AS FAYEMI AWAITS THE CROWN.

By Peter Claver Oparah.

By Saturday, April 25 2009, indigenes of Ekiti State will troop out en mass to make the final decision on who governs them. In an earlier article, I hade captured the entire thing as a game belonging to the Action Congress candidate, Dr. Kayode Fayemi. In arriving at this position, I had analyzed several factors which have since the publication of the article been reinforced and had made the make-up election more of the game belonging to Fayemi, who would be entering the election with a clear advantage in terms of the number of votes that have been judicially vetted and confirmed in 113 wards in Ekiti State. Fact is that the make-up election would be held in just 64 wards and this makes it increasingly difficult for the irreverent electoral robbers to perfect their infamous art in that exercise.

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Again, I had contended that the PDP that had became infamous for sexing up electoral results will find Ekiti State much more difficult to manipulate than it did in the other states where re-run elections took place and ended up much more shambolic than the original elections which cancellation informed the so-called re-run. For an adept, bright and well-formed candidate, 64 wards would be easy to police to ensure the kind of liberty that informed PDP’s Byzantine chance-taking with the 2003 and 2007 farcical elections never occurs. I still stand by that contention and I know the PDP is presently ran ragged by how best to steal the votes of Ekiti people.

But then, with the passage of time and the discernible facts on ground, the game is becoming clearly settled and the advantage Fayemi holds is becoming reified as many PDP chieftains, reading well the disastrous gravitation of their train, have jumped ship and voted with their feet. The party failed woefully in its desperate attempt to devour its vomit for expedient benefits by courting former governor Ayo Fayose. They hide the woeful fact of their failure to woo Fayose in the most absurd perambulations, which go further to advertise their frustrations at not nicking what they perceived as the ultimate panacea to the political perdition that awaits them in the make-up election.

In a blaze of acute desperation, the PDP hierarchs have descended on Ekiti State to threaten and awe the people with a road show of their strength. A wobbly president that is yet to come to grips with the elementary demands of his office, a Vice President that exists as a bench warmer in a presidency he was merely recruited into to assuage the conflagrating crises in the Niger Delta, a Senate President that has not really outlived his notorious past, an impish Speaker of the House of Representatives that advertises the peevish and infantile depth politics has sunk, when he is not covering up one corrupt act or the other for the executive, as well as embattled neighbouring governors that still have appointments to keep with justice for the jaded and bestial manner they were stolen into office form the top deck of this army of occupation. They invaded Ekiti State to tell the enlightened people why they must, of force, be made to be part of the seamless atrophy the PDP has come to bestow on the country. These were completed by a full battery of rabble-rousers, warmongers, space fillers, yeomen, thugs, eunuchs and scoundrels, most of who were ferried into Ekiti State from neighboring states by the PDP for the purpose of occupation.

However, the highlight of the empty, hollow and verbose show was the demonstration by the puerile Speaker that since they were able to rig the 2007 elections with mobile policemen and as they own the commander in chief of the army, they would use soldiers in the re-run polls in Ekiti and most probably for the up-coming 2011 general elections. A fact that showed that the rally failed was in the report that the PDP plans again to ferry Yar’Adua and company to Ekiti State in what best epitomizes the high degree of desperation among PDP members that it is loosing Ekiti State as the bye-election nears. The acute hype the PDP propagandists have adopted to beat back a certain and clearly discernible perdition, their morbid attraction to the employment of whatever might and force at their disposal, the clearly troubled predilection of the PDP officials to employ threatening assaults on the AC have demonstrated one fact; the PDP is afraid that it has lost the game but it doesn’t want to give up without a fight.

Having imbibed the credo that all is fair in battle, the PDP has come to live with the misnomer that electoral fraud and all other such absurd chicaneries are integral parts of the queer democracy they have foisted on the country, largely through dubious contrivances. That is why, having lost the popular appeal and with its house depleting at an alarming rate, it finds such hefty attraction in threatening force and use of troops and all other apparatuses of force in an election in just one third of Ekiti State. From the president down to the last man in the PDP, the party is ridden by fear that another stolen empire is about to fall in Ekiti but they would not know how to stop this moving train. They trust too much on their power to rig and this only finds expression in their misuse of the instruments of coercion. This is the cornerstone of PDP’s self-flattering strength and the reason why the country’s electoral system has been reduced to one huge ribaldry and comic aside while the PDP makes merry at the expense of all Nigerians.

While the AC choruses the mantra of free-and-fair elections or one-man-one-vote, rig and roast in Ekiti, the PDP at the other end choruses troop deployment, use of mobile policemen, invading from PDP states, etc. In fact, one of their ilk was quoted to have boasted that they will ferry over 100,000 PDP youths to Ekiti State for God-knows-what. You wonder what the invading troops and the platoon of soldiers will do when they are littered in Ekiti State. At the end of the day, the intent is to frighten Ekiti people to stay away from the polls so as to secure an unhindered forte to carry out electoral malfeasance in the true character of the PDP. But this will fail and it is becoming obvious to the PDP as the exercise nears. The determination of the AC to stand firm in the face of these heightened threats are overwhelming the PDP and it knows it can do nothing about it. But it doesn’t want to let go, which is why it may try more desperate measures within these remaining few days but these would fail because it would take an armada of troops to overwhelm the eager and enthusiastic Ekiti voters who see a real opportunity to shake off the lethargic infection of PDP politics in their state.

One will like to further avail these tips for electoral sanity in the Ekiti re-run;

In my earlier work on the pending election, I had posited that nothing stops Fayemi, Oni, the AC, the PDP, INEC, the monitors, the observer and indeed the entire world from knowing who is the next governor of Ekiti within few hours after the conclusion of voting in Ekiti State on April 25. This is however possible if the above steps are followed. It gives no advantage to any party and I don’t see why any party should feel uncomfortable with it. Any party that desires free and fair election will support this simple template. This is where Fayemi reposes his thrust for victory because he commands the forte, he is overwhelmingly supported by the masses and he is rightly heeled in the art. The PDP is desperate and hangs on their raw show of power but it will fail it on April 25 because yes, it has crude and unrefined power but it will certainly be useless against an enlightened people like Ekiti people, which is why April 25, 2009 will be the crowning day for Kayode Fayemi, just one week after interring his father and the patriarch of the Fayemi family.

Peter Claver Oparah.