Fayemi, the 10th Comeback Kid

Dr. Kayode Fayemi yesterday became only the tenth man in Nigeria’s history who vacated a Government House and made a triumphant return many years afterwards. The counting is mine, so I might have missed one or two other cases. The first man who ever left a Government House and later returned to it was Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia. By most accounts his nine-year governorship of the old Mid-Western State [today’s Edo and Delta states] during the Gowon era was a success, even though the Murtala Mohammed regime indicted him for corruption along with ten other Gowon-era governors including the civilian Administrator, East Central State [today’s Enugu, Ebonyi, Anambra, Imo and Abia states], Mr. Ukpabi Asika.

Ogbemudia was kicked out of office along with the Gowon regime in July 1975. Eight years later, the National Party of Nigeria [NPN] saw a chance to snatch Bendel State from UPN. Bendel was the only non-Yoruba state that UPN controlled and its governor, Prof Ambrose Folorunsho Alli had a very controversial tenure. Journalists at the time attributed his problems to his training as a professor of morbid anatomy who did autopsies. NPN needed a well-respected candidate, so it fielded Ogbemudia and he made it back to Benin Government House in October 1983, only to be booted out again in December.

In December 1991 when we elected the thirty Third Republic governors, not one of the Second Republic governors made it back. Many had died during the 16-year interregnum. Others had retired from politics, while a few others had graduated to presidential aspirants. General Sani Abacha booted out all the Third Republic governors in November 1993 and the next opportunity came up six years later, in 1999. Four of the Third Republic governors namely Chief Segun Osoba of Ogun, Alhaji Abubakar Audu of Kogi, Reverend Jolly Nyame of Taraba and Alhaji Bukar Abba Ibrahim of Yobe made it back to the Government House. Admiral Mohammed Lawal, who was Military Governor of Ogun State during the military days, also made it back, this time as civilian governor of Kwara State. Of these five, Osoba, Audu and Lawal lost their re-election bids in 2003 while Nyame and Bukar went on to become the longest serving governors in Nigeria for a cumulative ten years. They are about to be equaled by Governor Ibrahim Gaidam of Yobe, who has been governor for nine years now and still has a year to go.

Colonel Olagunsoye Oyinlola, once the military governor of Lagos, bounced back as elected governor of Osun State in 2003 but only managed to serve a term. Now, since 1999 only two elected governors managed to make it back to Government House. They are Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano and Peter Ayo Fayose of Ekiti. While the former lost his re-election bid in 2003, the latter was impeached in 2006. Both men later bounced back. Bouncing back was doubly sweet when you succeed the man that ousted you, as Kwankwaso did in 2011. Fayemi has now joined him in that rank; he is taking over from the same man who defeated him in 2014. However, neither Kwankwaso nor Fayemi defeated the men who defeated them; they only defeated the political proxies of those men.

Then there was another man who nearly became a Comeback Kid. That was Alhaji Abubakar Audu. If not because death snatched him away at the very last minute, Audu had already won re-election and would have set a difficult-to-beat record of returning to Government House after two long intervals each. I want to remind chroniclers in the affected states that, if we are to copy the American tradition, a man who bounces back as governor after an interregnum should be counted twice in the state’s list of governors. For example, when Fayemi resumes the Ekiti governorship soon, his portrait should be placed before Fayose’s, and yet another portrait should be placed after Fayose’s. If Abubakar Audu had lived, his portrait should have been placed three times, after Colonel Danladi Zakari, after Colonel Augustine Aniebo and after Captain Idris Wada.

There are many other men in Nigeria who served only one terms as governors, in some cases less than a term. Any of these men could one day bounce back to Government House. They include Abubakar Hashidu of Gombe, Mamuda Shinkafi of Zamfara, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero of Kaduna, Captain Idris Wada of Kogi, Bala James Ngilari of Adamawa, Prof Oserheimen Osunbor of Edo, Olagunsoye Oyinlola of Osun, Bisi Akande of Osun, Niyi Adebayo of Ekiti, Segun Oni of Ekiti, Ikedi Ohakim of Imo, Chinwoke Mbadiniju of Anambra, Andy Ubah of Anambra, Celestine Omehia of Rivers and Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa. Some of these men’s governorship tenures were judicially erased from the records and you may not find their portraits hanging in Government Houses.

It is a very tricky matter for a governor to leave the Government House and make a comeback. If the interregnum period is long, the complications are less because most of the civil servants he worked with would be gone. In the case of Fayemi who was there only four years ago, a lot of the civil servants and Government House workers he worked with are likely to be around. Those of them who shed tears when he lost in 2014 could expect a kind treatment now. Or maybe there may not be many of such men and women around because Governor Ayo Fayose is not the kind of man who will tolerate a Fayemi supporter anywhere near the state service. Those of them who celebrated Fayemi’s defeat and who warmly welcomed Fayose would be shivering now. Maybe that was why President Muhammadu Buhari said in his message of congratulations yesterday that Fayemi should be magnanimous in victory.

Fayemi must figure out for himself; did Ekiti voters vote for him or did they vote against Fayose? It was no small luck for Fayemi that a man with such a sorry record as Fayose injected himself fully into the election and even made it a referendum on himself. As late as Thursday, he said “I will still win on Saturday,” as if he was on the ballot. In fact, Fayose completely eclipsed the official PDP candidate, whose name began to appear in the newspapers only last week. In other climes, a man who has not paid salaries for many months and who spent most of his time fighting a dirty verbal war against the federal government would have kept to the background and allowed Prof Kolapo Olusola to sell himself to voters.

Deciding which is which is important for Fayemi because Ekiti voters turned him out of Government House four years ago. His margin of victory is also slightly less than the scale of his defeat in 2014. While he lost in all 16 local governments four years ago, he won in 12 this time around. Did he lose that time because of his elitism, as some observers said, or because he fell out with Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as Segun Ayobolu claimed in a column in The Nation? If so, has he ameliorated the two problems and other possible ones?

Dr. Fayemi, who is a formidable intellectual, must also ponder about “federal might” in Ekiti elections. Four years ago APC alleged that the PDP-controlled federal government deployed soldiers to aid Fayose to win. This time around PDP alleged that the APC-controlled federal government deployed 30,000 policemen to help Fayemi to win. As a man who was first victim and now beneficiary of federal might, I leave it to Fayemi to conclude which is which.

One more thing. Dr. John Kayode Fayemi is now running for the history books, since he cannot run again for governor. If he does so very well, he is a future material for president.