Kemi Alao-Akala is an astute, intelligent woman. As an English graduate who worked with Trade Bank for some 18-odd years, she needs to have been. But the beautiful First Lady of Oyo State may have wisely decided to put her intelligence and grace to other use than dabbling into politics on behalf of her husband. Her Excellency’s reason is very simple: the language barrier.

“Playing politics is not something I’m very keen on.

Thank God my husband was local government chairman and I started learning. By the time he became to Ibadan to be deputy governor, the first lady then was the perfect politician so I got my tutelage from her. But I don’t dabble into politics because I don’t want to put my husband in trouble. I’m from Ilorin and though I speak Yoruba, my Yoruba is different and there are some things you say, people take them to mean another thing so because of that I leave the politics to him.”

If you’ve been married for years without a child, then don’t be surprised to learn that you probably have more in common with the First Lady than you might think. She’s 44 and her first child is just 8 months-old, a product of In Vitro Technology. But she insists that she had very few of the challenges many women who have the same problems have.

Few challenges

“My husband had other children, so I didn’t have any problems from him and because of that, nobody could bother me. Most of the time, I’m a happy person. Most people didn’t know I didn’t have kids because when you see me with my husband’s kids, we are together. Once in a while because I love children, when my brothers’ and sisters’ kids come around, it would get me down.

But because I’m a happy person, and I like to sing and praise God a lot, I soon get over it. Maybe for a day, not the whole day, maybe in the evening, but the next day I would be okay again. But I knew I would have children. I didn’t have problems with my in-laws because of my husband. He didn’t have problems with it so why would they bother me? But I wanted for myself but I just handed everything over to God and that is one thing I’m ever grateful to God for.”

She says going through what she did made her come to a better understanding of how God works.

“You see, I’ve been pregnant before. I lost one at five and half months, which was in 1994, I lost one at four months that was 1996. I did all the tests; there was nothing wrong with me. But I guess God was waiting for this time. When I was praying I would tell God I didn’t want to do IVF. I said I know you can do all things, so why can’t I get mine normally? But then I attended Wale Oke’s church.

A lady walked in and said she had appendicitis and was supposed to have an operation but she said rather than doing that, she was praying for God to heal her without the operation. He told her, you’ll just die because God created doctors. Maybe God has made up His mind that it is through the operation that you’ll get your healing. I just said this man is talking to me. And because of my age, I think that’s how God planned it. I did it once and it took and that was it. Since we didn’t know much about it, we though it was something that would need to be managed but that wasn’t the case. Once it took, they told us to go home and that was it.”

Pampering

She says one of the things she enjoyed most about being pregnant was the pampering she got from her husband. “Nobody saw me when I was pregnant. My husband wanted me to stay in the hospital, I refused because my doctor said I was okay, but once he’s on his way from work, I made sure I was on the bed. When I became heavier and my doctor said I needed exercise, if he comes back and sees me outside, he’ll ask, what are you doing outside?

He pampered me a lot. In fact, I’m planning to get pregnant again just for that. But some of it was also difficult. During the transition, I was very miserable because I was heavily pregnant. My husband was not there. I didn’t see him until after the swearing in, for about two weeks. But when the whole brouhaha started, I didn’t look at things the way other people did, I just thought, so God was waiting for me to be a first lady before having my baby.”

She has just one word of advice for women who find themselves in her shoes.

“The advice I give to women in my shoes is just to wait on the Lord. I tell women now, when you’re praying just tell God, you did it for Kemi Alao-Akala, you can do it for me. I got to a point where I said to God, I know you’re able to do this, but even if you don’t, I’m going to remain focused. And the bible says try me and see if I won’t open the doors of blessings to you. Children are part of the blessing. So let them just remain focused on God, He’ll do it.

But you see He has a perfect time for everything. This is the first baby that would be born in this government house. When I got pregnant, I thought I would be having the baby as deputy governor’s wife, but then all these things happened and I said, God, you mean I’m going to have my baby as first lady? There’s nothing impossible for God. My son is everything to me. But I would not spoil him at all. Pamper him? I’ll be very strict because he has to turn out good. No pampering for him.”

Still the same old Kemi

She insists that becoming a first lady has not changed her much, because she has her eyes firmly on the period after office.

“If you ask people around me, they’ll tell you I’m still the same person I used to be. I think it’s the grace of God. Even if we are here for twenty years, one day we are going to leave and we are going back to the normal society because I don’t see this as normal. People around you don’t know whether they like you or not. I think everything around here is pretense. I always think of when we leave.”

Being a governor’s wife of course has its down-sides, one of which is the fact that she never gets to see her husband.

“I thank God I’ve been able to cope with being a governor’s wife. But the part of the job I don’t like is that my husband is never at home. I’m a family-oriented person. I have friends but I can count them on my fingertips. My husband is my gossip-mate, we gist a lot together but these days, most of the time, he’s not there. You know when you’re young and you dream of marrying, I never dreamt of marrying a governor or a politician, not in my wildest dreams.

In fact, when he was a police officer, if anyone had told me I would be here, I would say go and check your crystal ball again, you didn’t get it right. I never thought I would be in the government house. But I have no regrets about it.”

Before she grew up and became a first lady, a younger Kemi had a mischievous side that could get her into as much trouble as any young woman her age.

“We used to go to church on December 30th and when we would come back, and my parents were in bed, we would sneak out to parties. We were six kids and I was the fifth. They never caught us until the day we took my little sister. We took her and my mum got to find out and there was trouble.”

Philosophy

Her Excellency seems to have one philosophy which she lives by. This is how she deals with worries about her husband’s fidelity

“I don’t know if you’ll agree but my husband is a good-looking man and even if he doesn’t go after women, they’ll come after him. So what I do is just communicate with him. Most ladies will not believe the things I talk about with my husband. We talk about everything. So what I do is, as long as he’s not here, because I can’t be in the office with him, now that he’s even governor, he’s in the office till like 9, 10 and when he comes back, he’s going for another meeting but he comes to sleep at home. I’ve learnt not to bother myself about these things. As long as he doesn’t do it here, I like to believe that my husband is not promiscuous.”

Pet project

Almost every first lady has a pet project but Mrs. Alao-Akala is no different. But she hopes that it is one which will impact more on her people’s lives differently.

“I have a pet project that I believe will outlive me, because it’s a one local government, one project thing. I call it Community Advancement Project. I go to a local government, find out what they actually need, do whatever I can do and hand it over to the wife of the chairman. We are starting with Ibarapa North local government. We went there with the Society for Family Health and discovered that the women of reproductive age are poor and it’s rural community, they can’t afford gloves for hygienic treatment which costs around N10, vitamins and folic acid that you’re supposed to take when you’re pregnant, and the water there is not good for consumption.

The children are mal-nourished, and of course there’s poverty. So I said I’ll go there with gloves, iodized salt, multivitamins and water guard for their water. But I also thought about something for poverty alleviation. So I put in another structure. I have the machines already, I’ll put in a hammer mill, the one that cracks the dried yam, then there’s the one that grinds it to flour, I have cassava grater, and pepper grinder. Then I’ll give them a drum of diesel to start with, so they’ll be able to run it and make some money and create some jobs. I’ll hand over the whole thing to the community and there’ll be a monitoring committee.”

No money from government

One thing she is adamant about though, is not taking money from the government or her husband for her projects.“The reason why I’ve not commissioned it is because I’m using my own money to do it. People want to give me money but I want to do this because God has been good to me and I really must affect people positively. So I’ll leave that local government and go to another. So I’m going to have 33 LGAs to go to at the end of the day. And I know that will outlive me. No, I can’t take money from the government or my husband. No, no. Don’t even go there. Definitely not. But what I’m thinking about is how I’m going to make money to be able to help the people I want to. I’ll give you an example.

A woman came to my office, she had triplets, and she had two kids before. She had a cataract. Her husband is a driver earning, N5000 per month. And the landlord gave them a quit notice. I just looked at them, what can I do for them? So I said ok, I’ll get them another place, set the woman up, take care of the children. I have a lot of people I’m taking care of like that. I have a boy with a hole in his heart and I took him for surgery in Ghana and they said he was underweight so I’m feeding him now. The surgery will cost about 6000 Euros, and I’m not on salary. So we’ll do our best to impact on people positively.”