What’s the furore over Fayemi?

The search for a black goat should begin well before nightfall —African proverb

In a few months, active politicking for who will succeed President Muhammadu Buhari as president of Nigeria will begin. Those with interest are already jostling for relevance and notice. While the debate rages over which region should produce the next president, it would seem logical that he or she comes from the South. But who knows with politicians and their wily ways?

While the region or tribe of the next president should be secondary, if at all it is a consideration, the priority is to find someone with a proven track record of working within the democratic system with the right competencies and pedigree. Considering the recent disasters this country has suffered in the hands of its chosen leaders, I suppose it is pertinent to find a visionary, progressive leader with clear social and economic ideas for this century in a world that is in flux.

While the APC remains the party to beat, having been in power for the last six years and the PDP largely decimated, it is likely the party will re-emerge in power in 2023. It also doesn’t seem as if the party is looking to the South East for the next president. The basis of this APC is formed by the alliance of the ACN and the CPC with political bases in the North and the South West, and if power moves South, it will most likely be to the South West.

From this region, several aspirants are being bandied about. Most of them are burdened with baggage accrued over time, by their actions, inactions or by association.

On October 16 last year, at the height of the #EndSARS protest, before the protest turned south when most public officials were barricading themselves behind their high fence and surrounding their houses with security details, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State went into the midst of protesters in Ado Ekiti, engaged them, talked to them and answered their questions. He gave them assurances and advised them to have an exit strategy, to leave the protest before it turns riotous. A few days later, whatever happened at Lekki happened.

Participation and being present, such as Fayemi demonstrated, is one of the attributes of good governance, something Nigeria has been sorely lacking. 

Good governance has nine major traits: Participation, consensus-oriented, accountability, transparency, responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, equitable and inclusive and must follow the rule of law.

In the last few weeks, there has been quite the furore over Kayode Fayemi’s three years in office as governor of Ekiti State. This is to commemorate the anniversary of October 16, 2018, when he returned to complete his second term as governor after a four-year hiatus. Drums have been beating accompanied by significant chest-thumping. All for what?

Interestingly it was Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo who made a crucial observation concerning Ekiti State during the state’s Investment and Economic Summit earlier this October when he observed that the state’s $2.8 billion GDP is five times that of a country, Sao Tome, and greater than the GDP of Gambia, Cape Verde, Seychelles and is almost at par with Liberia’s.

Ironically, in the ranking of states in Nigeria according to their GDP, Ekiti falls in the 33rd place, one below Jigawa and one place above Ebonyi.

What is interesting is what the state has done with its GDP so much so that Prof. Osinbajo would say during that summit, as quoted by The Punch newspaper, that, “There is no question at all that Ekiti has established the foundations for a modern and thriving economy. The fundamentals are there; a modern, strong, consistently improving legal and justice sector, with forward-looking laws, which include a contemporary administration of Civil Justice law, a first-of-its-kind Sustainable Development Goals law, a Tourism and Hospitality law, Property Protection law, a 2020 amendment to the Ekiti State Board of Internal Revenue Law, which amongst other provisions, enables the service to collect all taxes due to the state government and all the local government councils in the state under any law through a centralized electronic payment platform.”

It is good governance that makes a country great. It is what Fayemi has deployed to position Ekiti for significant growth. In a conversation with an Ekiti native, his major concern was who will build on Fayemi’s visionary foundations when his tenure expires. Perhaps anticipating this, and having seen the projects he initiated in his first tenure between 2010 and 2014 being abandoned by his successor in the intervening four years before his return in 2018, Fayemi enacted the 2019 Ekiti Transition Law, which will ensure that succeeding administrations don’t abandon the projects of preceding ones. This law will ensure that government runs as a continuum, something that will see the continuity of vision and a significant cut in losses over abandoned projects.

Looking closely at the records, it is obvious Fayemi as governor has utilised the limited resources at his disposal to derive maximum utility in terms of infrastructural and social development in his state. I am not here to list the project he has completed which I am sure his publicist will be happy to share, and in any case, these records are publicly available, but to point out that with good governance, there is so much that could be achieved with so little.

It is Fayemi’s commitment to good governance, which sits at the head of his five-pillar development agenda, the others being Agriculture and Rural Development, Infrastructure and Industrial Development, Knowledge-Economy and Social Development.

The bare minimum that is expected of every state governor is to build roads and pay workers’ salaries, invest in agricultural growth and social investment. Fayemi has ticked these boxes. What makes him an interesting person to watch in the political terrain heading into 2023 is his visionary and progressive leadership, which the VP lauded during his address. Progressive laws like the Ekiti State Sex Offenders Register (leading to the naming and shaming of convicted sex offenders in the state) set him apart, not only as one who makes a show of caring about public morals but one who follows through with enabling laws rather than relying on demagogy. While other states have followed suit by enacting a similar law, it is Ekiti State that has a publicly available record of sex offenders that is updated frequently.

Fiscal transparency is a vital ingredient in good governance. And only recently, Fayemi’s Ekiti was adjudged second most transparent state in public procurement and financing in the World Bank Fiscal transparency programme, SFTAS, which I wrote about a while ago.

It is one thing to have the quality, it is quite another to have the reach. Fayemi’s position as the chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum, a significant pressure group whose relevance has grown over the years and which constitutes a significant power block when it comes to making political decisions in the country, especially ahead of elections year, strategically positions him to have a national reach. 

With the support of the other state governors, it is quite feasible for him to leap to the centre where he is not a novice. From 2015 to 2018 he had a stint as the Minister of Solid Mineral Development. And his PhD at King’s College, University of London, was awarded for his thesis on Threats, Military Expenditure and National Security: Trends in Post-Civil War Defence Planning in Nigeria, 1970 – 1990, and gives him an intellectual basis to attack Nigeria’s insecurity situation. While his background as a journalist, author and editor give him quite a range of experiences and intellectual acumen that his political experience compliments.

At only 56, Fayemi ticks most of the boxes for the kind of leader Nigeria should look for ahead of 2023.  

It is almost nightfall and while the search for our black goat might have started late in the evening, it will help to look in Fayemi’s direction when the time comes.