In the times past, educationally speaking, the age of graduation from higher institutions does not really matter. What matters had always been the fact that the fellow went to school, and a people had produced yet another scholar (if he/she could be so called) who may not have been adequately equipped to turn the fortunes of the ones he "left behind" around. And after a while, the truth reveals itself as our "new scholar" could hardly be distinguished from the "locals" he came back to meet, except for the fact that he works in a government department, he has now built a house and he rides a car. But, the mind-boggling question is, what did he bring back from the school he attended and added to the village and the people he "left behind?" Were they really left behind?
Fast tracked to the twenty first century of today, the age of graduation now counts. Most people want to quickly go to school and come back notwithstanding what they came back with; the kind of English most of today's graduates write and speak will confuse one rather than convince that they have ever being to the four walls of a university; yet they are graduates.
Now, the past and the present have met and fused into one to hunt a people who expectedly, should be able to distinguish between the right and the wrong. More so, the unfortunate fact that the thought process, irrespective of whether they went to school or not and whatever they read, has not changed from what it ere was, which means no one was actually left behind. That is the metaphoric dilemma of Ekiti life, and Ekiti politics.
States, within Nigeria and elsewhere, are evolving with new and expansive thinking of how to make things work irrespective of their gory past, and things are really working for them. For example, two states of Lagos and Kebbi formed an alliance and came out with "LAKE RICE." A cursory look at these two states will drive home the point that their product is a product of enhanced expansive thought process, not a boxed and parochial thinking of which Ekiti has always been bedevilled with since her inception, over twenty years ago.
Ekiti is "on the match again, looking" for Mr. Governor; the preponderance of which has made us seeing the regrettable and unfortunate gathering of political vultures, perching on the unsuspecting vulnerabilities of the ones they "left behind", who ordinarily do not know that their thought processes are still same; obsolete, parochial and dastardly retrogressive. If not, why are most of them turning emergency philanthropists? It is now they knew that some children of the poor can't afford to pay for WAEC and JAMB (UTME). It is now they know some people need medical attention. It is now they know that 2kg or 5kg of rice and a stupid #500 note could save some lives. No progressive mind thinks in such a lost manner. This action alone shows that most of them are chameleonic charlatans; who, either coming for the first or returning, are nothing but despicable vampires, coming to suck the already bleeding state dry to send her to her early grave in the committee of states, both in Nigeria and outside.
It bleeds my heart whenever I heard my state governor, past and present, complain of small federal allocation. Such words coming from an executive of an agrarian state like Ekiti is shameful and regrettable. It is a pointer to the fact that such executives had nothing in their craniums prior their elections (or selection, as the case usually is).
Equally, to me as a person, it is a gross collective insult to say that Ekiti has meagre resources; therefore, the state must be plunged into stupid debts.. I am of the opinion that our seeming nothingness is as a result of the unsubstantiated inability of our chief executives, one, to think deeply and look inward to see and use what they have to bring to existence, what they want. And two, their inability to identify with their roots because they have ascended an exalted position which has beclouded their senses and reasonings. During the last regime, right there on the social media, Facebook to be precise, I did engage some unthinking members of my generation, who were frantically, but shamelessly defending the then chief executive's daring audacity to mortgage the futures of our unborn children by borrowing some twenty five billions of naira from wherever he did. They anchored their argument on both the small federal allocation and the state's meagre resources. I punctured their argument by posing only one question to them saying; when the late Sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then Western Region Premier, built Cocoa House, NTA Ibadan, first of its kind in Africa, university of Ibadan, and tarred roads, even up to our Ekiti, where was he getting allocations from? Was it not the farm produces from the old Ondo state, of which Ekiti was pivotal, that he used to indelibly write his name in our hearts and on the sand of time? The only difference between Awolowo and his counterparts from other regions then was that he saw and used what he had.
The truth, my fellow Ekiti indigenes, is that Ekiti needs a governor who could think out of the box. A governor who understands the concept and true meaning of leadership as a way of liberating the people by being their light in their darkness. Ekiti needs a servant-leader who is ready to spend himself in the socioeconomic liberation process which Ekiti must as a matter of necessity and urgency, embark on if it is to survive and come out of her present socioeconomic quagmire and doldrums.
Ekiti needs a governor who will not be encumbered and gagged by and with the unproductive hedonistic precedence of our political elites. Ekiti needs a governor who would be able to maintain a striking balance between politics and people's welfarism. That is a governor who would not play politics with the future of the people, vis-a-vis, the state. That is a governor who will not go a borrowing only to turn to Santa because of a political school of thought who believes only in spoonfeeding people, pretending to care for them, but stealthily and unsuspectingly impoverishing them.
Ekiti needs a governor who is both explosive and expansive in developmental reasoning. We simply do not need a copy cat because every society has their own peculiarities. Ekiti is rich in everything she needs to grow and develop. We sure need to be weary of giving the leadership of this dear state to yet another cocoon who is only coming to depend on the meagre federal allocation, thereby running another feeding bottle government that brings no good to the people.
Ekiti is rich in both human and natural resources. Our next governor must be the one who could synergize these to move the state forward. He/she must be somebody who is able to draw and or pull the vast and diverse Ekitis in diaspora to contribute to the building of the Ekiti of our dream. We should not commit the unforgivable blunder of the past where people came to hoodwink and won our sympathies and votes by telling us some cock and bull stories of what they never were in order to become what they wanted. For our dear state to become what we have always anticipated, we need somebody with proven track records of global performance and connections.
My dear fellow Ekitites, four years is too long a time to waste in the life of anyone. We therefore can't afford to get and do it wrong again! Our fathers will say "una esisi i joni leremeji, o." Literally, it is a proverbial disgrace to stumble over a stone twice. Let's think deep as we inch closer and closer to the day of choosing the next occupant of our common and collective heritage at Oke-Ayoba.
God bless Ekiti state!
