Governor Kayode Fayemi and Senator Babafemi Ojodu are Still Good Friends

Friendship and politics, which started first? Between Governor Kayode Fayemi and his old mate, the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, the answer is obvious: friendship started first. Then came politics. Then came animosity. But recent reports show that even this grudge between the two is at its end.

As a reaction to the many happenings at the national and state levels and in preparation for the years to come, Governor Fayemi graciously hosted the Minister of Interior and former Governor of Osun State, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. But Aregbesola, to the surprise of many, was not the only one the Governor invited to his Ado-Ekiti office; Senator Ojodu was also there in the flesh!

As news people were to find out later, the content of the meeting was for the family of three, Fayemi, Aregbesola and Ojodu, and no other.

Nevertheless, the fact that all three ‘siblings’ came out smiling and willing to pose for pictures is telling enough: Fayemi and Ojodu put out the fires of war and competition long ago, and people did not even know.

As some folks earlier argued, the feud was not about anything serious in the first place. Moreover, the followers of the two played more significant roles in how it started and continued than Fayemi and Ojodu themselves. But it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Folks would recall that the Fayemi-Ojodu feud appeared to have started when members of Fayemi’s camp at the Ekiti branch of the All Progressives Congress (APC) attempted to oust the camp of Ojodu by suspending several of them. The gist at the time was that the latter group has infringed on national party directives and inadvertently growing too big for their breeches. Unsurprisingly, the smoke of battle soon reached the point where Fayemi and Ojodu disagreed on everything, with the hanging threat of APC’s collapse in Ekiti. Thus, it became a game of who could sling the most vicious words. And the back-and-forth never seemed to end. But that is all in the past now. Both Fayemi and Ojodu are back to being friends and better at being politicians.