On April 15, 2018, I attended a thanksgiving service in Ijebu-Ogbo, Ogun State commemorating Chief Ayo Adebanjo’s 90th birthday celebrations. I had missed the actual Church Service on April 10th and went for the more private thanksgiving to compensate. Unlike the big birthday celebration, there were few guests this time-I was seated between ubiquitous Afenifere spokesman Yinka Odumakin and former Ondo State Governor Segun Mimiko; and there were few others, outside the usual rural Church congregation-Professor Banji Akintoye, Dr. Amos Akingba, Senator Femi Okurounmu, Hon. Oladipo Olaitan and Chief Supo Shonibare were prominent amongst the rare Lagos crowd; and then there were Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, former Governor of Lagos State between 1979 and 1983 and his still very beautiful and charming wife, Abimbola.
Jakande and Adebanjo go back a long way, being both leading members of Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s inner caucus in the old Action Group (AG) and Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), but Jakande had since been somewhat alienated from his old Afenifere comrades after he ran for the presidential candidacy of the then Social Democratic Party (SDP) during the Babangida transition against the wish of the movement (which had earlier agreed on Chief Olu Falae while Jakande and others were banned) and then served in the Abacha cabinet as Minister of Works and Housing even after the group had asked its members to resign. Since then it was not often that we see “LKJ”(as Jakande was popularly known) in the company of the Afenifere elite. For many of us in that quiet and serene church service, it was a pleasant surprise seeing “Baba Kekere” in our midst.
Jakande is not the old LKJ we used to know however! Age has taken its toll. Lateef Kayode Jakande at 89 years of age is no longer the strong, formidable and vibrant politician who walked with authority and waved his “irukere” as he clearly sought to inherit the mantle of Awolowo as his appropriation of the appellation “Baba Kekere” demonstrated, Chief Awolowo implicitly being the Baba Agba! After the battles of the Sarumi-Agbalajobi era also during the Babangida transition, Jakande had been somewhat de-mystified in Lagos politics. The Chief Dapo Sarumi faction of the then SDP with the support of the Shehu Yar’adua/Babagana Kingibe hold on the national SDP machinery tilted power towards their Peoples Front (PF) allies led by Sarumi/Bola Tinubu/Yomi Edu in the governorship primaries in Lagos and in effect ended Jakande’s seemingly unbreakable hold on Lagos politics. The Jakande and Afenifere group merely extracted some self-respect by ensuring the defeat of their traducers in the consequent governorship elections of 1992, resulting in the unexpected victory of the NRC’s Chief Otedola, who became governor. By the time civilian politicking resumed in 1999, Chief Lateef Jakande had become alienated from the Afenifere mainstream and Chief Ganiyu Dawodu was now leader of Afenifere and its Alliance for Democracy (AD) in Lagos State. Jakande has been on the margins of partisan politics since then!
Yet nothing can wipe away Lateef Jakande’s service in Lagos! At a point during the church service in Ogbo, the officiating Anglican priest acknowledged the presence of the former “action governor” in the auditorium and the whole congregation-natives and visitors, rose and gave a long and enduring ovation! It was the type of moment people should live for…Jakande was not even a former governor of Ogun State in which the Church was located; he doesn’t have too much money (which is all that drives our current crop of politicians!) to donate to the church or hand out to the congregants; and he has not held any public office whatsoever in the last two decades. Yet as Lateef Jakande sat, old, weak and shrunken, we all rose and applauded in the privacy and solemnity of that rural thanksgiving service. Those indeed are the moments people should live for! It was his wife who rose to acknowledge the cheers, just as she piloted, guided and supported the old man throughout the ceremony. May God grant us wives and families who will support and help us when we can no longer help ourselves!
I do not necessarily applaud everything Jakande did as governor of Lagos State. As a student of Igbobi College between 1976 and 1981, I resent the seemingly deliberate destruction of educational standards in the leading schools in Lagos State (Igbobi, CMS Grammar School, Baptist Academy, Methodist Girls High School, Raegan Memorial etc.) in favour of a policy that focused on numbers and not quality, but I respect his egalitarian impulse and I can understand that beneficiaries of his mass education approach will appreciate the life changing opportunity he may have presented; his achievements in public housing remain unmatched even till today; and his imprint on health services, roads and infrastructure in Lagos State remains indelible. The valiant attempt by Jakande and his colleagues in the UPN (Bisi Onabanjo, Bola Ige, Adekunle Ajasin and Professor Ambrose Alli) to provide free education; free health services; full employment; and integrated rural development reminds us of an era when governance in Western Nigeria was about service to the people and not self-aggrandizement!
As we all rose to give former Lagos State Governor Lateef Kayode Jakande a rousing ovation in that modest church in Ogbo-Ijebu, I reflected on Jakande’s impressive service and hoped that we all would honour his service to the people of Lagos State, Yorubaland and Nigeria.
Opeyemi Agbaje
