SAYS EKITI ELECTION ABOUT MONEY, RICE
Recall that former Governor of Ekiti State and candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Mr. Ayodele Fayose on Saturday defeated incumbent governor of Ekiti State and candidate of the All Progressive Congress(APC), Dr. Kayode Feyemi in that election.
Results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) shows that Fayose scored 203,090 while Fayemi scored 120, 433.
But Fashola said the way the governor and his deputy were defeated was in an unprecedented manner. “That every election is an assessment of what the people think and how people behave. That is what is inherent when votes are counted. So, the lessons that are supposedly coming out of Ekiti are frightening lesson for me. Lesson about whether the people of Ekiti are really saying this was all about money and rice.
“This is because that is very easy to do. Development work is difficult to initiate and execute. Development work that brings about change which is what every election ask for, will also from time to time occasion debates and policy trust. This legitimately must be criticized.
“But it must be a very dangerous message to simply suggest that once you give people money, then this is the way it will happen. It is frightening for me in a democracy. But it raises the question of what we have been doing for seven years. Should we just be giving money and when people ask about security, we say we have giving you money, go and rent your own security.
“When people ask for healthcare, we say that you have collected money. Is that the model for development? These are lessons and I am not suggesting that we monopolise the debate about what the best policy is. But I am saying that there must be another side.
“There must be a debate. The debate that recognizes that development comes at a cost. And that even those that are privilege to serve, don’t claim to have a monopoly of ideas. We have demonstrated in Lagos state how flexible we can be about policies if we see a stronger argument.
“But to simply suggest that APC states where a lot of development is taking place; the road to winning power and we want to keep power and I am not pretentious about that. We want to remain in power but to suggest to us that in the aftermath of this, that the way to do that is to give money, for me it is a very worrisome lesson to learn”, he said.
“When one looks at the way people have behaved one week before the election, no one could say that Governor Kayode Fayemi will lose the election. The worse anyone could say was that the election look close.
“Does a governor whom everyone has said did well, lose in his own ward? If he was such a bad governor, was the deputy too bad? Was the speaker of the Ekiti House of Assembly also bad? I know this may be difficult to convey, but I want Nigerians to examine the message and not the messenger.
“I want everyone to remember that his party told everyone that the governor-elect has criminal issue to answer. They removed him from the office and took him to court. They have not come to tell Nigerians that he has been acquitted. They bring him back to the same state. With this, is that consistent with human behaviour?
“Will human being behave like that? Memories may have faded, but do they all fade such that the same governor now defeats an incumbent whom everyone said that has done well for his people; in all local government. There are issues that I think we need to ponder and ask about what really happened. From the human behavioural angle, is there any governor that has lost election like this in the country?
”If they say that the governor is elitist, where would one express his elitist qualities if not in Ekiti state? I am aware that there were instruction to cause mayhem during the election and Fayemi decided that rather than allow blood to be spilled, he decided to be a statesman. He saved his people from being slaughtered if they had protested”, he said.
