Ekiti 2026: election that should firm up BAO’s political paradigm shift

Most observers of Ekiti political history, pre BAO, should be ‘ad idem’ on the fact that it was atavistic and cold blooded; something akin to “bo ba o pa, bo ba o bu lese”, that is, just harm your political opponent, any which way. Nobody could ever have believed, based on our politics then, that we are the most homogeneous people in Nigeria. It was with that scurrilous situation in mind that I wrote as follows on this column a whole sixteen whole years ago, on 31 October, 2010 shortly after the Apeal Court, Ilorin, ruled in the Fayemi Vs Oni election case, while reflecting on the way forward for the state in: ‘Ekiti – Beyond Politics: “As William Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures”. You would think the Bard of Avon had Ekiti in mind when he penned those memorable words as they fit us so uncannily, looking like a clarion call to every Ekiti, young and old, to take our destiny in our hands and blow off the shibboleths that have stuck to us like ‘amutorunwa spots’. The time is not now to ask how we got here. Rather, it is a time for total reconciliation: first, with our God, and then amongst ourselves, Ekitis. The appropriate questions for us now are: what is the way forward? How do we rediscover, hold , cherish and nourish again, those pristine and immaculate Ekiti cultural traits which have served generations of Ekiti so splendidly? How do we get back that bonhomie, that espirit de corps that total strangers saw in us and thought we were all born of one mother? How do we begin to re- discover those economic traits that galvanized and enabled the poorest of our fathers to see his children and wards through college; how do we begin to seriously contend with the multi-faceted problems that today confront all of us, Ekitis, but especially our youth, educated thousands of them, who are paving the streets of Abuja, Lagos and Ado-Ekiti in search of non-existent jobs?