Ekiti 2018: Atonement for Collective Rescue
Metaphorically speaking, the forthcoming governorship election in Ekiti State can be likened to the historic Kiriji/Ekiti Parapo war of 1870-1886. Indeed the electoral contest slated for July 14 offers the Ekitis a new paradigm shift against the background of their present social, economic and political situation. A quick recall of the history of the Ekitis vividly reminds of the gallantry of their ancestors during the eponymous inter-tribal conflict tagged the Ekiti Parapo wars. The wars, which ended all the wars in Yorubaland was unarguably the last and most protracted military campaign that plagued the Yoruba nation.
As history reveals, Kiriji war broke out because of the unacceptable policies and maladministration, which the Ibadan hegemons established on the Ekiti people after the former’s significant role in the 1840 Osogbo war and her victory over the Ijayes in 1862 which indisputably pronounced her as the competent successor of the old Oyo Empire as the head of Yorubaland. Then, Ibadan hegemons had stationed its administrators, otherwise known and popularly referred to as Ajeles, in other parts of Yorubaland, especially in Ekiti and Ijesha, which upset the two towns who were not ready, like any other towns to accept Ibadan as the Yoruba head.
Indeed, the last straw that broke the camel’s back was the suppressive and obnoxious ways the Ajeles manhandled the Ekitis and the Ijeshas. These and many other aspects of tyrannical rules compelled the two groups to wage a 16 year war of attrition against the Ibadan political suzzainrarity. Again, the Ekiti people have today found themselves more or less in the same historical conjunction. While they are not confronted by the Ibadan hegemons this time round, they are no doubt entangled in the gripping hold of a re-incarnated protégé, Mr. Peter Ayodele Fayose, who though an indigene of the state had his early childhood and adolescent tutelage and upbringing in the ancient city of Ibadan. By all standards, Mr. Peter Ayodele Fayose, current governor of Ekiti state, has since he assumed the leadership of Ekiti state left no one in doubt that he is governing a conquered race.
Anyone who is familiar with the character traits of the average Ekiti will readily confirm that Fayose, whose four years of agonizing second term ends October this year has high disdain for the ‘Omoluabi’ culture of the Ekitis. The focal point of his administrative policy, which is the ridiculous “stomach infrastructure” is nothing but a mere mesmerisation of the social condition of the people and a grand conspiracy to deceitfully impoverish the Ekiti people. Indeed, the past three and a half years of Fayose’s mis-governance and mal-administration have poignantly and painfully revealed the folly and foibles of the Fayose phenomenon. It is a naked truth that in the last four years of this deceitful government, there are neither clear-cut policy direction nor a well-articulated welfare programmes for the people. While the state failed to carry out any meaningful developmental projects in all the sixteen local governments, the government of ayodele Fayose has enforced a tyrannical regime of multiple taxations in the drive to increase internally generated revenue. Before he assumed power in the state, the monthly internally generated revenue under the innovative and creative leadership of then governor John Kayode Fayemi was N600million. The government of JKF graduated the IGR of Ekiti from the paltry sum of N60million when he assumed office.
At every point in time, JKF would make public announcement about the geometric growth in the state’s internally generated revenue. However, since Fayose, aka Oshokomole took over, he has jettisoned this transparent approach to governance. Not only has he dubiously expanded the tax net, he has continued to keep the total monthly internally generated revenue a guarded secret. When recently the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) challenged the outgoing Fayose to a public debate on Ekiti finances, especially on the IGR generated over the years and its uses, the recalcitrant incumbent boasted that nobody could summon him to disclose information on Ekiti finances aside from the State House of Assembly, which he argued has the mandate to exercise oversight over him. What a disdainful and an inglorious way to treat the people.
This sentiment is further complicated by the fact that the resources of the state have not been prudently managed over time by this administration. How would anyone with the right sense of value commit a whopping sum of seventeen billion naira (N17Bn) to constructing a one kilometer fly in Ado-Ekiti, a state where there are low vehicular traffic on a daily basis? The contract which Nigerian society of Engineers have accessed should not have gulped more than four-Billion (N4Bn) was also commissioned with Fayose spending Six Hundred Million Naira (N600m) on jamborees and festivities on the day of the commissioning. Realizing that he might not be remembered for anything tangible in his second term, Fayose hurriedly went into frenzy, demolishing houses in Ado-Ekiti with a view to building an ultra-modern market.
After the initial braggadocio, which is peculiarly Fayose’s, work has since stopped on the new market construction as those whose houses were demolished continue to sulk and count their losses. It is the same fate that befell farmers in Kajola village, an outskirt settlement in Ado-Ekiti, when two years ago, Ayodele Fayose got into frenzy and declared he wanted to build an airport in Ado Ekiti. He mobilized his bulldozers to site and before anyone knew what was happening, thousands of hectares of Cocoa plantation and farmlands have laid in ruins.