Issues Against Fayemi
While some opine that the people of the state lost track when they gave consent to their immediate needs and concerns during the election and that this led to Fayose’s victory, others put the blame at the doorstep of Fayemi.

For example, Mallam Mohammed Haruna, a former managing director of the New Nigerian Newspapers, said Fayemi’s defeat was because the people became interested in politics of the stomach instead of a long-term view of the dividends of democracy. “Whereas the ordinary American has a long term view of his needs, the ordinary Nigerian’s view, circumscribed by his abject poverty, is that of satisfaction here and now,” he said in an opinion in which he maintained that this could only be the explanation behind Feyemi’s loss.

•Fayemi: Outgoing governor

But while Tunji Abayomi, a senior advocate, posited that Fayemi’s failure at the polls was the result of his inability to have a good hold on his lieutenants while he held sway as governor, Bayo Adeyinka, a social media commentator, listed what is popularly seen as the many sins of Fayemi’s administration. “Some people attributed Peter Ayodele Fayose’s victory to the sharing of rice and other inducements but this is begging the question because APC also shared rice and even doled out money. Those who were on ground confirmed this and most of them collected from both parties. Consequently, it was not the victory of ‘raw rice’ over ‘cooked rice’.”

Of course, according to Adeyinka and many other Nigerians, though Fayemi built roads and embarked on an aggressive urban renewal, there was the impression that his projects were merely elitist in nature. To these people also, the governor busied himself bringing bloggers from Lagos to assess his performance and engaged in high use of social media whereas Fayose continued to have a one-on-one relationship with the people at the graasroots, especially those who hardly patronised social media and the bloggers.

Fayose, through the election, proved Robert Greene right in advice on how best to tame a perceived enemy in the 48 Laws of Power. Greene gave the impression that one’s perceived enemy is more predictable than one’s friend and as such must be given a major consideration in such a way that he would be used to one’s advantage. Fayemi did not realise this. As Adeyinka put it: “It would have been a walk-over for Governor Fayemi if they had kept Fayose in their corner of the party.” Adeyinka, while naming Fayose a major contributory factor to Fayemi’s emergence as governor in the first instance, added that this was done allegedly on the understanding that Fayose would be given a senatorial slot, an agreement that never materialised. He then left for the Labour Party from where he returned to the PDP. “He brought his bruised ego into the political field. When a man’s ego suffers, other things bear the consequences. What would it take to cede a slot to ‘Oshoko’ and let him retire at the Senate? Even the Holy Writ asked us to quickly make friends of our adversaries lest they put us in gaol,” he explained.

The history of Fayemi’s loss in the election had always been partially tied to the long dispute his government had with civil servants in the state. Even after the election, the dispute has continued to rage. Just last week, the Ekiti State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers warned its members against resuming as instructed by Governor Fayemi. The union said the stay-at-home order would continue till government thought it wise to pay the teachers’ salaries for August and September as it was tantamount to a suicide mission to ask the teachers to resume work on an empty stomach.