How time flies. Only a few months ago, the Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose was so sure that President Muhammadu Buhari would die in London where he spent weeks receiving medical attention for health challenges. Fayose bubbled and babbled that Buhari was in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a London hospital which he did not name. But he posted a picture and video of himself standing on the corridor of the purported hospital, claiming that Buhari was inside there in ICU. He was short of saying that Nigerians should start mourning him.
However, strangely, today, yesterday to be specific, the same Fayose is singing a different song, since it became obvious that his wish, for Buhari to die had been over-turned by God, Who gives life when He will and takes it when He will.
As a matter of fact, a seemingly confused Fayose now grieved openly that President Buhari, who returned to Nigeria over a month ago, looking more agile, robust and ready to do any Presidential duty, did not send him a birthday greeting, as he clocked 57. Yours sincerely is 58 in December.
Hear Governor Fayose: “my wishes on my 57th birthday as Ayo Fayose are many, but one of them which will interest you is that I wish President Buhari’s congratulatory call would have woken me up today (November 15), as one of the governors in the country and as a leading opposition figure in the country: a fearless young man who believes that things should be done rightly.
“I expect the president to show himself as a father of all, preaching that we must extend love to everybody – not only those in his political party.
“The president would have made a difference if he had extended such gesture to others beyond his political party. Such a congratulatory message should have been conveyed through his Minister of Information (Lai Muhammad). I would have loved to either wake up receiving a congratulatory call from him or read it in the papers. But since it is not coming, it is not a big deal to me and I take no offence on it.
“I am not Buhari’s enemy. Opposition is the strength of democracy, it ensures that the electorate get value for their votes. Those who criticise your government are not your enemies, they are catalysts to your growth as a government.”
The Ekiti governor is just trying to play some kind of smart game, by eating his cake and wants to have it. Indeed, I don’t see anything about him being a fearless young man: what I have been able to piece together about Fayose, is that he is a careless middle-age man who had lost any form of respect to power, in which he is well drenched.
It is good to know that even the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo once said that you are either his friend or his enemy; that he didn’t recognise a man in the middle.
Yes, Buhari, being a Muslim whose belief in destiny, as enshrined in the Islamic Holy Book, is very strong, might have, as it were, ignored all the infantile negative imputations on him by Fayose, but, wouldn’t it have been a joke carried too far for the President to be congratulating every governor on his birthday?
If the President had embarked on that trivial pastime, surely, Fayose and his fellow travellers, would have come up with accusation that he, the President has no serious thing doing to cleanse the Augean stables that have ruined this country for a very long time.
And, for Fayose, every insult he threw at Buhari and the people who are unfortunate to come from the North, was pinned to the concept of opposition and opposition politics.
In any case, what has birthday got to do with good governance for which the President would be congratulating governor Fayose, and perhaps, all other governors every now and then?
And, in the side of the country where Fayose hold sway, does ghost congratulate the living? [myad]
