Fayose’s Recklessness Is Fast Approaching That Of A Suicide Bomber! By Ogaga Ifowodo

Actually, it is a bit unfair to single out Mr Ayodele Fayose, the rigged-into-office governor of Ekiti State (just listen to the hottest audio record in Nigeria, the Ekiti Election Rigging Tape) as the one, within the ruling party’s crowded barracoon of desperate power-mongers, whose recklessness is fast approaching a suicide bomber’s. Who, I ask you, plays second fiddle to another among these intrepid contestants for the prize of Enemy of Democracy No. 1: Fayose; or Call-Me-a-Bastard-if-APC-Survives Doyin Okupe, aka Dr Attack Lion; or Femi Fani-Kayode, whose congenital case of logorrhoea, “excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness,” is his only stock-in-trade; or AIG Joseph Mbu, non-card carrying member of the PDP; or Mujahedeen Asari Dokubo who threatens war if Jonathan loses the election; or National Security Adviser Dasuki, the de facto INEC Chairman; or Mrs Patience Jonathan, who doesn’t need change because she is not a bus conductor, who would have anybody shouting “Change!” stoned, and who knows a thing or two about “brain dead” people; or President Jonathan himself, whose refusal to curb the excesses of his troops and corresponding eagerness to reward high crimes (as in nominating the prime suspect in the criminal subversion of democracy in Ekiti for ministerial reappointment), betrays a clear preference, his public utterances notwithstanding, for a hand-picked interim government over a democratically elected one?
But I pick on Fayose for good reason: with his latest outing, he damns President Jonathan’s government as one founded on impunity. “The heavens will not fall,” Fayose counsels, if the president does what he sorely desires: sack Jega and replace him with a spineless chairman whose first duty would be to cancel the use of permanent voter cards for biometric accreditation before the elections can take place. Doubtless, Fayose would denounce impunity as vehemently as anyone but would not hesitate to recommend blatant illegality. “[T]he president,” says Fayose, “can determine whether or not Jega will go on the mandatory three months terminal leave which should commence on March 8,” and if he so decides, “what can the APC loudmouths do?” No matter, of course, that the INEC chairman is not subject to normal civil service rules and the president is not the Senate.
It seems to me that the PDP is traumatised by the shocking fact of having for once to confront a credible opposition party, especially one they had certified stillborn in its merger-bed. For Jega’s crime, lest we forget, is no more than a commitment, through electronic accreditation, to the elimination of rigging, the great bane of our electoral process. But the wind of change, blowing stronger by the day, has bared the proverbial rump of the fowl for all to see. Consequently, we hear now that to insist on rigging-free elections is to be an agent of the rival party! Makes sense. With all their hopes invested in rigging, the irony is lost on them that they have now conceded the moral high ground to the APC.