15032019 - INEC kicks as court stops make-up polls in Adamawa

40 — Vanguard, FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2019
Ajimobi, Okorocha, Ganduje: An unfolding story
IT’s incredible how eight years
have ended as a two-word
parable: constituted authority.
That’s what Governor Abiola
Isiaka Ajimobi would be mostly
remembered for - the epigram
from his encounter with students
of Ladoke Akintola University of
Technology, LAUTECH. That
episode was perhaps one of the
most catastrophic PR disasters of
Ajimobi’s eight-year tenure.
A teacher’s strike over the
status/funding of the school two
years ago left the students
stranded for nearly one academic
year. When the governor finally
met them, all he needed to do
was to climb down from his high
horse and show some empathy.
Tell them he felt their pain and
frustration, and what he was
doing to end it. Tell them that
anyone of them could have been
his own children and the last
thing he would wish was for his
children to be out of school for
one year, no matter what the
problem was, with still no end in
sight. Soothe their pain, calm
their nerves and come down to
their level.
He did not. Instead, as tensions
flared and a few in the crowd
taunted him, he railed back like
a village headmaster, desperately
looking for a scapegoat or two
among the students to give a few
strokes of the cane on bare
buttocks. How dare the students
challenge “constituted
authority!” Never mind that it
took this “constituted authority”
nearly one academic year to
discover that its own university
was shut down.
Ajimobi yo-yoed with the idea
of unleashing the police on a few
vocal students in the crowd, then
pulled back when he saw he was
playing with fire. But it was too
late. The video went viral and the
governor earned himself a new
name, a moniker, which I’m told
even cabinet members use to
mock him behind his back:
constituted authority.
Chieftaincy wars
Later the same year, the
governor expanded his
battleground to include the
Olubadan in a suicidal political
mission to downgrade the palace
to his Boys’ Quarters and make
the Olubadan just one of the
numerous tenants. Whatever the
governor’s rationale for
tampering with the chieftaincy
laws, the malicious intent was not
going to be forgiven easily in a
state with a long memory, a sharp
tongue, and a deep,
unashamedly old-fashioned
attachment to its myths and
traditions.
But Ajimobi still didn’t get it.
Not even after the initial ruling
by the court that he was out of
•Okorocha, Ganduje and Ajimobi...swept away?
order and many high-powered
representations to dissuade him.
He stuck to his guns and
increasingly assumed an air of
infallibility. He had, in fact, done
what Napoleon could not do, so
where was the mountain left to
conquer? He is the first governor
in Oyo State’s history to have a
second term. And this historic feat
had created a certain sense of selfassurance
and immortality that
banished that intuitive sense of
danger, sometimes vital to selfpreservation.
The primary question was
always, who’s next to conquer?
In that sense, the demolition of
the music studios of Yinka
Ayefele, after the governor’s
personal assurances of amnesty
to the distraught Mrs. Ayefele
who begged Ajimobi in tears in
the Government House the night
before the bulldozers moved in,
was just a blip. There was nothing
too hard for the governor to do.
Insiders said the governor came
only inches from demolishing the
fence of Tribune newspapers in
Imalefalafia, brushing aside
attempts to restrain him each time,
with the reminder that even if he
turns out wrong in the end: “It’s
not my money that will pay for
restitution. It’s government
money!”
Who ‘did’ Ajimobi?
The summary of Ajimobi’s
eight-year tenure is that he did
not know how to talk - and worse,
he did not know how to listen. I
wish I could say it in elegant
English, the Ibadan way. If he
killed himself by not knowing
how to talk, he might have been
redeemed from the political death
by listening before choosing a
candidate to carry the party’s flag.
Unfortunately, even that
potentially redemptive act,
became the final nail in his own
political coffin.
This is not how it was meant to
be. After years of turbulence and
rancour, which left Ibadan as a
glorified village and most parts
of Oyo backward for decades, the
coming of Abiola Isiaka Ajimobi
as governor was supposed to be
a breath of fresh air. Ajimobi had
26-year private sector experience
and was a cosmopolitan as they
come. He did not seem
encumbered by the provincialism
and identity politics that were the
albatross of a number of his
predecessors.
A one-time senator and twoterm
governor, how benefitting it
would have been to crown his
modest achievements in
infrastructure with another ticket
to the Senate and a successor to
carry on his work. But that is not
to be. Instead, for some time to
come, his tenure would be a
standard reference in Sunday
school on the perils of pride and
the vanity of hubris.
Friend from the East
Ajimobi is not in entirely
without comfort, though. Rochas
The wind that
swept away
Ajimobi in the
South West and
claimed Governor
Okorocha’s
senatorial
ambition in the
South East, has
just arrived in
Kano
Okorocha, the outgoing governor
of Imo State, is facing his own
moment of truth. After eight years
of Iberiberism, a homegrown
political philosophy which
lavishes the state’s treasury on
family and in-laws, while using
what is left to build statues and
honour crooks. Okorocha is
finding out the hard way that
foolishness digs its own shallow
grave.
At a time when he would not
pay salaries or pensions, he found
money to create Africa’s longest
Statues Street, lining up images
of whoever he fancied, as if the
people would eat statues for their
labour. When teachers were on
less than half salaries, Okorocha
still found enough money to make
large billboards, with pictures of
himself in benevolent smile over
a state in misery. In the summer
of 2015, he famously celebrated
his visit to the U.S. on Buhari’s
entourage by erecting a large
billboard in Owerri, with a picture
of himself smiling sheepishly
before former President Barack
Obama.
The lowest points for me were
the times when school children
whose teachers were on half pay
and whose parents didn’t know
where the next meal would come
from were brought to perform for
the governor and to sing his
praise. It was iberibe on a whole
new level. Apparently, the fellow
doesn’t know it’s over now; or
maybe he knows but just lacks the
grace to accept it and compassion
for the long-suffering people of
Imo. Okorocha still put himself
forward to represent Imo West in
the Senate; his son-in-law as
candidate to succeed him; and his
wife as the state’s matriarch-inchief.
When it became clear to him
that his bid had failed, he
reportedly threatened the
returning officer - the same way
he has held Imo at gunpoint for
eight years - to declare him
winner. Let’s see how far that gets
him. If the All Progressives
Congress, APC, ever sits down
to take stock of the 2019 election,
it would find that in a number of
the states where it lost – or could
still lose – its governors were the
party’s worst enemies. The only
exception, perhaps, is Plateau,
where the governor’s
obsequiousness in handling the
herdsmen-farmer’s clashes could
cost him his second-term bid.
…And the North, too
As Governor Abdullahi
Ganduje’s fate hangs by a thread
in Kano, it is clear that he is not
the oracle that he pretended to
be. His attempt to humiliate and
depose Emir Sanusi Lamido
Sanusi over the so-called dodgy
palace expenses; his spectacular
fallout with his former boss, Rabiu
Kwankwaso; and the
controversial video of him lining
his pocket with wads of dollar bills,
have eroded his popularity and
diminished any modest
achievements.
After last Saturday’s election,
thanks to an extraordinarily
courageous and professional
commissioner of police,
Mohammed Wakili, it must have
dawned on Ganduje by now that
the one million people who voted
for Buhari on February 23 did so
not at the governor’s behest, but
in spite of him.
Whatever Ganduje promised
Buhari or thinks Buhari owes him,
he forgot that in Kano politics, it’s
charity and honesty, above all.
That’s how it’s been since Aminu
Kano. Kano does not follow the
crowd; it creates its own crowd
and makes its own choice. It voted
Buhari not because of what he has
done or not done, but because
Buhari promised to jail thieves.
Now, voters are pointing him to a
piece of red meat in the Kano
Government House. The wind
that swept away Ajimobi in the
South West and claimed
Governor Okorocha’s senatorial
ambition in the South East, has
just arrived in Kano. It’s hard to
see how Ganduje will survive it.
Fayemi inaugurates
state Electricity
Regulation Act
By Rotimi Ojomoyela
A
D O - E K I T I —
GOVERNOR Kayode
Fayemi of Ekiti State, yesterday
inaugurated the State
Electricity Regulatory Act
2015, assuring that the
incessant conflict between the
Benin Electricity Distribution
Company, BEDC and
electricity consumers in the State
will soon be resolved.
Inaugurating the Act which was
originally signed into law by
former Governor Ayo Fayose in
September 2015, Governor
Fayemi his government
intervened in the BEDC /
consumer crisis immediately the
administration was inaugurated
in October last year by setting up
a committee to look into the power
problem.
Fayemi, who was represented
by the Secretary to the State
Government, Biodun Oyebanji,
recalled that no fewer than 47
communities were disconnected
from the national grid before
October 2018 but the present
administration is taking steps to
ensure that they are reconnected.
Okowa, Nigeria's
most valuable
political asset
— EFEKODHA
A
member of Delta State
Rural Development
Agency, Prince Larry Efekodha
have said that Governor Ifeanyi
Okowa of Delta State is a grand
master in the art of dispensing
prosperity to his people, stressing
that he is the best political asset
in the country.
Efekhoda said this in Asaba
while addressing Deltans during
his thank-you tour for People's
Democratic Party, PDP and
Okowa's victory
He said: ''Okowa will perform
better than his first four years in
office and Nigerians will need
him for greater national
assignment thereafter. His good
work will continue to promote the
Democratic Party's brand and
position it to be the foremost party
in Africa.
''His landslide victory with
almost a million votes is an
evidence to the fact that Deltans
love him for his ‘Prosperity' works.
We shall continue to work with
Okowa to spread dividends of
democracy to all Deltans till he
gets to the highest level of public
service in Nigeria.
Efekhode, who was the
President of University of Benin
students union also said:
''Governor Okowa is a rare germ,
a fast thinker, a smart worker and
a promise keeper, whose superior
qualities are needed for service
to humanity at all times. His level
of integrity is second to none. He
conducted the most peaceful and
transparent party primaries in the
history of Nigeria. Just like
Deltan's, Nigerian's will benefit
from his great leadership qualities
within the coming period.
''Today, Governor Okowa has
embarked upon numerous
human capital, as well as
infrastructural development
throughout Delta State. Okowa's
winning have also enthrenched
equity as a peaceful political
doctrine in Delta State.''