FAYEMI AT FIFTY
Dr. John Kayode Fayemi turns 50 on Monday, February 9, 2015.
One of his close aides Akin Rotimi writes about his boss, the former Governor of Ekiti State.
On our shores, politicians have earned a not entirely undeserved reputation for knavery, venality and self-aggrandizement. There is a profound disdain about politicians and ambivalence towards their craft. Broad generalizations about politicians abound. We frequently hear that all politicians are thieves or that they are all out for their own interests. To say that politicians now elicit distrust is an understatement. What is generally agreed upon is that a good politician is the rarest of species.
This statement is itself a tragic summation of our national situation but it is also paradoxically all the more reason why when we do happen to stumble upon the few good politicians, we should celebrate them unabashedly. Dr. John Kayode Fayemi is one of the good ones. Having worked closely with him for close to a decade, before, during and after he held public office, I can speak about him with a measure of authority. I have been privileged to observe him at close quarters in public and in private and I can testify that few individuals in our politics are as driven by the ideal of public service as a vocation. This is perhaps the first thing that struck me about him. For Dr. Fayemi, politics is much more than a job or a career track; it is a calling to serve the people and to change lives in tangible ways. As a man of faith, cutting his teeth in service early in life as an altar boy in the Church, he sees public service as an avenue to fulfill an apostolic mandate to bring the transcendent order, justice and righteousness of heaven to bear in the affairs of men – that the will of God may be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Fayemi's path to public service was anything but straightforward. To begin with, he did not (and still does not) fit the profile of a typical Nigerian politician. His roots are in the academia where he cut his teeth as an internationally recognized scholar on security sector governance, and also in the pro-democracy movement of the 1990s which wrestled Nigeria's military dictatorships to a standstill. Fayemi had been active in the Student Union during his university days and played his own part during the heady days of anti-military protests during the 1980s. However, he really came into his own as a leading operative of the pro-democracy movement in exile. At a time when dissenters at home and abroad were harassed and hunted down by the military junta of General Sani Abacha, Fayemi and other intrepid confederates were championing the cause of liberty.
In particular, he was the arrowhead of the opposition radio station initially known as “Radio Freedom” and subsequently “Radio Democracy International” but later renamed “Radio Kudirat International” after Kudirat Abiola, the slain activist wife of the acclaimed winner of the June 12 1993 presidential election, Bashorun MKO Abiola.
Fayemi was 28 years old when the June 12 election was infamously annulled in 1993. At that age, most young men are preoccupied with more worldly concerns such as their prospects of economic survival and upward mobility. Their worries tend to be uncompromisingly personal. This was certainly more so in the context of a depressed economic environment reeling from the recessionary effects of Babangida's Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) at the time. Already, Fayemi was way ahead of the generality of his contemporaries at the time having already earned his PhD at that young age.
Fayemi perceived in his country's instability at the time a summons to fight for a cause that transcended personal concerns. Years later, he would explain his choice to head for the barricades. “For me,” he said, “the annulment of the June 12 election was too monumental, that we had to rise up with full determination, putting aside all other considerations, to fight the injustice and enthrone a people's government. If Fayemi was already filled with the spirit of activism and protest, the June 12 debacle served to quicken it.
Fayemi thus came into politics with a rich pedigree as a former student unionist, public intellectual, a strategic studies scholar, a civil rights activist and a veteran of the pro-democracy movement's struggle against military dictatorship. None of these apparently represented the ideal preparation for the bare knuckle brutality of Nigerian politics. Indeed, he seemed to fit the mould of the fabled idealist in politics who soon realizes that his high-minded values are incompatible with his socio-political environment. In Nigeria, such idealists have been folkloric figures, objects of cautionary tales about how formerly principled stalwarts of civil society have been corrupted by power and access to filthy lucre. It has also fed the widespread notion that politics is a dirty game reserved exclusively for those without scruples.
Right from the outset, Dr. Fayemi came into politics with no illusions. He has consistently argued that Nigeria's problems are as much rooted in a collapse of values as they are in her much more remarked weak institutions and poor governance. Consequently, Fayemi sees politics as a means of modeling and preaching an alternative set of values in public life. Thus, a thorough scrutiny of his record in public life reveals three paradigms that converged in his public persona – the philosopher, the technocrat and the administrator. It is noteworthy that Fayemi published three books during the course of his four year tenure as Governor of Ekiti State, Nigeria – Reclaiming the Trust (2012), Regaining the Legacy (2013); and Legacy of Honour and Service (2014).
For Fayemi, values are the essence of every public engagement. As a social democrat, Fayemi believes that the provision of social services, infrastructure and public goods constitutes the primary purpose of governance. But beyond this, political leaders also have a duty to situate their policies and programmes within a matrix of identifiable values and ideals. Fayemi's prime obsession is getting people to understand the 'why' as well as the 'how' of governance. The object of all political organization is, or ought to be the common good. As he tirelessly preaches, public service is precisely about serving the public.
Fayemi believes that politics is far too important to be left to politicians. Politics is not a job exclusively reserved for a caste of special people called politicians but a manifestation of active citizenship. As an activist, Fayemi stresses the importance of citizens organizing rather than agonizing – a philosophy imparted to him by one of his closest friends and major influences in his life at a time, the late renowned Pan-Africanist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem. He believes in the ideal of a vibrant and informed civil society holding the state accountable and constantly urging it unto higher performance.
As a former student unionist, he appreciates the power of peaceful street demonstrations to dramatically channel the feelings of the people directly to those in power and to place those sentiments on the front burner of public discourse. However, as a politician, he understands the limitations of street-level protests. Thus, he constantly encourages young Nigerians to overcome their apathy and ambivalence towards politics and engage; he argues quite rightly that while street protests have their uses, they represent only one implement in the tool kit of social transformation. There is no substitute for being in the room where political programmes are drawn up and being at the table where policies are conceived and decided. Good policies are a product of good people in high places, and more good people have to venture into politics for the sake of the common good.
Fayemi is an apostle of civility and conversational courtesy. In a clime where public debate is often marred by ad hominem invective and character assassinations of messengers at the expense of their messages, he insists on civil issues-oriented discourse. It is simply not his style to trade insults even with political adversaries. One of the rules he laid down for members of his communications team is that whether in making statements for his administration or for his campaigns, in accordance with the biblical counsel “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone”, our statements must always take the higher rhetorical road whenever engaged in polemical combat with opponents, even those who fight dirty. He has demonstrated that it is possible to argue robustly about one's convictions against an implacable opponent without lapsing into crudity or indecency.
This was very much in evidence during the last election season in Ekiti when Dr. Fayemi steadfastly focused on the issues while his opponents trafficked in low-end trivia. This approach might strike some as naïve or un-Nigerian but it stems from his profound conviction that political leaders should aim to elevate the quality of public debate and thereby edify the people. He won plaudits for his gracious concession speech last year and it is a measure of the man that he seized even the opportunity of a defeat to demonstrate a becalming spirit of grace, tolerance and accommodation that ensured a sedate post-election transition.
As a hardworking team player who leads from the front, Fayemi can still be characterized as a “youth” going by the dynamism and vitality of his ideas and visions for a new Nigeria, as well as the sound health and agility God has blessed him with. He is however not oblivious of the imperative to mentor and build a successor generation. It was in this context I had the privilege of meeting him in 2007 at an international conference abroad. He was excited that the organizers of the African Business Leaders Forum in conjunction with LEAP Africa, had facilitated the all expense paid attendance of selected 101 Young African Leaders, to avail the opportunity for cross-generational networking. He invited three of us – me, Toyosi Akerele-Ogunsiji and Adedayo Daramola to dinner that evening, with now Senator Babafemi Ojudu, his wife Erelu Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi and his then 13 year old son, Jimi, a chip off the old block who impressively held his own in conversations about politics and our visions for a greater Nigeria. The privilege of a mentor-protégé relationship with this great man was forged that night – a rare opportunity I will always be grateful to God for. In truth, he has long devoted himself to the task of mentoring and empowering people of my own generation and showing us an alternative path to success in public life.
A deeply respectful gentleman, who grants to all – old and young, distinguished and of low estate – equal courtesies in recognition of our common humanity, his strengths are his weaknesses. As a principled and inflexible servant leader, he puts himself last in every situation in a land of grabbers. As a faithful and loyal friend, his most formidable friendships are those he has had from childhood. A true son of the land of honour, Ekiti State, Nigeria in whom there is no guile, and one of our finest exemplars of our pristine values.
There is no doubt that greater public assignments await this great African, even as the good Lord has declared John Kayode Fayemi to be an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations. I wish him a happy golden birthday anniversary, and many more years in good health.
***Akin Rotimi is Principal Private Secretary to Dr. Fayemi.