Ekiti unfinished businesses (3)

BY this time next week, Ekiti or more appropriately, about 26 per cent of her 2,384,212 people, would have made a four-year deal, ceteri paribus. Didn’t about 29,432.083 million voters make such a deal for close to 200 million Nigerians three years back? Our voting record is just as atrocious as our literacy level and just as our poverty level.

So, what is really positive and moving in this nation? Okay, we used to be the world happiest. Are we still that fun or simply raucous? Then a lousy report harassed the Nigerian woman as the face of global marital infidelity. Is it likely that Nigerian husbands are still most renowned cuckolds? I don’t know but in that recent past when food was being stolen from burning coal, out of emblematic nationwide hunger, anything could happen in households without staples and hussies were unpaid civil servants. Lord have mercy.

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In a state with 931, 334 registered voters, which is a record on its own, because the governor was up and doing about it, about 280,000 Permanent Voter’s Cards were said to be unclaimed, by INEC admission and a whopping 35 political parties are running the July 14 election. So, what exactly had the candidates been doing, to prime the voters for the big day? I guess, they were busy looking for cash to buy the about 630,000 PVCs in circulation. Everybody wants the cooked, tasty soup. Nobody was mobilising the disinterested voters to pick the instrument of the one-day oppression, when the voter is king and kilishi would be laid before him, in the presence of his enemies. Yes, the politicians that would court the voters on the big day are the real enemies, the oppressors without recess.

By the evening of July 14 or any voting day, everybody resumes his roles; the voters back to the trash-site for discarded crumbs and the elected officials, back to the chicken-hub, for the fattest, chunky laps.

Nothing would be said here or anywhere, to change the mindset of voters not getting paid for their votes. Bribe-for-vote is cultural now. I fear that by the time we are dumping this despicable democratic habit, something much more debasing will replace it. Until then.

Ekiti is the supposed home of knowledge, book knowledge but it seems more of home of paradox. Loaded to be free and galloping, held down and whimpering. Her known sons and daughters speak highfalutin grammar elsewhere and everywhere but the state. Did they deliberately abandon her to political jackals? Has too much knowledge, become so disconnecting and disorientating, that the locals prefer the supposed pedestrian leaders to the self-canonised princely philosophers of idealism?

Say what you can, Ayo Fayose, the least educated of the governors in Ekiti state, is arguably the most successful. I wasn’t told. I have always known Ekiti state, with the coming of this dispensation. You ask what I was looking for? That is my business. One major cloud on his strides in the state is his poorly-concealed passion to be nationally-relevant, starting with helping OBJ to search for a successor and forcing himself into Aremu’s furnace, all in the name of being a power-bloke. His fluke impeachment cast a pall on his much-acknowledged achievements as a rookie governor. He was as raw with delivering as with gubernatorial conducts. He came back with more life lessons, but little changes in his innateness. His oppositional duties, this time, have also overshadowed his bold imprints on infrastructure which I saw firsthand. Whenever and wherever his name is mentioned today, the first imagery is a Buhari heckler which isn’t bad on its own, only that, it is a legacy with a lifespan of an untethered Abiku. It appears too late for Fayose to tell the story of his positive engagement with the state, without the necessary contaminations of roiling oppositional role and election funding, rigging saga. But Fayose can take a bow and if Nigerians succeeded in offloading Buhari to Daura next year, he can thump his chest too. His unfinished business with the state is for posterity to wrap up.

With all the noise over this election, commonsense will still be a loser. Votes may significantly count, but they would be come-and-buy-me votes, already attracting varying obscene budgets from candidates’ camps. It will be an election of long-throat infrastructure. The kind of governance it will berth needs no magnifying glasses to decode. Politics, politicians, cronies and hangers-on, would be the real winners for the next four years, whether it is Eleka, Kayode or an also-ran.

Yes, 2019 could also receive a jolt from it, especially if Fayemi is beaten. The election could also shake things up in neighbouring Osun State, if either of the two front-rowers won. But the depressing cycle of an election year, won’t be brightened because nothing looks different, from all angles; INEC, electorate, politicians, godfathers, supporting moneybags et al.

The unfinished businesses in the state would never finish with anybody’s win, including the prospective comeback kid. Same way, Buhari’s second term, would not bring a closure to the depressive market Nigerians are currently subjected to. But politicians would a day, finish their election businesses after serving out constitutional terms and even if limitless like the legislature, someday, something will give way like it did for Ogbuagu himself, Arthur “tumbling” Nzeribe. Though alive, nature has helped him complete his self-assigned “assignment”. The same way it is for Ibrahim Babangida.

Whatever their likes are doing behind doors now, the effects would be largely limited to their exotic but deserted toxic living room. That is the unfinished business; men should be more worried about the conclusiveness. Considering the unpleasantness that largely governs how it has been ending for too many political leaders, starting from when we got into organised crime of politics, the frenzy over Ekiti election and 2019 should be saved for those who would end well among those making their nations and states unwell today. Unlike Osun, where God clearly revealed to me in a vision who would succeed the incumbent, I received no spiritual direction on Ekiti. But if I had a vote, it would go to the one with celebrated humility of the two probables. Even my Father in heaven says He would resist the proud. Like Father, like son.

(Concluded)