There are many people still in shock over the outcome of the governorship election in Ekiti, the state that prides itself as the “fountain of knowledge,” penultimate Saturday. Some discerning political analysts were caught napping because many of them had called the poll for Governor John Kayode Fayemi (JFK). And why not?
Fayemi had everything going for him. He is the incumbent in a country where incumbency is everything in elections. He is educated, urbane and suave, and has mastered the nuances of the political elite. In a state that has, perhaps, produced the highest number of professors in Nigeria, these factors ought to count in an election.
Besides, many in Ekiti admit that despite the very lean purse of the state, Fayemi has delivered the dividends of democracy in the three and a half years he has been in the saddle.
But while all this is true, the fact remains that democracy, in the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, is “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
The dictionary defines democracy as “government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.”
It is a government upheld by all freedom loving people, not just a select few guardian angels, no matter how intelligent and rich. At the core of any democracy are the people.
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Ayodele Fayose, won not because Fayemi failed to deliver on the promises he made almost four years ago or any misdemeanour in office.
Fayemi lost because the good people of Ekiti, highly educated, politically savvy and articulate, preferred Fayose, the man hounded out of office eight years ago by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the vocal elite minority, a man who still has charges of corruption and a murder rap on his neck.
That may not make sense ordinarily and as Fayemi noted in his speech, with the outcome of the elections, “a new sociology of the Ekiti people may have evolved”.
Yet, Fayose’s lanslide victory is quintessential democracy. The choice of the people may not always be the best. Democracy neither guarantees perfection nor government by angels. The only thing it does is to give the people what they want. Ekiti people wanted Fayose as their governor and Fayose they have got.
Of course, Fayose couldn’t have won if he was not a candidate. And he couldn’t have been a candidate if the PDP didn’t allow internal democracy to prevail in the primaries. Fayose kicked against the idea of a consensus candidate in the primaries, another name for an imposed candidate in Nigerian politics.
As he himself pointed out the other day, if the party had adopted a consensus candidate, that person wouldn’t have been Fayose and the PDP wouldn’t have won the governorship.
But President Goodluck Jonathan stepped in, insisting that the party must conduct a primary election, and when the most popular candidate won, he stood by him.
If anybody needs to be congratulated, it is Jonathan. By prevailing on the party to allow due democratic process in Ekiti, he has affirmed that the wheel of democracy is lubricated when the people exercise their sovereign right.
Democracy is not a rocket science. And we are not reinventing the wheel. All we need do, if we want democracy to endure, is allow the people, the pivot on which the wheel revolves, to own the process as done in other democracies in the world.
I have lamented often in this column that the bane of our democracy is that it lacks the people quotient. We claim to be in a democracy where the major actors are not democrats. We are in a democracy where, in the calculations politicians make on how to win elections, the people come last, if factored in at all.
Of the two major political parties – the PDP and the APC – the All Progressives Congress (APC) is the worst culprit, a culture carried over from the days of Alliance for Democracy (AD).
At the height of the arrogance in 2011, former Chairman of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Bisi Akande, said the party did not believe in free and fair primaries. For anyone to be something in the ACN, he must go on pilgrimage to Bourdillon Street in Ikoyi, Lagos. Even now that the ACN has become part of a national party, the APC, the tendency to stifle internal democracy is still there.
But what happened in Ekiti indicates that the people have not only become wiser but are ready to own this process as it should be, and may not tolerate the shenanigans of overbearing political godfathers any more.
For making this reality to dawn on everyone, Fasoye deserves all the accolades he is getting. As Dr. Olatunji Dare grudgingly admitted in his column in The Nation on Tuesday, June 24, “Fayose’s return to power eight years after he was disgraced out of office is one of the most amazing political comebacks not just in Nigeria but anywhere. He deserves to be congratulated.”
For his exemplary sportsmanship, Fayemi also deserves a pat on the back. A few hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced the result of the poll, Fayemi called the man who defeated him to concede and also made a broadcast.
“If indeed this is the will of the Ekiti people, I stand in deference to your will. If the result of the election is an expression of the voice of our people, we must all heed your voice,” Fayemi said, holding his head high.
“We are proud that with the support of Ekiti people, we have raised the bar of excellence in governance. In all, we gave our best, for conscience and for posterity …. For us as an administration and a cadre of political leaders in Ekiti State, we have fought a good fight, we have kept the faith.”
I pinched myself to confirm if this is real and if this is actually happening in Nigeria. The implication of Fayemi’s gesture is that Fayose will hit the ground running without the baggage of legal challenge.
He will concentrate on the job without looking back to know what intrigues the opposition party is up to. He will use the Ekiti money he would have spent on hiring Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to defend his victory in court to work for the state.
If he fails, he will have himself to blame.
Four years down the road, Ekiti people will decide if the critical decision they made on June 21, 2014 was right or wrong and act accordingly. That is the essence of democracy.
For democracy in Nigeria, therefore, the outcome of the Ekiti governorship poll may, indeed, be a new dawn.
