Fashola cries foul over Fayemi’s defeat

Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola has faulted those saying All Progressives Congress (APC) should learn lessons from its loss in the June 21 Ekiti State governorship election.

The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Ayo Fayose, won the election by a wide margin, defeating the incumbent, APC’s Dr. Kayode Fayemi.

But in an interview on Wednesday, Fashola said it would be dangerous for democracy to suggest that the lesson to be learnt is that winning an election is about sharing money and rice “which is very easy to provide”.

Fayose is believed to have won partly because of his ability to “connect with the grassroots” through sharing of goodies, while Fayemi was described as “elitist”.

Fashola said the outcome of the election has raised some fundamental questions, maintaining that the supposed lessons “are frightening and disturbing dimensions to conduct of politics and questions on human behaviour”.

“Should we just be giving money and when people ask about security, we say we have given you the money, go and rent your own security? So when people ask about hospitals and drugs we say you have collected money. Is that a model for development?” he asked.

According to him, “development comes at a cost” and to suggest that in APC-governed states, where a lot of development is taking place, the road to winning power is simply to go and give money “is a very worrisome lesson to learn”.

Fashola said two weeks to the Ekiti poll, no self-respecting public commentator could comfortably predict Fayemi would lose.

He said: “The worst that you could say was that it looked close, if it did. Is this the way human beings have behaved? Is this the normal way to behave? Does a governor whom everybody says did well lose even in his own ward? If he was such a bad governor, was the deputy also a bad deputy that she too lost? Was the speaker of the house also bad?

“Let us simply examine human behaviour here and perhaps you should remember that the governor- elect now from his own party was told to all of us that he had criminal issues to answer. They removed him, they took him to court and have not come back to tell us that he has been acquitted and they bring him back to the same state. Is that consistent with human behaviour? Do human beings behave like that?

“Just from the human behavioural angle, is there any incumbent that has lost an election like this before? I don’t know. I may be naive. But do people behave like this? Is this the way they reward development and then we say that politics is dirty, somebody comes with some very respectable qualifications and the reaction we now get is that he speaks too much English. Where would you speak English except in Ekiti?

“You have many professors there anyway and they say he is elitist. And you know I just don’t understand because this is the same governor that has an unprecedented welfare programme where a certain category of citizens get a fixed amount of money every month for the last three years. Is it consistent with human behaviour to leave that sure income for what have been at best temporary gifts for three months? Is that normal? Even if people were excited, would it be in that overwhelming number? For me those are issues that are worrisome.”