LongRead… The Keyamo metamorphosis: From activist to apologist, and all we know

When President Muhammadu Buhari nominated former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola for a ministerial position in 2015, he (Fashola) gave Nigerian lawmakers a lesson on the concept of loyalty when he appeared before the Senate for his screening.

When asked what he understood by loyalty, Fashola said:

“The concept of loyalty is a very strange concept. I always pray that my loyalty should not be tested. We may discuss it loosely, but you may not know. When loyalty is tested, you might have to take a bullet for your own child.”

Fashola appeared to have spoken for many of his ilk; Festus Keyamo (SAN), the current Minister of State for Labour and Employment, being a very recent example.

A little over two decades ago, the respected silk was a renowned human rights lawyer, activist, and social crusader who fought on the side of the Nigerian masses, a pride of the human rights fraternity.

Keyamo started his legal practice in the Chief Gani Fawehinmi Chambers in Lagos and was not a student of the late human rights lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi, for nothing.

Under the tutelage of the great Gani, Keyamo blossomed and led many marches and protests against the establishment, following, perhaps, in the footsteps of his celebrated mentor.

Making of a crusader

As a young lawyer, Festus Keyamo was on the front row of legal activism, representing radical minded activist icons like Dr Beko Ransome-Kuti, Chief Frank Kokori, and Ken Saro Wiwa. He was also on the legal team of Chief M.K.O. Abiola and Anthony Enahoro, who were arrested in 1994 following the June 12 election debacle, as well as other leaders of the NADECO movement.

It has been said that Chief Gani Fawehinmi, lead counsel for the NADECO team, coopted Keyamo into the team because of the trust he had in him and the zeal he had shown in the fight against injustice.

He further shot into limelight with the celebrated trial of the suspected killer of then Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, who was murdered on December 23, 2001, at his Bodija residence in Ibadan, Oyo State.

While many lawyers washed their hands off the case, Keyamo took the bold step of representing one of the prime suspects in the murder of Ige, Olugbenga Adebayo, also known as Fryo.

As the case dragged on, Keyamo raised the alarm, notifying Nigerians that the police was doing everything to frustrate the case.

While speaking during a symposium held in Lagos by the Bola Ige Centre for Justice to commemorate one of Ige’s death anniversaries, Keyamo had said:

“The state was complicit in Bola Ige’s murder. The police were more interested in destroying the evidence at their disposal. They were struggling to redirect the focus of the investigation. Bola Ige was not killed by armed robbers!

“The case of Bola Ige is the case of the killers looking for the killers; that is why it could not be resolved.”

Standing with the masses

Such was Keyamo’s penchant for standing with the masses that many had assumed that the huge shoes left behind by Fawehinmi had been filled by his protégée.

Apart from the Bola Ige’s case, Keyamo had also endeared himself to many by taking up some cases that bordered on the infringement of human rights, most of them pro bono.

The start of Keyamo’s legal career coincided with the heightened agitation for the revalidation of the June 12, 1993 election won by Abiola.

By this time, he had left the Gani Fawehinmi Chambers to start his own firm, Festus Keyamo Chambers, and shortly after, was saddled with several controversial and landmark cases.

He was, at one time, the lead counsel to the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples’ Volunteer Force, Mujaheed Asari Dokubo, in his trial for treasonable felony. He was also the lead counsel in the treason trial of the leader of the Movement For The Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, and other MASSOB leaders.

Indeed, he was also not afraid to test the might of the court against the government as he once went to court to challenge the powers of the Nigerian President to unilaterally appoint Service Chiefs without the approval of the National Assembly.

In the ensuing judgment, the court agreed with him and declared the appointments of the nation’s Service Chiefs without the concurrence of the National Assembly as null and void.

He had taken the establishment to court and won!

In 2014, he won another landmark case against the Adamawa State government when the former Deputy Governor of the State, Bala James Ngilari, was forced to resign following the impeachment of the then governor, Murtala Nyako.

In the case, the House of Assembly had alleged that Ngilari had resigned and refused to swear in him as the governor but Keyamo argued that the ‘resignation’ was unconstitutional and therefore, Ngilari ought to have been sworn in as substantive Governor. He won the case and the Deputy Governor was sworn in.

In 2017, Keyamo filed a suit on behalf of a Canadian-based Nigerian, Stephanie Otobo, who had accused the General Overseer of Omega Fire Ministries International, Apostle Suleman Johnson, of sexual assault and failing to “keep a marriage promise made to her after allegedly having several sexual relationships with her.” Otobo won the case and a huge financial cost was awarded to her.

Keyamo was also the lawyer to popular Nigerian musical duo, P-Square, as well rendering his services free of charge to many youth groups especially in his community in Delta State.

While under the tutelage of Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Keyamo was one of the key figures in the formation of the National Conscience Party (NCP) which was originally designed to challenge military rule. He was the first Northern co-ordinator of the NCP and is rated to have done well in mobilizing the northerners to join the movement.

In 1997, he formed the Youth Against Misguided Youths (YAMY), a youthful pressure group that successfully mobilized thousands of youths to oppose the self-succession bid of General Sani Abacha.

Test of loyalty

It would not be long before Keyamo’s metamorphosis began. His loyalty was tested when he became a card carrying member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), a product of a merger with such legacy parties as ACN, CPC, ANPP and APGA.

With the triumph of APC and Buhari in power, Keyamo was rewarded with an appointment into the board of the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) during the President’s first tenure.

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That appointment was Keyamo’s first real invitation to literarily dine with the king, and he was soon to lose all penchant for activism, seemingly abandoning his immediate constituency, the Nigerian masses, whose interests he had professed to represent for over two decades.

His other appointment came when he was placed as the Director of Strategic Communications of the President Buhari Re-election Campaign Organization, effectively making him the spokesperson for the president’s second term bid, and an apologist of the Nigerian state.

An activist long forgotten

Keyamo has, indeed, come full circle from his early days of being one of Nigeria’s crusader activists.

His later day critics are struggling to reconcile how a once fiery Keyamo, now Minister of State for Labour, would, working with the substantive Minister, Chris Ngige, preside over multiple strikes by university lecturers that have set the country’s education system many years backward.

The same tale pervades the health sector where resident doctors have also been in long drawn battles with the Nigerian state without a sustainable response from the leadership of the Labour ministry.

In all these, Keyamo appears to have sat comfortable even as Nigerian workers cry over non-implementation of the national minimum wage, itself an act of parliament.

While many may point to his much touted Special Works Programme to provide 774,000 jobs for jobless Nigerians across various local government areas in the country, critics have view this as mere tokenism as the offers are not only temporary but beneficiaries are very poorly rewarded, and most owed by the government.

Predictable metamorphosis

Keyamo’s metamorphosis was not totally unexpected. The switch was a migration to the corridors of power where critics have identified most beneficiaries as joining the privileged class of nouveau riche who are extremely averse to committing political suicide.

When Keyamo joined the Buhari team, many had thought he would use his years of activism to push for an end to the vicious cycle of partisan advantage and help his principal start exercising some form of restraint while in power but that was not to be.

With Buhari winning a second term, and Keyamo still strutting the corridors of power, the temptation to serve his master has since assumed a higher momentum, with many perceiving him a sell out.

‘I’m no sell-out’

However, Keyamo would not agree. In a recent interview, the question of him being a sell-out was raised and he brushed it aside by asking, “what is a sell-out? Who was I politically betrothed to? Who did I pledge allegiance to?”

He went on to add:

“So one cannot serve the people in government? What is the ultimate platform to deliver service to people in the world? It is the government, that’s power. I’m not serving a military regime, neither am I serving a regime that shot its way into power.

“I’m serving a government that was democratically elected to serve. So if 20 people gather somewhere and criticise me for joining a government that they perceive is a bad government, are those 20 people more intelligent or powerful than the 15 million Nigerians who voted for the president twice?

“The problem we face with a lot of people is that they are myopic to the extent that they think that their views are superior to the views of the majority. The ultimate test of people’s power and what the people want or think is the ballot paper, unfortunately, it is not Twitter or Facebook.

“I’m prepared to be a sell-out against the minority and be with the majority because I’m serving a government popularly elected. That’s the end of the point I’m making; I’m with the majority as of today as I’ve always been.

“If the minority feel I’ve sold out, it is better to sell out against them than against the majority who are the average Nigerian people.

“I joined the APC at its formation; so people should give me that credit. I was not a longer-throat who saw a juicy government and latched onto it. I was part of a grueling campaign against a system and order that I could’ve easily joined.

“If I did not support Buhari, that is when I would have been a sell-out. Why? The person who trained me and brought me up by hand, who everyone sees as one of the best as well as the definition of what is right and wrong today in the country, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, supported Buhari till he died and told everyone who cared to listen that Buhari was the only person he could vote for.

“As for the people on the streets, I mentioned earlier, we tested it at the polls again in 2019 when everyone thought Buhari was finished; they voted for him again. The human beings who voted and we saw on the TV, are they goats? Are they from Cameroon?”

If any recent development sums up how Keyamo has veered 360 degrees, it is his latest condemnation of the #EndSARS panel report set up by the Lagos State government to look into the shooting of protesting Nigerian youths at the Lekki Tollgate on October 2020.

In it, the once celebrated human rights activist showed how far he had become distanced from the masses who he literarily swore to defend in his journey to fame.

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