Penultimate week, our team of editors went to Ado-Ekiti to interview Governor Kayode Fayemi, one of the most cerebral governors in the country today.
Coming a week after the clash between members of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and security agents in the city which left one of his supporters dead, it was not only an interesting but also revealing encounter.
Fayemi was worried about the election and it was obvious. So, when the question was put directly to him, his face became deadpan as he struggled for an answer. That was unusual for a man with a gift of the gab.
“I will hate to alarm the Nigerian public but I think we are in for a very tough time in the Ekiti election,” he managed to say, still pokerfaced.
“The violence is a precursor to a well-choreographed partnership between security agents and the ruling party at the centre. This election is not only going to be fought on the grounds of performance. I know that the election sadly has become a proxy war for 2015.
“I am not fighting a local election again; the powers that be elsewhere are rolling in the tanks.”
I left Fayemi’s office that night worried. Why must Nigerian politicians prepare for elections as if they are preparing for war, even when we claim that we are in a democracy? Is election synonymous with war? Must an election be a do-or-die affair?
Granted, those who claim to be students of politics or who have read Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince will tell you that power is not given but taken. Therefore, all there is to struggle for power is intrigues. It is about viciousness and manipulation. The struggle for power brings out the animal in man.
But that is true if we are talking about other forms of governments such as dictatorship, oligarchy, monarchy and aristocracy, in which the people have little or no say in who leads and how the government is run.
A democracy is different. Yes, even in a democracy, there is contest, but power resides with the people who have the inalienable right to decide who governs them. So, democracy can never be war. It is a contest for ideas, policies and programmes. It is a battle to win the hearts and trust of the electorate.
So, why is Nigeria’s brand of democracy different? Why do politicians here want power at all costs? Why did a standalone election in a state like Ekiti, one of the smallest in Nigeria with little or no resources, generate so much heat? Is it that the electorate in Ekiti are so daft that they don’t know what is good for them?
Fortunately, all the contestants, to borrow a local parlance, are “sons of the soil.” So, are the people not discerning enough to make correct judgements? In any case, democracy does not guarantee that the best candidate must win. No! We have seen in advanced democracies where the best and brightest lose elections. But the losers respect the outcome of the poll because it is the wish of the people.
Why is ours different? Why is it that 15 years down the road, soldiers must be called out of the barracks for elections? An entire state must be locked down so that election will be held? Why will soldiers stop party members, even if they are governors, from attending the rally of their party in solidarity with the governor standing for election?
That was what happened in Ekiti on Thursday, June 19. The ruling party in the state, the APC, had organised what it called a mega rally to round off its campaign. The colleagues of Fayemi who were coming from other states to join him were prevented from reaching Ado Ekiti.
When I got a text message at 1.19pm from Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, that soldiers had waylaid him on the road, I was not only alarmed but also remembered what Fayemi said about the election being a “proxy war.”
Amaechi wrote: “I have been waylaid by soldiers on Akure/Ekiti road. They are threatening to shoot me. They have chased me to a village called Olurunsogo Ilado in Ondo State.”
I could only imagine his state of mind at that very moment and the possibility that he could be killed there and nothing will happen. Just as the military has denied ever stopping anybody from going for the rally or entering Ekiti, if anything untoward had happened to Amaechi, it would have, at best, been another case of Unknown Soldier.
He said soldiers pointed the gun at him and when I asked him what it was all about, he replied, “I have no idea.”
Amaechi was not allowed to go to Ekiti. Since the aircraft he flew in to Akure Airport had been impounded, he left from there by road.
I have heard some people not only saying that served him right but also asking what he went to Ekiti to do and if Ekiti was his state. Those who ask these questions know what the answers are and they also know that Amaechi committed no crime going to Ekiti.
It is within his fundamental rights to associate with whomever he chooses and to be in any part of the country when he wants.
But assuming without conceding that it is now a crime for a high-ranking government official to attend a political rally in a state other than his or to visit such a state with or without the intention of attending a rally, while was the Minister of State for Defence, Musiliu Obanikoro, a Lagosian, allowed free passage at the same time that Amaechi and others were stopped?
Why was the Minister of Police Affairs, Abdul-Jeleel Adesiyan, allowed into Ekiti State?
In opting for democracy, Nigeria is not re-inventing the wheel. Neither is the act of conducting an election a rocket science. We have seen India, a country with a population of 1.237 billion people (as of 2012), and a world record of 815 million eligible voters in over one million polling stations conduct a seamless election recently.
Soldiers were not drafted on the streets, the country was not locked down. The opposition party defeated the ruling party. The defeated Prime Minister said Indians had spoken and congratulated the winner, and India as a country and Indians are better for it.
But in Nigeria, because election is to be conducted in Ekiti, whose population is perhaps not up to the population of eligible voters in one of the one million polling units in India, there is so much tension, an entire state is shut down for days, nobody comes in and nobody goes out, schools, markets are closed and other forms of economic activity come to a standstill and we claim to be making progress.
We can delude ourselves but not the outside world.
If 15 years after of democracy we cannot conduct an election, the simplest event in a democratic process, in one state without bringing out soldiers on the street to intimidate people, that is a real shame.