Renowned poet and literary giant, Prof. Niyi Osundare, has advised Ekiti State governor-elect, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, to make poverty eradication, ignorance and job creation top priorities of his administration.
He expressed concern about unemployed youths roaming the streets and crowding around motor parks with susceptibility to be used as thugs by unscrupulous politicians.
Osundare regretted that Ekiti retrogressed in the last four years when it was muddled by what he called political madness and an abomination called “stomach infrastructure” promoted by the Ayodele Fayose administration.
The literary scholar, who spoke yesterday while delivering the inauguration lecture ahead of today’s swearing-in of Fayemi, said Ekiti values of honesty, integrity, hard work and honour were debased under Fayose’s leadership.
The event also featured presentation of a book written by Fayemi titled “Staying the Course,” Photo Exhibition and award of prizes to winners of JKF Essay Competition.
The lecture, titled: Reclaiming Our Land, Restoring Our Values-My Ekiti Dream, was attended by Ondo State Governor Rotimi Akeredolu; Fayemi’s wife, Erelu Bisi; Deputy Governor-elect Otunba Bisi Egbeyemi; former Ekiti State Governor Adeniyi Adebayo; Founder, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Babalola (SAN); former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun; former Ekiti State Military Administrator, Navy Capt Atanda Yusuff; former Ekiti State Deputy Governors Abiodun Aluko and Prof. Modupe Adelabu and traditional rulers.
Osundare, an indigene of Ikere-Ekiti, said the state in the last four years became a “laughing stock of the Nigerian nation and a hellhole of country bumpkins ruled by fiat and fear and subservient like oxen”.
Although the eminent scholar did not mention Fayose’s name, he noted that the use of demagoguery to hoodwink a good number of people dented the image of Ekiti with stomach infrastructure, which he said bred a culture of laziness among the populace.
Osundare recalled that a professor friend of his jocularly threatened to “defect to one of the luckier Southwest states, wondering how his beloved state descended to such a level.
Noting that Fayemi has his work cut out for him in the next four years, the literary icon said the incoming governor’s Restoration Agenda should also incorporate the banishment of illiteracy, mediocrity and demons of ignorance.
The Professor of English at University of New Orleans in the United States of America (U.S.A), also advocated training, retraining of teachers and adequate adjustment of their remuneration and total elimination of “miracle centres”.
He regretted that when Ekiti youth are asked what they do for a living, they say they are politicians as if “politics is a profession”.
Osundare urged Fayemi to invest in education during his second coming because the book has become an “implacable enemy of the younger generation while enlightened discourse has become their deafening adversary”.
He said: “Ekiti is where people place priority on knowledge, wisdom. They know the values of these virtues. They were regarded as extremely stubborn people because they wouldn’t compromise their integrity for anything.
“These were times when education was a pride and we had the brightest academics, like the late Professor Sam Aluko, Professor Adegoke Olubunmo, Chief Afe Babalola, Prof. Ojo Ugbole, and many others.
“We placed values on hard work, knowledge acquisition, and our parents sold their farms and clothes to send their children to school. They knew the rights from the wrongs at that time.
“But there came a demagogue who ran authoritarian government in Ekiti in a manner that had never been experienced by any state in Nigeria.
“He stopped at market places to buy roasted corn and ate in public place, just to deceive the people, when majority of our graduates were not provided with jobs and farm produce were wasting away and our value system collapsed calamitously.
“Education, which was regarded as our best industry, was not well funded and our graduates, who had earlier been regarded as the best in Nigeria for decades, became practically half-baked and unemployable.”