Governor Ayodele Fayose, is a man of many parts in Nigerian political history. To some, he was an enigma and someone who has the magic word to win elections. The fact that he had defeated two incumbent governors in two different elections suffice to corroborate and establish this assertion.

Again, some see this governor as the architect of modern Ekiti and the pioneer of the stomach infrastructure, that has now gained national attention. Some perceived him as the voice of the voiceless Nigerians, being the most vociferous voice against President Muhammadu Buhari–led government. Little wonder, the Alaafin of Oyo Kingdom, Oba Lamidi Olayiwola Adeyemi III, endorsed his presidential ambition, describing him as a man of uncommon bravado and courage.

Governor Fayose recently added another colourful feather to many of the political laurels he had won in Nigeria. He led the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ekiti Chapter to conduct the freest and fairest primaries ever to elect candidates for the December 23, Local Government Elections in the state.

Going by the trajectory of Nigeria’s political history, the councillorship and chairmanship elections are within the whims and caprices of the governors. The governors wielded enormous influences to the extent that they oftentimes wrote the list of their preferred candidates for these polls and rammed it down the throat of the party leaders. But the Ekiti PDP primary elections was different. It was another in a class of its own and Nigerians are beginning to see Governor Fayose as a vanguard of true democracy in our dear country.

Before the primaries were conducted in all the 16 local government areas, Governor Fayose had at various fora told the electorate that he had no preferred candidates. In actual fact, many were skeptical about this and perceived such as mere political sloganeering. But it marveled many PDP chieftains to hear that option A4 will be adopted to test the aspirants’ popularity coupled with the fact that the venue will be centralized so that the governor would have the opportunity to supervise the process for transparency and fairness. That was the chief reason why the venue of the primaries was shifted to the Government House.

Most exhilarating was the fact that the primaries went well and ended with no aspirant raising eyebrow about under-hand manipulations or undue interference. It was clear case of getting a ticket based on your popularity and acceptability in your wards and local governments, this is democracy in action. Under an ideal democratic process, power  belongs to the people and not the ruling class and that was what Governor Fayose had gleefully demonstrated.

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It sounded so incredible that many of Governor Fayose’s known allies and disciples lost in the primaries. Those who were widely regarded as underdogs clinched the ticket and they will be flying the party’s flags in the much-awaited local government polls. The take away from this is that, Nigerian politics is not dirty but only being played by dirty people.

Political pundits, analysts and ardent followers of the political process had argued and expressed resentment on how political leaders and perceived godfathers had been manipulating the system to favour their protégés and political cronies. This accounted for why we have pervasive rigging in our electoral system, erosion of internal democracy and lack of party supremacy in the polity.

Now, we have got a man who could set a pace and do the right thing even when not convenient. All we need to do is to replicate what Governor Fayose had done at both the state and federal levels for the uplift of our democracy.

The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu once said that “the INEC will have little or no problem with the electoral system if parties can entrench internal democracy because some of the crises we are having are pre-election matters”.

However, it is always painful for a leader to lose election because he decided to do the right things, but one must not also forget that history will continue to favour such leader. President Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential poll, but history will be there to judge him as someone who allowed the people’s sovereignty to prevail when such could be subverted.  Putting it succinctly, this is the same spirit Nigerians wanted the APC – led Federal Government to handle the 2018 Ekiti governorship poll and 2019 general elections, so that history would eternally adjudge their leaders as patriotic and committed Nigerian citizens.

Dalimore Aluko, a class teacher at Ikere High School, Ikere-Ekiti