On Thursday, 28 September in Abuja, Fayose made the declaration, giving reasons why he would contest; why he felt he was qualified and competent for the job; and why Nigerians should elect him. It was as if he stirred the hornets’ nest. One of the first to react was the PDP National Caretaker Committee’s Publicity Secretary, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, decrying the Fayose declaration and declaring it a red herring. Whereas Adeyeye, himself from Ekiti, has his own axe to grind with Fayose over the local politics of Ekiti, we now know for sure he did not act alone in distancing the Caretaker Committee from Fayose’s ambition. Last week, the Caretaker Committee’s chairman, ex-governor Ahmed Markafi, revealed that the committee actually asked Adeyeye to issue the rebuttal. Markafi himself could not have acted altruistically, since he also nurtures presidential ambitions.
Reactions to Fayose’s presidential ambition have ranged from the strange to the macabre. Kashamu Buruji, who, in cahoots with Ali Modu Sheriff, took PDP to the gate of Dante’s Hell before the resolute stand of a few party leaders like Fayose and Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State and the Supreme Court rescued the party, has charged Fayose with anti-party activities! Which party: The one he and Sheriff almost killed, prompting ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo to declare the party dead when the self-same Sheriff met with the Ota farmer behind closed doors?
Last week, some Northern leaders (hitherto frightened and rendered reclusive by the EFCC!) found their voice again, not to tackle the APC-led Muhammadu Buhari over the avalanche of issues traumatising our people and nation, but to fire salvos at Fayose over his presidential declaration. The most amusing, even pathetic, of them all was Professor Jerry Gana, who was reported to have said: “Whatever the Fayoses of this world may be doing, the party has resolved that the presidential candidate will come from one of the three zones in the North” So there are now “three zones in the North;” and the North is monolithic! So there is no longer a Middle Belt, which Gana stood on rooftops to declare was not part of the North! Gana had asked that we tell the North, in the heat of the restructuring debate, that the Middle Belt is not Arewa. He had said in the event of Nigeria’s break-up, the Middle Belt would not go with the North. Northern leaders had laughed him to scorn, assuring that they knew how to tame the likes of Gana and his co-travellers. Arewa fore-fathers subdued the ancestors of today’s Jerry Gana and the scions of Arewa boasted they knew how to silence the irritants mouthing profane words against a monolithic North. We now know who was speaking the truth! When the chips are down, I mean when push becomes shoving, Arewa will whip the Middle Belt into line. Southern leaders should please take note.
Sincerely speaking, many of those commenting on Fayose’s declaration have not been fair to him. Adeyeye is Ekiti like Fayose and will remain so after his national assignment. He and Fayose still have so much to do together. Let him also remember the Yoruba adage: “Ti a ba ran ni n’ise eru, k’a fi t’omo jee” I have no word for Buruji and his ilk than to ask them to shut up and get lost! Left to Buruji, Sheriff, and their fellow travellers, there would be no PDP today. Buruji, therefore, cannot pretend to have the interest of the party at heart. If anything, his riposte at Fayose is to demonstrate his anger that Fayose led the party faithful who snatched PDP from Sheriff’s hands. As for the other PDP leaders calling for Fayose’s head, it is too early for them to forget the heroics of Fayose for the same party. Is their memory so short like Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels posit? While they all cowered, it was Fayose, and to some extent Wike, who stood the ground and took the fight to the APC-led Buhari administration. Fayose especially became the last man standing, neither wavering nor tiring but holding Buhari’s feet to the fire and speaking truth to power. It is too early to reward him with such malevolent ingratitude.
Now to the crux of the matter: Is Fayose qualified to contest for president in 2019 on PDP’s platform? The answer is a resounding “yes.” The constitution of the country guarantees him this right and any other law, such as party constitution, rules, regulations, and conventions to the contrary are null and void and of no effect to the extent of that inconsistency. Even a lay man like me know that much! Secondly, the PDP constitution also guarantees Fayose the right to contest. What those opposing Fayose’s stance are flaunting is the Port-Harcourt Convention of the party which zoned some offices along the North/South political divide. At best, this is a “gentleman’s agreement” or an administrative convenience meant to avoid rancour in the party and ensure fairness and equity so that everyone could be carried along. In doing this, great care must be taken to ensure that no one’s constitutionally-enshrined rights are abridged; otherwise, there could be litigations and the party may pay dearly for it. Careful about this, the party had, in the past while zoning offices, employed negotiation and consultation, which are the fulcrum of democracy. Carrying stakeholders along through persuasion and negotiations, not bullying or insulting them, has done the trick. Even after this, the party had also been careful enough to allow anyone still bent on exercising their constitutional rights to contest against zoning, as it were, to do so; if only to fulfil all righteousness. So, we have this precedent on ground – and it is a weighty one.
That way, the party had killed two or more birds with a single stone. Offices have been zoned but all interested candidates have also been allowed to exercise their rights to contest. This way, zoning and democracy had reinforced each other. A win-win situation had thus emerged. This had been the practice in the past. Why some people afraid to toe the same line this time around is because of the stature and pedigree of the personality coming to battle. Fayose is not an ordinary party leader or contestant; he is not even an ordinary state governor. Everyone had seen his heroics in the past two years; so everyone is aware he can turn the apple cart. He is brave, bold, and courageous. He is prophetic and divinely-inspired. He commands a large following. In fact, Fayose is one political leader from the South-west in recent memory to command a cult-like rating outside his South-west enclave; most especially in the South-east and South-south. This is the fear of his political opponents. Yet, it will not be easy to brow-beat Fayose. I must admit that the PDP has a mouthful here but I dare to say the way some of its leaders have chosen to go about it may prove counter-productive. Can they stand a Fayose standing against the party? Can they afford to lose this ‘enfant terrible’ with all the goodwill and support base he commands? While it is trite that no man is indispensable, your guess is as good as mine.
Now to the all-important question: Does Fayose stand a chance in the 2019 presidential election? There are those who mock and laugh him to scorn; they think he is chasing shadows and engaging in a wild goose’s chase. There are others who think Fayose is an attention-seeker and noise-maker. For those in the above categories, Fayose, at best, only wants to improve his curriculum vitae as an “also-ran.” There is the school of thought which says Fayose is doing all of this to avoid EFCC prosecution when he leaves office in 2018. To arrest a presidential candidate or aspirant making waves will be roundly criticised as political intolerance and witch-hunt carried too far. Another group sees the Fayose presidential aspiration as a carefully-conceived plot targeted at making him presidential running-mate in 2019. Only Fayose and a few of his close circle of relatives, friends, and aides believe he is actually destined for the presidency.
Habakkuk 2: 1 – 3 says: “I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” In the early hours of October 16, 2006, Gov. Fayose paced up and down the Government House, Ekiti – betrayed, deserted, lonely, hounded, harassed, confused, and confounded – and the clock ticked by. He had very unpleasant decisions to take – and he must be fast about it. Troops had surrounded the Government House – and more were on the way, sent by the President and Commander-in-Chief. With bated breath, he managed to steal away in the booth of a two-door, rickety, jalopy car. It was the lowest point of his life but, then, God spoke: “Like I did unto Nebuchadnezzar, I will return you to this place in glory.” Unbelievable but exactly eight years after – on October 16, 2014, Fayose took the oath of office for his second term as governor of Ekiti state. The same God, he says, has again spoken! Little wonder, then, that like Saul of Tarsus after his experience on the road to Damascus, Fayose needs neither yours nor mine’s prodding; and all the mockers in this world will not sway or discourage him. Did God actually speak, and if He did, will He at this time deliver the presidency to Fayose – Acts 1: 6 & 7? Time, as they say, will tell!
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and then