Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi
With free education, massive interventions in agriculture, and with an intellectual disposition towards governance, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti State, is changing the meaning of governance.
Within his first year in office, Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State has dramatically demonstrated, in a turf where governance had taken flight that socially re-engineering his state and putting it on a totally new development footing is possible. In consonance with his definitive 8-point Agenda, his administration set out to provide good governance, education, a solid agriculture base, healthcare, industrialization, tourism a framework for women empowerment and infrastructural development.
Apart from engaging the considerable human resources available in the state, Dr Fayemi has also leveraged the expertise and competences of development partners like the World Bank, DFID, USAID and UNDP, which have all returned to the state and are actively in support of a government that is led by one of their own.
For bringing compelling imagination and courage to the centre state of transformative governance in Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi is LEADERSHIP Governor of the year 2011. Several developmental actions attest to this.
Under the Fayemi administration, the state took several bold policy actions to bring about change. Some of these include free and quality health care services not only people living in the urban areas, for every citizen, including those living in the remote parts of the state, is involved. The state government also commenced its social security scheme for the aged with the enumeration of elderly people in the 16 local government areas of the state.
But there were other challenges to be confronted. They included: low revenue both from the federation account and internally generated revenue (IGR), high wage bill, low workers’ morale, and uncompleted road projects. Specifically, Ekiti receives an average of N2.5 billion monthly revenue from the federation account, while the state pays about N1.8 billion as salaries, leaving it with paltry sum of other needs.
To surmount this problem, the government has to devise ways to shore up the revenue base – and that has been his preoccupation since his assumption of office. Fayemi has since raised the IGR from 100 million monthly to N600 million monthly with a target of N1billion monthly. The governor has also identified attracting investment and industrialising the state out of the woods. His various foreign and local trips attest to this strategy.
Education reforms have also taken centre stage. The administration, in a bold step, merged two new universities established by the Oni regime that were described as glorified secondary schools! The University of Education, Ikere Ekiti (TUNEDIK), and University of Science and Technology, Ifaki Ekiti (USTI), with the University of Ado Ekiti (UNAD). The Fayemi administration has equally restructured the senior and junior secondary school systems into a single administration. On Fayemi’s watch, Ekiti was the first to domesticate the freedom of information law, bringing his administration squarely in the domain of public security.
For his courage, sincerity and innovative developmental thinking which have leveraged the lot of Ekiti people, Governor Kayode Fayemi is LEADERSHIP Governor of the year 2011.
Kayode Fayemi: A Profile
Fayemi, born February 9, 1965, is a native of Isan-Ekiti in Oye local government area of Ekiti State, Nigeria. He attended Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti, and received degrees in history, Politics and International Relations from the University of Lagos and Ife in Nigeria and his doctorate in War Studies from the prestigious King’s College, University of London, England, specializing in civil-military relations. His research and policy interests include: Democratisation, Constitutionalism, Security Sector Governance, and Regionalism in the Global Context.
Fayemi is a former director of the Centre for Democracy and Development, a research and training institution dedicated to the study and promotion of democratic development, peace building and human security in Africa. Prior to his establishment of the centre, he worked as a lecturer, journalist, researcher and strategy development adviser in Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
He was strategy development adviser at London’s City College; research fellow at the African Research and Information Bureau in London, UK; reporter with The Guardian and City Tempo newspapers, editor of the political monthly, Nigeria Now; management consultant at Development and Management Consultants; and lecturer at the Police College in Sokoto, Nigeria.
As a prominent leader of the Nigerian opposition to military rule in exile, he was responsible for the founding and management of the opposition radios – Radio Freedom, Radio Democracy International and Radio Kudirat – and played a central role in the opposition’s diplomatic engagements in exile. An account of the process and roles played in the setting up of Radio Kudirat may be found in Fayemi’s book, Out of the Shadows.
Amongst his numerous academic and public policy engagements at home and abroad, Fayemi has lectured in Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has also served as an adviser on transitional justice, regional integration, constitutionalism and Security sector reform.
He was the main technical adviser to Nigeria’s Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (Oputa Panel), which investigated past abuses, and currently serves on the Presidential Implementation Committee on Security Sector Reform (NEPAD) and the Millennium Development Goals.
He was technical expert to ECOWAS on small arms and light weapons and United Nations Economic Commission of Africa on governance issues. He is also a member, Africa Policy Advisory Panel of the British Government. At other times he has served as a consultant to the OECD on security sector reform and chaired the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s Committee of Experts on developing guiding principles and mechanisms of constitution making in Commonwealth Africa.
Kayode Fayemi is a fellow of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Ibadan, Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at the African Centre for Strategic Studies, Naitonal Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., USA. He was also a visiting professor in the African Studies Programme at Northwestern University, Evanston, USA, in 2004. Dr. Fayemi serves on numerous boards including the Governing Board of the Open Society Justice Institute, Baobab for Women’s Human Rights, African Security Sector Network, and on the Advisory Board of the Global Facilitation Network on Security Sector Reform and on the Management Culture Board of the ECOWAS Secretariat. He has written extensively on governance and democratization.
Fayemi ran for the Ekiti State governorship in 2007 election on the platform of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). His ‘defeat’ was contrived by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). After three and a half years fighting through the legal system, on October 15, 2010, the Appeal Court sitting in Ilorin, Kwara State declared him the elected governor of Ekiti State.
Last modified: September 18, 2012
