Fayose: The thick and thin of a maverick actor

BY  ADEWALE ADEOYE

Like an epic battle between a lion and a tiger, Nigerians are anxious for the 2018 elections in Ekiti, a small but significant ancestral state. Since 2003, Ekiti has seen a star actor on the national stage.
Sitting like an incubus is Ayo Fayose, 49. His opponent know this: elections with Fayose is like the fight between a professional boxer who adheres to conventions and a notorious chief thug of the ghetto whose rules are drawn from the barbaric, riotous instinct of a swamp dwelling brute.

The 2018 battle has started. An array of arrows is fashioned against him, he insists his shield is awesome. Daily, Fayose continues to develop fresh wits to counter the flood of attacks. He has turned the state TV and radio into maverick propaganda tools, boasting that he will humiliate his opponents in the next rumble in the jungle. What are the sources of his strength? Let us admit, he has strategies and tactics ignored at the peril of his adversaries. He came to power in a swooping whirlwind in 2003. His stay was marked by deadening controversies leading to his impeachment and exit in 2006.

His reemergence in 2014 as the governor in a disputed poll where he “won” all the 16 Local governments remains the most shocking in the state’s electoral history. If his first coming was like the swoop of a falcon, his second coming was like the swift precision of the hawk. I have had opportunity of “spying” at one of his pre-election rallies. Fayose is oratory, captivating and a maestro of red district vocabulary. When he launches tirade of attacks with his cynical remarks, he would then convert his rhetoric into captivating songs to the rapturous trance of his faithful. His policies are shrewd, designed to curt personal favour. In a poor state, this draws fanatical loyalists. His development projects target one thing: sustaining the euphoria of the public.

He understands the facts and figures of elections; he invests only where his political gains are immense. He plays on the sociology of immediate needs, the desperate passion and poor judgment of the uneducated among the voters. He feigns to be the ally of the common man. He drinks paraga with them, shares his jokes, dances in the market and above all, exploits public ignorance to the brim. He sets up pictures he takes with the downtrodden to create the impression he is at home. His imaginative power and ability to sway the audience is real. For instance, he was in my town during the 2014 elections. As soon as he entered the palace, he crashed his height in prostration. The new palace was being built. He immediately offered to supply the tiles which he did the second day. Such is his ability to feast on the momentary feelings of his hosts. He holds out flashy pecks and takes the advantage of poor people rushing to his given point.

Fayose came at a time moral values have been perverted, owing partly to years of military rule that fueled the poverty of ideas. Instead of lifting the ethnical status, he concentrated on deepening the rot which he then maximizes to huge electoral harvests. For instance, he tells the people anyone can be the state governor, even the starkest of the illiterates. This drums blind support for him from the fanatical and often violent dregs of the society who have come to see educated people as a threat.

His Machiavellian tactics includes relishing in the misery of the people; he builds himself in a fortress and holds carrot sticks, throws out crumbs, leaving the people with the false inkling that he is their eternal savior. He does not believe in institutions, for there lay checks and balance; he deliberately kills his political party’s structure, holds forth the powers and privileges of his aides, making them perpetually at his mercy. He holds out baits and forlorn hope, keeping his supporters in unending expectations tied to him. He has the rare gift of leading an undisciplined multitude which his opponents, used to decent political culture, will find tasking. He instills fear in his aides and commands them to his sovereignty.

He ensures none of his aides is particularly in means huge enough to either challenge or truncate him. His officials are placed in positions that make them subservient to his command and phantom generosity. His propaganda machine is immense, turning every tiny issue into electoral advantage. Fayose has an edge in his cult-like control of the House of Assembly. He runs an idolatry political industry. Two years plus, no force has been able to polarize the State House of Assembly he once described himself as the Speaker, adorning military attire. Before the 2014 election, he made only one request from the State PDP, that he should be allowed to pick the 26 House of Assembly aspirants. He did. In screening each, he asked each to write “IMPEACHMENT”. Those that could not spell the word passed the text. He was once impeached, so, that became the ghost that continued to hunt him. He cannot contest in 2018, but having a rookie is as crucial to his escape from the looming hunt.

He also needs victory in the 2018 election to pour libation to his idolatry politics. Fayose will be put to a difficult position, which will make him fight desperately. Not grounded in any ideology, he could offer a political trade-by-barter. In this case, to surrender his machine to the formidable opposition, if for instance, he would be considered a Senatorial candidate.

Even when he leaves in 2018, the new governor will still need to contend for two years, with his yes-men and zombies in the parliament. He also has the advantage of feeding on the divisions within the APC. There is no single opposition figure against him, with each APC aspirant building personal political fiefdom as against forging a collective opposition before the main battle. It is an old war tactic, that a divided army becomes easy prey. Fayose is also fueling the crack in the leadership of the APC at the national level, with a faction already seeing him as a potential ally that should be preserved for the 2019 battle.

He is a man of deception, a critical element in warfare. He feigns disorder, when under attack, he positions himself as weak in order to seek public sympathy. He concentrates on projects that catch public eyes even when they are ephemeral. However, in spite of his claim to certain advantages, the 2018 battle certainly will be the most fierce he had ever fought. For many reasons, he is at a weaker point compared with his past energy. The fact is that Fayose had never won any election without the brutal and vicious onslaught of the Federal government. His greatest advantages remain the federal might and unimpeded access to illicit funds. These two elements now face the greatest threats. In the past, his victories were propelled by arm-twisting and intimidating tactics, arrests of opponents, seizure of funds meant for campaigns, bravado and a rhapsody of killings. In all the elections he had “won”, instilling fear through barbaric force has been his trademark.

In 2018, Fayose will be contesting without his traditional hegemonic backer. He will also contend with his encircled situation, with Ekiti being the only PDP state in the entire South West. With the prying anti-corruption hawks, his campaign funds will be depleted. With complete manipulation of the security forces out of his way, he will contend, for the first time, on a turf he is unfamiliar with. In his despotic calculation of not building formidable individuals, he left the battle and his fate only on his palms, making him easy target. He is said to have a nasty temper with a rash instinct. The opposition had explored this, drawing him out to make volatile statements that produced fatal enemies even up north. Vengeance is an old art in politics. 2018 won’t be an exception.

Also, Mr Fayose has been trumpeting from the gallery with his scathing brickbat against Northern establishment raising the prospect of his contending with authority vengeance. Realizing how difficult his defeat might be, opposition continues to plot his impeachment before the 2018 election. However, one of the worst steps would be for the APC to throw into the ring, a fighter whose tactics are already known to the belt holder, by picking a former governor of the state to run in 2018. This will show the party is at wits end. Apart from leaving the electorate in a quagmire, it will also portray the political parties as being the same in form and content, without offering the people a qualitative, inspiring choice.

More of his weaknesses: Inspite of his advantages, Fayose’s humiliation from power seems inevitable. By 2018, if he has not been impeached, he will be a diminished ghostly shadow, his bully instinct subdued, his pugilist manners cut to size and his grandstanding humbled. For one thing, on his shoulders hang the cross of the murders of Tunde Omojola and Dr Ayo Daramola which the opposition continues to drum. For one thing, he may have some projects to show, like the overhead bridge and the Ikere-Ado Ekiti highway, but in all, his policies have further impoverished the masses. Contracts are awarded to cronies.

The tender’s board exists in his bedroom. One top civil servant told me that Ekiti has become “Hitler’s Concentration Camp.” No one can challenge his bullying authority. He owes workers about 6 months’ salary, not purely due to the national meltdown, but largely due to his reckless and disorganized roadmap combined with corruption and the muzzling of public funds. The civil services which he claims to control have turned 360 degree against him. He cut the salaries of the Obas. His party, the PDP is in shreds. There is visible anger on the streets marked with bottled up disenchantment ready to explode. For the first time, many Ekiti people have never witnessed the level of deprivation, poverty and hopelessness.His propaganda stunts are exhausted. More than ever before and despite the divisions within the APC, the party and the people seem determined to put an end to the shame and ignominy imposed on them.

Fayose who claims to be a tiger, this time in 2018, seems will not be fighting a lion, but a liger, a more vigorous hybrid from the genes of a lion and a tiger. Perhaps, he already knows that his fall from the cliff-edge is inevitable, prompting is confession that 2018 is uncertain. Worst still, by 2018, he will be out of his immunized fortress to face the chilling consequences of his past. For now, he may have to begin to think of how he will contend with the post-election political blitzkrieg. If politics is war by other means, Fayose should expect the bitterest war in his political career come 2018 and possibly his most chilling defeat.