Former speaker of the Oyo State House of Assembly, Hon. Kehinde Ayoola, held the audience that attended the matriculation ceremony of the Federal School of Surveying, FSS, Oyo, spellbound, when he revealed how, as a young boy, he wanted to be an army officer.
Ayoola, who delivered the 2017 matriculation lecture of the institution, said he had the privilege of being one of the few children who got to see soldiers on daily basis, as his mother had a shop at the Barrack Mammy Market.
This is just as he gave reasons for his decision not to join the civil service when he graduate from university.
According to Ayoola, who is the national financial secretary of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, his interaction with soldiers daily, as early as age, was the driving force.
Hear him: ”children flocked to the Army Barracks on Children and Independence Days to watch smartly-dressed soldiers and officers on parade.
”I loved their smart turn-outs, the precision of their parades and the authority they wielded then as our incumbent rulers.
“My parents were of humble means. My father was a carpenter/furniture maker and my mother traded in akara balls at the popular Owode market. My mother woke us up at some minutes to 5am every day except Sundays and the day usually ended around 9pm. By 7am, the first batch of hot-steaming akara balls was ready in the most clearly organoleptically-acceptable form. And so also were we; ready to go to school.
“My school days were between 1971 and 1982. The period 1966 to 1979 was the military era. In that 13-year period, Nigeria had 4 (four) military Heads of State in the late Major-Gen J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, General Yakubu Gowon, late General Murtala Mohammed and Gen Olusegun Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo. So in my first 14 growing up years, I never experienced democracy with the attendant freedom of speech, of association which we enjoy today.
“In that period too, Nigeria underwent a bloody Civil War for 3 years, 1967 to 1970. The war led to an expansion in size and scope of the Nigerian Army. Thus, military formations were all over the country – including Oyo here where an artillery battalion was stationed at the site of the present Alayande College of Education, Isokun campus.
“After secondary school, I applied and wrote the Officer Cadets’ Entrance Examination into the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna. I passed in 1983 but that same year, I wrote the University Matriculation Examination conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board,” he recounted.
On how he rose from nothing to his present status, he explained: “I was born about fifty-two and a half years ago at a small maternity clinic: Methodist Maternity, Ayarabiasa (Swift-as-the-Eagle), Ajagba, Oyo, just about 400metres from here. I attended St Michael’s Primary School at Oke Ebo, also about 400 metres from here but I and my twin sister trekked about 10 km to and from school every school day. My secondary school education was at Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo which should be about 3.5 kilometres from here.
”Late in 1982, Professor Frank Nwachukwu Ndili, then the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (UNN) visited Alhaji Lateef Jakande, the then Governor of Lagos State to complain that applicants from Lagos and the Western part of Nigeria were not choosing the UNN enough; therefore the admission quota for these states went largely unfulfilled. I had made an unsuccessful attempt to enter University of Ibadan in 1982 (unsuccessful due to the competitiveness there) but this piece of information helped me.
“In 1983 therefore, I had two options as I planned: to go to the Army through the Officer Cadet course at the NDA or go to university to earn a degree. After consultation with my parents (who would pay my fees anyway), I left for Nsukka. I was a raw, wide-eyed and inexperienced 18-year old. I was thrust into the exploration of another part of my country.
“The Igbo language was strange to me. I was quartered at Zik’s Flats Hostels, Onuiyi Haven where I met many Igbo Students and some Yoruba boys. Together we went to lectures and ate at the Refectory. Government subsidised our meals then. A plate cost N1:50k (one naira, fifty kobo only) but we only paid 50kobo. I formed friendships with my Igbo colleagues and one of them: the late Michael Ndulaka of Umuahia-Ubeku in today’s Abia State was extremely kind to me. This taught me that there are good Igbos just as there are good Yorubas and vice versa.
”We started the session on schedule in October, 1983.
Nigeria had conducted a second election in the Second Republic. The results were widely disputed by the Progressive Peoples’ Alliance, PPA, which was a coalition of four parties: Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Nigerian People’s Party, NPP of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, People’s Redemption Party, PRP, of Mallam Aminu Kano and, Great Nigeria People’s Party, GNPP of Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim. These four lost to the National Party of Nigeria, NPN of President Shehu Shagari.
“On December 31st, 1983, just 3 months into his second term, Alhaji Shagari’s government was overthrown in a military coup by Major-Gen Muhammadu Buhari.
“The coup had convinced me that not joining the Army earlier in the year was my best decision in the circumstances. Military regimes distract the attention of our military from its primary responsibility of protection of our internal integrity as well as suppression of external aggression.
“I spent just one year at UNN and switched to the then University of Ife, Ile Ife by transfer admission in 1984.
I finished my first degree there at the renamed Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
“As early as 1974, when I was 9 years old, I had become politically conscious of my environment. My father was a local leader of Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group in the ‘50s. He also was a leader of the UPN in the 2nd Republic under the governorship of late Uncle Bola Ige in the old Oyo State. In the aborted 3rd Republic which the annulment of M.K.O. Abiola’s June 12, 1993 elections rendered inchoate, my father was a Ward Chairman of Abiola’s party, the Social Democratic Party, SDP. I therefore lay claim to early political tutelage from him.
“As a 9-year old, I recall that my father and his group of politicians, conscious of the ban that the military placed on politics then, carried out their politicking underground.
“I was 10 years old when General Yakubu Gowon was overthrown on July 29, 1975, exactly nine years to the day he came to office. I sat at my father’s feet as the elders discussed the advent of the then Brigadier Murtala Mohammed and its implications for the political development of Nigeria.
“My father and his colleagues met under the excuse of town or area unions, naming ceremonies, house warming et cete ra. On these occasions, they would leave the merry-making horde outside with all the drumming, music and partying and slip into another building nearby to evaluate the situation and strategize on the next line of action.
“This was why, twenty-four hours after the then General Olusegun Obasanjo lifted the ban on politics in September 1978, Chief Obafemi Awolowo addressed a World Press Conference where he announced the birth of the UPN. He had planned for it. He was ready for it.
Similarly, in 1998 after the death of Gen Sani Abacha, the Afenifere (Yoruba Socio-Cultural Organisation) had no problem at all transforming into the Alliance for Democracy, AD, even as the deadline set by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, approached fast.
“They had planned for it. They were ready for it.
I left Ife and went to do my National Youth Service Corps scheme at Government Secondary School, GSS, Pankshin in Plateau State. At the end of the exercise, many of my colleagues wanted to take up appointments with the Plateau State Government on contract basis but I had a plan since my university days. I was going to be in politics and staying back in the North would not help me.
“I also had another plan. I was not going to join the civil service. I knew what problems I would have to pass through in leaving service suddenly in order to go and contest an election.
So, my working years had been spent in the private sector and in self-employment. I worked for about 10 (ten) years post-graduation before I contested my first election in 1997. It was an election into the chairmanship of my local government, Oyo East. I contested on the platform of the defunct Congress for National Consensus, CNC – one of the ‘Five Fingers of a Leprous Hand’ as late Chief Bola Ige, the Cicero of Esa Oke described the five parties of the Abacha era.
I lost that election. It was about six months after I got married.
“Almost two years later in January 1999, I contested for and won a seat in the Oyo State House of Assembly where I became the Speaker – the first Oyo man to have the honour.
“In September 1996, I got married to my wife, Olukemi. In choosing my life partner, I took note of my overall life plans. My wife, apart from certain physical features, must possess certain non-compromisable qualities: fear of God, education up to university level or equivalent, must not be interested in private business and must share my vision for public service.
Needless to say that my wife encapsulates all these qualities and even more. She is an academician whose time is well divided between her research laboratories and her duties as a wife and mother. We planned it that our house should be built just about one kilometre to her office at the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, I.A.R.& T, Moor Plantation, Ibadan – to make for easy access.
