In a feat of rage and sense of wanting to establish his
authority as the chief security officer of the state, Governor Ayodele
Fayose has withdrawn Ekiti from modern civilization. With Dane guns and
gun powder, General Fayose set-off for war at a time there was none; for
no man fights one with rusty poles and squirrel hunters. Not at this
time. Not in this age.
The irony is that the killings by suspected herdsmen in Ekiti, like any other state in the country, is everything but war. But in his nauseating penchant for courting public sympathy on the most insignificant of issues in the same fashion as resorting to theatricalization of others however grave, a man who ought to be the first victim of anger by failing to protect his people was quick to transfer the blame on the criminals. Talk about passing the buck!
Save sentiment, although understood due to the herdsmen’s encroaching instincts laced in blood and limbs, coupled with the president’s fall into absolute taciturnity each time his fellow businessmen strike, every rational mind would not hesitate to nail our security agencies for their inability to protect the people from aggression of any kind.
With Fayose in the midst of old locally-made guns foaming fire and spitting thunder, reflective thinking puts one in a position to enquire what happens to our claim to modernity! Would the hunter not become the hunted in the manner Queen Cersei got her recompense? The Lannister belle in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire got her share when the same militias she armed made her walk nude amongst her people. Karma is a bitch after all!
There are thousands of policemen in Ekiti. Men of the civil defense aren’t dead. The recruitment of unskilled hands to combat crime is nothing but a fall into a fatal error in a bid to correct a fatal problem. What becomes of the hunters when there are no more herdsmen to hunt? Would Fayose make a new security outfit of them to keep them from constituting nuisance in the community? In the event that a new threat emerges, would he resort to this method again?
Being the biggest beneficiary of the electoral largesse from a pool of uncritical thinkers whose thumbs and affections sway based on stomach infrastructure and malice against his predecessor in pigheaded and mulish terms, the investiture of local warriors (pray what that means!) into the security apparatus of a democratically governed state in a bid to curb the annihilatory acts of the herdsmen would appear as a strong move by a strong man willing to go the extra mile to protect his people.
But deeply, one cannot but be wary given that some of these warriors might hide under executive backing to become thin gods in the community. We’ve traveled this road not too long ago in this country. Frantz Fanon must have had Fayose in mind when he made his wish that political leaders should be psychiatrists as well.
Had his wish become Ekiti's reality, the methodicalness which social scientists deplore to reign-in on anger, hence proffering lasting solutions to seething problems would have prevailed on our subject. It is this attribute of talking before thinking that makes Fayose implement his threat before taking a bill to that effect to the state house of assembly.
Afflicted with a rare condition which had reduced him to a political animal that views every issue under his self-made political binoculars, the Oshokomole would have been saved from his pedestrian antics clothed in the garb of barbarism had hubris and insecurity not create a thick smoke over his consciousness.
He would have done well as a stand-up comedian. But as the face of the Ekiti, a people prided as custodians of the knowledge fountain, an appreciable amount of decorum would have suffice to help remove the fountain arena from the much touted maxim which public opinions have affixed to Nigeria’s leadership: the worse from amongst us rules over us.
Had he been seen jogging on the streets of Ekiti the same way he poses for the camera while he cuts ponmo in a detached shop, school teachers of health education would not have had to strain their voices to teach the children the values of fitness.
But having been inflicted with chronic pedomorphism, he beats his chest thinking the unleashing of hunters to perform the constitutional roles of the police would suffice to remove his name from the list of the blights of the black race.
It is no coincidence that Akinwunmi Ambode was taking Lagos’ security to 21st century standards the minute Fayose went on his 18th century exhibition. It’s a tale of two cities ladies and gentlemen. In a twist of fate, the home of professors finds solace in antique war gadgets best suited for a museum while that which houses the most area boys exhibits modern weaponry!
"One great danger of black leadership" says Kwame Ture, "is that you get an opportunist, and he becomes a rhetorician who says things rather than striving to look for solutions.” In the spirit of hysteria, the people queue behind the star of #Ekitigate thinking the solution to this menace had been found. The local hunters aren’t the solution - but a problem in waiting. The rhetorician only needed them to further send a message to the president that he is still in charge. Had he wanted the police to go muscle a political opponent, he would not have seen them as an appendage of Abuja.
Leaving Ekiti en route Ilorin on May 13, I saw several herdsmen at Idofian, Kwara State, moving their cattle in the thousands away from Ekiti. A fellow passenger informed me that the herdsmen had been on the move the minute the governor gave a green light to his people to poison the waters with Gammalin 20.
Could the herdsmen have returned to take their pound of flesh from the people; or were some of them left behind to perpetrate crimes? These are questions only trained and organized security outfit could answer, not hunters.
This needs to be understood by Nigerians. Why do governors use the police to do their dirty laundry but go into a helpless mood when failure stares them on their faces? Even as we are yet to have state police, the police are as answerable to the state as it does to the federal government.
When this nightmare is over, the sages of Ekiti must go back to ask how they got into this mess. It appears the man thinks of himself as a celebrity whose role is to curse the president, cut ponmo on the streets, and beat judges up.
But like the white edible from the dark pot, Fayose’s showiness was not completely lame. Let the herdsmen, cattle owners and state governors take heed from his words: “Cattle farming is a business like other businesses, those interested in cattle farming in Ekiti should be able to provide their own ranch. After all, government does not provide ponds for fish farmers.”