On Jegede and his perfect match
BY KAYODE FASUA
Casting a furtive look at the kind of didactic forum of teachers in their thousands, this politician with the trademark cap of All Progressives Congress, APC, was crest-fallen. He was particularly awed by the overwhelming reception that teachers in Owo, Ondo State, had given Mr. Eyitayo Jegede (SAN), the governorship candidate of the rival Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Markedly, Owo is the hometown of the APC governorship contestant, Mr. Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN), a gladiator who is still to pull a quarter of crowd witnessed on the day the Owo teachers honoured Jegede.
When given a close call, this distraught, lonely politician was heard jabbering at first, before he eventually managed to utter the words, “So this is the way things are going…I guess I will soon cross over to this Jegede party o!”
Why is the inexplicable public affection for Jegede this pervasive? Why is it even crazier in Owo, the hometown of Akeredolu? Or why are markets virtually closed anytime Jegede visits Ilaje communities, the supposed base of Olusola Oke, the flag-bearer of sleepy Alliance for Democracy. The answers are not far-fetched.
Here is an urbane, simple but strict lawyer, whose passage through the corridors of power remains decent and result-oriented. These innate qualities find records in Jegede’s early life as a hardworking student at Aquinas College Akure, where he reached the pinnacle of honour among his peers by being appointed the Senior Prefect. In those days, to be appointed a prefect, much less a senior prefect, was akin to the proverbial needle-eye that a camel seeks to take as route.
In his chosen profession-Law, Jegede in far-away Adamawa State was elected chairman of the state’s chapter of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. He is unlike one of his fellow contestants for governor whose tenure as the National President of his profession’s association was stained by serious fraud allegations; so many that they remain unresolved till date.
But an ebullient Jegede comes to public service as a matador; determined to wrestle the bull of lingering socio-economic problems, bearing the panache of a goal-getter. Having served for seven and half years in the Governor Olusegun Mimiko administration, great potentials have been found in him, as even beyond his brief as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Jegede had been saddled with varying responsibilities, ranging from contract supervision to budget monitoring.
Mimiko, it was learnt, was shell-shocked at the level of commitment that Jegede had to the rural dwellers, that the latter virtually became the natural interventionist whenever any community was in some dire strait.
To wit, all these have reflected in the carriage and character of Jegede’s campaign machine. All over, he has been unfolding his agenda of how the state’s economy would be bolstered with the establishment of a power plant to energise industries that he intends to establish through a public-private partnership formula. In tandem too, Jegede wants to float a gas plant that will feed the energy plant, which in turn will serve both industrial and domestic energy needs of the people of Ondo State.
“I’m always moved to see young, educated people loafing around the streets for want of what to do. I want to put an end to this by giving these promising youths good jobs for the benefit of themselves and the society at large,” an impassioned Jegede once said during a media interview.
Being an agrarian society too, Jegede has identified mechanized farming as the major road to salvation for Ondo State, especially in this era that the price of petrol keeps tumbling down at the international market. To that extent, he is set to float an agric expansion policy that will cut across all the requisite locations in the state.
Now, the big news. Jegede’s party, the PDP, in its hoary wisdom, has found a suitable partner to assist Jegede in driving his vision. They went for Prince John Ola Mafo, a delectable achiever in public service, to become deputy governor.
Mafo was once the spokesman of the then University of Ife Students Union. A lawyer and graduate of English, Mafo, much loved in his Ilaje/Ikale clan, and even among the Ijaw ethnic stock of Ondo State, had served meritoriously in various capacities to prepare him for this daunting task ahead. He was a Local Government Chairman and was at a time the Commissioner for Sports in Ondo State. Lately, he was in charge at the state’s football governing body.
Talking frankly, Jegede is reticent, suave, urbane, cautious and highly reflective. Whereas Mafo is outspoken, prickly as per an activist, tedious at work and impatient with slothfulness. With these variegated qualities respectively shared, Ondo State is in for a glorious era. An era when the drive for economic revival and infrastructural uplift will match with a renaissance that is common awareness of rights, and the ennobling of the social expectation of voters from the voted.
As the people of Ondo State look on earnestly to the break of November 26, this year, when they hope to elect a new governor, the choice seems made, and perfectly too.
*Fasua, media spokesman to Eyitayo Jegede, wrote in from Akure, Ondo State
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