It gave me immense pleasure to be present today at the launching and formal presentation of Chief Bisi Akande’s Autobiography, “My Participations”, in Lagos.
Chief Bisi Akande is, by common consent, a decent, truthful, friendly person. He is a public servant by choice: and an administrator of the first order.
My first personal contact with Chief Akande was, if I recall correctly, in 2006 when preliminary consultations were coming to fruition for a grand coalition to unseat the PDP Government. Those efforts eventually came to nothing.
Neither he, nor I, nor many of our friends and associates gave up as, in Chief Akande’s words: “the country was going down and down under PDP”.
Bisi Akande had risen to prominence from his participation in the Constituent Assembly established by General Olusegun Obasanjo’s military Government. He was always in the thick of things through the difficulties and political discontinuities of the 1980s and 90s. He emerged as Governor of Osun State in 1999 when the military handed over to the civilians.
Chief Akande had a horrendous baptism as Governor of Osun State with discord from his own party; his State Assembly (including an attempt to impeach him without any reason whatsoever); from the trade unions and from his own deputy Governor!
On top of that, he inherited a deeply indebted Treasury, huge arrears of salary, allowances and pensions. Enough challenges to overwhelm many an aspiring leader.
Bisi Akande stood four square and faced all the challenges head-on and overcame most of them. His first action was to stop payment of “critical allowances” a euphemism for government money customarily shared by the big boys in Osun State. This set the tone of his Administration.
Within 1 year, he had paid off all the salary and other arrears: proof of a competent and serious administrator.
By 2003 Chief Akande had virtually sanitised governance in Osun State having cleared some of the troublemakers from his government and, though reluctant to serve a second term, he was persuaded to run again in 2003.
It is common knowledge that Akande was the victim – along with other AD Governors – of a diabolical double-cross which ended his gubernatorial career. Only the steadfast Asiwaju Bola Tinubu escaped the electoral massacre masterminded by President Obasanjo.
Desperately disappointed though he was, and being a good Muslim, he accepted this setback as part of the trials of life. He looked to the future of service to the country.
Chief Akande was in the thick of further attempts in 2011 and 2014 to fuse together different groups and dislodge PDP from governance. The key to his thinking which coincides with mine is that Nigeria can only be successfully managed by alliances between major groups.
Although we failed in 2011, by persistence and knowledge that PDP was driving the country towards disaster, several major parties were able to finally coalesce into APC in 2014 .
Chief Akande was unanimously chosen as the first Chairman of this great coalition. Throughout the difficult negotiations, I found Akande truthful, steady and always with an eye to the ultimate goal. In or out of office, he has retained his inflexible integrity. On p.400 of his book, he wrote: “I never gave to or demanded bribe from anyone all my life.” A perfect gentleman. A perfect public officer.
There is a famous Hausa saying: “Labarin zucciya a tambayi fuska” loosely translated it means, if you want to know what is in a man’s heart watch his face!
Akande has a permanent smile on his face. He is the type I will go into the jungle with.
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