Revised
Dear All:
As a result of my friend and engineering colleague Segun Oni’s recent controversial comments about his gubernatorial ambitions for 2022, I have decided to post my first volley on this Southern agenda matter.
I am not a flaming Southern Agenda 2022 proponent or advocate, but some recent developments particularly from some Northern and Central senatorial District elements who wish to continue to use narrow and historically systemic issues to advantage – and which issues can be used ad infinitum to the permanent exclusion of the South – have now caused me to fully ask the question: When is Unfair Unfair?
Please come with me:
The Southern Argument for Ekiti Governorship – When will Unfair be Unfair?
Recently, all the seventeen (17) Southern Governors in Nigeria took a firm position on rotation of the Presidency, that it should next be the South’s turn.
Can any of these Governors canvas North-South rotation nationally, and then not canvas the same in their own states at the gubernatorial level, at which it should be among senatorial districts? That is an interesting question that needs to be answered.
So what is good for the goose (Nigeria), is also good for the gander (Ekiti).
If all had gone right politically in Ekiti State since the return to electoral democracy in 1999, our dear state would have had elected only three Governors so far – from senatorial zones Central, North and South as follows:
- Otunba Niyi Adebayo – Central – 1999/2007
- Dr. Kayode Fayemi – North – 2007/2015
- Ogbeni Lagbaja Tamodu – South – 2015/2023
So, ironically, it should have been a Southern governor serving right now under this enunciated equitable principle of rotation.
As it is, since 1999, the actual elected gubernatorial rotation in our dear Ekiti State has been viz.:
- Adebayo (C) – 4 yrs (1999-2003)
- Fayose I (C) – 3 yrs (truncated by impeahment) (2003-2006)
- Oni (N) – 3 yrs (truncated by court declaration of illegality) (2007-2010)
- Fayemi I (N) – 4 yrs (2010-2014)
- Fayose II (C) – 4 yrs (2014-2018)
- Fayemi II (N) – 4 yrs (2018-2022)
with a smattering of three or four unelected emergency “administrators” in the interregnum of Fayose I and Oni.
Now we note from the above exposition that the North has succeeded itself twice, Central twice, and each has done (or would have done) eleven years by the year 2022. With the incumbent coming from the North, if perchance Central were to succeed as Governor again say for the next eight (8) years, then that zone would have done it for nineteen (19) years, North eleven (11) years, and the South would by then have done a fat zero (0) number of years! Ditto the North; from whence Segun comes. Haba, Is that when things would be really unfair, or when then would unfair be really unfair?
It is therefore clearly past time for the South to seize the bull by the horn, and I rise to praise those who have been unrelenting in that campaign so far.
I ask us to heed the year 1857 words of Black American activist and slave abolitionist of yore Frederick Douglass
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The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
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Furthermore, we have the legal maxim:
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Justice Delayed is Justice Denied “
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by William E. Gladstone, one-time PM of the UK
There is also no excuse tenderable about non-availabilty of worthy candidates from the South, an allegation which grates the nerves. On a personal note, I reject that. Rather, it is the availability of too many hands hoping to steer the affairs of state, a tendency that must be curbed for advantage this time around.
Of course, the rotation-to-the-Southern-argument is not the weightiest one for succession to Governor Fayemi in 2022 – continuity of governance agenda, competence, integrity, party loyalty and finally acceptability by the party are, among others which on many occasions have eluded Ekiti since its creation in 1996 – but it is a weighty one.
Who will bell the cat? The world waits and watches. A wrong move, and we are back to Egypt.
Bolaji Aluko
Ode-Ekiti
Aiyekire LG
South Senatorial District
July 28, 2021