Tiko Emmanuel Okoye
Your Excellency, please accept my belated congratulations for overcoming supposedly overwhelming odds to win the last Ekiti State Governorship Election. Your Cinderella performance expectedly took many people outside Ekiti State by surprise considering the pedigreed antecedents of your principal opponent, Dr. Fayemi Kayode. Particularly interesting is the fact that in enacting your electoral Houdini act, you also added a new phrase to the nation’s political lexicography: stomach infrastructure!
Judging from the rather brusque manner you governed the state in your abridged first tenure, many people feared the worst. But you again took everyone by surprise with your spectacular displays. There you were at the Ado-Ekiti branch of the Deeper Life Bible Church (DLBC), right on the floor, rolling from one end to the other not minding your very fine garments. It was the epitome of humility as you displayed total submission to the will of God. Many of us who up till that very moment had cynically wondered if the leopard can truly change its spots shed a tear or two while asking God to forgive us for being doubting Thomases.
Not many people identified you in your first term as a born-again Christian, talk less a member of the ultraconservative DLBC. The bible says that regardless of whatever anyone professes to be you can only know them by the personality fruits they produce. And your image, as especially ventilated in the print and electronic, was far from being one of chastity and piety.
Make no mistake about it, you cannot even grow a single hair strand on your head without the say-so of God. Your recent victory has very little to do with the supposed invincibility of Ayodele Peter Fayose but everything to do with the mercies and grace of almighty God. Do you need to be reminded that you had earlier contested a senate seat in the same state on the platform of the Labour Party and was soundly defeated? So, turn a deaf ear to all praise singers telling you how you’ve killed your ten thousands and has become the anointed arrowhead for Jonathan’s victory in the South-West come 2015.
Once upon a time, there was a man who providentially moved from the prison to the Presidential Villa. He testified to the world that he became a born-again Christian in prison and that he was going to govern with humility and wisdom. He was clearly singing a different tune by the time he left office. But for the fact that the lacklustre performance of those he selected to replace him has succeeded in accorded him the status of a one-eyed man in the country of the blind, he’d have been consigned to the dunghill of history.
Your Excellency, you started so well by giving all the glory to God for your victory. But the bible – which you profess to believe in – is replete with stories of those who started very well – including those initially called by God Himself – but ended very badly. A few examples would suffice. Judas Iscariot was chosen by Jesus Christ to be among his twelve disciples. He was among the twelve who Jesus promised would “sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” as a reward for their faithful service (Matthew 19:9; Luke 22:29-30.
Judas was also among the twelve sent out in pairs with power over unclean spirits. The bible says they evangelized and cast out many devils and healed the sick (Mark 6:7-13). Up to that stage, he could be said to be certainly earning the right to his promised throne. But somewhere along the line, and somehow, the same devil he was casting out with ease entered into him and caused to sin by betraying his master. He had thought he was exposing an impostor claiming to be the messiah, the king of the Jews and played into the hands of Jewish officials seeking to stop the wave-making ministry of Jesus.
Judas later realized he was wrong. He repented of his sin and tried to return the money he was paid by Jewish officials but they rebuffed him. He consequently committed suicide (Matthew27:3-5). Your Excellency, Judas repented but his repentance came too late and counted for nothing. You occupy a very special place in history. Not many people get the kind of second-chance God has given you. What do you intend to make of it? Is it going to be a case of wasted opportunities? Business as usual? Behave like Judas only to have a change of heart when it is too late?
Please do not let sycophants and rent seekers destroy your legacy. Moses was pronounced the meekest man on earth by God. Yet, continually goaded by ungrateful Israelites he was leading out of freedom from centuries of bondage in Egypt, he gave vent to anger in a temporary moment of madness and ruefully ended his journey at the point of entering the Promised Land after leading them for forty grueling years! Your Excellency, you must take your people into the Promised Land.
Rehoboam succeeded his father as king of Israel. When the old men who served his father as advisers counseled him to lighten the heavy burden on the Israelites as a PR stunt, the young men he appointed urged otherwise. In the end, none of his family members ever became king again.
Your Excellency, the stories recently emanating from your jurisdiction are very worrisome. If it isn’t about judges being harassed and their robes torn in daylight by sponsored thugs, it is about blackmailing members of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state legislature into defecting to your party. Just yesterday, a Government House coaster bus with registration number EKGH 111 conveyed nine PDP legislators under heavy police cover to supposedly sit and approve your list of commissioners, political aides and local government council caretaker committees. Nineteen members of the APC were effectively locked by the well-armed police escorts.
Your Excellency, as a born-again Christian, it is wrong to allow the tail to wag the dog. Regardless of your past activities, God has gifted you a golden opportunity to make a discernible difference in the style and language of governance in this nation. You are not the only governor presiding over a state where the opposition party has a majority in the state legislature. God wants you to make a difference in governance. You’ve the opportunity to excel in office to the extent that a case can be made for more Pentecostals to assume topmost elective leadership positions. Impunity, wickedness, vengeance and hatred must have no place in your administration.
You must show that our democracy can thrive by charting a different course, no matter how frustrating and painstaking the process may be from time to time. You are now a golden fish that has no hiding place. If you won’t do the right thing for yourself and your family, then do it for the sake of your Christian family, the Deeper Life Bible Church and their well-known high Christian standards. But should you persist in behaving like the proverbial fly that chose not to listen to advice and followed the corpse into the grave, then the General Overseer of Deeper Life Bible Church, Pastor William Kumuyi, must step in to ensure proper order and decorum.
