission, for instance by the EFCC?
I never received any letter from EFCC. I was never invited by any panel. The owners of the property attended the probe panel in Ado-Ekiti and cleared the air. They presented themselves and said we were the ones who sold the property to the state.
The government we are having in Ekiti now is a government of deceit. All they believe is just to blackmail people. They set up a probe panel, requesting memoranda from the members of the public. They can’t find anything from the people of Ekiti State that were said to be petition writers. No memoranda were written by the members of the public against my administration.
They decided to go on with the probe, they went and collected audit queries that have been prepared by the state Auditor-General, using that to continue with the probe panel. In the meantime, all these audit queries have been published by their government. They are just looking for how they will crucify our administration and they have not found anything.
I find all this an indication that the government does not know what to do about making progress. And in order to cover up for their inadequacy, they decided to embark on activities that would blind the eyes of the people to their inadequacies. Now the people are saying enough about this Adebayo’s administration. You have been there for almost two years, what have you done? In one and half years, Adebayo could point at free education, free health programmes and physical developments in the state.
Now, how do you feel about the reversal of the free education policy in the state, knowing full well that the state prides itself on education?
I feel very bad and upset about it. This is because, it is only education that we can give to our people which can lead to their own emancipation from poverty and lead to their development. Some of our people in Ekiti are peasant farmers who cannot afford to send their children to school but to the farm. But if we create a situation whereby we assist them as a government to train their children, they would go to school, even if they will be farmers, they would engage in modern farming. That was what we were trying to do.
If you look at the background of the governor, he is somebody that does not understand the import of what education is all about. For someone like us, I was brought up to believe that every man should have access to basic education. That was why when we got into office, we followed the tenets and principles of our great leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo about education. The first pronouncement I made in getting to office was to pay the students school fees. His (Fayose) government has nothing to do with this. What I learnt about this policy was that during that time, enrolment of school pupils increased. Those that had dropped out of school started coming back. We have to increase the number of secondary schools in the state.
By the time we left office, we had created about 14-15 new secondary schools to take care of the increase in the registration.
They claimed that this led to poor performance. Yes, that was at the initial stage. Even before we left office, we had addressed that problem. What we observed was that we paid free examinations fee for NECO, as a result of that, there was care-free attitude which is normal where people get something for free. When we realised what was happening, we embarked on conducting examinations for every prospective candidate to determine those that would sit for the exams. We said, it is only those who passed the exam that would benefit from the government free examination fees. Now that they are there all these have been cancelled. No more than 50 percent of those that qualify to sit for the exams can do it now because they cannot afford it.
You have said that, you feel bad about what is happening in the state now. As a leader, what do you think is the way out. Do you people want to fold your arms and allow the state to sink?
As a former governor of the state I cannot afford to do that because I am upset that the good works I carried out have been destroyed. The only thing I can do is to make sure that my party becomes stronger and more viable in the state and whenever there is election we can democratically get rid of the present administration that is damaging the state.
Initially when Governor Fayose’s administration came into power, it appeared there was cordiality between the two of you, you and him, why the sudden change?
Look, I always say it, he always threatens to probe my administration, I challenge his government to probe my government. There was nothing I did that I am afraid of. I always say it and I will continue to say it that they have nothing to probe me on. The only noise is the Oju Olobun property. The owners showed up for it and told the panel that we sold the property to the state and that it had nothing to do with Adebayo.
Don’t you feel that invitation was not extended to you because of the temporary set back of the death of the panel’s chairman?
May the soul of the man rest in peace. I feel sorry about the whole situation, but if someone takes up a job or assignment because he wants to be vindictive, God has a way of making his own judgement. Because what happened was that I had a good relationship with this judge. The man was sick and had stroke. I went to visit him at the U.C.H, Ibadan then. I approved fund for him to be treated abroad because I was worried about his health. But when he came back, he thanked me. However when the issue of Ekiti state Chief Judge arose, ordinarily, this man should have been appointed because he was the most senior person. But I felt I would be doing him an injustice due to the state of his health if I recommended him for the office.
Unfortunately, he was not recommended. He took offence at this and decided to take his own pound of flesh by heading the probe panel against my administration. Well, God who is the final judge has judged the situation. It was because of his health I did not appoint him the Chief Judge. He took up an appointment that was too strenuous for him.
You have said you felt bad about things happening in Ekiti State now. What is your party which is in the opposition doing to arrest the situation?
You can read from the dailies that everyday the chairman of our great party is always talking. The party will definitely come back as a vibrant party in the state. You know what happened at the last election, especially in the South-West, no matter how strong a party, when you don’t have gun, you don’t have the police and the soldiers, my friends it would be difficult to do anything. That was exactly what happened during the elections.
I know then that we calmed our people that we didn’t want problem in Nigeria but we have come to a stage now that we will not allow people to deny us of our legitimate rights. Let them realise that we have a right to elect a government of our own choice not the one decided for us in Abuja because they have the arms.
As you said, you are tired of the situation, it is like everybody is tired of the situation?
We have a situation where a man like Bode George comes to Ekiti State to tell us that he is in control of the state. Whenever anything happens in Ekiti State, it is Bode George that runs around, rallying support for him (Fayose).We heard Bode George was running around the authorities to bury the recent attempt to kill PDP chairman in Ado. Is that how to run a country or a state? We have a Chief Security Officer of the state, who is the Governor, always threatening fire and brimstone on the people he is supposed to protect, defend and take care of. Indeed, we have major problems in our hands.
Governor Ayo Fayose recently decided to convert the state owned motel, Fountain Motel to offices. How do you react to this development?
I feel that this Fayose of a man is a very selfish person. The whole idea or concept of expanding the Fountain Motel is to serve as a befitting accommodation for whoever comes for business in the state. The whole idea is to attract people for business to the state. If you want to invite a visitor you must provide a befitting accommodation. When people come, they will have a comfortable place to stay when they come with money. This will definitely have positive impact on the economy of the state.
That is the whole idea of rebuilding that hotel. Now Fayose has decided to turn it into governor’s office. Why? He doesn’t want the hotel. He has built his own hotel. He is comfortable lodging government officials in his own hotel. When the government has visitors they will lodge them in Spotless hotel, Ado Ekiti, which belongs to Fayose.
Not only that, Fayose connected the Government House power generator to this hotel. Whenever power generator is turned on at the Government House, there will be electricity at his hotel. This is very wrong.
So how do you expect him to want the state have a hotel that will be better than his own. I cannot see any other reason why he decided to do that. For your information, we have a design for the governor’s office to be situated at the state secretariat. That was one of the projects earmarked to be carried out if we had returned. In fact, we would have completed the project by now. We had reached an advance stage for the award of the contract. The model was ready.
You talked about the state now getting almost thrice of what you were getting as revenue. Are you sure of this?
I am sure of this. You can check what has been coming from the Federation Account to the state. It is far in excess of what we were receiving during our tenure. So, one cannot but begin to question or talk about what accounted for this. But the most important thing is that the money is going to the state but we do not see what the money is being used for. We were getting less than they are getting today. And we had free health and education services. What are they using the money for now? The governor has spent less than two years and has travelled more than 12 times at government’s expense. Whereas I spent four years and did not traveled more than six times. None of all these was at government’s expense because whenever I was on leave, I travelled at my own expense. He just came back from America and I learnt that he wanted to go back to thank those who hosted him when he traveled.
There were some controversies over the proposed revocation of the Certificate of Occupancy of some individual properties located around the Government House for alleged security reasons?
The governor is just being vindictive about the whole thing. This is because many of those involved are those who served in my administration. The security issue was a ruse. Must government house be on island and keep everybody away? Is it the first government house we are going to see? Are there no houses over viewing Aso Rock in Abuja? Purely, he is just being vindictive and it is not fair. The people involved have taken the matter to court.
How could we establish that the AD is in strong position to challenge the South West states taken away from it by PDP, let alone of winning elections?
You know that AD is strong in South West. You know that the PDP government in the South-West is not popular. You are journalists, go out and listen to what people are saying. The PDP is the most unpopular government in the South West.
So you see AD bouncing back?
Yes, we haven’t gone anywhere. I have the confidence that we are going to reclaim all states in the South West.
Do you still have plan to come back in 2007 in Ekiti state?
As a politician, you never say never, but my options are open.
How do you assess the on-going democratic dispensation?
I say democracy is not an event, but a process. It is something that we nurture to get to perfection. Unfortunately, we would have done better but for the selfish attitude of some of our leaders. But I notice that with time things will improve. Like I said when we were removed from office in 2003, we appealed to our people that we don’t want problems. We are sacrificing ourselves for the future of this country. It surprised everybody that we did not react to the rigging and other things like that. We did not call our supporters to hit the roads. Now we have prepared to sacrifice ourselves, if that would sustain democracy in Nigeria.
Don’t you think you have made enough sacrifice for the last one year?
We have made some sacrifice but if the sacrifice does not yield any dividend, 2007 will come. We have to prove the point, we cannot stay back and allow people to delay the democratic process. Part of the democratic process is insisting that the will of the people prevails. That exactly will be what will happen in 2007.
Is that what you will do in Ekiti State?
Definitely, yes definitely.
There was this challenge to the Ekiti sons and daughters to support the present administration in the state for development?
I will not support an administration that is not focused. I am an Ekiti man, I was brought up as a man of integrity and principle. I believe in certain things and, I will not, because of getting recognition from a governor, compromise those principles and my integrity. If a governor is doing well, I will say he is doing well and if he is doing bad, I will not hide that. So the one we have in Ekiti is not doing well, I cannot support a governor that is not doing well. He has to wake up. Unfortunately he cannot. Rather than use those superior intellectuals; he surrounds himself with mediocrities. This is what is creating problems for us in Ekiti state.
So you don’t see any meaningful development coming to the state?
No, no, you see in the first year they said oh, because AD took us to tribunal, we can’t do anything, please bear with us. If the man has something to do, whether you are in court or not, would that disturb you? After that one they started probe panel. I said this is just to cover up their inadequacies. After one year of probe panel they said bear with us, it is the probe panel. They will always come with an excuse, because they don’t have anything to offer Ekiti people and no direction at all. This is a purposeless government. If the members of their PDP in Ekiti are saying that this is a purposeless government, you know what it means.
Are you not worried with the state of security in the state?
I hope things would change now because all the law enforcement agents, especially the police, the government was using as instrument of operations against the people of the state have been redeployed. I think things would change now. Use of police to harrass innocent people of the state is unbecoming. I believe things would definitely change now.
With the political situation in the state, have you ever got any threat to your life?
Well, I have been hearing various things. I heard of the list of “ twelve people” to be killed in every 12th of every month. I keep hearing plans of mob attack. Sometimes people will phone me, if I want to go home, that I should not come. As I said, I believe strongly in God, it is God that gives life, only He can take it. If my time is not ripe, any weapon fashioned against me shall not prosper.
