The result of the recent governorship election in Ekiti State in which Ayo Fayose of the Peoples Democratic Party upstaged the incumbent governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, of the All Progressives Congress, has generated a wide range of armchair commentaries. The present offering is a meta-commentary, that is, a commentary on the commentaries, which seeks to clarify certain misconceptions about the Ekiti election, while cautioning against wide speculations.
To start with, a few analysts and pre-election pollsters, if any, knew the extent of internal problems that Fayemi had within his administration, with civil servants, and with teachers. Those who knew probably never thought that they were so serious as to translate into his electoral failure. Nor did anyone fathom the electoral implications of his disconnect with the electorate. True, there were signs of the disconnect, but there were often misrecognised. Finally, the implications of Bamidele Opeyemi’s breakaway from the APC and his candidacy of the Labour Party were underplayed just as his last minute pact with Fayose was unanticipated.
It is all too easy to blame those close to Fayemi for not speaking truth to power by drawing his attention to his shortcomings and loopholes in his campaign strategy. The truth is that political appointees often function in a sycophantic relationship with their bosses. Besides, Fayemi’s intellectual posture and the insertion of his wife into the power matrix were said to have discouraged those who had useful advice for the governor.
True, Fayemi did a lot of good for Ekiti in infrastructural, industrial, and human capital development, but he was ready game for negative campaigning because of the problems listed above. Besides, how, for example, could one dismiss the impact on the voting masses of the negative campaign that Fayemi’s cabinet members and contractors were “imported”, that is, hired from Lagos or overseas? Local politicians often frown on the idea of hiring from outside, even when it is the right thing to do for specific positions or jobs. Against this background, it was easy for Fayemi’s supporters to argue that there was nothing new after all that the governor brought to the table that Fayose didn’t do in three years as governor.
It is interesting that Fayose’s brand of grassroots politics, including the distribution of rice and other material goods to voters during the campaign, is being viewed derogatorily as amala politics or the politics of “stomach infrastructure”. What is the difference between bags of money distributed to the elite by practitioners of “Champaign” politics and bags of rice distributed to the masses by practitioners of amala politics? We should not criticise one without criticising the other. Besides, we cannot deny the need to provide immediate succour for over 70 per cent of the population living in poverty. That, in fact, is why the government has poverty alleviation measures.
What is often forgotten about the so-called amala politics is that the amala eaters are the more steady voters. Besides, as Fayose put it in a post-victory interview, amala eaters do not ask for contracts. The elite, who do, often do not vote.
This leads to yet another interesting recurrent issue in the commentaries, namely, allegations of electoral fraud. To be sure, most observers concur that the election was free and fair but argue that the process was not. Something or someone somewhere in the electoral process must be responsible for Fayemi’s failure to win even his own local government. Some have even gone further to doubt the authenticity of the election, arguing that just over 300,000 voters could not be said to be a good representation of Ekiti’s population of over 2.3 million.
I was stunned like everyone else that Fayemi lost so badly. Nevertheless, it remains unclear to me why others have chosen to cry for Ekiti people who have peacefully acquiesced to the poll results and moved on. The people knew who they voted for or against. Given the state’s electoral history, don’t we all know that Ekiti people would have been up in arms now if the majority of the voters thought that their candidate’s victory was denied?
Those who complain about the small population of Ekiti voters in the governorship election seem to overlook the fact that it is usually a small fraction of the entire population that often votes in virtually every democracy. Only a few million of India’s over one billion people voted in the last presidential election. Even in the United States, the bastion of modern democracy, fewer people often register to vote than are qualified; and even much fewer registered voters often exercise their franchise.
It is equally premature to extrapolate from the Ekiti results to the party affiliation of the Ekiti people or their voting pattern in 2015. Fayose’s victory did not suddenly turn Ekiti people to “umbrella” carriers. They voted specifically for or against particular candidates and not necessarily for or against their political parties. Fayose’s victory came from either voters who set out to vote for him or those who set out to vote against Fayemi for various reasons.
That’s why speculations about the outcome of the presidential election in Ekiti are premature. True, a Governor Fayose would work hard to facilitate the presidential election in favour of the PDP, it is premature to reach any conclusion about the fortune of the APC or PDP in Ekiti in 2015. In the light of what we witnessed in the Ekiti governorship election, presidential candidates and not political parties may well be the deciding factor in 2015. Besides, six months or more is a long time in presidential electoral politics for current predictions to hold.
Although the Osun State governorship election is around the corner, speculations about the possible influence or bandwagon effect of the Ekiti election on that election must consider the realities of Osun politics. Three things are clear: Osun is not Ekiti. Rauf Aregbesola is not Fayemi. And Iyiola Omisore is not Fayose, although they both caught the same bolekaja figure. Aregbesola’s popularity in Osun is not a fluke, while Omisore’s negative baggage tops his positive attributes.
In a way, Aregbesola has Fayose’s mass appeal, but without Fayose’s negative baggage. True, Aregbesola has delved into some controversial projects, but the controversies were politically motivated, being drummed up by the opposition, precisely for its possible electoral value. The truth is that Aregbesola’s policies, programmes, and projects are as widely accepted as he is popular.
One important issue that Bamidele’s candidacy brought up is the need for the APC leadership to change their method of selecting candidates for office. In the Ekiti case, the APC leadership made a tactical error as they did in Ondo State in 2012. Rather than merely anoint Fayemi as the party’s flagbearer, a primary should have been conducted, which the latter could still have won. The consequences of candidate imposition turned out to be more than the rancour that the APC leaders wanted to avoid in a primary.
At this point, I am inclined to support Fayemi by respecting his concession of defeat. And move on. That, I think, is what his supporters should do. And that’s what the APC should do. Source: http://www.punchng.com/opinion/viewpoint/a-meta-commentary-on-the-ekiti-election/ |
