Sallah rams in Ekiti

Ayodele Fayose, he that is now wearing the toga of the enfant terrible of Nigeria politics, a gadfly if ever there was one was in his most generous mood recently. For those who are likely to pull a long face and demur that Ayodele Fayose may be accused of everything but not selfishness would most […]

Ayodele Fayose, he that is now wearing the toga of the enfant terrible of Nigeria politics, a gadfly if ever there was one was in his most generous mood recently. For those who are likely to pull a long face and demur that Ayodele Fayose may be accused of everything but not selfishness would most certainly be right. They should not however forget that Ayo comes across not only as a maverick but also as the meanest governor in Nigeria today. Go and ask President Muhammadu Buhari about what he thinks of Ayo, because even in his generous and expansive mood PMB would not forget so easily what Ayo tried to do to his presidential ambition. How can we forget his ranting from the rooftop that the former general was old and infirm and even went as far as evoking a morbid possibility of that which should not be mentioned, which no doubt must have shocked every discerning person to the marrow, because wishing a person ill will and death is simply the height of indecorum and downright sadistic?
 I am sure PMB would chuckle wryly whenever Ayo crosses his mind, he would wonder how it came to be that the virtues of respect for elders whose blessings are cherished and much sought after by every Yoruba never robbed off Ayo for him to imbibe. Yet, warts and all, Ayo has a method, his own distinct personal style which has continued to work for him. Yes, it has worked for him big time. It is the reason he is sitting as governor of Ekiti State. It is Ayo’s method that won him that coveted seat, and he did that by beating no less formidable opponent in the person of a cerebral, urbane intellectual of the calibre of Kayode Fayemi, albeit in a disputed election. Many have wondered how a state proverbially noted as one with a professor in every household put a man with a disputed HND, so bereft of decorum to rule over them.
Simple. Ekiti people are poor like most people in many states, with many needing immediate palliative measures to relieve the pangs of hunger, and so at election time Ayo doesn’t waste his time going about preaching about future development. He simply busies himself doling out food items-rice, gari, yams etc to solve the immediate problem of hunger. He calls it “stomach democracy” and it has worked for him, it is the reason that he is sitting pretty at the government house in Ado Ekiti calling the shots. Some may call him a grassroots politician throwing money and resources at solving the immediate problem of his people, while others would see him as a short -sighted populist out only to feed the anxieties of his people to win votes but ignores the salient issue of marshalling scarce resources to develop and modernise the state. Ekiti State’s roads are far more motorable than that of Kwara State, its neighbour to the west. Anyone going to Kwara State from the north abandons the shorter route between Kabba and Omuaran and uses a longer but well macadamised one in Ekiti state. The roads were rebuilt during Kayode Fayemi’s tenure but I understand that faced by the dilemma of paying his civil servants, including those in the all important teaching service and doing concrete things like building roads, schools and hospitals etc, he applied the scarce resources at his disposal to the latter. It meant that teachers and other civil servants could not be paid as and when due. They never forgave Fayemi and at election time he paid dearly for it. You do not have to be the late Professor Sam Aluko, the renowned economist and a veritable Ekiti man himself to know that in the long haul in Fayemi’s policy of building infrastructure lays the prospect of turning Ekiti State into an economically viable state that could attract investors. But as far as the Ekiti people are concerned you could jolly well go tell that to the marines for all they care!
What’s more, having chanced upon the election winning formula of his “stomach democracy”, Ayo Fayose is not about to abandon it now. Towards making the sizeable Muslim community in Ekiti happy during this sallah he invited them to government house to collect rams. The gesture which is not against any Islamic doctrine, its practice is widespread in the north, threw up a controversy, as most issues in the state do and divided the ranks of the usually cohesive Muslim community. Many Ekiti people hard put to it at finding the means to buy rams paid a quick visit to the government house to collect their own, but many others, for reasons personal to them preferred to scrape and labour to find the means to buy rams, with many making do with bush meat or without any meat at all in the sallah soup.
Governor Ayo Fayose, not being one to be brow beaten easily went on the offensive against his political foes “who mix religion with politics” for dissuading those who did not collect the ram, urging all Muslims to see the rams he was giving out as their entitlement and that a similar gesture would be extended to Christians during Christmas. Well, I am a firm believer in the injunctions of the good books that say we should give and receive; I would therefore be the last to judge my Muslim compatriots for receiving what was offered to them. As for my Christian friends in Ekiti, they would have no excuse, not even non-payment of salaries for not adding a sumptuous pot full of ram meat to the dinner table at Christmas when I call, now that we have heard from the horse’s mouth that there would be free ram during the yuletide!

 Coups in Africa
Africa remains about the only continent still wedded to coups-a distasteful and conspiratorial way of changing governments. The latest one in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabe capital where the elite presidential guard, led by one General Gilbert Deindere toppled the interim government trying to pave the way for a general election before this year runs out is another one in a long line of sickening removal of governments by drunken soldiers. South America used to be notorious for coups but all that is in the past. From Mexico to Bolivia and Venezuela down to the southern tip of Argentina, South American countries have stuck tenaciously to democratic traditions with thriving popular rule and with it has come prosperity. It is the same for Asia.
Not so in Africa, where Mali, Guinea (Conakry), Cape Verde, Egypt and now Burkina Faso have at various times come under military rule. In Egypt, a popularly elected government of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that had languished in opposition for over 80 years was swept to power with Mohammed Morsi at the helms in the aftermath of the popular uprising that swept across North Africa some 4 years ago. Sadly, Egypt is back under the rule of a former military man deluding himself to have been elected by the people. Burkina Faso recently chased out Blaise Compaore, the former ruler for changing the constitution that would have allowed him to stay beyond the term limit. He was replaced by an interim government working to conduct an election and then Gilbert Deindere and soldiers loyal to Compaore struck, apparently seeking to return the latter.
For now, good sense forced down the coup makers throats by Ecowas and sheer force of might mounted by other arms of the Burkinabe military have caused Deindere and his men to back down thereby returning sanity and normalcy to Ouagadougou. Ecowas and the military in Burkinas Faso should go further to try Diendere and his clique for endangering lives and supplanting duly constituted government and be punished accordingly.