Fayose And His Last-Ditch Slew In Ekiti – By Segun Dipe
For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy: but to the sinner he giveth travail, to gather and to heap up, that he may give to him that is good before God. This also is vanity and vexation of spirit. -Ecc 2:26
I have yet to find the most appropriate word to describe the insatiable lust for power and property by the emperor-like Governor of Ekiti State, Peter Ayodele Fayose. His last days in power has been quite preposterous. He has become shameless and carefree with the way he steals from the collective patrimony of the helpless people of Ekiti.
Fayose is afflicted with great insatiable desire. He has lost his natural human qualities and behaves worse than animals. Human virtues cannot be acquired from calling oneself a leader of the people. They can neither be nourished from mere governing a state the longest, nor can they be got ready made from mouthing it. They have to be cultivated and the resulting joy has to be experienced by him.
But Fayose has become an unrepentant sinner. Like the biblical Nebuchadnezzar, he has grown to become a deluded eccentric. Fayose has an unmatched knowledge of what is evil and he does it with impunity. His mindlessness of how his conduct bruises the people he swore to protect and yet doesn’t know how to repent from living a lie, is legendary.
Fayose has converted the state coffer to his personal purse. He dips his hands into it at will, and in these last days in power, he is desperately doctoring every document to justify every phony expenditure he has made, and still making, on his personal desire. He is today the state, and the state is him. So, resources that are allocated to Ekiti State, automatically belong to Fayose, with the connivance of his lawlessly handpicked assemblymen.
It is quite challenging for the people of the state who still have up till October 16 to watch Fayose committing more atrocities than any living Nigerian in the name of governing them. More heinous is the fact that those they have sent to the State House of Assembly to represent their interests are the same people encouraging Fayose to continue with their rape.
The man I do not envy at this point of waiting for Fayose’s exit is the Governor-elect, Dr. John Kayode Fayemi. I honestly don’t envy him at all, as he waits and watches, with baited breath, hoping for when Fayose would stop pillaging the fortunes of the state in his care and what he would eventually hand over to him on 16 October 2018. I am sure Fayemi must most times have been tempted to walk up to Fayose and ask him why he would be such a mindless and wicked fellow to his people in slewing their collective patrimony on personal projects.
When Fayose in his usual puff came up with the promise that he would not leave any project uncompleted, he was actually referring to the projects he is personally acquiring. Today, Fayose is as rich as the biblical King Nebuchadnezzar, stealing from the poor Ekiti State.
Fayose has gone berserk with acquisition. He has acquired for himself every property and resource in sight. 50 per cent of choice properties in Ado Ekiti state capital now belong to Fayose. Name it, from estates to hotels to radio and television stations to petrol stations, to churches and mosques, to shops, Fayose is acquiring them all to himself with the speed of light, and with unmatched impunity. He is unperturbed and undisturbed by what becomes of the state after he must have left on October 16. His calculation, I guess, is that let the EFCC or any security agent come, they can only seize only as much as they can identify, not all.
For lack of any living match, I liken Fayose to Nebuchadnezzar who was the king of Babylon c. 605 BC – c. 562 BC. Like Fayose’s is the longest and most powerful reign of any governor till date in Ekiti, Nebuchadnezzar’s is the longest and most powerful reign of any monarch in the Neo-Babylonian empire. Nebuchadnezzar stole everything in sight in his empire and even attempted to steal what belonged to God. In his last days, he was being addressed as “O god Nabu!”
Nebuchadnezzar used force and destruction to grow an empire for himself. He conquered kingdom after kingdom, with the most notable being his destruction of Jerusalem in the name of development, just like Fayose opted to destroy the legacies of Ado, the capital of Ekiti State, under the guise of developing it.
Fayose is totally immersed in self-interest. Multiplying desires without limit, he is becoming demonic being. He is not content with having what he needs for essential purposes, rather, he is accumulating enormously for an unforeseeable future. He is filled with delusive discontent, and in the process, he has forfeited his happiness here and in the hereafter.
Ekiti desperately needs a leader with human values, and leadership with human face, which cannot be promoted through materialistic, worldly or scientific means. They also need a governor who will not be afraid or understanding to let Fayose get away with all the wealth he has stolen from them, without making him account for them within the ambits of the law. Hopefully, this is what Fayemi is coming with, for nothing short of it will be good enough.
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Dipe is a Public Affairs analyst
