Before June 21 Governorship elections in Ekiti State Professor Jide Osuntokun spoke from Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world that Ayo Fayose may be bad news for Ekiti State, Yoruba Nation and Nigeria,If he is forced on the people Ekit judging from the feelers he got from the powers that be. In that historic piece ,Prof. Osuntokun screamed: “How on earth, in the year of our Lord 2014 can anybody compare Kayode Fayemi, our incumbent Governor with Fayose, our former Governor who we are trying to forget that he ever ruled our state.”
In the same piece Prof Osuntokun thundered: ‘’If we are sensible people and I think we are we should not be faced with this choice but the choice is clear. There’s no meeting point between darkness and light, between peace and war, between serenity and confusion, between murder and life, between development and underdevelopment, between progress and backwardness and between education and illiteracy.’’
Professor Jide Osuntokun saw it coming and he spoke out. The rest is now history. The worst has happened in Ekiti state, the unthinkable, the unbelievable, the unacceptable, unpardonable, the bizarre, and the hopeless.The world was told that Ayo Fayose won the June 21 Governorship elections in Ekiti State because Governor Fayemi did not play politics of the stomach or stomach infrastructure politics.They told us that Ayo Fayose is a popular candidate who is in touch with his people. These dangerous unsubstantiated fairy tales nearly covered and shielded the obvious and painful truth that when you allow lies to be told a thousand times educated illiterates in the 21st Century may accept the lies as truths.
Only few Nigerians especially the opposition asked serious questions about why APC leaders were prevented from going to Ekiti State to campaign few days to the elections proper. Had APC known half of what they found out before the state of Osun elections, the story would have been different today. The truth is that we allowed PDP and the nation’s security Agencies to intimidate us out of Ekiti State and they went ahead to rig Fayose to power. As we went to sleep thinking that PDP and its agents would be fair to all, the worst happened, and a villain instantly became a hero, an illiterate became a professor over night and darkness became light instantly.
Before the June 21 elections in Ekiti, all the security agenices in Nigeria were in the know that Ayo Fayose has a case of corruption with EFCC. They knew that he was impeached for reasons known to all of them. They knew that he was impeached for reasons known to all of them. They knew that he has two murder cases to answer in the court of the Land. But PDP still went ahead to give him the ticket to run and consequently rigged him to power.
Now,APC Ekiti later discovered that something went wrong somewhere and headed to the court of the Land to seek redress. But the worst happened few days back. Sensing that things might go wrong Ayo Fayose went to the Ekiti State High Court on Wednesday September 24, 2014, slapped the Judge, Justice John Adeyeye and ordered thugs to beat the Judge up. Policemen were standing by and watched as the Judge was being assaulted and they did nothing. As at the time of writing this, no serious explanation has been given to Nigerians why the police stood by as a Court Judge is being assaulted.It speaks volume of how deep we have sunk in this virus called impunity and brigandage. It shows at once that something is fundamentally wrong with our democracy. It shows the world what to expect in days ahead. Those who know better will tell you at once that we have reached a dead end, where it is either we do something or we all perish.
The Ekiti Court invasion may not be the first of its kind in Nigeria but beating up a Judge may be another new invention in the politics of Nigeria which continues to baffle the world.In almost 16 years PDP has devastated South West in particular with the worst characters in their midst. PDP has used political criminals and nonentities to under develop South West. They have used their worsts to rubbish their bests. For eight years former President Obasanjo was in power South West suffered degradation and decimation. They rigged charlatans and scoundrels to power and they used it to vitiate their progress for eight years. The criminal inversion and the beating of a High Court Judge is yet another assault on the sensibilities of not only people of South West but the whole of Nigeria. It is a big threat to democracy and rule of law. It signals anarchy and lawlessness. It portents death wish to Nigeria.
Now, if the truth must be told ,the world must know that majority of Yoruba leaders, thinkers, rulers, and followers’ e.t.c do not want PDP anywhere in their land. To them PDP is like a Virus, Ebola, HIV AIDs and Cancer. They see PDP as potentially dangerous and deadly. Anything PDP touches in Nigeria goes down and at best to ashes. The party celebrates corruption, impunity, brigandage, rigging of elections, mediocrity, lawlessness, crass incompetence, and inefficiency.
If the truth must be told we have come to the point where we can no longer trust the President, the army, the police or any agency of the government. It is that bad. In every sector we see decay, betrayal, mistrust, hopelessness, helplessness, arrogance, and confusion.
I plead with Nigerians once again to get up and give Nigeria hope by rejecting PDP now. We need to inject new blood, new ideas and new hope into the system. We need to do things differently now, we need to have the courage to say no to this cabal and say in voice, in amity , in unity, concord, loud and clear that enough is enough.
Joe Igbokwe
Lagos