I was an Editor in the Newsroom of the Broadcasting Service of Ekiti State BSES when Engr Segun Oni and Dr Sikiru Lawal were sworn in as Governor and Deputy Governor of Ekiti State, respectively. Under the Nigerian Presidential system of government, the Deputy Governor takes the oaths before his boss, the Governor.
After their inauguration, the Segun Oni administration hit the ground running launching one revolution after another, principal among is its road revolution. The administration even tried to change the Ekiti Anthem by calling for new entries but it did not see the light of day. True to a popular political jargon, winners in election often use to taunt losers, "We shall be doing governance while our detractors will be doing court case". The loser in the April 14, 2007, Ekiti Governorship Election, the candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria ACN, Dr Kayode Fayemi was in the court waging a relentless legal battle to unseat them.
A few months after Segun Oni's first anniversary, I received a memo on August 25, 2008 directing me to report to the Deputy Governor's Office, to take over the coverage of the official activities of Dr Lawal from my colleague, Femi Awojobi. The memo was handed to me after an Editorial Meeting and Gentlemen of the Press started to congratulate me one after the other saying, "Our Àjẹ́ reporter is leaving the Dungeon for Evostick and Super Glue". We had a great fun that morning and my buddies more or less dragged me somewhere to "wash" the posting for them.
The weekend of the very week I assumed duty at Oke Bareke, the Deputy Governor, Dr Lawal had an engagement at Ibadan, Oyo State and I was included in his entourage by the protocol officer in charge of the trip even though, I had not been officially introduced to their principal as the new Reporter from BSES. So, when the Deputy Governor saw me at the thanksgiving service he was invited as a Special Guest of Honour, at the Celestial Church of Christ CCC in Apete, Ibadan, he greeted me familiarly as a person he had known in Ekiti and asked me whether I had relocated to Oyo State. I replied that I was his new reporter, that we came together from Ekiti. His countenance changed and made a comment that told me that he would not approve the posting. The Deputy Governor spoke in Yoruba, "Ẹnu Mr Ogunmola ti fẹ" and smiled sarcastically.
Barely two weeks at the Deputy Governor's Office, I received another memo on September 10, 2008 which posted me back to the Radio Desk and Femi Awojobi returned to continue as reporter to the Deputy Governor.
It began as a rumour but it turned out real and authentic. The Segun Oni administration closed down the Broadcasting Service of Ekiti State BSES because it wanted to renovate and reposition the state owned radio and television channels. The staff of the station were deployed to Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the state government.
I found myself at the House of Assembly Service Commission at the state Secretariat. The posting turned out to be a long vacation for most of the BSES staff including myself because we were not given any responsibility to perform in our new offices but we got our salary as and when due.
The BSES was still under lock and key when Segun Oni was sacked as Governor by the Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin, Kwara State on October 15, 2010 and ordered that Dr Kayode Fayemi should be sworn in with immediate effect and he was inaugurated the following day, on October 16, 2010.
We rushed back to work at Ilokun in Ado Ekiti, the headquarters of the BSES with the change of power in the state even without any official memo. For me, I went back to submit my letter of voluntary retirement because I was already eyeing a Lagos based television station all the while that we had been redundant following the closure of the BSES. The months of closure and the renovation of the offices and studios did not make settling down easy but skeletal programming took off notwithstanding and for me whose days are numbered as my letter of voluntary retirement has been accepted, I proceeded on a terminal leave, during which I pushed my papers through for my gratuity and commencement of monthly pension payment.