OUR EKITI "AWOLOWO" August 13, 2013 By Abiola Olufemi in Gazelle News It is fast becoming a competition among Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship aspirants in Ekiti to outrank one another in making incendiary statements about the incumbent, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, as though that would make President Goodluck Jonathan look in their direction as the anointed candidate for Oke Bareke. One needs not be a seer to decipher that it is now a case of who can use the foulest language among the PDP aspirants in disparaging the visible achievements of the sitting Governor. Most garrulous of the pack is Prince Dayo Adeyeye, erstwhile Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), who seems to have appointed himself the spokesperson of the crises-ridden and violence-certificated Ekiti PDP probably because the party’s PR machinery has gone to sleep, though there is nothing to market or defend anyway. In all fairness to the Ise-Ekiti prince (whom a fellow PDP governorship aspirant, Ayo Fayose, serially accused of allegedly having some scores to settle with some palace artefacts. How true that is, one can never say due to the schizophrenic fickle-mindedness of the accuser), he has the necessary credentials of an image-maker having served as a publicity secretary to both Afenifere (a Yoruba socio-political group) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD), though little, if nothing at all, seems to remain of his own image, having gone the way of co-Yoruba quislings. Prior to his foray into the self-acclaimed largest party in Africa, Prince Dayo Adeyeye as publicity secretary of Afenifere and the Alliance for Democracy did all in his capacity to unleash his arsenal on then President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Peoples’ Democratic Party. Not a few were shocked when he opted for Obasanjo’s camp in 2007 and had to eat his vomit before the Owu high chief while desperate for a ministerial appointment during the Yar’Adua presidency. Obasanjo was said to have told eminent lawyer, Chief Afe Babalola, when the latter was going to plead on behalf of Adeyeye: “If you are coming because of Adeyeye, you won’t meet me.” And just as when he was in the AD and was the only senatorial candidate to lose in the whole of southwest in 1999, his failure trailed him to the Oni regime where he left the worst record as chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB). It is on record that 99 projects were abandoned under his regime and recently I read somewhere that some of the completed structures in some primary schools across the state have started giving way. A block of classrooms at St. Michael B Primary School, Oke Iloro, Okemesi-Ekiti attests to the wreck Adeyeye brought on education in Ekiti. The roof of the classrooms have caved in, so is the wall which has life-threateningly cracked. Whoever Adeyeye outsourced the contract to in his wisdom roofed the building with the tin used by bakers to bake bread and cake. In lieu of the standard 0.45 roofing sheets, 0.3 was used at the primary school in question, hence the eyesore which it is today. This is just one out of the many death-traps Adeyeye set for Ekiti pupils – future leaders. One must wonder the synonymity of educating pupils to dish-serving death for that was what Adeyeye did at SUBEB. These and no other are the credentials Adeyeye would be presenting as Ekiti PDP governorship aspirant, and shockingly enough, the credentials he vows to bring on governance in Ekiti State if elected as he stated in one of his numerous character-assassinating interviews: “You all know the innovation I brought into Ekiti primary education in just two years, when I was the Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in Ekiti. I will replicate this…” God save the soul of Ekiti! He went further: “Where is free education in a state where government claimed to have provided 33, 000 free laptops, but no student has the so-called laptop?” If this was meant to be a sincere question, he should visit one of the secondary schools in the state which the present administration renovated (under its Operation Renovate All Schools in Ekiti) to ask the students. I am sure they might have one or two lessons for him in computer education. One cannot but wonder how someone whose only innovations in Ekiti education sector were desecration and destruction could have the rectitude to blame the destructive footprints he left behind on another when in real fact the incumbent Governor has set himself apart from his predecessor’s days of locusts by instituting free education up to post-primary level and distributing free laptops to secondary school students and teachers in the state. He would have gone a notch higher through the conduct of an assessment test for teachers via which their deficiencies and needs would have been ascertained and corrected, but the move provided PDP with another discordant tune to carry on with for a while. It sent one of its thugs to town to haul stones at the teachers who wrote the assessment test at OlaOluwa Muslim Grammar School in Ado-Ekiti. Prince Adeyeye’s greatest record-breaking discordant tune is his promise to be another ‘Awolowo’ if and when elected Ekiti State Governor, but all well-meaning Nigerians must ask the Ise-Ekiti prince the following questions: Was Awolowo reputed for eating his own vomit like Adeyeye whose past-time was once to denigrate Obasanjo and the PDP, but is today unashamedly referred to as one of the OBJ boys in the southwest and one of the fiercest defenders of PDP House of Violence and Commotion? Was Awolowo a quisling with no consistent ideology? Did Awolowo stand for nothing? Was Awolowo known for lying about evidently visible advances of others like Adeyeye who till today has not seen any development in Ekiti except during the illegal tenure of his PDP compatriot, Segun Oni? Was it difficult to situate Awolowo ideologically like our Ise-Ekiti brother? Did Awolowo build school buildings that nearly killed pupils? Did Awolowo hire contractors whose trademark is substandard materials? Even if Awolowo was your enemy, you still must be able to come up with answers to these questions; it doesn’t matter if your political leaning would not allow you voice the true answers. But keep the answers to yourself until after (or the build-up to) the 2014 governorship election in Ekiti when we would know the next move of our Ise-Ekiti ‘Awolowo’. Abiola Olufemi writes from Igede-Ekiti, Ekiti State
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 06:16:26 +0000
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