I always believe that meeting someone and striking a friendship or a relationship with him/her is divine, but what they do with the friendship or relationship in terms of its quality or otherwise is entirely up to them. That has nothing to do with the Divine.
This is the prism with which I would rather see my friendship with Dr. John Kayode Fayemi. Prof. Bolaji Aluko was the string God wanted to use to tie the two of us together in the faraway United States. But I didn’t want to be bothered. Since the Book must be fulfilled, it was merely a matter of time before the friendship manifested.
And this is how it happened.
We had finished a NiDO America conference in Washington, DC I came to attend from my Chicago base as one of the organization’s Board of Directors representing the Midwest region of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Milwaukee, and Kansas. Prof. Aluko invited a few of the NiDO officers to dinner in his Burtonsville, Maryland, home.
After dinner and another round of schmoozing about the seemingly intractable Nigerian problems and challenges that went deeper into the night, Prof. Aluko had no choice but to drop me at my hotel. On our way, Prof. Aluko asked me if I had heard of one Kayode Fayemi. My answer was in the negative.
He then told me that Fayemi would be running for the governor of Ekiti State. Prof. Aluko noticed that I didn’t really say anything to perhaps justify his continuation of the Fayemi conversation. I couldn’t have said anything about a man I didn’t know, let alone heard of.
It was at this juncture that Prof. Aluko handed me what was essentially Fayemi’s manifesto; a small pamphlet titled “On a Rescue Mission” or something along that line. This was either 2006 or 2007.
Prof. Aluko gave me this booklet for two reasons. He wanted me to know Dr. Fayemi through the manifesto and his rescue mission. As a publisher, he also wanted me to run a story in my newspaper (The African Voice) about Fayemi when I get back to my base for the benefit of the significant number of Ekiti indigenes in the Chicagoland area.
A few weeks later, Prof Aluko called to ask if I ran any story on Dr. Kayode Fayemi as discussed. Again, the answer was negative.
“Why,” he asked.
I told him that after reading his bio, I simply concluded that Ekiti people did not need a person as highly credentialed as Fayemi to run their affairs. Looking at the entire Nigeria then as a backwater of civilization as we know it, not to talk of a materially less endowed very small state that only needs an averagely good manager to direct its affairs, Fayemi was an overkill in my estimation.
“Because Nigeria is underdeveloped is the reason we need someone like Fayemi to be in government,” Prof Aluko said. But I wasn’t convinced.
I, however, made copies of the Fayemi manifesto and sent them to some of my colleagues in the newspaper industry in other states, such as Lagun (now late), the publisher of the “Houston Punch,” and the publisher of “The Nigerian Times” in the Washington DC area, among others. The Houston Punch, to the best of my recollection, ran a story on Fayemi.
It was not until Fayemi started the struggle to reclaim his mandate that our paths crossed. As a media consultant to the Lagos State government of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu through Dele Alake, his Commissioner for Information and Strategy, it was usually expected of me to join the Asiwaju team (both in and out of power) anywhere they were in the United States. Out of power, I would see Fayemi sometimes in the Asiwaju team. Dele Alake would do the introduction if he believed I was meeting someone in the entourage for the first time. That was when my friendship with Dr. Fayemi started.
How I ended up working for a friend that I truly thought then was overqualified to direct Ekiti State affairs as my boss through whom I started my public service career is a story for another day.
Life is truly an irony!
Here’s wishing you a Happy belated Birthday Sir.
*Femi ODERE
Office of the President of the Senate
Monday, February 10, 2025.
