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Re: Fashola’s Ekiti “takeaway” - Politics - Nairaland

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Re: Fashola’s Ekiti “takeaway” by gramci: 8:50am On Jul 06, 2014
By Ochereome Nnanna
LAGOS Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola,
made an interesting foray into column
writing last Monday (June 30, 2014) on
the back page of THISDAY newspaper as
a guest columnist with an article entitled:
“Ekiti Poll: My Take Away”.
In his revision of the recently concluded
electoral exercise, he deployed gritty logic
and arcane reasoning to turn out a fine,
readable piece befitting of a lawyer who
became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria
(SAN) before he was elected in 2007. But
going through it, Fashola came across as
a deft political ball juggler evocative of
his famous talents as a skillful footballer.
It was a thoroughbred political article
created to question the popular
conventional wisdom that emerged from a
cross section of opinion writers and
commentators describing the poll as a
true reflection of the political will of the
Ekiti people. He questioned the notion
that incumbent Governor John Kayode
Fayemi lost to former Governor Ayo Peter
Fayose despite Fayemi’s performance.
He insinuated that Fayose’s vaunted
connection to the grassroots owed to his
use of some of the said “missing” federal
funds to buy the vote. Fashola floated
generally down the lane of the All
Progressives Congress, APC’s,
afterthought of disputing the Ekiti polls,
even after the contestant himself,
Governor Fayemi, had graciously
conceded defeat and gained for himself
overwhelming applause as a true
democrat and statesman.
It was not really Fashola’s denunciation
of the Ekiti vote, and his remonstration of
the choice the Ekiti people made that
brought me to this topic.
The truth is that Ekiti people had a
credible background experience based on
which they made their choice. Fayose was
an elected governor of the state for nearly
four years until he and his deputy were
impeached by the State House of
Assembly. Fayemi was also in office for
nearly four years before the June 21,
2014 election. They knew what both men
were capable of doing, and made their
choice. They must now live with the
choice they made.
I do not believe that “rice” and money
decided the poll. Both sides spent money.
It is futile to pretend otherwise. Every
Nigerian incumbent politician does. That
is what people refer to as the power of
incumbency in Nigerian politics. That one
party was able to manipulate their power
of incumbency to win an election cannot
make the loser a saint. There is no
difference between the tricks that PDP
marshals to win an election and the ones
that other political parties, including the
APC, deploy.
The truth is that the APC has so far failed
on many fronts to show it is different from
the PDP. The APC has not lived up to the
clamour for an opposition party that is
DIFFERENT and BETTER than the PDP.
The only thing we see is that the APC is
sworn to use every trick at its disposal to
snatch power at the federal level from the
PDP and become the new dominant party.
It is a legitimate aspiration, but the party
has failed to adopt clear-cut strategies to
portray itself as the credible alternative to
the PDP. If anything, it has tended to
mimic the ruling party, rather than make a
difference.
For instance, the PDP’s cardinal principle
of power sharing is through the zoning
arrangement. Principal offices are shared
among the geo-political zones of the
country, starting from the office of the
president. Even though zoning is not
poignantly spelt out in the APC charter, it
was the arrangement they adopted in the
recent election of their party’s national
executive.
Why did the APC fail to make a difference
by, for instance, throwing the party
positions open for THE MOST QUALIFIED
individuals, thus putting emphasis on
MERIT rather than the PDP’s QUOTA
SYSTEM? It is clear that they have already
decided to zone the presidency of the
party to the North. Why not throw it open
to the best and most electable candidate
from its ranks to be different from PDP?
Also, the PDP is often known for
“adoption” of candidates through
“consensus”, a ploy by which the leaders
impose candidates on members, which
often leads disgruntled members to look
for alternative platforms to pursue their
ambitions.
Atiku Abubakar is a living example of this
in APC ranks. Why doesn’t the APC make
the difference by adopting TRUE
DEMOCRACY, giving power to its members
to elect candidates of their choice? Why
did it use the PDP’s “consensus” method
to produce the new National Chairman of
the party, Chief John Oyegun? That is why
Chief Tom Ikimi is disgruntled and might
move over to another party.
Again, the PDP is known as the party of
the Democrats, while the APC is the party
of the Progressives. What, in their
processes portray them respectively as
such except in name only? The PDP
heavily subscribes to the economic
blueprint and strategies of the Bretton-
Wood institutions – the International
Monetary Fund, IMF and the World Bank.
They believe in the privatisation of public
commercial ventures and the use of the
Private, Public Participation, PPP, system
of infrastructural delivery. Their economic
model is primed primarily for the rich. As
the economy grows, the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer.
A credible alternative which is Progressive
should create an economic policy that will
primarily benefit the masses. Is that the
situation in Governor Fashola’s Lagos, the
foremost APC state? Lagos is a state
where roads and bridges built with public
funds are exorbitantly tolled and the poor
cannot afford to send their children to
tertiary institutions run by the Lagos State
Government under Governor Fashola. The
Lagos State economic model is not only
cozy for the rich, worse still, it is hostile
to non-indigenes.
To become truly relevant and progressive,
the APC must make a difference. It must
stop mimicking the PDP that it spends so
much money and energy disparaging.
There must be a clear-cut difference
between the party of the Democrats and
that of the Progressives.



www.vanguardngr.com/2014/07/re-fasholas-ekiti-takeaway-2/

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Re: Re: Fashola’s Ekiti “takeaway” by talktimi(m): 10:29am On Jul 06, 2014
The APC is PDP in a worse format... They even share the same godfather/navigator Obj

2 Likes

Re: Re: Fashola’s Ekiti “takeaway” by NwaNimo1(m): 10:58am On Jul 06, 2014
APC =

A

P athetic

C oncept

1 Like

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