THE GOVERNOR EKITI NEEDS NEXT

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!

Ekiti 2018: In Search of Fairness, Equity and Justice

The shameless conflagration of unbridled selfishness and egotist nature of man is in itself, a cause for concern for only the reasonable and responsible homo sapiens. It is not only humane and moralistic, but also Godly to think about others' wellbeing even as one strives to make life better for oneself. In contrast, to be subsumed in the dungeon of self and self alone is hellishly satanic. One of the major concept of a Yoruba omoluabi is the tendency, ability or readiness of the adjudged or acclaimed omoluabi to shed the self for the betterment of others and for the general good. None, and I repeat none, who falls short of this is ever robed with the omoluabi regalia in Yorubaland.

The drumbeats heralding the dance to the most exalted throne in Ekiti State have started sounding, and very many qualified sons (and daughters?) of our land are already putting on their shoes to showcase their dancing steps which they hoped would take them to the exalted Oke Ayoba.

The Nigerian Constitution, as amended, in its wisdom made room for Federal Character to allow equal (or near equal) representations at all levels at the uppermost level of governance in the nation. Equally in its wisdom, the Constitution also provides for the delimitation of each state in the federation into three; North, South and Central. This also is never a mistake, but an attempt by the writers to ensure that no part of the states is deprived of the coveted chance to become whatever in the political calculations of both their state and in the federation as a whole.

It is in the human nature to take docile gentility to mean stupidity. These first twenty years of Ekiti State's existence have seen five sons of both the Ekiti North and Ekiti Central take their turns on the most exalted seat in our land in the following order: Otunba 'Niyi Adebayo (Central), Mr. Ayo Fayose (Central), Engr. Segun Oni (North), Dr. Kayode Fayemi (North) and again, Mr. Ayo Fayose (Central). This has been the order in which turns have been taken by my brothers from the North and their counterparts from the Central. The BIG question then is: where is the South in this whole calculation? Or are the Ekiti Southerners slaves (in their own fatherland) who are not entitled to rule the state? Where is fairness, equity and justice in all these?

The time of bareface political hypocrisy is gone. Dirty, unthinking sycophantic genre of politics need make way for reasonable and responsible hegemonic democratic dispensations where the tenets of true democratic democracy is practiced. The world over, bearing the inherent intrigues of politics in mind, the tripod on which democracy stands are fairness, equity and justice. No society frowns at these and yet prospers. Rather, they continue to wallow in circles of very rich underdevelopment.

The forthcoming Ekiti State governorship election in the first quarter of 2018 should have it in mind to bring about the entrenchment of the tenets of true democracy into existence in our state. In my last write up on the subject of Ekiti 2018, I enumerated the hardship being faced by these Southerners in terms of the abundant scarcity of necessary amenities and infrastructures that could and do make life meaningful to humans in that area.

Even if we (North and Central) don't even mind them dying in their appalling infrastructural decays, but for the sake of the presently skewed political appointments and position holdings in the past, we all need to rally them. Presently, the only Federal Minister from Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, a former governor, is from the North. The only ambassadorial designate, a former Commissioner of Education in the State is from the Central. In APC, the Deputy National President of the Party (West), also a former governor, Engr. Segun Oni, is also from the North. The list goes on without a mention of anyone from the South. Where is fairness, equity and justice in all these? Where is our darling democracy in this, please?

Permit me to reiterate that I am from the North, but I am a firm believer in fairness, equity and justice, the tenets of democracy. That is why I am saying that the South be given a chance to rule the State, even if it for just one term of four years.

Let every self-acclaimed democrats, especially from the North and Central stand to be counted in this call for the entrenchment of true democratic practices in our land. We must be careful of once again propagating and nurturing the annihilating political skewness birthed in the nation in 1914. We MUST prevent it from festering in our state.

The unborn generations are watching us.

Let's give Ekiti South a chance to occupy Oke Ayoba!

WHO STOLE OUR CHANGE?

We unanimously agreed
To CHANGE our king
Because he and his chiefs seems
To have lost it
And we all appeared rudderless.
We cried for THE CHANGE
We prayed for THE CHANGE
We worked for THE CHANGE
We campaigned for THE CHANGE
Yes, we got a change.

We got  a change
But NOT THE CHANGE
For people changed in persons
But the land still cries and bleeds
In the hands of our change agents.

Who stole OUR CHANGE?
Or who changed OUR CHANGE?
For this is not the CHANGE
Which we kept vigils for
This is not THE CHANGE
Which we toiled for
This is not THE CHANGE
Which we thumbed.

Who stole our CHANGE?
THE CHANGE we worked for
Has a human face
And works for us as humans
THE CHANGE we cried for
Carries no cudgel
And pampers rather than beating.

Who stole our CHANGE?
Like an endangered bird
Our CHANGE has flown away
And we are left to savour
The stench of a change
With animal face
And cudgels in both hands.

Who stole OUR CHANGE?
Sincerely, who stole OUR CHANGE?

Ekiti 2018: Let's Turn Southwards

Selfishness, not magnanimity, is an endemically inalienable nature of man; it lives in our genes and runs in our veins.  Hence, the veracity of the theory of "Competition" and the consequential, but denigrating,  "Survival of the Fittest."

Since the advent of the Ekiti South For Governor (ESFG) mantra as regards the impending gubernatorial election in our dear state, come 2018, I have listened to and read many side comments, especially from my folks in the Northern part of the state as well as our siblings from the Central. I must say that these comments have not only been dissenting, but equally discordant. Though, not presently in Ekiti physically, I have equally kept my ears to the ground on the same subject matter within the state. While some of the ensuing comments and observations have been favourable to our Southern brothers, most have seen their agitation as being ill-timed, illegitimate and very divisive for a state as homogeneous as Ekiti, touted as the most homogeneous of all the states in the country.

With the kind of a selfish orientation of our politics and the practitioners, I humbly suggest that my Southern brothers be hell bent in taking the highest seat in the state, come 2018. My position is hinged on the fact that I was "privileged" to live in the Ekiti South with my family, for one year, between 2014 -2015. The deplorable and disagreeable conditions of living there was the reason my wife, a Lagos-born woman, decided that come what may, she just had to relocate back to Lagos where we were before I strayed into the murky waters of Nigerian politics back in 2013. And back we have been, since early 2015.

I am from Ilejemeje Local Government, one of the five local  governments that make up the popular and revered Ekiti North. But, I am not a coward; hence my position that Ekiti must turn Southwards, come 2018.

During my one year sojourn in the South, life shifted very near to  hell. We felt the heat of the fire therein because most of the social amenities, aside the good road networks, were painfully, either nonexistent, or epileptic. How appealing does it sound that in a state called "the most homogeneous" that had existed for over twenty years, there would still be existing local governments without access to portable water? For good one year, we lived on well water. Our only respite came when the rains started, but even the rain was not as constant. Most of the time, we had to keep vigil to ensure that the other neighbours didn't get to the well before us; if they did, we are done for for that day with regards to water availability for domestic consumption. Most times when I came down there (I was shuttling between the South and the North, my birthplace), my wife would cry that to have brought her and her children to that part of the world, I only decided to make her suffer for an unknown sin. The mechanical boreholes sank scattered scantly all over the place; most of them have broken down, and therefore, nonfunctional, and there was nobody to bell the cats of their repairs.  So, most times, we traveled like two kilometres to get drinkable water. That, in the 21st century!

How well does it sound that people in that area don't have, not enjoy, for months running into four, five or even six, a good supply of electricity? I can still vividly remember the case of PHCN versus the youths of Emure - Ekiti that nearly set the King against the entire town in 2014. The PHCN goons were bringing bills for light consumption that never was, and the youths revolted. That was the genesis of that crisis because the PHCN used their governmental powers to arrest some of the youths who rose against the prevailing annihilating injustice. Most times, we took our rechargeable lamps and phones to the only First Bank in the town to charge for us to have lights to sleep at night and to keep communicating with the rest of the world. Televisions became ordinary show-boxes at homes. God bless your soul that your television had a crack, you have unwittingly built an unsolicited duplex for the audacious number of unwelcome visitors looking for where to hide; the rats.

Meanwhile, in no matter how little it may be, the people in both the North and the Central of the state are enjoying these two most significant aspects of human existence, water and light. I know very well that water runs in my house at Iye Ekiti. I open the tap anytime and water flowed to my satisfaction. Thanks to the Ero Dam that is close-by. I have lights, with good voltage outputs, four to five days a week, and sometimes, a whole week, all through the year unlike the South where they don't see light for months, and even when they have it for two to three hours, the voltage output is always embarrassingly low. I never needed rechargeable lamps to light up my room at night while in the north, unlike when I visited my family in the South.

The point I am making here is that the subsequent governments of my brothers from both the Northern and Central parts of my state have been very unfair to our Southern siblings. The twenty years of our coexistence as a people in "the most homogeneous state in Nigeria", aside the roads, have been that of neglect and lip service. The South have remained, I will not say underdeveloped because the entire state is underdeveloped, but rather, uncared for. Therefore, given the selfish nature of the Nigerian brand of politics, if it requires a Southerner or the Southerners to care for the South, let them get there and provide the basic social  amenities for their own people, too.

I appeal to my northern and central folks not to see the agitation of our Southern brothers as illegitimate. The South have supported all kinds of elements, the goods, the bads and the uglies, that we have foisted on them in the last twenty years. We have seen how fair they all faired in the provision of basic social amenities. I believe it would be kind of us to allow the South too to come and dent their yet-to-spoil reputation in the governance and maintenance of our common heritage; Ekiti.

For Ekiti 2018, I am Southbound!

A Sumptuous Lesson

"The Bloom of Health Is Not Itself Health" is an article I consider a very great one. I strongly believe that nations of the world, including the self-styled leader would Lear a great deal from this invaluable piece.

Every society that operates in a lopsided form in contrast to the spirit of this great thought would find itself where my country, Nigeria, is today; flat on her belly and the 'leaders', regrettably disillusioned.

I enjoyed this article so much and I strongly believe every upcoming leader would have a lesson to learn even as we all are eager for a seemingly elusive orderly world.

The independent philosophical blend of economic and religious principles and the perfect application of such to the creation of a perfect society is sine qua non. This is a great article and a-must-read for all leaders-to-be.

Read this beautiful article here - http://wp.me/p2cZzM-2Iv

Let's Celebrate!

Country people,
Today is our nation's day
The day we claimed and declared
To the whole world a new identity
An identity of hope
A daring identity of prosperity
A towering identity of a new giant.
And like a lion we roared our arrival
Amongst the nations sovereign.

So, let's celebrate this day
The day our freedom we declared
From the clutches of colonialists
But came straight into the dungeon
Of our own brothers
The neo-colonialists we make with our thumbs
Who took away the tiny single British broom
That beat our backs black
But replaced it with logs from our own forests.

Let's celebrate this freedom
That stopped the meagre earnings of the whites
And replaced them with nothing in our pockets
That our people now steal 'amala' pots
While many commit suicide
For responsibilities unmet.

Let's celebrate our freedom of injustices
That celebrates rogues and robbers
But executes pilfers
That makes robbers kings and chiefs
That lets rogues go free
But makes saints rot in gaol
That sits atop big cases
But expedites actions on 'smallies.'

Let's celebrate our freedom of hunger
That took away our white crumbs
But feed our bellies with black nothing
That our children go thin
In the face of our scarce prosperity
And our bodies emaciate
Because we are overfed.

Oh, let"s celebrate our freedom of illusions
That turned prosperity into a mirage
As the leaders quench the lights of hope
And left us to grope
And drawn along by the rope
In this dark alley of disillusionment.

Brothers and sisters,
Let's celebrate today
That maybe tomorrow
Our dreams of yesteryears
May yet materialize.

Let's celebrate today
For who knows in a short while
A saving root may sprout
Yet among the thorns
To rekindle the dying hopes
Yet to wipe away our tears of five decades and six
To refill our emaciated bodies
And yet reflate our thin children's bodies
To put books back in our schools
To put drugs back in our worn syringes
To put paints on our tarred roads
To put round pegs in round holes
To put rogues where they belong; behind bars
And make kings of our saints.

Let's celebrate
My people, let's celebrate!

SEEDS OF OUR LAND

Oh, but like a diligent farmer
We planned and executed a divine coup
Uprooting the seed-turned weeds on our land
Taking up all the sun, and
Draining all the waters and our soil's nutrients
To fatten but only themselves
While our children grow thin all year over
And the certainty of seeing our planned tomorrow
Grow dim in our eyes as the seconds tick

Then, we chopped all over the land for new seeds
And cohesively planted our seeds
Expecting them to be divinely watered
And become fat enough
To bring sumptuous meals to our tables
And quench the famish of many decades gone by.

“Your time of harvest has not come
And your expectations are just too high
Know you not that the seeds of yesterday
Which are but weeds in disguise
Have drained all the soil nutrients?
You will need to be patient with us.”
Those are the lyrics of the song
Of our new seeds,
Who like their predecessors
See no darkness and never go famished
For our bloody sweats
Supply all their needs
According to our riches in suffering.

Oh, fatherland!
For how long wilt thou be raped
By these genuine weeds
Which pose but as seeds?
Fatherland, answer me fatherland
For how long wilt thou be stripped
For thy neighbours to mock your nudity
Orchestrated by the artistry of thy own artists?
Fatherland, when wilt thy thirst be halted
Which is brought upon you
By your own seeds
Who have more than enough waters and nutrients?

Rise, fatherland rise!
The rhetoric of thy seeds are but ruses
Take up thy sharpened armed tongues
And thy prodding swords and write
Shout to the hinterlands with thy bloody paper
Tell of your inglorious rapes
But by your own seeds.

Tell, fatherland tell
Tell for your children
For whom you planted the seeds
Die of unquenchable hunger
While the seedlings of thy seeds
Grow fatter every second.

Tell, fatherland tell
Tell of thy amiable darkness
For which you exorbitantly pay
Albeit every ten and a score days
Tell of thy elusive surrounding water
Tell of thy snail speed on thy roads
Because the roads are menacingly tarred
With punctuating potholes
Tell of the denigrating neglects
Of all thy utilities
Have thou faithfully forgotten, fatherland
How many of thy children pass on  annually
But for curable ailment
For they couldn't afford the generous bills?

Tell, fatherland tell
Lest your fire be extinguished among nations!