Author: The Nation

• By Olayinka Oyebode

Purple is the colour today, no doubt, sixty is the milestone and joyful is the mood as friends, family members, associates and mentees as well as an army of beneficiaries of her generosity rise in unison to celebrate one of God’s gifts to humanity- Erelu Bisi Fayemi, the immediate past First Lady of Ekiti State and  Co-founder of the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), regarded as one the most impactful non for profit organisations, supporting women in the continent.

I have many good reasons to join millions other well-wishers home and abroad to celebrate Erelu Bisi Fayemi on her day.  On a personal level, I am a testifier to her magnanimity, generosity of spirit and keen interest in uplifting other individuals and working hard to rally support, empower and raise the bar for women and the girl child.

‘Erelu Bam Bam’ or “Ochiorah” as she is fondly called by her numerous admirers, is many things to many people. But the main attribute of hers that stands out of the pack is her generosity of spirit. Apparently, she has milk of human kindness flowing through her veins. And for this, some call her ‘Mother General’. She also goes by the name ‘Yeye Atayese’. ‘Yeye Oba’. All these sobriquets speak to her royalty, the grace she wears like a garmenr, loyalty to good causes and penchant for supporting and lifting others.

To these attributes of brilliance, kindness, thoroughness, thoughtfulness, decency and civility should be added a number of others, too numerous to be outlined in a short tribute such as this. There are for instance, such attributes as her frankness, firmness, wittiness, creativity, eye for details, her insatiable penchant for excellence, ability to bring out the best in people, and her love for art works.  Erelu Fayemi’s unmatched ability to mix freely with the lowly placed, the struggling and the mighty is a classical lesson in inter- personal relationship management. And quite remarkable is her simple way of turning up bold, brave, brainy and beautiful, decked in her favourite well styled ankara or lace materials, designer bags and top range jewellery. A prolific writer, historian, gender development advocate of repute, Erelu is at home with words. Words – creative words are the vital flavour that spice up her weekly newspaper column- ‘Loud Whispers’ and her Above Whispers.com blog. Her words, like Mother Teresa wrote, “leaves an endless echoes”. Her spoken words are inspiring, reassuring and possess therapeutic effect.

In giving back to the society, Erelu has mastered the art of doing it effortlessly with focus on change and transformation that would be the portion of the benefitting individuals, groups or communities. This is because her motivation is anchored on the biblical injunction: “Love your neighbour as yourself”.   She is not just a woman of substance with a heart of gold, she is a humanitarian who has dedicated her life to the service of humanity. No one comes in contact with Erelu without a good story to tell. Even her most rabid critic readily admits this as well as her ability to use power and influence quite positively.

My first encounter with Erelu Bisi Fayemi was on January 3, 2011 when I resumed in her office as her Special Assistant on Media, following my appointment by her husband, Dr Kayode Fayemi, then the Governor of Ekiti State. I had resumed with much enthusiasm at the Governor’s office that fateful morning only to be told that I had been re-assigned to the office of the Wife of Governor as her SA Media. The development dampened my spirit, having not had a prior working experience under a female boss. I quickly put calls across to a few friends and relations on the fate that had befallen me. Some pitied me, while some urged me to give it my best. I walked the 300 metres distance between the Governor’s office and the office of the Wife of Governor, with dejection. All that melted immediate I entered Her Excellency’s office.

The one hour meeting with Erelu was all I needed to convince myself that I was in the right place at the right time with the right principal. The meeting turned out an interview cum motivational session. I left her office feeling some inches taller than I came in, armed with some tips on better work ethics, interpersonal skills, and a better estimation of myself as a media and public relations professional.

“Your CV is quite impressive, and I have read some of your published works. I have no doubt you will go far if you remain steadfast”, she told me as she opened her diary and took me through her itinerary and work plan for the next three months. “Ise ti bere niyen (the work has started), she said with a smile as she handed me two books- my first gift from her. “You will find these books quite interesting”. What struck me most during our conversation was the fact she asked questions and showed genuine interest in my immediate and future plans, my family and my parents.

Even though my stay in her office was just for six months, as I was promoted and redeployed back to the Governor’s office as the Chief Press Secretary; we however, forged a mother and son relationship that has seen her mentoring and nurturing me till date. Erelu remains one person I can call at anytime to seek her opinion or professional advice on any issue and would readily oblige me. And that goes for many people as she is ever willing and ready to go the extra mile just to make sure everybody around her feel good.  She is ever positive and receptive to ideas and even advice from younger people and subordinates, and gives credit to whom it is due, and does not fail to acknowledge, even seemingly inconsequential, gestures.

Erelu’s love for fellow human beings, regardless of their social strata, is legendary. I remember the case of her personal photographer who just went on ‘AWOL’ a few days to a major event. The development caused some anxieties and we had to quickly arrange for a replacement. But when the guy resurfaced in the office some few months later and tendered an apology, Erelu welcomed him after listening to his “story”. Having given directive that the photographer should not be fired, she called me aside and explained to me how ‘crazy’ some highly talented people can be. Citing some of the great works the photographer had churned out, she said it was rather unfortunate he did not have the right grooming, just like many other talented fellows. She then threw a challenge at me that I should endeavour to provide the needed guidance to the photographer so he could make the best of his enormous talent. At another instance, I witnessed Erelu insisting that a committee I served on should pay what she considered a “just and fair” professional fee to a chap we hired to do a job. She was of the opinion that it would be unfair to pay a poor wage and expect excellent service delivery. Based on her insistence the chap got an upward review that positively impacted his life.

There are legion other instances of Erelu championing and defending the rights of women and the girl child. She does this with her personal resources and institutionalises it through partnership with relevant organisations and development agencies. As First Lady in Ekiti State, she facilitated the multiple births Fund, which provides support for families that give birth to multiple births ( i.e twins, triplets etc). A few years back, she set up ‘The Wrapper Network’ an online mentoring and support program for over 4,000 young women.

Born in Liverpool, England on June 11, 1963, Erelu Bisi Fayemi has a BA (1984) and MA (1988) in History from the University of Ife, Nigeria (now Obafemi Awolowo University). She also received an MA in Gender and Society (1992) from Middlesex University, UK.  She served as a United Nations Women Nigeria Senior Advisor (2017-2018) and is currently a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Africa Leadership Centre, King’s College, London. In 2000, she co-founded the African Women’s Development Fund, (AWDF) – the first Africa-wide grant-making foundation, which supports the work of organizations promoting women’s rights in Africa. Since it began grant-making in 2001, AWDF, based in Accra, Ghana, has supported over 3,000 women’s organisations in 42 African countries and the Middle East with millions of dollars in grants.

Today, I join million others in singing a birthday song to this quintessential leader, celebrated teacher, writer, women rights advocate and global citizen, Erelu Bisi Fayemi. Sixty hearty cheers “Mother-General”!

• Oyebode, is Special Adviser (Media) to Ekiti State Governor.

• The nation should emulate the open heart of Kaduna Muslims who paid ransom for abducted Christians

Rare indeed that Christians could employ the word ransom in reference to anyone other than their saviour in heaven. But recently the word is uttered by Christian lips paying homage to a different meaning and applauding an unlikely group of people: Muslims.

That is the cheering story from Kaduna State, precisely from Madala near Buruku in Chikun Local Government Area.  A group of Muslims in the community embraced harmony and advertised peace when they decided to pay ransom for Christians in their midst who were in the hands of kidnappers.

They sacrificed their money and treasure to pay the hoodlums. They also bought motorcycles. The kidnappers often love money to buy weapons and motorcycles. Increasingly, the goons also make demands for motorcycles that they recalibrate to thrive on the rocky terrain of the north, including the forests.

The number of ransomed Christians was 16, but about 40 of them were whisked away by the kidnappers during a Sunday church service at the Bege Baptist Church at Madala on May 7 this year. The number released were those who were left in the nest of the abductors. The others had escaped and probably had relatives and friends who had paid for their ransoms. The 16 represented the helpless and hopeless among the victims whose relatives or friends did not have the wherewithal to save them. This emphasized the power of the community to come to the rescue of the weakest among them. The abduction raised a lot of nervous fear in the land and reinforced suspicions that the Buhari administration’s vaunted fight against bandits was nowhere near a cheery place.

The act of the Muslims bucks the trend of some of the triumphal rhetoric of quite a few Muslim bigots up north and the view of some Christians who make a blanket profiling of all Muslims as fanatics and bloodthirsty.

The media did not play up this act of humanity and their disdain for sectarian impulse when their neighbours sulked in terror. But the Christians in that part of the country and Kaduna State are gushing with gratitude.

The chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, in Kaduna State, Rev John Hayab, said: “The Muslim community where the worshippers were abducted contributed money and bought a motorcycle as part of the ransom required for the release of their Christian brothers and sisters in captivity.

“This goes to show good, caring and sincere neighbours that practically showed concern to the plight of their brothers and sisters that were abducted and their sincere wish that they return home to live together with them in peace and harmony.”

It is not just a score for good neighborliness. It is not just a triumph for interfaith handshake. It is a moment of positive reckoning in a country that emerged from a fractious election in which many voted to reify their faith over and above the call of human togetherness.

These men and women of kindness saw citizens, not tribe, humans not Christians, tolerance and not hate. When they saw Christians, they saw human first and appreciated the quality of human interaction without religious barriers. They have by their gestures shown to our divisive elite how a country of such multiple tribes and different faiths can live together.

They gave their treasure, but they do not belong to a wealthy precinct. They have demonstrated that it takes sacrifice to work out peace in a community.

Nor is this the first time we have witnessed a case of this sort. In 2018, we praised Imam Abdullahi Abubakar for his single-minded heroics of saving hundreds of fellow citizens in the rustic backwoods of Yelwa Gindi Akwati in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area in Plateau State. The village was under a bloody terror attack by unknown goons who were after Christians.

Imam Abubakar hid the Christians in a mosque, but the worship place and its overflow could not contain the fleeing Christians, some of whom ran there from neighbouring villages.  The rest were hidden in rooms inside his compound. The gun-wielding criminals confronted the cleric who even stumbled in the rain as the goons stared menacingly at him before they brushed off. The Iman was justly rewarded with a national award during the Buhari administration.

Before that, in 2014, a group of Muslims showed their love in December when they guarded a church in the same Kaduna State, this time in the main city itself, of Christian adherents during a Christmas carol service. They were at least 200 Muslims who had seen with horror the devastation and murderous onslaughts some of the bigots had made of their faith and of fellow humans. Pastor Yohanna Buru of the Christ Evangelical Church described it as an act of interfaith harmony.

What the citizens of Buruku Chikin Local Government Area did with their treasure was a faith in humanity. We expect no less from the rest of us.

Emasculation is a brutal word or to put it more appropriately, it describes a brutal process, one which does not have a feminine equivalent because in practical terms it describes the removal of external genitalia. However, there does not have to be any violence in emasculation as it can be used figuratively to describe a process of depriving someone of a group of people of power; power with which to make or unmake. It is on this basis that it can be said that the Nigerian middle class has lost its relevance and has become effete. In plain physical terms the Nigerian middle class is in the intensive care unit and is well on its way to the mortuary.

Humans by their biological character are social animals but they are no less so than a lot of other animals who depend on each other for individual survival. For social groups we need to look no further than the insects we see around us. A bee colony is a lesson in social engineering with the different classes of bees carrying out their naturally assigned duties all their lives and not only that, prepared to sacrifice themselves for the good of the colony should the need arise. The queen is at the centre of all activities in the hive and is given everything needed for her to produce every other member of the colony whilst only a few drones, perfect example of an emasculated group, are needed to provide the queen with the wherewithal to ensure the continued existence of the colony. Insects have been social animals for many million years and they have perfected this process. They are likely to be doing the same thing long after man would have vacated the premises that they have shared with other species.

Man may be a social animal but the scope of their social interaction has for the most part been severely limited in that until about ten thousand years ago, the extent of their cohabitation was limited only to a few individuals who were constantly on the move trying to survive on what they could squeeze from the intolerance of niggardly nature. Their collective means of survival was very limited and some bands must have been wiped out by any of the numerous accidents of nature which was their misfortune to encounter along the way as they foraged for food and shelter on a more or less continuous basis. Life was hard, short and thoroughly miserable and the only thing in the favour of the early modern man was the spirit of togetherness which ensured that everyone in the group contributed in more or less equal terms to the continued survival of the group within which there simply was no room for any form of elitism not approved by age and experience.

This picture of unremitting struggle changed dramatically when quite by accident, mankind discovered the science of agriculture and rather than roam around in a barely fruitful but continuous search for their means of livelihood, settled down in ever expanding groups to till the land and bring forth harvests in season; allowing them to have time for other occupations besides pitching themselves against the pitiless might of nature. Their farming activities allowed them to build up impressive stores of food to last them through from one planting season to the next. Man rose from the chaos of hunting and gathering to the paradise of surplus, marred only by the fact that they became vulnerable to those of their kind who insisted on hunting and gathering, many times gathering what they had not sown. These footloose nomads were in reality robbers who expropriated the result of the labours of farming communities which were forced to raise among them, those who were of a warlike nature to defend themselves from the robbers. In time, these defenders constituted themselves into a class which because of their might elevated themselves above the common people who had no choice but to comply with the wishes of their overlord who in due course elevated themselves to such heights that they claimed to have divine rights, to determine the workings of society. In that way, kings and royal dynasties were born to rule over other members of the communities. The king required courtiers and priests to shore up their authority and the nobility, who were a step down from royalty came into existence and helped to control the life and ambitions of those who lived in the shade of the kings and nobles. Other classes including common soldiers and traders were formed in order to ensure that society functioned firstly to the benefit of royalty, then the nobility and finally, the common toiling herd which carried the weight of society on their frail shoulders. Society almost everywhere adopted this system of governance and made it possible for human civilisation to puncture the darkness of primitive living and build complex physical structures such as the pyramids, sophisticated cities, ocean going vessels and other such items which promoted the ascent of man as a builder of human comfort.

Like the bees and other insects, the various classes assumed their allotted places within society and for several millennia did not question the fairness or otherwise of the arrangement. Along the line however, some people challenged the system and in many cases forced a rethink such that kings lost their self proclaimed divine rights. As expected, the kings did not go quietly and in the famous case of King Charles I of England disputed his divine right against the Commons so strongly that he lost his royal head over the matter. It is ironic that Charles I had to lose his head in order for Charles III to be crowned king, albeit a much diminished king nearly four hundred years later. His brother king across the English Channel in France managed the situation so badly he not only lost his head , together with that of his wife and countless number of the nobility that what exists in France today is a republic, members of the royal houses and nobility having been guillotined out of existence.

Every modern society is made up of different classes, each of them fulfilling a role which enhances the continued survival of any group of people. We have now more or less settled for three broad social strata; the ruling class, the middle class and the working class. The ruling class are those who for a variety of reasons do not have to do any work, principally because they use their enormous wealth to do all the work for them. Some of them are first  generation wealthy but a very significant percentage of them inherit both their money and their understanding of society from their parents and tend to marry other members of their class in order to keep everything within the group. People in this group are so rich that they are not bound by any moral scruples. In other words, they are amoral and practically above the law. Their education is incidental to their lifestyle and they are quite capable of committing murder and not have to worry about the consequences as long as the victim is not a member of their exalted class. They exist in virtually all societies and remind me of the story of a particularly debauched Aremo (Crown prince of the Oyo Empire) who is reported to have employed a porter to carry a particularly heavy load. As the poor man went along with the load on his head, his neck appeared to grow shorter. Noticing this, the prince wondered if his thick neck could be cut through with a sword. He decided to test his hypothesis, drew his sword from its sheath and with one hefty stroke deprived the man of his head. Satisfied with the result of his bloody experiment, the prince casually employed another porter who must have carried out his task with great trepidation fearing the descent of a sharp sword blade on his tortured neck with every step of the way.

On the other end of the scale from the members of the ruling class are those who are described as belonging to the working class. These are people who depend on the work of their hands for their bare sustenance. They work for low wages and when they die, they leave very little to their children who in turn depend on the strength of their hands to make a living so that their poverty, like the riches of the members of the ruling class, is hereditary. The more talented members of this class struggle to get into the middle class and a significant number of them make the break through to give some encouragement to others in their group harbouring this ambition. Members of this class however labour against their origins and although they have a sense of what is good or bad, such is their struggle that they have no truck with morality and are described as being immoral. Because of this, prisons are brimming over with members of this class, especially since when they get in trouble with the law, they are not able to cough up the money with which they can hire clever lawyers who can extricate them from their predicament.

Sandwiched between the ruling and working classes is the middle class, many of whose members  have climbed out of the working class on the basis of some talent, usually associated with education. A great many of them are the children of parents who are themselves native to this class and in common terms are said to have been born with some privileges of which the working class people can only dream about. Virtually all the members of the so called liberal professions; doctors, lawyers, engineers, university lecturers, senior civil servants, accountants and other such people are solidly middle class. They are the engine room of any successful community and are usually guided by the principles of moral behaviour. They are brought up with the message of decency, hard work and integrity ringing in their ears. They are not likely to be found in jail and are brought up to appreciate impressive family values. In others words they are the veritable salt of the earth.

The above characteristics are associated with the middle class everywhere except Nigeria where too many members of the group behave like members of the corrupt working class or the amoral ruling class. They have acquired their middle class status through education but in Nigeria they have supervised the dismantling of the excellent primary school educational system bequeathed to them by the departed British colonialists. First, they set up primary schools for their pampered offspring. Not satisfied, they eviscerated the public secondary school system and paved the way for overly expensive secondary schools to which they send their children from the proceeds of corruption and from which some members of their class derive enormous profit. The universities which over the last fifty years produced most of the current members of the middle class are now in ruins following thirty years of criminal neglect and those that teach in them are now in danger of being expelled from the middle class unless of course they resort to self help bordering on criminality. It appears that there is a damaging civil war raging within this group as too many of them attempt to climb into the socially useless but dizzyingly wealthy ruling class, the members of which over the years have contrived to warehouse a great deal of the money that should be used for societal development. All that the Nigerian middle class has managed to do however is to subject itself to a process of self emasculation from which nobody in society can profit. And yet without a viable middle class, there is no way that Nigeria can make any meaningful progress.