Give it to Femi Fani Kayode! He is indeed a master with words and regularly writes the kind of prose with some elements of poignancy, a reader’s delight I must add, given his penchant for causing seismic like shifts with his use of pun!
That said, FFK’s latest treatise which criticises the non teaching of history in our national curriculum is essential for a number of our policy makers to perhaps have a rethink and do an about turn on such via it’s reintroduction into our curriculum.
Truth remains that a people who are not familiar with their history have already lost a part of their consciousness, and it doesn’t much matter if such a generation describes itself as the “woke or soro soke” generation, if that generation is breaking boundaries and attaining feats worldwide, no!
So on this plank, I much agree with FFK, matter of fact I see the effects of such on a daily basis, particularly within the unguarded gateways of social media where many attempt to distort history and many more who are gullible lap such distortions as truth, becoming bigoted as they help disseminate such nonsense.
FFK, however fails to note that it is not only the GenZ that have the predilections to in his own words predicate and rationalise their nation’s existence on lies, misinformation, disinformation, falsehood, folklore, fairy tales, fantasy, self-serving and selective clap trap and a more than heavy dose of intellectual distortion and historical revisionism, even scholars and historical buffs such as himself can also be victims of what Kornberg Jaques (1933-2020) refers to as historical negationism or historical denialism.
In seeking to draw a bridge to nowhere, FFK attempts to explain the importance of the January 15 date, a date that houses two very remarkable events in the annals of our nation’s chequered history, first it witnessed the January 15, 1966 coup and second it was also the day that the Nigerian Biafran war came to it’s end with the surrender of Biafra’s number two man, Philip Effiong. Thus the date has since that period become the Armed Forces Memorial Day, to commemorate those officers and men who have repeatedly given their lives not only in that civil war but also in World Wars 1 and 2, a number of international peace keeping missions and the recent war against terrorism and banditry.
Read Also; CBN gears up for first MPC meeting under Cardoso
FFK mentions the bloody coup of January 15, 1966 and describes it as” the day where our seemingly unending troubles and turmoil really started.” It is at this point that the faux historian in FFK is unleashed otherwise the scion of the Fani Kayode dynasty would not attribute the nation’s problems to January 15 which was rather an intervention to stop the country from drifting into the abyss under the civilian leadership led by the Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa.
Fani Kayode forgets or at most attempts to negate that as at January the 14th, 1966 a number of sections of the Nigerian nation were up in flames, the Western Region had become a blood soaked land owing to the ‘ Operation Wetie’ crisis as a result of the massive rigging carried out in the Western Region elections of 1965 that had witnessed an Akintola boasting that even if the people of the region did not vote for him that he would still win and win he did with all the shenanigans that whilst celebrating the heist of that election, Remi Adetokumbo Fani Kayode was alleged to have declared Churchillian style that ” This is our finest hour” . Indeed, it was a fine hour in vote stealing and electoral malpractice, a precursor to what we were to experience in the Second Republic and this present one.
Fani Kayode has also forgotten the Tiv riots in which soldiers repeatedly massacred citizens of present day Benue State. Now, while Balewa had been quick to declare a state of emergency in the Western Region owing merely to a fight between parliamentarians , the same Balewa had much dawdled and even told the same audience that he had no power to declare same much in the wake of the bloodletting experienced therein.
Fani Kayode then goes for broke in his attempts to negate history by agreeing to the nauseating argument that the January 15th coup was an Igbo Coup and in his words described the coup as one in which the Igbos had “attempted to take power through the barrel of the gun and impose an ethnic and religious agenda.’
Try as much as he may Fani Kayode rcannot negate the roles played by John Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi Ironsi who rallied Federal troops to stop the coup from gaining any success in Lagos and Ibadan, again his selective amnesia may have also forgotten the other role played by Colonel Emeka Ojukwu who was in charge of the 5th battalion Kano refused to partake in the coup and even told Nzeogwu via the phone that he would not take orders from a Major. It is to his credit that the coup lost it’s verve in the North and in a couple of days Nzeogwu was to surrender to Ironsi. Were these men Yoruba or Birom? If these men played noble parts in shutting down the coup then how could the coup have been an Igbo Coup?
An Igbo Coup would have sought to entrench an Azikiwe or an M.I Okpara in power, or how else could they have imposed their ethnic and religious agenda as viley suggested by FFK if one of their own did not suceed. The likes of FFK know that the main thrust of the coup was for the release of an Obafemi Awolowo from Calabar Prison and his establishment as Premier of the nation, enamoured by his exploits as Premier, these young coupists including a Major Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba and the likes of Odia Ofeimun and several other witnesses to history have attested to such, if it was an Igbo Coup, I guess the great Obafemi Awolowo must have hailed from my native Enu Orofia Village in Abagana?
