By Omotoso Okeya
The outcome of the last PDP congress in Ekiti State has obviously generated divergent views and reactions. Some said the congress never took place in any of the 177 wards in the State while others contend that it only took place with some pockets of skirmishes. Anyway, the Congress Committee set up by the NWC of the party has declared that congresses were successfully held in 170 wards.
I can authoritatively assert that i actually partook of the congress in Ikere Local Government, where the major disruption to the exercise was caused by Prof. Kolapo Eleka who deployed his thugs and cult members to attack some notable politicians, including myself in order to win all the delegates in the municipal local government. But, Eleka forgot that he neither attended any political meeting nor produced a single delegate in Ikere before he won election as deputy governor in 2014. Eleka is obviously a desperate aspirant who is heavily intoxicated by the mere aroma of power, now determined to kill any Ikere person who is not in his camp whereas the former Governor Ayo Fayose’s kinsman who is serving as Eleka’s DG has never been molested in Afao Ekiti. Unfortunately, the same Eleka is alleging other leaders of election rigging and attacking the political order he’s still benefitting from because he has not achieved any political feat without Fayose’s benevolence! Anyway, January 26th is the D-Day, we shall see how far an ingrate could go.
However, everybody is perfectly entitled to his or her opinion. Hence, expression of contradicting views about a political programme is not strange under any democracy across the world.
Politics is a game of numbers and it’s no longer news that politicians usually deploy different strategies and gimmicks to outsmart one another in every election contest. And, the contestant with the superior political calculations would usually win. But, in most cases we cannot deny the fact that every election winner is usually perceived as a rigger by the loser. This development has almost become a democratic norm most especially in the developing countries where a loser of a free, fair and credible election would hardly concede defeat and congratulate the winner. Little wonder, every election is characterized by litigation!
Election is a multi- sectoral exercise in which different critical stakeholders would play their parts in order to achieve a credible election outcome. Hence, the role of INEC and the Congress Committees set up by the PDP National Working Committee (NWC) cannot be overemphasized in resolving the crisis in Ekiti PDP over the last congress to elect three ad hoc delegates in each ward. It’s a well established fact that none of the aggrieved parties is qualified to adjudicate over the allegations of malpractices raised because they all have vested interest in the exercise and would do everything possible to defend such. Nobody shall be a judge in his own case: memo judex in causa sua.
The position held by the INEC, Congress and the Appeals Committees is sacrosanct on the lingering issues in Ekiti PDP.
At this juncture, it’s important to ask if a single politician from Ekiti State or elsewhere could unilaterally appoint the members of congress committee and INEC officials that supervised the last Ekiti congress ?. No, I don’t think any individual politician could weird such power in a democratic setting. Nevertheless, honour should be given to whom is due and there is need for the political Lilliputians to respect and bow for the giants in the political space. All politicians may be equal but some with superlative and superior political arithmetics could be higher than the others.
Conflict is not peculiar to any political party. The ruling APC equally has certain challenges it has not even started to address.
Peoples Democratic Party has a better chance of producing the next governor of Ekiti State, the feat which could only be achieved with all hands on deck.
The position of the Constitution must be respected vis-a-vis who emerges as the party candidate. Let the candidate be embraced by all and sundry while every internal conflict resolution mechanism deployed to unite the conflicting groups and aggrieved members ahead of the general election
*Omotoso Okeya*