When the Ekiti State House of Assembly leadership crisis broke out on November 15, it was important to let all sides to the story have their say before anyone came to judgement. No one inside and outside Ekiti can now claim ignorance of the dynamics of the crisis: the election on November 15 and dethronement on November 21 of Gboyega Aribisogan as Speaker, the foisting of Bunmi Adelugba six days later as the new Speaker, the partiality demonstrated by the police pretending to keep the peace, the suppressed chuckles by vengeful ‘powermongers’ pulling the strings from barely concealed backgrounds, and reassuringly the umbrage taken by the state’s leading, if not also legal, lights. While the rigmarole lasted, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, who assumed office about a month before the crisis broke out, maintained stoic indifference in a matter that demanded candour, courage and involvement. He was probably being diplomatic and calculating.
Hon. Aribisogan was not the candidate of the state’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) hierarchs, but he had mustered a coalition of independents and the disaffected to pull an upset against the party’s favourite, Hon. Adelugba, a woman, by a healthy and unbridgeable margin of 15 to 10. There was no accusation of rigging or coercion. But incensed by their audacity and defiance of party wishes, party leaders instigated the police to lay siege to the Assembly on the excuse that arsonists threatened the complex, prevented any plenary from taking place, and bought some days within which to perfect strategies to procure what is now humiliatingly referred to as a legislative ‘coup’. Five days of dizzying rigmarole followed, culminating in the ‘election’ of Hon. Adelugba by, again, a chasm of 17 to 0, with seven obstreperous legislators suspended. No one has yet explained the sleight of hand that made those who voted for Hon. Aribisogan to turn apostate. But the gloves are off now, and the hapless pawn, Mrs Adelugba, has been introduced to the governor and other applauding and consenting party leaders. The beaming Adelugba crowd lauded the governor’s ‘benevolent neutrality’, and they praised party leaders, mainly ex-governor Kayode Fayemi, for their fairness.
The entire revolving door now widely acknowledge as humiliating to Ekiti State was plotted by relatively youthful politicians whose ethical sensitivity has been dulled by years of playing politics unmoored by great values and principles. They had plotted so many murders and got away with them, and have thus become accustomed to taken metaphorical blood at will. Luckily for Ekiti, the state still has elders, brilliant and learned men of steel and character. They had been quite loth over the decades to intervene in some of the shenanigans enacted by the state’s politicians, wary of being soiled by heedless youths and irreverent, obdurate politicians. Indeed their years of patience is now construed by the Ekiti APC spokesperson as a reflection of their indolence and partiality. However, unable to stomach the indignity of being affronted by the malfeasance of Ekiti politicians, the elders have finally stirred themselves and have given short shrift to the manipulators in the state legislature. They not only rejected the legislative ‘coup’, they have insisted on its reversal. They stopped short of mentioning names of those behind the plot, but they left no one in doubt who they were. Indeed, Hon Aribisogan was quite explicit in blaming Dr Fayemi for the whole imbroglio. The former governor’s spokesperson and the party’s spokesperson have denied the attributions and insinuations.
The Ekiti elders led by the redoubtable Afe Babalola and Wole Olanipekun have taken up the gauntlet and will see the matter to the end. It is hard to see them lose. They may be slow to anger, and have demonstrated over the years an uncanny ability to stomach a lot of political provocations and indignities, starting from the bohemian Ayo Fayose era; but once roused, they are even more wary of giving up on issues and principles they know to be true and unassailable. The state APC leaders may have their reason to back Mrs Adelugba, but their approach was wrong, controversial and provocative. They know it themselves, but they had become complacent to think that the elders would be as usual chary of meddling in political issues, not being strictly politicians and not wanting to openly join the fray. But the revolving door at the House of Assembly was too flagrant to ignore. Mr Fayose’s buffooneries were happily terminated before he tipped the state overboard. Given the disrespectful manner the changes in the Assembly were mediated last week, the elders were simply unwilling to endure lightning striking the same place twice. Chief Olanipekun, chairman of the Body of Benchers, was the first to react a day after Mrs Adelugba was foisted. He counseled respect for the rule of law and legislative order. One day later, the elders came out with a strongly-worded statement that denounced the ‘coup’ and asked for a return to status quo. The statement warned that the ‘constitutional and democratic rascality (in Ekiti) must stop henceforth’.
While the elders’ statement was rough around the edges, and could have profited from some scrupulous editing, its logic and rationale are incontestable. Point by point, the statement tore apart the nefarious exercise of changing the Assembly’s leadership in just six days, not to talk of the appalling manipulation of the process and the unconstitutional suspension of seven members. The elders then concluded that the change was a legal and procedural travesty that must be challenged and not sustained. They restrained themselves from mentioning names, but they never hid their disgust at the manner the so-called progressive party and leaders failed to appreciate the burden of history placed on their puny shoulders. As indigenes of Ekiti, they of course knew those who orchestrated the infamy, but they have couched their statement in general terms in expectation that the malfeasant politicians who perpetrated the anomaly would initiate redress. They, however, did not spare the governor whom they surmise would be ultimately held liable should the problem escalate beyond civilised boundaries. They probably remember the Edo example where the potentate, Godwin Obaseki, governs with a minority legislature.
It was clear why the Ekiti elders mentioned the governor directly. It has perhaps not fully dawned on Mr Oyebanji, but the fact is that he is governor, not anyone who backed him in the election, mentor or otherwise. He was expected to rein in the police who sent in policemen to cordon off the Assembly just a day after Hon. Aribisogan was elected Speaker. The governor also knows those behind the coup, though no one thinks he was one of them. The public can only guess that he does not wish to be confrontational yet, and has not purged his mind of the time he was Secretary to the State Government, though he probably knew that the legislative coup was provocative and unconstitutional. He is an intelligent man, but last January, he also profited from unwholesome political tactics that gave him the APC governorship ticket after his opponents had been mauled insensate. After lending his soul and conscience to the coup plotters for this brief insurrection, he must hope that when they return them to him, they will still be intact, and that he can still recognise them and subject them to his will and control. Sometimes, one surrender may be all it takes to damage a personality for life.
It is inconceivable that Hon Adelugba and his backers can win this unseemly joust. No, they can’t. No judge in Ekiti or on appeal will give judgement in favour of Ekiti’s ‘political rascals’. Judges may in some delicate legal cases sometimes lack the integrity to deliver justice. But they are not stupid. They know what is happening, and they will not risk their reputation and career for a foolish, shortsighted and self-gratifying case such as the unconscionable overthrow of a Speaker who had not even acted in office for a day, let alone be accused of infractions such as sabotaging the supplementary 2022 budget. The plotters may be banking on fostering a stalemate in the Assembly until their term expires next year. They do not like Hon. Aribisogan for his outspokenness and sometimes iconoclasm. They think he is too full of himself, is not a team player, and would not take dictations. By his combative antecedents, he has seemed to justify the accusations. Even those who voted for him on November 15 may have done so not to endorse the Speaker’s style and personality but to demand their own pound of flesh from party leaders who denied them return tickets to the Assembly. What is clear overall is that the state’s elders will not be cowed and cannot be defeated, for they are standing on the moral high ground.
But if the elders think the case, assuming it is litigated, and their opposition to ‘constitutional rascality’ can be used to reform those who orchestrated Hon. Aribisogan’s overthrow and get them to toe the path of democracy, they are mistaken. What informed the coup was not just a loathing for the irreverent Hon Aribisogan, but a clear case of political self-aggrandisement that failed to take cognisance of the cultural and political dynamics of Ekiti State. The Ekiti plotters had probably hoped to reenact the tight political control evident in Lagos without quite appreciating the parallels between the two states. The ‘control’ in Lagos is predicated on successful programmes, policies and philosophies, all of which were embedded in a blueprint that luckily for Lagos leaders had a short gestation period. On top of these was a leadership style founded and anchored on deep empathy and self-effacement that somehow became inclusive and unintendedly avuncular. Ekiti leaders had no such foundations, no such style, no such resonant programmes, and were for the most part aloof, offensively patrician, and decidedly undemocratic. It was impossible for them to forge the kind of political environment that would enable them produce the outcomes they desire. Worse, they even lack the elementary strategic thinking required to successfully upend democratic norms.
After the Ekiti plotters failed to persuade Hon. Aribisogan to embrace their goals, and unable to divide the ranks of those whose ambitions for second term they had crushed at legislative primaries, Ekiti APC leaders adopted a more forceful approach, an approach that has now backfired spectacularly. And lacking the strength of character to own up to their shenanigans, they have cajoled APC as a party, through its spokesman, to rebut the Ekiti elders’ unimpeachable statement. The APC spokesman, Segun Dipe, issued a statement thereafter that tried to ape the legalese of the elders and imitate their reasoning and style. How he thought politics could successfully imitate law is hard to explain. But paragraph by paragraph, Mr Dipe tried to put the lie to the elders’ convictions and arguments, struggling in some parts not to sound ridiculous and offensive, and alternating between reverence for the elders, whom he dubbed Ekiti Wisemen or Ekiti Seven in one paragraph, and irreverence in another paragraph. But he was clearly tilting at windmills.
The APC spokesman baited the elders with suggestions that described them as wise men, but accused them in another breath of being partial. He even attempted to hoist them with them own petard by accusing them of acting sub judice since the House of Assembly ‘brouhaha’ was already being litigated. In other words, he was saying that these eminent lawyers didn’t even know their legal onions. He also wrote grandly of grundnorms, falsely denounced legislative independent-mindedness by drawing equivalence between loyalty to party and slavishness to party leadership, and in the same vein abjuring independent candidacy which he said the constitution forbade. In Paragraph 4, he accused the elders of ignoring and demeaning the APC constitution, and in Paragraphs 6 through 9, he berated the elders for suffering from amnesia and acting either duplicitously or not at all in similar and grave political situations in the past. Then he questioned their neutrality, gave them a slap on the wrist for flouting the principles of natural justice and coming precipitately to judgement in matters that required reflection and restraint. The remaining 10 paragraphs were little more than gratuitous insults that negated the essence of the Ekiti people, with a few of the paragraphs devoted to either sanctimonious drivel or homilies about the good citizen. Would the elders feel slighted? Unlikely. Instead, the insults would likely stiffen their resolve. Onlookers may be dismayed by what has come over Ekiti, a galling metamorphosis that had been in the offing since the state cut its nose to spite its face with the election of Mr Fayose, but they will hope that the litigation will not stretch to the point of making any victory nugatory.
Could the overthrow of Hon. Aribisogan have happened without both the surrender of the Clerk of the House, Tola Esan, and the recantation of legislators who initially voted for the dethroned Speaker when they could call their souls their own? It is doubtful. There was nothing wrong with the voting that brought in Hon. Aribisogan, nor did he get the chance to preside over the House before he was accused of wrongdoing and ‘impeached’. Mr Esan would graciously tell the public what went wrong with the first voting and who ordered another round of voting. Perhaps he may not be guilty of the demonstrable lack of character and courage for which he is being accused of and ridiculed. The legislators themselves owe the public explanation as to how easily they turned coat, what political sorcery instigated their remorseless show of cowardice, and whether they didn’t care about their image going forward, at least in the years ahead. Fifteen of them voted Hon. Aribisogan on November 15, with perhaps no one to prick their conscience, and 17 allegedly voted Hon. Adelugba. It is not the arithmetic that went wrong; it was their character, assuming legislators of that number actually turned up at the Assembly complex. There are states like Kogi where legislators have become mannequins, completely impassive to human feelings and destitute of any morality or character. Ekiti was not exactly cut from that cloth, but it had given the impression that regardless of the indifference of its first Fourth Republic governor Niyi Adebayo, and the gangsterism of the second, Mr Fayose, it was above suspicion. Now, no one is sure anymore. Dr Fayemi was always thought to be an intellectual in government, perhaps he still is, even out of government. But no one ever accused him of being a democrat. He is living up to that billing admirably, insouciantly.
Since Ekiti seems to be full of surrender, could the rest of the country please admonish the state’s leaders and elders as well as the principled lawmakers still standing, to stay the course. If the state’s APC leaders are too proud to let democracy bloom in the legislature, the Ekiti Seven, Hon Aribisogan, and the suspended lawmakers should in the name of God stand firm and litigate the monstrosity let loose on the state. This column and many other analysts and well-meaning Nigerians have invested too much in Ekiti to stand idly by as political adventurers play ducks and drakes with the affections of many people who love the state. Dr Fayemi does not appear incommoded by the crisis, so too the governor. Instead of disclaiming their participation in birthing the crisis, should they not more sensibly be outraged that the madness is being enacted on their watch?