New Telegraph

Ayo Fayose: A word

I woke up this Sunday morning ruminating about what to write for my weekly column amid a plethora of several issues competing for space and attention in a country of so many chequered narratives.

 

Two issues attracted my attention in very hilarious way; that of Ayo Fayose, former Governor of Ekiti State popularly called “sifia (severe) pain” and that of President Muhammadu Buhari’s response to the NTA interviewer on his return from London after 17 days of medical tourism. Excited by Mr. President’s return, the journalist had asked the president what Nigerians should expect having rebooted and refreshed.

 

The president’s response was dumbfounding: “continuity”. As if he wouldn’t want any rehash or emphasis on his response, he asked for the next question. That response did not show a president that has a presence of mind, or one who is attuned to the realities around him.

 

If we are to go by the negatives that have dominated public discourse in recent times, continuity would further asphyxiate an already bad situation due to the dysfunctionality in the system.

 

Could it be continuity in kidnapping, armed banditry, insurgency, armed robbery, general insecurity and a litany of other minuses that have crippled our economy? What exactly was Mr. President talking about when be mentioned that word? Continuity of suffering, of deprivation, of IDPs, of joblessness, of unemployment and killings?

 

What is the continuity about? While the president was at the Presidential Wing throwing punches in the air, Fayose was on Channels Television, Politics Today doing his usual theatrics loaded with contradictions.

 

Typical of a politician that wants to listen to his own voice, he tried effortlessly to present himself as a man who has the love of PDP at heart. While he was on Channels TV, I was also a guest on AIT’s Democracy Today programme where I had the opportunity to expose the weakness, laziness, and inertia of the Uche Secondus-led leadership that has become largely draconian, conquistadorial and acquisitive.

 

Due to leadership inertia, the role of opposition which the party ought to be preoccupied with has ebbed considerably amid a plethora of other competing interests surrounding the quest for the 2023 presidential contest.

 

The Uche Secondus-led regime is gradually killing the PDP, making it weaker by the day, and assuming a “siddon-look” posturing that would further decimate its opportunities and fortunes in preparation for 2023.

 

Voices of reason are considered as treasonable. In a gale of suspension and counter- suspension, the party is immersed in dubiety of purpose, based on interests by those who called themselves “owners” of the party. The finances of the party are not alluring tales to celebrate nor do they tell didactic stories of what an ideal opposition engagement should be.

 

A document I obtained through my sources, catalogued the sorry state of the party’s finances and the lack of proper record-keeping and balance sheet of income and expenditure. Most states chapters without elected governors under the PDP flag are left to rot away from lack of attention, motivation and encouragement.

 

Even though I was not opportune to watch Ayo Fayose on the said Channels’ Politics Today programme, I was able to watch the full episode on YouTube to ascertain the kernel of his diatribe.

 

Displaying the hauteur of a smart Alec, he tried to be holier than thou as he presented two faces of his persona, one contradicting the other, with an ego that is tellingly expository of his dual personality.

 

Trying to be clever by half, he said repeatedly that he would not want to drag the party out in the public domain, yet, he expressed his disavowal to the outcome of the South-West Congress where he put every blame at the doorstep of the Oyo State Governor, Seyi Makinde. Does Seyi Makinde not belong to the PDP?

 

Is an attack on Governor Seyi Makinde, not an attack on PDP? While he indicted Governor Seyi Makinde on the one hand, he stated that he would not discuss the party on TV.

 

What a contradiction! I watched him trying to locate my person, where I come from, where I belong or not belong, but his reference to me exposed his limited knowledge of my persona.

 

Just to tell Fayose that I am still a bona fide member of the PDP and all my rights are still very much protected and guaranteed by the party’s constitution and that of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I am amazed at Fayose’s liturgy at twisting logic and displaying ignorance at such a level.

 

Asked about my recent introspection into the unwholesome activities of the Secondus-led leadership of the party, Fayose went off track, trying to locate my state and trajectory, whether Delta or Edo, mentioning Bukola Saraki, before he finally arrived at his submission that I was no longer a member of the PDP.

 

If I didn’t watch the outing on YouTube, I probably would have thought the snippets I was initially fed with were not accurate. I was shocked listening to Fayose not being able to locate my state, yet he later talked about working against Governor Obaseki.

 

Not done, he said I was no longer a member of the PDP. How ignorant? Only yesterday, the national leadership had given a fiat that the state chapter should hand me a suspension letter. Do you suspend a man who you claimed not to be your member?

 

Rather than address the crux of my allegations which are germane to helping the party locate its locus, the leadership has been adrift, running from pillar to post, trying to silent my voice. Fayose, as one of Secondus’ foot-soldiers in the South-West, tried to ensure a structure that would be answerable to him, but he was beaten silly to his game.

 

None of his anointed candidates was elected. While he accepted his defeat during the day, he sings a different tune at night. I have repeatedly stated the fact that the PDP as opposition must be alive to its responsibility of playing its role without equivocation.

 

It must rise above its present leadership inertia to assume a more formidable pedestal in the scheme of things across the length and breadth of the country. Its present role is defeatist and utterly discomfiting of a party that should be at the forefront of charting a roadmap out of our present economic quagmire and political cul-de-sac.

 

The leadership has not only shown itself as rudderless, spineless and without balls, its method of playing opposition exposes a routine weakness that tells of incapacity and crass incompetence. Nigerians desire an alternative voice at this point of our chequered history, a history that is driven by the phlegm of nepotism, cronyism, selective amnesia and leadership atrophy.

 

Rather than rise to the occasion, all they have to tell any onlooker is the weather-beaten phrase: “Kassim Afegbua has left our party”. What has my membership of the party got to do with the queries I raised about financial impropriety and malfeasance?

 

I am still very much a member of the PDP and my September 19th, 2020 support for the APC candidate was my own way to rebel against the unholy imposition of Godwin Obaseki and his Deputy on the Edo State Chapter of the PDP. My position has not changed and given similar scenario, I will still maintain same stand. Leadership must always submit itself to serious interrogation and inquisition.

 

That is the beauty of participatory democracy. The real issue before all of us is how to rescue Nigerians out of their present leadership cul-de-sac. The PDP that ought to provide the alternative voice as an integral part of this process has a leadership that is slumbering and snoring away as if nothing is amiss.

The gloomy picture of today’s Nigeria is enough to make the PDP the beckon of hope were the leadership to be proactive and forward-looking.

While APC is gaining strength on top of its lethargic leadership and poor delivery of democracy dividends, the PDP leadership gallivants about, detained by its own incompetence, like a rudderless ship running amok on the high sea.

 

The leadership, rather than dissect the issues I had raised, desires to see my membership suspended. They give directives to the state chapter, pressuring them to suspend me, yet they declare in the public that I no longer belong to the party. Double standards, you would say.

 

The fact must be stated that the present leadership of the part has shown signs of weakness, incapacity and incompetence to manage all the divergent views that should mass together into a movement that would signpost what to expect in the 2023 political tussle. The likes of Fayose must go beyond noise making and rabble-rousing.

 

They must see the larger picture of what lays ahead and the place of the party in that jungle of struggle and political contestation. The party’s stakeholders must urgently meet to articulate the way out beyond the present rhetoric of thinking everything will fall in line once the “battle” commences.

 

The truth must be told in unambiguous terms about the greater need to forge ahead with well-articulated plans of how to swim in the same ocean as the APC and dominate the latter in policy options and benchmarks.

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