In Ekiti, the words of Charles Dickens thunders with aptness like never before. These are the best of times, and these are the worst of times. The classic line from the novel, “A Tale of Two Cities”, captures the unfolding happenings in the state as build up to the June 21st governorship poll draws to an end.
The period has seen intense politicking, horse-trading, carpet crossing, accusations and counter-accusations and doubtless, the stakes are high judging by the mounting anxieties and spiralling politically motivated violence. Only yesterday, the police in a brazen show of force and unhidden partisanship rained a hail of bullets on a street rally led by Senator Babafemi Ojudu. When the smoke cleared, a man laid still in dead, despatched to the great beyond and many others injured. The Governor’s car was fired upon. A security detail attached to him was battered on the order of a thuggish police officer who led the assault. His name is Michael Seleke, reportedly a onetime aid de camp to President Goodluck Jonathan when he was deputy governor in Bayelsa. He gave security cover for some elements within the Peoples Democratic Party to wreak havoc. It is not unlikely that such a character is a registered member of the party with a task to either deliver victory for Fayose or destabilize the state.
For democracy to thrive, competition for power is allowed with the ambit of the law. It requires campaigning and canvassing one’s ideas but resorting to violence is abhorrent, ugly and generally repulsive. It is particularly worrisome when officials of the state who are expected by their calling to maintain a dignifying aloofness are rabid partisans. Hounding, harassing, maiming and executing members of the All Progressive Congress, (APC), or any other party is not in conformity with universal known notion of democracy. Such actions ought to be denounced and any member of the Police found wanting is expected to be prosecuted. Fayose’s re-assurances of comporting himself in a decent manner has since fallen flat on the face given that some of his supporters were seen partnering with the police to assault the people.
Unexpectedly, there all manners of pundits, commentators and partisans who refer to the race as a three horse race, citing the incumbent, Governor Kayode Fayemi, former governor Ayodele Fayose and Honourable Michael Opeyemi Bamidele as the main contestants. Some saying that it is a straight fight between the incumbent JKF and the former governor, given the alliance between PDP and Labour Party in Abuja. Many others maintain that it is a certainty that JKF is the man whom the cap fits. I share this view.
The President was in Ekiti over the weekend to campaign for his party and its candidate. They regurgitated tissues of lies, half-truths and concocted statistics to justify Fayose’s purported excellence whilst governor between 2003 and 2006. Perhaps they forgot that their desperation to re-write history cannot fly, simply because of facts. With the PDP, there is no need to cast pearls before a swine.
A philosopher once said, “If you don’t have the facts, quote the law, if you don’t have the law on your side, resort to facts, if you don’t have either the facts or the law on your side, then simply shout”. In Ekiti, the song is “never again”. Paul Kigame recently said, “Historical clarity is a duty of memory that we cannot escape. Behind the words “never again”, there is a story whose truth must be told in full, no matter how uncomfortable”. The verdict of history has turned full circle and it is obvious that Fayose belongs to an infamous past, one that will never resurrect again!
May 29, 2003, cursed is that day. Jeremiah and Job would have said, of the day as when malediction, punishment, violence, killings and grief descended on the state with reckless abandon. Many remember that day as a day in infamy. That day, light was snuffed out and replaced with darkness, sadness and lamentations. To paraphrase the Bible: By night we yearned for dawn, at dawn we prayed for the night to come. From that day on I was like a man who feels blindness overtaking him: I looked and stared, desperate to retain it all. Doom was palpable!
He superintended over a sustained assault against reason, individual liberty and was a public nuisance. Fear was endemic, so was alienation of the people. The potential for manipulating the election is now real as all doubt has been aggressively erased, not with the recent assassination attempt on Fayemi. The combination of the police and the PDP in intimidating the electorates will not fly. This election is a genuine and not a manipulative conversation about our future. Barry Glassener, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, argues that there are three techniques that together make up “fearmongering”: repetition, making the irregular seems regular, and misdirection. By using these narrative tools by both the Police and PDP in Ekiti, there is a deliberate attempt to make the prospective voters anxious for nothing, fearful and distorting public discourse and reason.
To be sure, we still have our ideas about public matters in Ekiti intact. Resilience, widespread support, performance has seen this government thus far. Again, we need to be clear about the relationship between Fayemi and the people, the majority of the people. A climate of fear, intimidation, and harassment will not de-rail the resolve of an enlightened people to cast their vote for JKF.
Given that Fayose and the several other candidates are trailing far behind in opinion polls and appears with no possibility of clinching the trophy, it is safe to assume that, the sparks of unprovoked violence are the last kicks of a dying horse. The evil men does lives after them say Shakespeare. Fayose has consigned himself to a fate well deserving. Now that he is fast losing sleep and his collaboration with the police is evident, vigilance of the electorates is demanded more than ever.
This is a moral moment. Happily, with the former governor, it is once beaten, twice shy! As for jokers, their true worth will be revealed by June 21st. The Police will know that in Ekiti, an informed citizenry is a true repository of the public will. As Martin Luther once prayed, “we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us”.
ROTIMI OPEYEOLUWA
Legislative Aide to Senator Babafemi Ojudu and Coordinator of the Young Patriots in the South West
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