Femi Fani-Kayode and Femi Gbajabiamila have known each other since they were boys in Surulere, Lagos. When Gbajabiamila, now the Chief of Staff to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, turned 64, Fani-Kayode marked it with a long public post that read like a family scrapbook.
Fani-Kayode, a former Minister of Aviation and Nigeria’s Ambassador-designate to South Africa, put it on X. He said the two had been “closer than brothers for at least 50 years.” Their circle of boyhood friends included Folabie Caxton Martins and Wole Atunrase, who lived around the corner from Gbajabiamila, and Deremie Ajidahun.
Politics and a prediction
They went into politics together in 1990. Fani-Kayode recalled Gbajabiamila’s scathing attack on the late Chief Bola Ige that year, after Ige ran down the idea of “newbreed politicians.”
He wrote about the day in 2004 when Gbajabiamila came back from America with his wife and went to the Villa to tell President Olusegun Obasanjo they would live in Abuja. He remembered the restaurant and bar the couple opened there not long after.
When Gbajabiamila first won a seat in the House of Representatives, the two men belonged to different parties. Fani-Kayode said he was elated all the same. At Gbajabiamila’s birthday dinner in Abuja in 2011, he told the room that his friend’s time would come to be Speaker. He now calls that remark prophetic. Gbajabiamila did become Speaker before moving to the Chief of Staff post.
Loyalty to Tinubu
Fani-Kayode also singled out Gbajabiamila’s devotion to Tinubu, which he dated from 1993 through the NADECO years and Tinubu’s term as Lagos governor, and on to the presidency. Gbajabiamila, he wrote, stuck with Tinubu “through thick and thin.”
The tribute had its softer side. Fani-Kayode said few people know that behind a “sometimes stern and officious look” lies “a very soft, kind and caring heart.” He described Gbajabiamila as a devoted son and husband.
Both men now live in Maitama, Abuja. “Whoever thought that this would be?” Fani-Kayode wrote. He closed with prayers that his friend would have many more years of peace and good health, and said Gbajabiamila had “done us proud.”
Sources
- FFK Celebrates Gbajabiamila at 64, goes down memory lane
- Fani-Kayode celebrates Gbajabiamila at 64 |
