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Kudirat Abiola was a lady of elegance, the highly resourceful wife of MKO Abiola, second only to Simbiat, the first in whose house Abiola first ate fried eggs during their dating days!
Kudi was a rallying force, a beehive of ideas, a freedom fighter and for me the best 1st lady Nigeria never had. It will therefore not be out of place for any first lady in Nigeria to desire to be like her, Erelu Bisi Fayemi is not out of order for wanting to complement her husband’s walk in the footsteps of the Abiolas.
But every good walk after an ideology must be in spirit and in truth.
MKO Abiola was the symbol of money, not just in Nigeria and Africa, but among the black race. When money, riches and wealth is the subject of discussion, he was a pride in his generation!
Abiola was not born rich, rather, he was, pretty and pauper poor, he literally begged by providing traditional drum beating service to survive! He inherited poverty, which panacea almost automatically in his days was education, but not anymore!
There are two forces of poverty in Nigeria making the people poor; the systemic force of poverty and the spiritual force of poverty. The systemic, just as the name sounds, is the poverty caused in the society by the system being supervised by the Oligarchy. This type is the one that produces the Northern Almajiri system which restricted out of school children majorly to Northern Nigeria until Buhari became our President. Today, indeed like Femi Adesina said, “Nigerians across the divide have a common experience of 12 million out of school children for which Buhari has become more appreciated and popular than Obafemi Awolowo!”
Awolowo’s political influence and policy pulled out of school children into schools, while Buhari’s level of it and policy on it has successfully seen many millions in school children out of school since becoming President!
Awolowo lifted many in Abiola’s generation from poverty through education, Buhari is lifting Boko Haramist out of poverty through, “his repentance to repositioning project” that has seen bandits becoming custom’s officers!
Abiola, was a phenomenal, who conquered every space he transversed, leaving behind mentees who are generals in their fields of endeavor, Dele Momodu in Journalism, Kola Abiola in Business, Bola Tinubu in politics, Sunny Okosun in Music and Entertainment and Kayode Fayemi in both Journalism and politics!
Abiola was so rich that the late music meastro Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Barrister couldn’t but communicate it in discernable terms that every one in Nigeria could understand, when his initials, “MKO”, Barrister referred to as Money, Kudi, Owo. Owo is the Yoruba word for money and Kudi, the Hausa word for it. Abiola was not just rich having money. If symbol and providence are things to go by, he was the “olowo ori owo”, being the husband of Kudirat. Talking about Lady Kudi, she would have become the 1st Lady of Nigeria had Abiola been sworn in upon winning the June 12, 1993 presidential elections!
She was fallen by the bullets of Abacha’s commander, Sergeant Rogers, but the magnanimity of Buhari that saw Abiola honoured with GCON has not been extended to see justice done to the killers of Kudirat!
Her murder by the Abacha Junta Government, in which Mohammadu Buhari served, took the struggle for democracy to another level when Kayode Fayemi’s voice was heard on radio Kudirat! There are many engagements with which the military were pushed, radio Kudirat was a “centrifugal force” against the military locally and internationally thus Kayode Fayemi’s emergence into our political foray didn’t come as a surprise, he worked for it! What is a surprise however is the sycophancy that has characterised our Presidential “hope fools”, apologies to Tunde Bakare!
Tinubu said in his solution providing mechanism to herders and farmers clashes that Yoruba and Fulani are one! What a way to further divide a divided country for personal ambition! Fayemi became a muslim at the 3rd anniversary of his Government just to prove a point to the northern crowd he was ready to do anything in the race set before him. By that singular act, for me, he put a big question mark on his conscience, conviction and stability which are requsite qualifications for leadership in our context as a nation!
Leadership in a multi religious society is better in the hands of men of strong social leaning than a religious prostitute. The North will rather respect a Christian with conviction than a “Christomuslim” personality a year before elections! Fayemi obviously learnt no lessons in Edo that saw a Pastor loosing election to a church goer, simply because he wore a turban!
In the world of the pentecostals, an unbeliever dusted a tongue spealking, demon casting man of God in a religious sensitive nation!
Our politicians haven’t separated our convictions from our sentiments! Abiola’s religious conviction was never in doubt. He was a muslim respected by Christians and Muslims for being one!
The greatest odd against Fayemi’s 2023 dream need not wait till 2023! As the governorship race in Ekiti takes the center stage of political happenings in the country, a group under the auspices of Ekiti Youth for Equity has made a passionate appeal to Governor Kayode Fayemi to disallow impositions of any candidate in the All Progressives Congress!
The group is bothered by the feelers it was getting from the body language of some politicians in the All Progressives Congress fold, suggesting that our 2023 Presidential First Lady, Erelu Bisi Fayemi, in a bid to be like Lady Kudirat Abiola and consolidate her husband’s political structures, ended up with an invented philosophy without the spirit and truth of Kudirat Abiola!
Erelu’s strives for magnanimity is today tagged “Kudi-rat” in the running of Government in Ekiti State. It is no longer news that Erelu is the Governor and Government at home, since her husband relocated to Abuja to fester the nest of his presidential ambition!
Erelu is of course not hiding her preference for the aspiration of the Secretary to the State Government, Mr. Biodun Oyebanji, whose office is overseeing the Kudi – rat, the money eating operation allegedly being carried out in all ministries and agencies of government in Ekiti State!
The political organisation in a statement released recently signed by its Convener, Victor Omogbemile and titled: ‘Ekiti 2022 governorship, Mrs Bisi Fayemi and the Need For Caution’, warned that the First Lady may end up losing her huge respect should she work against attempts by APC to zone the governorship ticket to Ekiti South!
He said Governor Fayemi’s clinching the ticket in 2007 was accomplished on the strength of zoning and the next political dispensation won’t be an exemption for the present agitations for zoning and what was obtainable then are similar!
“The party leadership at the national level under Governor Mai Mala Buni is working tirelessly to ensure justice by insisting on zoning Presidency to the South, which has kindled the hope of Kayode Fayemi!
It is rather sad, that a beneficiary of such political justice will be trampling on that of others in Ekiti State! The fact remains that for APC to see to it that the next governor in Ekiti state should emerge via zoning modality, will be confronted with the Yoruba philosophy,:”Ohun ti a ba se loni, itan ni yio da lola”, meaning ‘whatever is done today shall become history tomorrow.’
“Having a reminiscence of what transpired in 2007, the people of Ekiti North made agitations on the basis that the two democratically elected governors before then, Otunba Niyi Adebayo and Ayodele Fayose were from the Central and they believed that other zones should be given the opportunity. Though this are mere opinions and not the position of the party’s constitution.
“It was that virulent advocacy from politicians of that axis that compelled the APC and the PDP to pick Kayode Fayemi and Segun Oni for the governorship election of 2007!
“After a prolonged legal battle, Dr. Kayode Fayemi was pronounced the governor of the state in 2010 from where Erelu Bisi Fayemi became the First Lady and wielded so much power and influence which is keeping her “pet project”, kudi-rat running!
The First Lady must not forget that history beckons and that enduring and endearing legacies are built on the legality of our conducts when given the opportunity to serve the public.
Proofs abound on Omogbemile’s allegation that Mrs Fayemi is poking her nose into issues of politics. This of course may be mere rumours among party members for it has become customary for party members to be peddle rumours. Rumour, of course is the smoke that leads intelligent investigative journalist into a successful fact find out!
Ekiti is the poorest of all the States of the Yoruba Nation South West Nigeria. It is on lips in Ekiti state that Erelu is trying to pay back Oyebanji from the merger earnings of the State for being a good boy whose office is being used to coordinate “kudi rat” as a conduit pipe to siphon monies running into billions since 2018 in preparation for 2023!
Is it a mere rumour that Governor Fayemi’s budget for running the office of the Secretary to the State Government which Oyebanji is supervising is 30 million naira monthly and that as a loyal boy, the rat formula is pegged at ratio 1 to 2, this of course is waived higher when the needs from the office of the First Lady so demand?
The smells from Ekiti kitchen and the “chef in chief”, Oyebanji, might have been a pleasing aroma to the office of the First lady, But what is underneath is more than meets the eyes. Governor Kayode Fayemi will do well by paying attention to the smoke from Erelu’s kitchen cabinet before it will choke his ambition and the fire from their stoves burn down the state!
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