By Ikechukwu Amaechi
A week before the June 21, 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State, I led a team of senior editorial staff of TheNiche newspaper to interview the governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, in Ado-Ekiti.
It was a robust engagement but it was obvious he was troubled. Asked what the worry was all about, 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.”
The interview held a week after the clash between members of his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and security agents in Ado-Ekiti which left one of his supporters dead.
On Saturday, July 14, 2018, Ekiti people will go to the polls again to elect a new governor. Though 35 candidates are on the ballot, as it was the case in 2014, it will be a straight fight between the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose candidate, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, is the incumbent deputy governor and political protégé of Governor Ayo Fayose, and the APC whose candidate is the self-same Fayemi.
The unfolding drama in Ekiti reminds me exactly of the events of 2014.
As it was the case then, there is a massive security build-up in Ekiti now. On Wednesday, July 11, armed police officers numbering over 50 cordoned off the entrance to the government house, restricting movement in and out of the complex. The governor who attempted to drive out was teargassed.
Meanwhile, the police have deployed 30,000 personnel, two patrol surveillance helicopters, five armoured personnel carriers, 10 armoured personnel and 250 police patrol vehicles for the election.
The operations, according to the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, will be led by the Deputy Inspector-General of Police (DIG) Operations, an Assistant Inspector General of Police and five Commissioners of Police.
The military deployed 4,390 soldiers and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) ordered the deployment of 19,997 personnel from Abuja, Osun, Kogi, Edo, Ondo and Kwara commands,” mobile surveillance vehicles and sniffer dogs, surveillance/intelligence unit, medical and disaster rapid response team, special forces and other specialised units.
Like the police, the NSCDC operations will be led by Deputy Commandant General (DCG) Operations, three ACGs, six Commandants and other senior officers from the rank of DCC to ACC.
It is simply a show of force. An act of intimidation. Yet, we are told everyday that there are not enough security personnel to stop the carnage in the Middle Belt.
Expectedly, the newly elected APC chairman, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, has thrown his weight behind the massive deployments, particularly the military, on the ground that “the rigging machine is serviced by criminals who are hardened and who are often hired,” alleging that the criminals wield AK 47 rifles on election days.
Every Nigerian politician will point a finger of blame at his opponent even when the other four fingers point at him. As a people, we have refused to grow our democracy, to learn from our own political history. Political leaders have failed the people. The hoi-polloi who snatch ballot boxes, kill and maim are in the same boat.
Ekiti, based on the 2006 Census figures, is one of the least populated states in Nigeria, ranked 29th out of the 36 states with a population of 2,384,212.
Only 913,334 of this number are registered voters, and the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Abdulganiyu Raji, said only 667,064 collected their Permanent Voter Cards.
The state is one of the most homogenous in the country and the people know the two main candidates.
As I pointed out earlier, Fayemi, a public intellectual, governed the state between 2010 and 2014 and has been Minister of Solid Minerals Development since 2015. Fayose, who defeated him in 2014, was actually a comeback kid who governed the state between May 29, 2003 after defeating the incumbent, Governor Niyi Adebayo, and October 16, 2006 when he was impeached.
The PDP candidate, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, was a lecturer in the Department of Building, Obafemi Awolowo University, for about 24 years. Though a political protégé of Fayose, he is accomplished in his own right.
The election can also be rightly seen as a referendum on the Fayose administration.
The overarching question to answer on Saturday is; In whose hands will the lot of Ekiti people be better? And the people can answer that question empirically based on the antecedents of the political gladiators in private and public offices.
That decision ought to lie with the 667,064 registered voters who have collected their PVCs.
That is the beauty of democracy. It is all about the freedom to choose. Unfortunately, with the unfolding drama, the powers-that-be seem not prepared to allow the people exercise their democratic right.
There is so much tension. An entire state has been shut down, nobody comes in and nobody goes out. Schools and markets will be closed and other forms of economic activities will come to a standstill and we claim to be making progress in an era where, in some countries, people don’t even have to go to the polling booths to vote.
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 politics is intrigue. The struggle for power brings out the animal in man.
But that is true if we are talking about other forms of government such as dictatorship or even monarchy, in which the people have little or no say in who governs 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. It is a battle to win the hearts of the electorate.
So, why is Nigeria’s democracy different? Why is a standalone election in Ekiti generating so much heat? Is it that the electorate don’t know what is good for them?
All the contestants, to borrow a local parlance, are “sons of the soil.” So, are the people not discerning enough to make correct judgment? In any case, democracy does not guarantee that the best candidate must win.
In opting for democracy, Nigeria is not re-inventing the wheel. Neither is the act of conducting an election a rocket science. India, a country with a population of 1.237 billion people (as at 2012), and a world record of 815 million eligible voters with over one million polling stations conducted a seamless election in 2014.
Soldiers were not drafted onto 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 the country moved on.
What is going on in Ekiti State right now is antithetical to democracy. Any election conducted in this pugnacious atmosphere cannot be fair no-matter the outcome.
I have heard some people say that what is happening is just deserts for Fayose because of what happened in 2014.
Maybe! But I condemned it when it happened in 2014 and I am condemning it now.
Read also: https://www.thenicheng.com/ekiti-election-as-war/
We cannot continue reveling in the Nigerian paradox of the more things change, the more they remain the same.
If 19 years after, we cannot even conduct free and fair elections, the simplest event in a democratic process, without bringing out soldiers on the streets that is a real shame.