If I were Oni, I would rather concentrate all my energies on strengthening my relationship with the Jagaban. What’s done in Ekiti is done and there isn’t any use in crying over spilled sour milk because what lies ahead is potentially far greater.
By Tiko Okoye
The 2022 Ekiti State Governorship Election has come and gone. It was a landslide victory for outgoing Gov. Kayode Fayemi and the erstwhile Secretary to the State Government and governorship candidate Fayemi foisted on the APC as his handpicked successor, Biodun Oyebanji.
It turned out to be an electoral rout because the valid votes he garnered (187,057) are more than the combined votes of the 2nd (82,211) and 3rd-placed (67,457) candidates – Segun Oni of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Bisi Kolawole of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), respectively.
Dazed by the unexpected outcome, Oni has cried foul! He’s the only candidate that has rejected the outcome of the poll – and for good reasons.
By all accounts – and all things remaining equal – Oni was well on his way to winning the election.
First, his first term in office as Ekiti State governor was well received and it was the Supreme Court’s decision on the election petition filed by Fayemi that sacked him from office.
Second, Fayemi is an elitist politician who’s more at home in diplomatic circles and multinational agencies, like the UN, than mixing things up with ordinary folks. He has never been able to strongly bond with Ekiti voters like, say, Ayo Fayose, the founding father of stomach infrastructure politricks aka ‘Oshokomole’ or even Oni to a lesser degree.
Third, Fayemi’s authoritarian “take it or leave it” approach to handling party affairs significantly weakened the APC’s cohesiveness as a result of the sprouting of several cliques and factions – very much like what happened to the party in Oyo State that facilitated the victory of Gov. Seyi Makinde.
Fourth, Fayemi was one of those – including Rauf Aregbesola, Ibikunke Amosun, Babatunde Fashola, Babafemi Ojudu, ‘Eleyin’ Dapo Abiodun and Yemi Osinbajo – the cabal, comprising persons with Buhari’s ear and party chieftains at the highest echelons, successfully enlisted in the grand project to render Bola Tinubu irrelevant in the politics of the South-West.
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As a result, the Tinubu camp was hell-bent on giving Fayemi and his godson their political comeuppance by backing Oni to the hilt (Oni has kept a very cordial relationship with the Jagaban since defecting from PDP to APC and became South-West National Vice Chairman by the latter’s instrumentality).
But after imbibing the needful lesson from seeing Aminu Tambuwal unapologetically betray his brother by another mother, Wike, by stepping down for his real blood brother, Atiku, at the-last-minute-minus-one at the PDP nominating convention, Fayemi similarly woke from slumber at the 11th hour and fortunately smelt the pungent coffee that brought him back to his senses. He consequently kick-started the domino stepping-down of South-West aspirants – except Osinbajo – for Tinubu.
But all things are hardly equal in real life and at the end of the day, politics is all about permanent interests, not permanent friendship. It meant that Tinubu had to return the favour to Fayemi. An Igbo proverb posits that a fowl never forgets the good neighbour who helped it pluck its tail feathers during the rainy season.
And the best – if not the only – way Tinubu could immediately crystallize a quid pro quo was by endorsing Fayemi’s governorship candidate. Bye-bye Oni, Welcome Oyebanji!
Unless you’re a diehard hater, it’s crystal-clear that Tinubu’s stellar performance at the APC nominating convention – surmounting serial most invidious plots to stop him in his tracks – created a big momentum for him, and nowhere else has the victory created a magnetic pulling effect as robustly as in his South-West homeland.
The vast majority of the tumultuous crowd that attended the APC mega-rally in Ado-Ekiti actually came to behold the famous kingmaker that’s on the verge of becoming the king more than from a desire to support the governorship candidate.
Oyebanji’s sudden gain translated into Oni’s sudden loss! This is the reason why Oni shouldn’t humiliate himself further by kicking against the pricks. Not only are the elections not too close to call as to warrant a wasteful litigation in terms of time and money, but he was principally done in by a queer twist of fate.
If I were Oni, I would rather concentrate all my energies on strengthening my relationship with the Jagaban. What’s done in Ekiti is done and there isn’t any use in crying over spilled sour milk because what lies ahead is potentially far greater.
It is exactly what it is!