On Saturday, this week, national attention will shift to Ekiti State where an off-season governorship election is holding to elect outgoing Governor Kayode Fayemi’s successor. The Ekiti election is, of course, a referendum of sorts on Fayemi and his predecessor, Ayodele Fayose, who are acting in concert to hold down power in their “political domain”.
But the people are expected to deploy their votes in determining their fates and those of their protégés who are candidates in the election, to wit: Biodun Oyebanji, who is Fayemi’s anointed candidate on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Bisi Kolawole who is the anointed candidate of Fayose on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party-whether or not, they will be indulged to continue their domination of the political ecosystem of Ekiti as godfathers or as godsons.
Saturday’s poll is a three-horse race. Whereas, in previous governorship polls in Ekiti, the governorship contests had always been a two-horse race; this time round, providence has altered and consequentially expanded the political landscape in such a fundamental manner that a former governor of the state, Asiwaju Segun Oni, of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), is going into the election as the people’s anointed candidate of the “Ekiti ko’ya; o to ge” electoral revolutionary movement that is targeted against desperate power mongers and odious political godfathers and their proxies in the APC and PDP.
The Oni candidature has, indeed, generated a lot of interests and this is quite understandable. As a former governor of the state, he performed creditably in the management and deployment of public finance to build both tangible and intangible infrastructures. Ekiti people did not find it difficult relating with the Oni administration.
They still remember very vividly, and with nolstagia, his achievements and how significantly and positively the administration impacted on the state. Oni’s excellent performance has been writ large even after 12 years of his sudden exit from office in 2010 . He is very popular and can ride on his legacy of achievements back to power. The plot of the forces who are desperate to ensure that Oni does not return as governor was to block his emergence as candidate on the platforms of the APC and the PDP. He was blocked in 2018 by Fayemi who deployed his famed “Abuja might” and war chest to “defeat” him in the party’s compromised primary election.
The self-acclaimed owners of Ekiti State introduced the same shenanigans in the PDP primary election early this year to deny Oni the governorship ticket. Bravo! Their stratagem of ensuring that he did not emerge on the ballot of the June 18 governorship poll on the platform of the PDP had materialised in their calculations. There was festivity. Instructively, there were media exposures of Fayose’s visit to Fayemi at the end of the guber primary poll, perhaps, to report back to him that the mission had been accomplished.
Fayemi and Fayose had thought that by ensuring Oni did not run on the platforms of either the APC or the PDP, they would have successfully short-circuited his guber dream. But many concerned leaders of the state, who believe in Oni’s leadership and capacity to take back the state from the captivity of political buccaneers and reposition it on the path of greatness, set to work to search out an appropriate political platform with which to push through his governorship since there is no constitutional provision for independent candidates. Enter the Social Democratic Party (SDP) around which consensus was built to project the will of the people as typified by Asiwaju Segun Oni.
Since the crystallisation of the people’s approbation of Oni on the SDP platform, the waves of the apocalypse have relentlessly buffeted and, indeed, engulfed the notorious leadership guards holding down the state by the jugular and subjugating it under their brazenly byzantine political tradition of transactional leadership, a leadership that draws limited support from their politics of prebendalism and from which arrangement, a 101 percent loyalty is always expected, all at the expense of the common good. And, this is where the Oni phenomenon is different. Oni’s seemingly phantasmagoric but certainly surreal political effect is people-inspired. The movement to take back Ekiti is an incredibly huge political Evangelism that is much bigger than Oni himself.
I have quietly analysed and appreciated the multi-dimensional electioneering, mobilisation and sensitisation strategies adopted by Ekiti people for Oni on the SDP platform and I must say these have incredibly built a huge momentum for his potential victory on June 18. I will return to the multi-dimensional strategies shortly. The SDP platform and Oni’s persona have also somewhat benefitted from a rare symbiosis or complementarity of solid pedigrees, particularly when it is recalled that it is the same SDP and the logo of a white jumping horse (which the people now refer to in their voting sensitisation drive to the unedicated as ‘Esin fufun, gbera’, meaning jumping white horse) that propelled the “MKO Abiola effect” in the famed June 12, 1993 presidential election victory, which the then junta mismanaged to the peril of the Third Republic.
It is against the backdrop of the historical antecedents of the SDP identity that stimulates a sense of nostalgia and Oni’s body of legacies in his governance of Ekiti from 2007 to 2010 when the verdict of the Court of Appeal in Ilorin terminated the glorious era that a collective summons was issued to compel Oni as Asiwaju (leader of his people) to lead Ekiti people from the front in the collective battle to put an end to maladministration of the state and mismanagement of the commonwealth that inexorably sustains poverty of and suffering by the people. And this brings me back to the strategic electioneering by the people for a historic endorsement of Oni in the June 18 referendum in Ekiti that is expected to upend the reign and political dynasty of the oppressors of the people.
So much emotions, efforts and commitments have been invested in the liberation movement that is exemplified by the mantra of “Ekiti Ko’ya; O to ge” meaning “Ekiti people reject suffering; enough is enough”. I watched a video clip shared with me by a friend which captured a typical morning in a community in Ekiti. Someone used a hand-held Church bell to usher people into a brand new day. As he rang the bell, he proclaimed: “Oni a san wa o”, meaning “today will favour us.” The intended pun was on Oni’s name to drive in the people’s consciousness the political cum electoral mission ahead.
I watched another video clip from another locality in Ekiti during an SDP outing. The women passed across their message of solidarity in a song that was particularly touching: “Asiwaju ko gbo do bale, e gbe; Oni ko good bale, e gbe.” It is transliterated thus: “Support Asiwaju Oni to make sure he does not fall or fail.” It has been an incredible movement freely and passionately energised by the people. The people power has come alive in Ekiti, sending a clear message of outright rejection to the political godfathers in the APC and the PDP.
Interestingly, the people have adequately sensitised themselves to reject vote-buying, which as expected would be the last resort of desperate power mongers in a bid to survive the rage of the people. But the good news is that a vast majority of the people have crossed the Rubicorn on the issue of ushering a new season into the socioeconomic and political ecosystem of Ekiti State.
The presence of APC’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the final grand campaign rally of the party’s guber candidate is too late to reverse the political cross currents between the people’s will and any support for the APC’s guber candidate. I want to believe that Tinubu’s real disposition is tilted towards allowing the will of the people to prevail in a liberal process of democratic choice of governor.
And, just before the June 18 referendum, in rounding off this intervention, I expect that the security agencies, especially the Department of State Services, should have by now harvested situation reports and analysed the same to reach a conclusion on the direction that the vast majority of the people have decided to go. Security intelligence must have been shared up to the table of President Muhammadu Buhari. One expects and appeals that necessary pro-people decisions are taken to ensure that government machinery is not deployed in resisting the people’s will. I rest my case.
● Sufuyan Ojeifo contributed this piece via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com
