By Peter Claver Oparah
The attack by the mobile police on Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti state, Babafemi Ojudu, a serving senator, the leadership and supporters of the All Progressives Congress in Ekiti who were holding a peaceful rally forewarns of the dangers ahead as 2015 approaches. The attack was provocative and is a direct umbrage and assault on the constitution and an affront to the people of the state. It was meant to point the way the Jonathan presidency and the PDP hopes to overwhelm and over run the country as he dreams of continuing in the office they have collectively ridiculed and minimized since 2010 unfurls.
The attack adds to a rich list of worrying predilection to illegality, irascible exuberance, dread and impunity that the Jonathan presidency and the PDP are employing to serve notice of their readiness to trample on the rules, the laws and existing ordinances so as to appropriate an increasingly hostile political clime that had been made more hostile by their dour and humbling performance in power, which had attracted hefty international condemnation and ridicule. The desire not to take enemies by Jonathan and his tendency had led to deep fissures within the PDP and this led to a mass exodus that had considerably weakened its strength and resolve to continually annex power through foul electoral practices. That Jonathan and his PDP have been engaging in expensive campaign rallies and road shows even when party campaigns are yet to be flagged off, says a lot of the damage the unilateral quest of Jonathan and his clique for continuity had inflicted on the PDP.
That a sitting governor, the chief security officer of his state, the embodiment of the constitution of his state should be set upon by commissioned police officers, claiming directive ‘from above’ and that the sacred office of the governor should be so violated in such impudent manner, speaks of the ensuing dangers ahead. It speaks of a democracy imperiled and it launders the gargantuan impunity and lawlessness that continue to dog our so called democracy such that it remains a stunted democracy fifteen years after it berthed as a nascent democracy. The show of shame in Ekiti where a police officer sabotaged and held hostage the democratic institution forewarns of the endangered and mutilated form of democracy we have in Nigeria; subjected to the inordinate whims and idiosyncrasies of one man and his cahoots.
The attack on Governor Fayemi is coming on the heels of the shameful and primitive way soldiers have been commissioned to attack and wrestle down newspapers and curtail the free press and coming just at the same time the aircraft of Governor Chibuike Amaechi was grounded in Kano on silly suspicion that he was supportive of the emergence of former Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido. Sanisu was removed from office for revealing a whopping multi-billon dollar scandal perpetrated by the Jonathan government, as the Emir of Kano. These and many other cases of clear exasperation point to the imminence of many more crackdowns and a widened impunity forte that will be unleashed in the days to come.
The contest in Ekiti is well projected given that the two leading candidates are clear contrasts of each other. Fayose’s enforced stint as Ekiti governor was a bloody, tragic era when murder, impunity, lawlessness and all manners of outlawry were employed to violate the tranquility of the sedate state. It was a period Ekiti trust into the national limelight for all the wrong reasons and witnessed a dearth in development and progress as the largely internal PDP bickering lasted. Lives were lost, limbs were severed and governance screeched to a halt as the fierce contests for fortes lasted. Fayose himself was impeached as governor for reasons of corruption and till today, he has corruption and murder charges hanging on his neck. In contrast, incumbent governor, Kayode Fayemi is a suave, urbane, cool and calculated scholar, pro-democracy fighter, politician and administrator. He had brought these lofty personal traits to not only reduce the tension that reigned in Ekiti prior to his coming but also to positively impact on governance resulting in massive achievements in the nearly four years he had been in power. While his academic pedigree is redoubtable, Fayose’s remains shrouded in conjectures.
What more, going to the contest for the governorship stool on June 21, Fayose has a tattered house bristling with malcontent and reservations about his candidature, from his co-contestants to the PDP ticket, Fayemi has an impregnable and coherent structure that had harvested the very best and brightest in Ekiti PDP in the person of former governor, Segun Oni.
The difference between the two candidates is like that between two parallels. It is like what separates day from night, darkness from light, black from white. It is as clear as contrast might be. So it presents alternatives, it presents choices, it presents jarring opposites from which voters in Ekiti must choose. There are no blurred lines, noted herrings, no meeting points, and no similarities.
In deploying the type of brute force that was at display in Ekiti last Sunday, it may be apparent that the PDP doesn’t fancy the chances of its candidate. It is apparent that the resort to crude and illegal self help is meant to awe, intimidate and overwhelm Ekiti voters to go with the most fearful and the most brutal. It is apparent that the PDP is exploiting its notorious alliance with the police to scare Ekiti people to grudgingly go along with it. How well it succeeds in this deadly mission will be revealed in a few days to come. But Ekiti voters and people are not fools that cannot differentiate oranges from apples, even under the nozzle of the gun. They certainly will survive this callous effort to enchant them and force a diseased choice on them.
Peter Claver Oparah is on linkedIn
