Why Governor Ayo Fayose Must Hang

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Peter Ayodele Fayose. Two-time Governor of Ekiti State. There’s cer­tainly something to say for this man. Without question he is, for good or for ill, the most talked about State Governor in Nigeria today. He is one of the most controversial, if not the most controversial. Those who believe in him, who swear by his name, would readily die for him, would give whatever it would take for their man to retain his gubernatorial seat, will strike in­numerable blows to thwart his traducers. Others who hold Fay­ose to be beneath contempt, who proclaim that disdain expended on his account amounts to vital energy exercised in obedience to barrenness, people who abhor all that the man stands for, and who sand eternally against his regular ventilation of contrary opinion, would yearn for a cudgel – and a chance to bring the deadly weapon hard down on his head, to shatter his cranium, to finish off everything for the first-and-final time. 

*Gov Fayose 

Yet, there is something to say for Ayodele Fayose. If the coun­try ever had an autonomous Governor, the accolade belongs to this occupant of the Ekiti Governor’s Lodge. Leftwing ideologue Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa, tried his hands at autonomy as Governor of the old Kaduna State during the Sec­ond Republic. He waged a deter­mined war against the behemoth known otherwise as feudalism. He got impeached in less than two years. Even though the exer­cise that moved him from office was unwarranted, unjustified and shameful, the Federal Gov­ernment then run by the Nation­al Party of Nigeria (NPN) sanc­tioned it. He went. Balarabe may have had a chance to bounce back to the governorship seat but a second, protracted military in­terregnum killed and buried the possibility. He still lives though – with his integrity intact – while very little is today heard of those who abused democracy to get a blameless leader off the princi­pled path.

Fayose is empathetic to Bal­arabe’s experience. On October 16, 2006, he suffered a similar fate when into the third of his four-year tenure as Governor of Ekiti State. He was impeached, not necessarily because he was a wolf among the sheep, but large­ly because the top leadership of his political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), found him expendable. But age was on his side. Only a month shy of his 46 birthday when he was im­peached, he bided his time. He switched parties. He contested other elections. He ultimately returned to the PDP. Then he strode back to Government House, Ado-Ekiti!