FAYEMI: AN ALTAR BOY ON PODIUM FOR CHANGE AT 50
Like a team of masquerades staging a public show in the Cathedral , he stormed the Nigeria's political landscape drawing both shock and awe. Shock, because his forte was the academics. And like a good Catholic, he was the Knight of the Order Of the Barricades in the pro-democracy tribe; the creed that cobbled and coupled him for the uncertainties of the Third World political vicissitudes but over which he wreaked unbelievable havocs. Awe, because of his audacious plunge into the Nigeria's murky political waters infested by sharks in human clothing.
In both senses, only the bold and the courageous could emerge from the clouds to challenge a status quo helplessly held as a national fate, but whose intervention later became a national consciousness and whose morals today resonate across the the world in a new push for national salvation.
That is Dr John Folorunso Kayode Fayemi, a former Altar Boy in the Catholic faith born on February 9, 1965 in the pot town of Isan-Ekiti in the semi-arid zone of Ekiti State but who is rich in fertile mind and endowed with the everlasting freshness of the month of May.
Like Chaucer, Geofrey Chaucer, Fayemi likes political pilgrimages that go with astounding and palpable anxieties laced with amusing stunts. Not for him an enterprise without its accompanying fables induced by the state. It is not his fault. It is not his wish, but that is the reality imposed on him by the social conditions of his society. It is only the determined that would strive to alter such conditions that impose constrictions on the path of national survival.
But it seems Fayemi was conscious of what fate bestowed on him as a potential national leader as he grew up in his Catholic Christian background. Besides holding the candles and swinging burning incense at Mass, the other thing young Kayode knew was reading, reading and reading. That he did with harvests of laurels in his early adulthood, during which Fayemi had accomplished feats that are rare among his peers.
After his university education that took him to the University of Lagos, University of Ife and the King's College, University of London; and many national and international engagements to boot, Fayemi established the Centre for Democracy and Development after he had worked as a Lecturer, Journalist, Researcher and Strategy Development Adviser in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. He was Strategy Development Adviser in Nigeria and the United African Research and Information Bureau in London, UK. He was a reporter with The Guardian and City Tempo newspapers,editor of the political monthly, 'Nigeria Now'; and management consultant at Development and Management Consultants.
As a prominent leader of the Nigerian opposition in exile, he was actively involved in the establishment of Radio Freedom, Radio Democracy International and Radio Kudirat, and he played a central role in the opposition's diplomatic engagements in exile during the infamous military rule in Nigeria.
Among his numerous academic and public policy engagements at home and abroad, Fayemi lectured in Africa, Europe, America and Asia. He also served as an adviser on transitional justice, regional integration, constitutionalism, security sector reform and civil-military relations issues to various governments, inter-governmental institutions and development agencies. He was the main technical adviser to Nigeria's Human Right Violations Investigation Commission (Oputa Panel), which investigated past abuses and served on the Presidential Implementation Committees on Security Sector Reform, NEPAD and the Millennium Development Goals. He was technical expert to ECOWAS on small arms and light weapons and United Nations Economic Commission of Africa on governance issues. He is also a member, Africa Policy Advisory Panel of the British Government.
He also served as a consultant to the OECD on Security Sector Reform and chaired the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative's Committee of Experts on developing guiding principles and mechanisms of constitution making in Commonwealth Africa.
Fayemi is a fellow of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Ibadan; Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at the African Centre for Strategic Studies, National Defence University, Fort McNair, Washington DC, USA. He was also a visiting Professor in the African Studies Programme at Northwestern University, Evanston, USA in 2004. He serves on numerous Boards including the Governing Board of the Open Society Justice Institute, Baobab for Women's Human Rights, African Security Sector Network and on the Advisory Board of the Global Facilitation Network on Security Sector Reform and on the Management Culture Board of the ECOWAS Secretariat.
Besides having authored seven books, Fayemi has also written extensively on governance and democratization, civil-military relations security sector issues in Africa. Armed with this background, Fayemi moved out of the shadows in pro-democracy struggles to the political theatre to test the strength he had garnered during the political struggle. He succeeded but not without the pains of three years struggle in the courts to reclaim the electoral victory freely given to him by Ekiti people. He was the first Nigerian in history to be in court for three and half years using forensic technology to retrieve his electoral victory.
In power, he exuded competence and forthrightness of a patriot in mission to redirect the state to the path of growth. He did it with grace to the applause of Ekiti people and other Nigerians. Under him, the Human Development Report (2012) declared Ekiti State as the most conducive environment to live, for long and healthy living with a life expectancy average of 55 years more than the National Life expectancy average of 50 years. Ekiti had the lowest infant and maternal mortality rate and the lowest HIV/AIDS infection rate in the country. The state had the highest pupils' enrolment relative to Nigeria's population and it had the least out-of-school children (less than 2%) in Nigeria.
For his development and leadership style, Fayemi won 'Governor of the Year 2012 Award' by theLeadership Newspapers on September 18, 2012 in Abuja where elder statesman, Alhaji Maitama Sule, described Fayemi in these words: “At a time like this, we need leaders not looters, leaders not rulers… Leaders who are not corrupt; leaders who will not steal; leaders who will look in the eyes of the common man with compassion and not eye of the privileged few… Let other leaders emulate this governor.”
All these were confirmed in September 2013 when the United Nations invited Fayemi to its session on the basis that Ekiti State had met many of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
For this, Ekiti people chose to vote for him again in the June 21, 2014 governorship election. But like in the 2007 election, the establishment people again deployed state powers to deny him the victory. The perpetrators of that fraud are already talking to the world on what they knew about that national sabotage.
But Fayemi is a “brakeless” vehicle when the journey to national development is on the menu. After supervising what is regarded as the best and most transparent presidential convention in Africa, he now leads the research and policy laboratory of the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in what looks like a done deal among Nigerians to put the nation in the safe hands of APC leaders.
Significantly, the months of February, March, April, May and June are very special in the lives of the Fayemis. While Dr Fayemi came to the world in February, other members of the family arrived the world between March and June. His mother succumbed to the tricks of biology in April. His father, Pa Francis Fayemi, died in March and interred in April. Kayode Fayemi himself began his journey to the Ekiti governorship on April 14, 2007 when he contested Ekiti State governorship poll and won but he was rigged out. Through April and May, 2009, the rerun poll was held but he was still denied victory.
His wife, Olabisi Fayemi, who became the Erelu of Isan Kingdom on March 15, 2011, was born in June. He contested second term election on June 21, 2014 and won but poll thieves now in the nation's court as well as the court of public opinion aborted that victory. Fayemi's party (APC) was set for an historic and historical victory on February 14, but the Aso Rock matador abruptly applied the brake on Nigerians' journey to freedom by postponing the poll to the month most favourable to the aura that pervades the Fayemi family.
Fayemi is 50, the year associated with golden round and sceptre of authority in a man's engagements in this world. With Nigerians putting their hope in the scheme Fayemi has an abiding faith, the March 28, 2015 Salvation Day in Nigeria will be the crowning of his patriotic efforts to build a virile nation.
Ilufemiloye ONE, happy birthday!
Written by Wole Olujobi, Fayemi's former Speech Writer and Special Adviser (Media) to the Speaker.