Ayo Fayose for Trust Annual Dialogue

The three speakers for the 2015 edition whose theme is ‘2015 Elections; Making Nigeria The Winner’ did not disappoint. Lt General Danbazzau (rtd) former Chief of Army Staff, proved his mettle as a scholar soldier, who successfully combined the exertion of military service with the refinement of intellectual pursuits of the ivory tower, launched the […]

The three speakers for the 2015 edition whose theme is ‘2015 Elections; Making Nigeria The Winner’ did not disappoint. Lt General Danbazzau (rtd) former Chief of Army Staff, proved his mettle as a scholar soldier, who successfully combined the exertion of military service with the refinement of intellectual pursuits of the ivory tower, launched the opening salvo. He wasfollowed by Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, achartered accountant, former two-time minister in the Ministries of Solid Minerals and Education, later Vice President of the Word Bank (Africa Region), and a pillar of support for several social causes including that of the kidnapped Chibok girls. Speaking lastly was the highly motivational Bishop Idowu Fearon of Kaduna whose mastery of the Bible and Koran places him as a veritable bridge across the nation’s principal faiths of Christianity and Islam.  So much for the refined disposition of the forum.
Yet after twelve editions of successful run, the series may need to consider some structural adjustments just as the nation’s economy, though for a different reason. Having paraded the brightest and the best for so long, would it not be unfair to ignore the elements at the other extreme end of our community of leadership, the iconoclastic public officers in our midstwho have consistently demonstrated palpable deficit in self-restraint?
Having featured the brightest and the vilest, will it be a bad idea for the forum to consider expanding its repertoire to include in one form or the other, those statutorily endowed potentates under whose brief the resources and destiny of the nation are vested by accident or design, but who have rather deviated from expected trajectories of decorous conduct in office for reasons best known to them. For them, the laws, conventions, traditional values as well as mores of the society including the sanctity of lives, are nothing more than disposable handkerchiefs.
Ignoring these is not as helpful to the country as much as constructive engagement does, except if they have been granted the status of bulls in a China shop that is full of fragile pottery ware, leaving them to  destroy as much of our collective patrimony as is possible, only for us to lament over the avoidable loss, after they leave office. And without doubt the most qualified front-liner in this case is Ayo Fayose, the current Executive Governor of Ekiti State.His credentials for this role are not in doubt. Fayose’s escapades in the nation’s public domain in the past decade plus, eminently qualify him as the choice candidate for a front seat in the roll of dishonor.
Here is a man who contested and ‘won’ the exalted seat of Governor of Ekiti State in 2007, under circumstances that were anything but regular. His tenure featured a no less unsavoury medley of shenanigans, leading to his impeachment by the Ekiti State House of Assembly on October 16, 2006. The grounds of his impeachment were alleged embezzlement of public funds and abuse of office.
As alleged by some reports, while the security agents were waiting for the impeachment to be announced in order to arrest him following his consequential loss of executive immunity, the gentleman was scaling the airport perimeter fence to evade detection during escape. This explains how he ended up in exile soon after his impeachment, and started courting the powers that be to plot his return to freedom, power and relevance.  
Fayose’s return did not fare more gloriously. In a gangland style of seizing power through the machinations of a cabal in Ekiti State, working in cahoots with elements at the national level of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Fayose was suddenly presented to Nigerians as the best thing that happened to the nation’s politics, and, of course, the messiah of Ekiti State. The truth was that given the then dwindling fortunes of the PDP in the state, the mandarins could not envisage any indigene who could generate the level of political unorthodoxy to upset the apple cart of the ruling Action Congress (AC) in the state and later the All Progressives Congress; (into which the AC later collapsed). So desperate were they to seize power that nothing was too sacred to be sacrificed for the cause.
In that context no effort was spared to repackage his image as the anointed one to whom all has to defer to. Even the statutory hurdle as provided in the Constitution which barred impeached officers to return to public office was sidelined by the good people of Ekiti State, thereby setting up a dangerous legal precedent for the country as a whole.
The APC contested it spiritedly. But a bizzare turn of events stalled (temporarily?) the process. Firstly, court proceedings over his impeachment matter were brazenly disrupted by thugs who stormed the High Court just before judgment would be passed, beat up the officials, ransacked and tore up the court records including documents relating to other cases beyond Fayose. ’Coincidentally’ the next day as Ayo Fayose engaged another High Court Judge in the court premises a group of thugs descended on the Lordship, beating him up mercilessly in the process.
Of course the untouchable Fayose, predictably won the governorship election a second time and soon after returned to his old ways. Firstly he emasculated the legislature, when the Speaker was impeached illegally, and adopted seven out of the 26 member Ekiti House of Assembly for carrying out his unfolding agenda.
His latest outrage, this time against General Muhammad Buhari at whom he launched a death wish in the name of political campaigning for the PDP, is only one face of Ayo Fayose at work, this time outside the borders of Ekiti State. And given his antecedents this is not the last to be heard or seen from him.
Before the Buhari episode,Fayose had advised the PDP to suspend former President Olusegun Obasanjo his (former?) benefactor, over comments that he considered not patronizing enough to the party. Who his next target will be is as predictable as where Boko Haram may strike next.
The late Jamaican reggae musician Peter Tosh might not have had Ekiti State in mind when he wrote the lyrics “Sorry the magadog, he’ll turn round to bite you, you jump out of the frying pan, you jump in the fire yeah…”
Recommending Ayo Fayose to feature at the next edition of Trust Dialogue is not intended to desecrate the forum. Rather it is hoped that if offered the opportunity of appearing at such a platform, and if he accepts to come,  Nigerians and the world at large may be availed an insight into the mindset that drives his redoubtable public life.
After all, rigorous scrutiny has a corrective value, and may apply in taming Ayo Fayose.