By Okey
Ndibe
Governor Peter
Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State has a solid claim to the title of politician
par excellence of Nigeria ’s Fourth Republic .
In many ways, the man symbolises the idiosyncrasies, texture and other
pathological characteristics of the high-priced, frustrating experiment that
goes by the name of democracy in Nigeria .
*Gov Fayose |
His storied
political career has involved a controversy over his academic credentials. It
is ironic that questions were – perhaps – are raised about the
educational training of a man who presides over Ekiti State – a state with one
of the highest PhD degrees per capita in Nigeria. During his short-lived first
stint as governor – from 2003 to 2006 – Mr. Fayose was accused of several crimes,
including massive theft of public resources and ordering a murder. He left
office in disgrace, impeached by a state legislature that was under pressure
from then President Olusegun Obasanjo. The US government once had cause to
revoke visas issued to him and members of his immediate family. He is as brash
as they come, a bolekaja brand of
politician, who takes no prisoners.
At a public
function in Osun State in 2014, Mr. Fayose traded insults
with his nemesis, Mr. Obasanjo. He had ignored the former president while
greeting other “dignitaries.” Not one to recoil from making a spectacle of
himself, Mr. Obasanjo demanded to be greeted. “I won’t greet you. You are bad person! I don’t greet bad people!”
exclaimed Mr. Fayose.
“You are a bastard,” an irate Obasanjo
railed.
“You are a father of bastards!” Mr. Fayose countered. And he wasn’t done yet. He threw a few more verbal punches at Mr. Obasanjo, accusing him of wrecking the PDP in the southwest.
“You are a father of bastards!” Mr. Fayose countered. And he wasn’t done yet. He threw a few more verbal punches at Mr. Obasanjo, accusing him of wrecking the PDP in the southwest.
In 2014, Mr. Fayose
signaled a desire to return to the office from which he was ignominiously
sacked in 2006. As he sought the PDP’s governorship ticket, some political
pundits thought it was a long shot. After he secured the ticket, the consensus
among political talking heads was that he would not be competitive against then
Governor Kayode Fayemi, an articulate PhD owner. Shunning the incumbent
governor’s air of sophistication and emphasis on matters of policy, Candidate
Fayose refined a pragmatic political message calculated to resonate with the
voters’ gullets. He dismissed his opponent’s accent on developing
infrastructure in the state. What the people needed above all, he insisted, was
“stomach infrastructure.” He had
introduced an ingenious new term into Nigeria ’s political lexicon.
I confess to being among those who gave Mr. Fayose little chance of winning the governorship. His rustic, charming gift for words would carry him only so far, but certainly far short of the gubernatorial goal. I reckoned, as some others did, that the man’s past would doom his quest.
*Okey Ndibe |
Instead, backed by
federal funds and military muscle apparently authorised by the Presidency of
Goodluck Jonathan, Mr. Fayose pulled off a stunning victory. He won even in Mr.
Fayemi’s immediate electoral turf.
And then an
audiotape emerged, showing the extent to which soldiers and other security
apparatchiks illicitly collaborated with Team Fayose. In the tape, recorded by
a dismayed young officer, Mr. Fayose and several PDP officials, two of them
ministers, could be heard giving instructions to a military general on the use
of troops to intimidate voters sympathetic to Mr. Fayemi and his party, the All
Progressives Congress (APC).
There’s a chance
that Mr. Fayose would have won, without all that meddlesomeness – but that’s
now a moot point. The reality is that the PDP, which was at the time the ruling
party, had deployed the resources of federal might in an illegal and violent
plot to thwart voters leaning in favour of Mr. Fayemi.
The bombshell
revelation hardly slowed Mr. Fayose. Despite the defeat of the PDP at the
centre, the governor has remained a gadfly, a constant torn in the flesh of
incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari. Where many of the PDP’s henchmen have
become diffident, Governor Fayose has transformed himself, it seems, into a
one-man opposition front. He frequently utters loud, damning critiques of the
Buhari administration and, sometimes, with devastating power and accuracy. He
has often made a point that eminently bears restating: That Mr. Buhari’s
vaunted change remains, in many crucial respects, missing.
To the extent that
his utterances, inelegant as they are often couched, represent some of the most
ambient counter-narratives to the APC’s tarnished mantra of change, Mr. Fayose
is a vital part of Nigeria ’s
political debate. Quite recently, however, he has given us an indirect,
altogether unintended gift.
Officials of the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) recently froze more than N1
billion in Mr. Fayose’s private bank account, claiming the money came from a
security budget of more than $2 billion that Sambo Dasuki, President Jonathan’s
National Security Adviser, splashed on PDP politicians.
Mr. Fayose has
denied that the funds came from the former NSA. He claimed that Zenith Bank
bankrolled his election, an assertion that certainly raises potential criminal
jeopardies both for the bank and the governor. But Mr. Fayose has reopened the
old debate of whether, as a serving governor, he could become a target of a
criminal investigation.
Section 308 of Nigeria ’s
constitution pertains to the whole question of immunity for certain designated
public officials. I have long argued that the immunity clause, arguably the
most expansive in the world, constitutes a crime against the Nigerian people.
The section states in part: “no civil or
criminal proceedings shall be instituted or continued against a person to whom
this section applies during his period of office;” adding, “a person to whom this section applies shall
not be arrested or imprisoned during that period either in pursuance of the process
of any court or otherwise.” This is a scandal that no serious people would
countenance.
It is a nonsensical
provision, its effect nothing short of fertilizing the unfettered commission of
crimes by those it covers, the President, Vice-President, Governor and Deputy
Governor.
In vibrant democracies, the immunity clause protects public officials only for those actions that are within the legitimate purview of their office. Former Governor John Rowland of the state ofConnecticut
was investigated, charged and convicted for illegally accepting gifts from
contractors, doing work in his state. Former Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois is serving a
14-year jail sentence for seeking to sell President Obama’s Senate seat. US prosecutors
did not wait for them to serve out their gubernatorial terms before docking
them.
In vibrant democracies, the immunity clause protects public officials only for those actions that are within the legitimate purview of their office. Former Governor John Rowland of the state of
The absence of action on altering the immunity clause is evidence of political
failure on Mr. Buhari’s part. In 2011, as a presidential candidate, he had
vowed that, if elected, he would push to “remove
immunity from prosecution for elected officers in criminal cases.” Such an
amendment would do more – systemically and structurally – to fight corruption
than the haphazard way the EFCC is currently going about prosecutions.
The question is –
why has the president not acted on an important promise he made?
*Okey Ndibe is a
professor of literature. Follow him on twitter @ okeyndibe
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