Since General Muhammadu Buhari was voted
presidential candidate of the APC, Fayose has mounted a ghoulish
death-watch on him, pivoting on medical report purporting that the
72-year-old former head of state had been treated for prostate cancer,
at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital, in Kaduna.
Even if true, the report should have
elicited empathy. The report was fake through and through, however; an
inept forgery. But it was more than enough for Fayose to embark on a
countdown to Buhari’s demise with the kind of glee you would expect of a
person about to come into a vast fortune.
Don’t vote for Buhari in the
presidential election, he urged his band of followers, for the most part
those whose stomachs he has conscripted for the vilest ends; don’t vote
for him because he is going to die in office, like four previous
leaders from his corner of Nigeria .
That, essentially, was the statement
Fayose put out in a signed advertisement that several newspapers
plastered on the entire front pages, as if it was editorial material of
the highest importance. And to every newspaper that agreed to publish
this obscenity, Fayose forked out the going price of N5 million.
For a while, he was distracted from his
macabre obsession with compassing Buhari’s death by the disclosures that
have now enteredthe annals of electoral skullduggery as Ekiti-gate.
On the eve of last June’s gubernatorial
election in Ekiti, some leading PDP members and top officials of the
Jonathan administration gathered at Fayose’s Spotless Hotel, in
Ado-Ekiti, to put the finishing touches to their design for winning the
poll.
In attendance were Musiliu Obanikoro,
Minister of State for Defence, Jelili Adesiyan, Minister of Police
Affairs, Brigadier-General A.A. Momah, commanding officer of the 32
Artillery Brigade deployed to Ado Ekiti to supervise the poll.
Also in attendance, probably for an
on-the-spot assessment of the design that was to be pressed into service
for him in the gubernatorial race in neighbouring Osun State several
weeks later, was the PDP’s candidate, Iyiola Omisore.
Unbeknownst to the schemers, the meeting
was secretly recorded by Captain Sagir Koli, an aide to General Momah.
The tape was posted online newspaper Saharareporters, after confirming
that it was authentic.
Fayose can be heard on the audiotape
bullying and harrying Momah, charging that Momah had been taking a bribe
from the APC to disarm the police and thus to clear the way for it to
rig the poll.
Obanikoro, who had all along denied
being anywhere near Ado-Ekiti at the material time, can be heard
declaring that he was on a mission from the President. He reminds Momah
that his promotion lay more or less in his hands as Minister for the
Army, and that he had better deliver.
The tape contains just enough hints of
the plot – how APC stalwarts were to be rounded up and detained and its
field workers immobilised while only PDP operatives travelling in
specially marked vehicles would have the field entirely to themselves.
The plot is fleshed out in shocking
detail in Koli’s deposition, including how one of the notorious Uba
Brothers, rode into Ekiti at the head of a column of soldiers, with bus
loads of cash taken out of the Central Bank in Umuahia, and how the
military personnel in this special task force took their orders directly
from Chris Uba, aforementioned.
Only a person trained in reconnaissance
could have reported in such precise and overwhelming detail how the
gubernatorial election that brought Fayose to power for the second time
was compromised, if not perverted. It makes frightening reading.
When the audio surfaced on the web site
of Saharareporters, Fayose stoutly denied its content, claiming that it
was only the latest fabrication in a long line of fabrications by the
APC, “the party of liars.” He said no such meeting ever took place, and
that his voice had been digitally manipulated to implicate him.
“There are softwares (sic) that can
re-create voices and even bring the voices of long-dead notable persons
back to life,” Fayose reportedly said. “There are softwares (sic) that
can turn printed text into synthesised speech, making it possible for
anyone to use recordings of a person’s voice to utter new things that
the person never said. One of such softwares (sic) is called ‘Natural
Voices.’”
If this was Fayose speaking extempore
rather than reading from a script that some bureaucratic hack prepared
for him, the Higher National Diploma he parades from the Ibadan
Polytechnic may well be authentic. Some might even be led to believe
that he is actually a professor of cybernetics!
It was only after several of the
schemers named in the tape had fessed up to the fact of the meeting but
not the purpose that Fayose admitted, without shame and without remorse,
that he had indeed participated in it.
To give Fayose his due, he did not
threaten to go to court, as Obanikoro did. Even if the publication was
false, Obanikoro’s recourse to the law courts would still be fruitless.
Under American law, he would have to prove that the publication at issue
was made with actual malice, .i.e. with knowing falsity, or with
reckless disregard for its truth or falsity.
That burden is almost insurmountable.
And it explains why public figures rarely bring defamation lawsuits
before American courts.
If Fayose’s reaction to the Ekiti-gate
was characteristically duplicitous, President Goodluck Jonathan’s was
downright execrable. He would not waste his time investigating a
fabrication, he told The Wall Street Journal long after some of
the officials featured in the audiotape had admitted that they had met
in Ado-Ekiti but for a different purpose, and long after Saharareporters
had posted Koli’s damning account of rigging plan.
How could Dr Jonathan, a scientist
trained to be guided by empirical evidence, tell that the audio tape and
the report were fabrications when he had not examined them?
This is a repudiation of the scientific
method. No wonder Nigeria under Jonathan has been like a stalled
caterpillar, its antennae probing in every direction, its body inert.
Meanwhile, Fayose has resumed his
ghoulish pastime – his Buhari death watch. No sooner was it announced
that the APC presidential candidate would be going to the UK on a
working visit than he released a bulletin on Buhari’s itinerary.
Buhari, he said, had been ferried to a
plane in the dead of night on a stretcher, and rushed to London for
urgent medical treatment. Buhari was not scheduled to speak at Chatham
House, as his camp had claimed, was in the UK for one purpose only: to
obtain treatment. Fayose even went on to name the hospital where
Buhari was allegedly being treated.
All this, Fayose exulted, was splendid
vindication for the editorial advertisement he had placed in the papers
several weeks ago warning that the APC had saddled Nigeria with a
presidential candidate set to expire.
Buhari has since been shown going about
his business in the UK, including a photo-op with former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair. His Chatham House talk is scheduled for Thursday.
Nothing in all this has moved Fayose to
admit error. Rather, he has now conflated his ghoulish obsession with
what he says is revelation from on high that Buhari will never be
president.
A debauched mind’s hallucination, Governor, is no revelation.
- This Piece was written by Olatunji Dare/The Nation
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