Ayo Fayose broke the oath he took with me –Bamisile, Ex-Ekiti Speaker

Former Speaker, Ekiti House of Assembly, Mr. Femi Bamisile, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, speaks on how Governor Ayo Fayose allegedly reneged on his promise..

What are your thoughts on governance in Ekiti State in the last one year that Governor Ayo Fayose has been in office?

There are lots of things that are happening in the state that a lot of people don’t feel comfortable about. There is the issue of bailout; Ekiti was granted N9.6bn to alleviate the poverty of civil servants, who had not been paid one entitlement or another. Before this money was put together, there must have been some form of study to know what the state needed.

 But till now, the governor has not used this money for what it was meant for. The only explanation for this is that the governor has put it in a particular account to yield interest for him. We all know the people who the money should go to and the head of service in the state knows those who are owed money and should be paid. So the money shouldn’t take 24 hours until it is paid. But we all understand what is going on. 

The government has no reason to delay payment. We are not fools; I have been in the system before. I have been number three citizen in the state as Speaker of the House of Assembly. I’ve been special adviser to a governor in the state and this same governor (Fayose) many times so I understand the running of government and we all understand what is happening. It is unfortunate that the same people who put him in office are the same people who are suffering within the ambits of power in the state. For me and many others in the state, it is unfortunate. You can look at the N17bn airport that his administration is also talking about. That will clearly tell you that something is wrong with the administration. When Fayose came in, he made it clear to the world that the state never needed to spend the N3.3bn the immediate past governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, spent on Government House. He made so much fuss about it and he is still talking about it.

But some people wonder why you didn’t criticise Fayemi even when he was said to have spent about N3bn on the state house.

I don’t criticise any government but I speak for the Ekiti people and myself when things are going wrong. The issue of Fayemi building a N3.3bn Government House is clear except we want to make a fool of ourselves. You need to come to Ekiti State and see the Government House.

 It is what can be called a Government House. The old government is not befitting and what Fayemi built is an edifice that will be there for the rest of time. No governor will come to say he wants to build a government house again in the next 100 years if there is no earthquake in Ekiti State.

But considering the standard of living and economy of the state, would you say that the N3.3bn government was what the people needed at the time?

I can join those who say so because they are good arguments considering the standard of living in Ekiti state and the fact that there are no jobs in the state. So things could have been done differently, but he chose that project. But if you are one of those who criticised that project and now eventually became the governor, why would you think of this N17bn airport which will have no economic value to the state? 

There is an airport in Akure, Ondo State, which is about 45 minutes drive from Ekiti State because of bad roads. I would have N3bn out of the N17bn to reconstruct that 20km road linking Ekiti to Akure, dualise it and save N14bn. The people would drive from Ekiti to Akure to catch a flight to wherever they are going. 

Anyway, it is not an international airport that is being proposed, it is a local airport. So we ask ourselves, what are the economic values are? So I just consider it as a conduit pipe to siphon the state funds.

Some people say you don’t want to admit that Fayose is popular in Ekiti because of your ambition to become governor. What do you say to that?

When he won the election, he won basically because there were some things that the previous government was meant to do and did not do. As regards infrastructure, he (Fayemi) did a lot. 

You need to come to the state, Ado-Ekiti especially and see for yourself. You will see that he has done his own bit but government is a continuum, anyway. So you do what you can do before you pull out. But in the remote areas, everybody expects to have one on one interaction with their governor. Those are the basic things that the immediate past governor did not do at that point in time. Those are the things that Fayose capitalised on and it earned him the support of the Ekiti people. Since 1999 in the state, no voter has voted for a political party, people have voted for individuals. 

At the end of it all, people vote for individuals. But if you continue to vote for individuals, the likelihood is that you will not get dividends of democracy. People will see themselves as tin gods. You need to institutionalise political structures so that the voting pattern would change. So people would look at the political party and not the characters in the party. That is where we missed it in Ekiti State.

You were one of those who criticised Fayose when he was distributing rice and chickens, but you seem to have latched on to the stomach infrastructure initiative as you have also been distributing petrol. Some people call that hypocrisy.

I would let you in how the stomach infrastructure came to be. Fayose was not the master mind of stomach infrastructure; it was a term that was used in the Action Congress of Nigeria because some people were not comfortable with Fayemi’s administration within that party. So it was then the term came out that the man was busy doing basic infrastructure within the state while leaving out human development. So that was how stomach infrastructure came about. Fayose came and latched on to that. 

His definition of stomach infrastructure is the distribution of rice and chickens during Christmas and Sallah. So we have reinvented and reengineered that. I call it human capital development. If you look at Ekiti, the funds are not there. We are well educated but we don’t have the financial base and that is why anybody would come in and lie to the people that he is giving them something which should be their basic rights. 

So about stomach infrastructure, we have moved away from that. We have redefined it as human capital development and you will see the difference between them. Compare a man who gives 2kg of rice and a fowl during festive periods to a man who look straight at a commercial motorcyclist and says ‘I will fuel your motorcycle with N500 petrol to work for the day and make N5,000 with it on the same day’.

 In simple economics, I have imparted into his life because from the N5,000 he made the previous day, he will get another N500 to fuel his motorcycle. It would take the man and his family a long way. That is the difference. We try to make people understand that we don’t have that much but we will try to impart into their lives with the little we have.

People can also argue that someone who has not eaten won’t need the N500 for fuel in the first place.

As a sitting governor, that is not the best to do for a society like Ekiti State. It is an insult on our people with the level of education that we have. I don’t want to believe that through the giving of 2kg of rice, you get your dividends of democracy. Yes, I’m not arguing that. 

It is open for criticisms, no doubt. But I do this on a monthly basis and I’m not in government. I am going into another venture which is to give kerosene to the old folks because I realise that not too many of us use gas. 

A litre is sold for N130 and a lot of people cannot afford to spend N200 on meals a day. If I can help them with two litres of kerosene, that will be able to prepare food for the household for a week. So we are helping to alleviate poverty within the society. If I can afford to do that now without any money, then I should be able to look for better ways of alleviating poverty when I get to government.

Is Ekiti the poorest state that politicians have to reduce its people to the level where they have to be given dole outs?

I have lived there for 13 years and it is really not the poorest state in the nation because a man with sound education cannot be considered a poor man. He could use the education to earn a living. Unfortunately, Ekiti State has no industry. So you will understand that the majority of people in the state are so dependent on government and this is where the problem is. So whatever it is that people do, whether they are fresh from the university or civil servants, they will tell you that they are politicians.

 Everybody is practising politics in Ekiti State. I’m not saying that is a problem but it could be a burden. There is no private-public sector in the state because the private sector is not functional. So everybody is so dependent on what government brings. That is why I have called for true federalism in Nigeria, whereby every state is independent.

 It is the state that should be feeding the federal government so we need to decentralise power from the centre. No federal government should throw money to a non-working governor every month who does not want to find a better Internally Generate Revenue for his people. You need creative minds to lead a state. It’s not just about giving rice.

 Fayose has imprinted something into the psyche of the Ekiti people and if you want to get back on track, it takes a fool to catch a fool.

Nigerians say that all defections are usually for selfish reasons. What can you say about yours?

Mine was based on principles. Immediately after the election, we realised that we needed to rebuild the party (PDP). If we wanted to rebuild the party, all we had to do was have everybody that we thought had some political connection within the local governments, district or the state. That was why we (Dr. T.K.O. Aluko and I) thought of Fayose. We went to him in Lagos and when we had the convention, our group won the primaries. 

I became the deputy chairman, Aluko became the secretary and when the time came to distribute the spoils of war, we sat together. We met and he (Fayose) said Femi, I will like to be the governor of the state and I said by zoning ordinance, you should not go to the centre. He said there was nothing called zoning. And I said no problem. He said ‘you sort for yourself’. He said ‘be the deputy governor and he asked Aluko to be the chief of staff’. He brought out a Bible and we took an oath with it. 

He took an oath with me and Dr. Aluko that we would stick to our promises and deal. And the moment, that endeared me to the entire process and we started mobilising the entire state. Don’t forget that Fayose had left the PDP for over seven years and had no political footing within the party. So it was our structure that he used to win the primary. The moment he won the primary, he realised that Femi Bamisile was too strong, that how a young man could be able to mobilise the entire state to vote for him. It was something that was unimaginable that someone who was kicked out of the state could come back and win the primary.

 How could someone who was impeached and sent out of the state in disgrace come back and win the primary in the same political party and become the governor of the state. It was quite unimaginable but we made the impossible possible. 

The moment he saw that, he became scared. I regard myself as his mentor because everything he did politically after his return to the PDP, we made possible by God’s grace. 

The moment he got the ticket, he had the strength of political party and that was when he told me to my face that I could not be the deputy governor and I said fine. It is not a big deal but I would rather not stay within your party because for a politician to have looked me in the eye and say I would not be the deputy, he would crush me to the ground. So I needed to pull out. 

As they say he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day. So I left the PDP based on principles. If you go as far as taking an oath with me, and then go back on your word, then there is nothing that you cannot do. A man’s word is his bond and that is me for you.