BY ODUNAYO OGUNMOLA*
Election periods throw up all manners of individuals seeking the votes of the electorate as candidates of various political parties aiming to win one office or the other to acquire power to be held in trust for people.
Politics has the capacity to attract the good, the bad and the ugly but it is the electorate that need to be circumspect in critically assessing the office seekers, their past, their present, the policies and programmes contained in their manifestos (if any).
The governorship election is here again in Ekiti State, the Land of Honour and as it happens every four years, the motley crowd of contestants have emerged like “various shapes of knives that surface when an elephant is killed.”
But one of them shines the brightest like the northern star and his name is on the lips of everybody. Providence and fate are coming together to make him fulfill the journey of destiny of becoming the Governor of Ekiti State to render service to the people and for the progress of the state.
Who is that man Ekiti State needs at the moment to take the growth and development of the state to a higher pedestal? Who is the candidate trusted and tested to raise the bar of governance already launched by an outgoing stellar administration? Who is the man that knows Ekiti more than all his competitors worthy of being handed that covered governorship trophy? He is BIODUN ABAYOMI OYEBANJI (BAO).
Oyebanji, the Ikogosi-born politician has everything going well for him which will give him the edge on the election day and stand him in good stead not only as the winner of the June 18 election but also as the next Governor of the Fountain of Knowledge.
Oyebanji is running on the platform of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which is campaigning on a record of superlative performance in spite of paucity of funds and other fiscal challenges to make impact with life-changing policies, programmes and projects to show for the mandate given to the party in 2018.
As the candidate of the ruling party, Oyebanji is the favourite to coast home to victory on June 18 with the broom party resolute this time around to record a back-to-back victory even though the opposition parties are expected to mount a serious challenge to prevent the APC from achieving the feat.
As the election day draws nearer, Oyebanji and his party had in the last few weeks mounted an intense house-to-house, door-to-door campaign and whistle-stop visits to farmsteads, markets, motor parks, interior neighbourhoods in villages, towns and cities selling his well-thought-out manifesto and achievements of the Dr. Kayode Fayemi Administration.
Being the candidate of the ruling party confers enormous advantages that will be exploited to the fullest. The APC is the ruling party both at the federal and state levels. Apart from the 1999 general elections, Ekiti has a history of voting for the party that controls the federal government with the candidates fielded by such parties going ahead to win the governorship elections (rewind to 2003, 2007, 2014 and 2018).
The opposition parties in the state especially the major ones will be going into the governorship election like orphans without the backing of the federal government which is expected to stake everything to ensure an APC victory like it happened in Ekiti and Osun in 2018 and Ondo State in 2016 and 2020.
Like in the elections in three states mentioned, Ekiti poll is an off-cycle election that will give sister APC states the latitude to contribute to the emergence of the party’s flag bearer as the governor-elect on June 18 in terms of strategy, physical appearance and deployment of financial, material and human resources.
The performance of Governor Fayemi in nearly four years in office across the length and breadth of the state will play a major role in wetting the ground for Oyebanji to smoothen his emergence as the next Governor. It is a ready-made campaign tool for BAO and his team and he is always proud to do so having been a frontline member of the successful team.
There is no village, town or city in Ekiti that the APC-led government has not touched with one project or the other which have made life easier for the people serving as a reference point and campaign tool that will shape where the pendulum of victory will swing to on June 18.
Unlike the immediate past regime which concentrated its developmental projects in the two biggest cities, Ado and Ikere, the Fayemi administration spread its tentacles of development to the hinterland and the grassroots and it has a harvest of projects to show which include construction, reconstruction and rehabilitation of intrastate roads, construction of roads to farmsteads done in conjunction with the World Bank, construction of community markets, palaces, rehabilitation of schools and provision of instructional materials and other facilities, rehabilitation of hospitals and provision of facilities to make healthcare accessible to the grassroots, rehabilitation of dams, construction of civic centres/town halls in communities, urban renewal in the major towns and cities among others.
The Fayemi Administration also succeeded in attracting investments worth millions of dollars with the Ikun Dairy Farm revived under a partnership with Promasidor as a signature project for investment and employment opportunities for citizens. The rice mills floated in partnership with reputable business conglomerates like Dangote Industries, Stallion Group are nearing completion not forgetting the cargo airport which will all be inaugurated before the Governor leaves office in October.
Since the return to democracy in 1999, the people of Ekiti State had always clamoured for a governor who was born at home, grew up at home, schooled at home and spent a considerable length of his adult life at home and the APC has fulfilled this aspiration by nominating Oyebanji as its standard bearer in the 2022 governorship contest. Oyebanji is a homeboy, he is home-based, he is homegrown and the homeboy advantage will come into play at the forthcoming election.
Having such a personality as the Governor, in their estimation, will give them them somebody who understands them and their problems and who will be in the best position to provide solutions to their problems. They want somebody who understands the dialect very well, who can communicate with them in a no-holds-barred manner and Oyebanji fits the bill.
Oyebanji was born in his hometown, Ikogosi where he had his primary education, he had his secondary education in Awo and Efon Alaaye and his university education (first degree) in Ado. He also started his first job as a lecturer at the then Ondo State University (now known as Ekiti State University) and also had a stint in the banking sector (the then Omega Bank) in Ekiti here before his appointment into the government.
As a lecturer at the university, he was among the eminent Ekiti personalities that fought for the Creation of Ekiti State when he was appointed as the Secretary for the Committee for the Creation of Ekiti State after submitting a proposal on the dream could be achieved when he was still in his 20s. His brilliance, erudition and poise wowed the cream of the eminent personalities including Obas, academic giants, legal luminaries, captains of industries, top bureaucrats who unanimously appointed him as the scribe of the august body.
Since serving in the first civilian administration in the state led by Otunba Adeniyi Adebayo in various capacities including Special Assistant, Special Adviser and Chief of Staff, Oyebanji had not left Ekiti and had contributed his quota to its development as a progressives politician and an investor in agribusiness providing employment for the citizens of the state.
Oyebanji had turned a full cycle in other capacities as Director General of a critical agency (Office of Transformation, Strategy and Delivery), Commissioner in two key ministries (Integration and Intergovernmental Affairs; Budget and Planning) in the JKF 1 Administration and capping it with his appointment as the Secretary to the State Government during the JKF 2 Administration.
Nobody can say that Oyebanji is an “atohunrinwa” or a diaspora candidate. He knows Ekiti like the palms of his hands, he understands Ekiti very well and his election will give him an opportunity to marry the blueprint of the Committee for the Creation of Ekiti State with his own manifesto to launch the state on a higher pedestal of development.
Oyebanji also offers the people of Ekiti State an opportunity to have an indigene of the state as the First Lady for the first time since the creation of the state. His wife, Dr. Olayemi Oyebanji, an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, is a princess of Ado Ekiti. This establishes the fact that Oyebanji and his wife are “tiwantiwa” (homegrown.
Throughout his long years of learning the ropes under two great leaders and mentors, Otunba Adebayo and Dr. Fayemi, Oyebanji has a squeaky clean record as an administrator, no baggage, no scandal. He boasts of requisite experience in governance spanning a cumulative period of eleven (11) years in government. When elected, he will not be a neophyte or a novice who will be tutored for the first few months on what governance is all about.
Leveraging on his sublime performance as SSG and the excitement that greeted his entry into the APC governorship primary contest and his emergence as the candidate, support base for Oyebanji has been growing by the day with various interest groups identifying with his aspiration which they believe will stimulate the prosperity of Ekiti.
Interest groups like political parties (some of which have been defecting to APC and collapsing their structures into Oyebanji’s Campaign Organisation), market women, farmers, artisans, traditional chiefs, wives of monarchs (oloris), commercial transporters, okada riders, civil servants, youths, students, community associations, ethnic nationalities have been declaring their support for Oyebanji’s candidacy.
The APC flag bearer also comes to the table with a solid manifesto carefully crafted to consolidate on the gains achieved under the Fayemi Administration which gave him away as the most prepared candidate for the top job. The launch of his manifesto jolted candidates of other parties into consciousness on the need and struggle to come up with their own manifestos too.
The BAO manifesto incorporates Job Creation, Agriculture, Investment in ICT, Industrialisation, Consolidating the opening up of the State to local and foreign investments, Sports Development, Youth Engagement, among others which he had promised to religiously and conscientiously implement to the benefit of the people of the state in his avowed passion to better their standards of living.
It should not be a surprise to anybody when Oyebanji is declared the winner of the election in the night of June 18 or thereabouts. All indices are pointing in the direction of victory for him as his campaign train rolls into various Ekiti communities for the final push for the votes of the good people of Ekiti State.
Definitely, Hurricane BAO is sweeping to victory at the Ekiti State governorship election. Let the people of the state prepare themselves for governance of the highest quality from October 16 when, by the grace of God, the man of the people, Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji will take the oath of office to implement his blueprint for Ekiti prosperity.