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.
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| *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!
