The First Lady of Ekiti State and Founder of Ekiti Development Foundation (EDF), Erelu Bisi Fayemi is reputed as one of the busiest Nigerian first ladies on account of her tight schedules. That much was confirmed by our correspondent, KUNLE AKINRINADE, who had a 16-hour encounter with her in Ado-Ekiti a few days ago. She also opened up on her life as the wife of the Governor of Ekiti State and a gender activist.
Like others before it, October 9 was a busy day for the wife of Ekiti State Governor, Erelu Olabisi Fayemi. The previous day, she had been in Lagos for a meeting with some of her colleagues and had hardly closed her eyes for three hours as she spent the night putting finishing touches to an 18-page speech she was to deliver at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.
For the reporter, the opportunity to witness the itinerary of the famous rights activist came on a rather short notice. Her Special Assistant on Media, Akin Oyedele, had sent a text message inviting the reporter to be on the entourage of the First Lady of Ekiti State. “I have the instruction of Her Excellency to have you on her entourage today,” the message read in part.
The reporter arrived the agreed meeting point at about 7.15 am and was briefly introduced to her media team by Oyedele. By 7.30 am, Erelu Fayemi, looking elegant in a black skirt-suit and a pair of red shoes, emerged from her room, signalling the commencement of the journey.
Her convoy, made up of eight vehicles, arrived at the Ogere end of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway at about 9.15 am. At Ogere, there was a light traffic that lasted about 10 minutes. After about two hours, Erelu Fayemi and her entourage arrived at the OAU into the waiting hands of some alumni of the institution.
She was immediately ushered into the Vice-Chancellor’s office where the VC, Prof. Tale Omole, eulogised her for her outstanding contributions to the university.
“We want to commend you for your passion and interest in this school. We want to appreciate your effort for sparing your time to interface with the university,” Omole said. He then went on to intimate Fayemi with some of the activities lined up for her visit.
He said: “We have a three-pronged programme for you. You are to deliver a lecture, lay the foundation for the Centre for Gender Studies and we are also hosting you to a lunch.”
Erelu Fayemi signed the visitors’ register at about 11.20 am, after which Omole presented her with a gift. Her next port of call was the main auditorium, venue of the lecture, where she shone like a star.
The programme commenced with a short poetry performance by Prof. Lere Oladitan. Oladitan rendered two poems, namely Eko and Mount of Pounded Yam. The performance, which lighted up the auditorium, ended at 12.20 pm and was immediately followed by Erelu Fayemi’s citation by Dr. E.T Babalola at 12.22 pm. Fayemi made her way to the dias at 12.30pm to deliver the institution’s Faculty of Arts Annual Conference Lecture entitled: “Re-enacting Leadership in Nigeria: The Place and Role of Humanities.”
She held the audience spell-bound with her nearly two hours of eloquent presentation. So forceful was her presentation that at a point, she lifted one of her legs to drive home a point. One of her aides had to intermittently offer her a handkerchief to mop the beads of sweat that lined her beautiful face.
In the middle of the lecture, she noticed a member of the audience in the front row whose GSM phone had rung noisily. The Ekiti amazon politely asked him to step outside to answer his call in order not to disturb the rest of the audience.
Condemning gender-based violence in her speech, she said: “Women in positions of influence should advance policies and laws that will protect women, provide for their needs and guarantee their wellbeing.
“We need identities that affirm our rights as full citizens, with rights of participation, engagement and protest. We also need to assert our rights; to use the power of our numbers as a critical voting mass and bring to power men and women who will truly transform our societies and create the enabling environment for all marginalised people to thrive.”
She did not end the lecture without sounding a note of warning to male undergraduates who are in the habit of abusing their female counterparts, saying that grave consequences await such errant students. Although the lecture ended at 1.32 pm, another 20 minutes was spared for a question-and-answer session. Thereafter, Fayemi was presented with the Ori Olokun bronze as a mark of appreciation by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Prof. Oladipo Salami at 2 pm.
At about 2.15 pm, she left for the venue of a foundation laying ceremony of a building she intended to donate to the school as part of activities marking the institution’s 50th anniversary.
After a brief ceremony, she was again presented with a gift of her life-size portrait. She turned the sod of the building of OAU Centre for Gender Studies at 3.15 pm, urging other old students of the institution to contribute towards the infrastructural development of the school.
She was subsequently hosted to a reception at the OAU Staff Club where Prof. Omole again showered praises on her for giving back to her alma mater among the over 80,000 other former students of the institution. The ceremony ended at 4.25.
But just as the elegant Ekiti First Lady was about to step out of the hall, she was ‘hijacked’ by former members of the school’s Kegite Club for another round of discussion that lasted till about 4.55 pm.
The journey to Ado-Ekiti thus began at 5.10 pm.The trip took the convoy through Erinmo-Ijesha and other communities along the axis. The convoy ran into a procession mounted by a group of jubilant supporters of local masquerades at Igede-Ekiti. Her train finally arrived in Government House, Ado-Ekiti at 6.50 pm, but the reporter’s hope of getting her for a chat took more than one hour to materialise. The chat eventually took place in an expansive living room that bore a life-size portrait of Governor Kayode Fayemi. Excerpts:
Would you say that your life as a woman rights activist and gender advocate was by accident or a result of your academic background?
I think my interest and passion for women’s rights started when I was doing my first master’s degree at the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State. A very good friend of mine who had just returned from Canada suggested that I should write my thesis on women issues because she thought that I sounded like someone who should be interested in women’s issues. And at that time, I had no understanding of women’s movement and right issues. But this friend of mine gave me a copy of a book by Jemmy Griffin titled The Female Eunuch and the book completely changed my life and perspective. That gave me the courage to go to my professors to say that I would like to write something about women in Yorubaland, their history and their contributions to the socio-political development of the society.
I met a lot of fantastic women in the course of the project because I travelled wide to places like Ondo, Akure and different parts of Ekiti. Those women I mentioned were not even major political figures, and that was where my passion for gender activism started.
I later left for England to further my education and earned another master’s degree in Gender Studies because I wanted to acquaint myself with gender issues. I subsequently worked with various gender organisations and I decided to spend the rest of my life working as a women’s rights activist.
But apart from academic background, what other things influenced your life of activism? Did you experience cases of rights abuse while growing up?
When people ask me why I do what I do, I tell people that it is because I always believe that women have choices on issues of concern to them. My father brought me up to know that I could do anything I wanted to do in life; that I could have my own opinion; that I could speak out my mind. He also brought me up to know the value of service to the society. So, with these values that I have learnt from my father, I find it strange when people say that women don’t have a right and that they cannot have the same advantage as men in our society.
There was this lady who was like a big sister to me when I was growing up. We lived on the same street and she was into a violent relationship. Every other night, she got beaten up by her husband and he would lock her out. She would run to my father to help her talk to her husband.
One night, when she ran to our house, my father was already in bed. My mother asked me to tell her husband that my father would see him the next day. I was shocked at what I saw when I got to their house. The man just barked at the lady. He was so rude to his wife even in my presence, saying: “Is that how you’ll talk to your husband? Put your hands beside you and stand straight!” Then I said to myself, if this is what marriage is all about, I don’t think I’ll want to get married.
In the five years that the lady was striving to earn a Higher National Diploma (HND), she gave birth to three children such that she could not focus well on her studies. This kind of situation encouraged my passion to fight women marginalisation and for the rights of women to have or make choices on issues affecting their lives.
Your official project, the Ekiti Development Foundation (EDF), has succeeded in making a case for women through the enactment of gender-based laws which protect women from all kinds of abuses. But there are cases of men who suffer abuses from women too. What is the fate of such men in Ekiti State?
Although, the law seeks to protect women’s rights from being violated, if there are men whose rights have been violently violated, they are free to come forward and their rights will also be protected by the law because it is all encompassing. But you know cases like that are in the minority, and that is why the vast majority of those who the law seeks to protect are women.
Apart from the gender-based violence laws, what other things have you done to better the lots of people, particularly in the area of education?
I am happy to say that the girl-child education is a source of pride in Ekiti State because we have more girls enrolled in schools than boys. And we have free education and child rights law which prevent parents from keeping their children at home in order to engage them in trading when they should be in school.
The challenge we have is keeping girls in school, because they face a lot of issues. They are compelled to do some activities like cooking and selling while the boys while away their time. In the course of engaging them in trading activities or other things, they are molested by all kinds of people including their guardians, and they get pregnant and this stops them from continuing with their education.
However, we are working with the Ministry of Education in order to embark on a sensitisation and awareness programme to highlight the implication of this and its effect on the education of girls and their future.
Given the agrarian nature of Ekiti State, what have the women benefited from your project?
Truly, Ekiti is largely agrarian and government is investing a lot in agriculture. But Ekiti Development Foundation (EDF) is focused on women development and empowerment. A lot of women are as well into subsistence farming and other activities like trading. And during my tour of council areas in January, we were able to provide women farmers with fertilisers.
But it is not farming alone that women engage in. There are other activities that women do to earn a living; like trading, arts and crafts. We are funding them as well as assisting cooperative organisations with funds. Basically, what we are doing is to help them in order to ensure gender balancing in the distribution of wealth.
It has been two years now that you became the Ekiti First Lady. Tell me about your greatest achievements so far?
My greatest achievement in the last two years is the support I have given to my husband. Others include the enactment of the gender violence prohibition law, the Multiple Birth Trust Fund, creation of awareness for increase in women participation in government which occasioned the Ekiti Women Leadership Forum, and the organisation of Ekiti State Festival of Arts and Culture, etc.
You and your husband had been into activism for some time before he became the Ekiti State governor. Now that he is a politician, do you have any particular line of disagreement on issues?
I am someone who usually wants to get results on time. So, when situations like that occur, he would ask me to be a bit patient and that we would get the desired results soon. Therefore, we really don’t have disagreement because my husband is my best friend and we understand each other very well.
How did you meet him?
My husband went to Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, for master’s degree but got something more than that (laughter). We met in the classroom but got talking at Prof. Oluwasanmi Library. He was the one I was referring to in a joke earlier today, about someone who got more than he went to do at OAU.
What kinds of book do you read?
I love biographies. And there are a couple of books I have read and still do. I have read books written by feminist writers like Alice Walker, Amina Mamah and Mayah Angelo, among others. I also like reading general literatures written by Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Chimamanda Adichie and a lot of literatures in the development world on women’s rights and gender issues.
Which book are you currently reading?
I am currently reading The Nomad by Aayah Helis and Omoluabi 2.0 written by a very good friend of mine, Wale Ajadi.
What’s the attraction to your trademark Afro hair?
Oh, my hair-do? I am not going to tell you the reason (laughter). But, to be honest with you, I like looking natural. Chemicals have not touched my hair in the last 20 years. I hate putting chemicals in my hair and I don’t buy the idea of African women looking like Caucasian ladies. So, I am comfortable wearing Afro because it is natural. But there is a secret about my hair I won’t let you into because I don’t want it for public consumption.
What is your typical day like?
My day starts early and ends late. But more than any other thing, I take proper care of my health. I go to the gym and I eat well. Because if you are not careful, your body may not be able to take you any further in your activities as you advance in age. I believe that the greatest asset any human being can have is good health and not material acquisitions.
What should the people of Ekiti expect from you in the next two years?
As part of the vision behind the establishment of EDF, we are embarking on the first ever Ekiti Food Bank that would cater to the needs of orphans, widows and People Living With HIV (PLWH).To this end, we have been registering people across the 16 local government areas of the state and to create employment for the people as well, particularly in the area of farming.
Let me state that we are poised to consolidate on our success so far so that when next we ask for people’s votes, we can justify what we have achieved in the past four years.
