Dear Otunba Oguntuase:_
Your rejoinder to Wole Olujobi’s article in respect of the above title on April 12, 2022 makes not only an interesting read but also an amusing one.
It is amusing not only because of the jejune response you deployed in defense of the visit of the governorship candidate of the Social Democratic Party, Chief Segun Oni (CSO) to Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), Nigeria’s former head of state, ostensibly to felicitate with him on his birthday which the former military ruler probably had forgotten about because of the time it took your principal to effect the birthday visit.
Nothing else can be said to warrant further response because Olujobi had already put paid to your submission in his rejoinder. But what still remains to be said is why you chose to deny, if not render nugatory, in the face of empirical evidence, the several accomplishments—some of which are quite unprecedented—-of the governor of Ekiti State Dr. John Kayode Fayemi. It is the singular reason I am writing this letter to you..
But before I delve into the accomplishments that even the blind can see except those that would rather bury their heads in the sands, like the ostrich, in their pretence that these achievements never happened—-which you exemplified—-I must submit to you that what you did when you quipped that “we know your pay masters are intrinsically contemptuous of your National Leader, but we least expect that you will find a way at all cost to want to blackmail him so that your Ogas will have their way” was nothing but a cheap and pedestrian attempt to a score political point with those who are not discerning enough to read between the lines. You also attempted to drive a wedge when there’s absolutely no reason to do so.
The discerning knows that the target of this cheap shot is Dr. Fayemi who, in your imagination, is the “contemptuous” one while the person who’s held in contempt needs no identification despite your disingenuous pluralization of some keywords in the aforementioned statement. Pray, could the person that is supposedly “contemptuous” of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu have been the first person among the southwest political leaders, if not the entire country, to visit him in his redoubt where both men had a private conversation after the latter’s public declaration of his intention to run for the nation’s highest political office? Does that make any sense to you?
Otunba, before going into the specific accomplishments that warrants this public missive, it should be stressed here that in a clime where people are sophisticated enough to know what power and politics must produce, the “continuity agenda” would have been the swan song of the people themselves by now of the Fayemi administration.
What’s more, his party’s candidate Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji (BAO) would have also been the shoo-in candidate of just about most, if not all, the political parties in contention for the governorship seat in the state.
As a result, this campaign would have been much easier and almost effortless since the economic foundations, which has been (and still being) painstakingly laid by the outgoing governor would have been more than enough to warrant continuity, not to talk of the vision, the ideational preponderance and the relevant laws now in place that undergird these economic foundations.
I shall leave the macro economic imperatives of these achievements for another day.
But since the values that used to be second nature to the voters and their sense of judgment, in the main, have corroded and pretty much debased with the so-called “stomach infrastructure” of the previous Chief of State, one must continue to educate the populace which you, as one of the elites of the society, are perhaps inadvertently, if not deliberately trying to prevent from happening with your denial of these obvious accomplishments.
Otunba, perhaps I should ask at this juncture what is your idea of how a state should grow and be economically self-sufficient. A debate may be necessary here so that the public may know how your mind works on this all important subject matter. If you can lie with a straight face which of the achievements of Fayemi requires consolidation, I can submit to you, without fear of contradiction, that the achievements of Fayemi requires consolidation, hence continuity in the following areas that are by no means exhaustive.
Pray, are the skills acquisition programmes that are designed to provide economic opportunities for the youths of the state a duplication of what CSO provided in his previous governorship outing? Please let me not be allowed to dwell on the Ikun Diary Farm, which was first used as a conduit to embezzle monies but later abandoned by your principal in his ill-fated attempt at governance. This diary farm is now a national pride under this administration which employs over a hundred indigenes of Ikun community.
How about the Ero and Egbe dams that has been completed to further facilitate the provision of potable water to homes and businesses as well as accommodate irrigation farming?
Can the state boast of a 4.75MW Independent Power Project (IPP) which has started, and will be completed within the tenure of the current administration by any of the previous administrations? Where is it on record that any previous government partnered with a transmission company, such as what Fayemi has done with TCN to build two sub-stations in the Ilupeju Ekiti and Ijesha Isu axis which, when completed, would significantly increase the electricity received in the state? Please don’t let me get started on the Cargo airport and the Knowledge Economic Zone with the attendant multiplier effects.
On road infrastructure; are the Ado-Iyin, Aramoko-Erijiyan, Oye-Ikun-Otun, Omuo-Isinbode, Ilupeju-Ire-Igbemo, Ilawe-Igbara Odo-Ibuji roads, for instance, already in existence in their present state before Fayemi came this second time?
Otunba, can you, in all honesty, dismiss the significance of the 56,100ha Special Agricultural Processing Zone (SAPZ) in the northern senatorial district, the presence of more than 25 investors with more than $300 investments in the state, clearing of land for farmers and investors to the tune of 10,000ha, distribution of more than 200,000 seedlings of improved cocoa seedlings, free distribution of 55,000 cashew seedlings for tree crops plantation to the economy of Ekiti State?
How about the N800 million rice inputs distribution to rice farmers under the rice pyramid scheme, where this has moved the state’s rice output from 342,000mt to 750,000mt, the release of N330m for Fadama Ekiti Cares for small holder farmers and rural road farms—-just to mention a few—-to job and wealth creation for the people of the state? I will save Fayemi’s achievements in the education sector for another day.
Sir, the senselessness, to put it mildly, of your denial of Fayemi’s achievements is not necessarily what is discomfiting, if not scary, as what seems to be your anti-Fayemi achievements campaign can always be pushed back with empirical and verifiable record of accomplishments of the man and his administration. And there are lots of these achievements to showcase.
What is frightening, it should be pointed out, is the likelihood that most of these economic infrastructures that has already placed the state in good stead to experience modernity as the rest of the world knows it would either be scrapped or significantly rolled back that they would no longer have the desired economic impacts in the polity in the highly unlikely event (and God forbid) that Chief Segun Oni becomes the next governor of the state—in the name of populism.
This is because your likes would practically be running CSO government since he told us in no unmistakable terms during his ill-advised lawsuit against Fayemi in the aftermath of the 2018 primaries that he does only what his followers tells him to do.
So much for a leader.
May this day never come to pass.
I send you greetings!
Yours Sincerely,
FEMI ODERE.