The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Fani

  • Fani leads ‘em to Kigali

    Fani leads ‘em to Kigali

    Femi Fani-Kayode is strutting to Kigali.  Yet, the Yoruba nation — at least its media-savvy denizens — barge along, too angry, it appears, to remember their essence.

    When did the cherished Omoluabi credo (in-born nobility, founded on honour, equity and justice) start endorsing criminality, simply because the alleged perpetrator is Yoruba?

    Or what else do you call this rabid atavism over the Ile-Ife crisis, except giving tribal cover to heinous crime and brazen criminality?

    What is this — some early-day hubris, of a people set to fall upon their proud heritage of uncompromising fairness, as a diminished Roman great would fall on his own sword?

    Or a more sinister end-stage decadence, of a people that boast nothing now but once-upon-a-time fairness?

    These are troubling questions.  But they demand rigorous answers, in the hysteria of the moment.

    It started with Fani’s usually tendentious pieces (this one, a two-piece grenade) that gave the Ife crisis the stark colouration of ethnic saints and sinners.  Yet, the miscreants involved, Yoruba or Hausa-Fulani, are suspected criminals.

    Why, good old Femo, flush with emotive lather, even branded himself the Hitler of the moment!  That ought to have exposed his sinister motive.

    But no!  Other Yoruba leaders and pressure groups have jumped into the fray, each and everyone rippling with a rather explosive dose of Yoruba ultra-nationalism!

    Without risking an ad hominem fallacy, you could see through the early launchers of this emotive war, fired from tribal missiles.

    Femi Fani-Kayode has gained unfettered notoriety for cunning emotional claptrap, disguised as some reasoned real deal.  Though only the obtuse get hooked, that tribe boasts great numbers in today’s Nigeria.

    Between the old Afenifere and the Buhari Presidency, there appears no love lost; since the grandees so spectacularly backed the wrong horse at the 2015 elections.

    With disturbing Yoruba ultra-nationalism issuing from the Afenifere camp, “Hausa-Fulani”, to that frazzled assembly, sounds like throwing the red flag at a snorting bull.  Add downtown rage from the Odua People’s Congress (OPC) and allied clans, and you may well see, in full emotive gargoyle, howlers from 2015, seeking some rogue closure to their pain.

    But the real surprise, in the trending Yoruba ultra-nationalism, using the Yoruba cradle as launch pad, would appear the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG).  That is the real tragedy, for though ARG is proudly Yoruba — and correctly and unapologetically so — its reasoned mien, since it broke away, tended to shun the supremacist gait of its pristine elder cousin.  All that seemed melted with the ARG response to the Ife crisis.

    The problem with ultra-nationalism, in a delicate federation, is  that it is good for no one.  Not a few believe “Hausa-Fulani” ultra-nationalism is expressed in the notorious “Fulani herdsmen”, that kill with murderous bravura and satanic flourish.  That has set the whole of the southern media in a tailspin of rage.

    But that scalding rage, which belches visceral hatred across regional and ethnic lines, is counter-media terrorism, which erects an intriguing match-up between physical and psychological siege.

    The Fulani herdsman slits the throat.  The hate-belching media rips the soul.  The situation is lose-lose, for the innocents, on both sides, are tarred and cooked.

    The herdsman libels his race as free-wheeling, conscienceless killers.  The howling media damns a whole people as murderous monsters, beyond redemption; and those it defends as primeval bigots.

    That can only point to the blood-soaked road to Kigali, on which hate-filled Rwandans killed first, reasoned later — when it was too late!  A shocked globe reclined from that horror!

    The Fulani antipathy, which shaped much of the reaction to the Ife crisis, and the role of the state in it all, lead the discourse right back to the subject.

    There is a strong case to be made against the alleged lop-sided arrests in the Ife communal dispute.  It takes two to tango; and apparent one-sided arrests are bound to set the alarm bells clanging for fairness.

    The Police had better issue a convincing explanation, or they risk being charged with odious partisanship; and perceived as aiding  and abetting ethnic crimes, thus actively undermining the state.  That is tragic — and treasonable.

    Frankly, President Muhammadu Buhari and his security apparatus have earned fair blame over the rampaging killer herdsmen.  These guys are felons, who the state should bring to heel and fast.  The more the Federal Government tarries over these heinous criminals, the more the president gets gravely de-marketed, along ethnic lines.

    But it is sheer fallacy to hang, on the president’s neck, the crime of a few “Hausa-Fulani”; and go ahead to hint, as many of these media reports do, at culpable presidential enabling for this gory criminality.

    For all the president’s faults, he is no devious fellow.  Besides, such supposition is illiterate and wilful.  No self-respecting media pushes such a line.

    Unfortunately, that is the line Fani is wilfully pushing on the Ife crisis, with the other so-called Yoruba leaders in tow.  But really — Yoruba leaders?  Or just soulless dealers, in willy-nilly relevance, mortally scared of creeping but sure oblivion?

    Let every felon — Hausa, Fulani or Yoruba — be arrested for their ignoble role, in the Ife fracas.  But let no one, pleading alleged lop-sided arrests, push to spring genuine criminals, under the cover of ethnic solidarity.  Failure to do justice to all leads to two fatal passes.

    One junction leads to Kigali.  Perceived government cover for crimes, under ethnic sympathy, arouses the explosive ghost of Hutu-Tutsi antipathy, that brought Rwanda to its knees, after its security agencies had been thoroughly demarketed and devalued, incidentally, by its hurting media.  It is baiting avoidable anarchy.

    The other, no less suicidal, is the road to Mogadishu.  That should be of riveting interest to the Yoruba nation.  Somalia fell upon itself, despite being of essentially one ethnic stock, because it harboured wilful criminality among its own.

    After the Kiriji War of the 19th century, is the Yoruba breeding certified felons to plague its future, whether inside or outside Nigeria?

    That is what you do when you rationalize criminality in the Yoruba cradle, simply because the victims are “other people”.

  • Their Fani has gone mad again

    Patriotism, goes the saying, is the last bastion of the scoundrel.  You can trust the Brits, they of the stiff upper lip — and quick, laconic wit to boot — to cut to the chase and summarily dismiss any grandstanding posturer, even before he forms the posturing in his mind.

    Not here.  That is why a fellow like Femi Fani-Kayode would always luxuriate in explosive mischief, cock sure he would get away with it:  the dense, trapped by his enchanting mischief; the state, yielding to blackmail, instead of nipping in the bud a growing clear and present danger.

    Meanwhile, the human rights orchestra are funereally mute — until cranked to life, when the lunatic fringe get their due comeuppance, from a thoroughly exasperated state.

    This bloke, with his penchant for ethnic chauvinism, devilish baiting and hate-mouthing may well be baiting the country towards the road to Kigali.

    Some Rwandans, in Fani-Kayode’s image, started the Rwandan hatred pyre.  But when the hideous flame and putrid smell of the big funeral fire hit the global eye and nostril, the whole world reclined in sheer horror.

    A violence, indescribable and condemnable, just hit Ife, the cradle of the Yoruba.  From reports, that was no organised mayhem between two ethnics  in the  Sabo neighbourhood of downtown Ife.  It was rather  miscreants from both divides that took the law into their hands and embarked on free arson, stealing and murder.

    It therefore behoves any right-thinking member of the elite, to which Fani-Kayode belongs, to approach the crisis with utmost sensitivity.  But no.  He must throw  ethnic bigotry into the fray.

    From his hate-infested eyes, nothing mattered: not the arson, not the murder, not the rupturing of the peace, for something that started as a quarrel between two people.  What mattered was the ethnic colour of the arsonist, of the murderer, of the anarchist.

    In this Fani-Kayodesque mischief, which eerily teems with a Kafkaesque  distortion of the original, this bloke, in a diseased piece two-part serial for a newspaper, weaves a sickening tale of ethnic combat, and practically goaded his own ethnic saints to go crush the virtual infidels polluting their geographical space — and this in a country of law!

    He demonised everyone involved in the post-mayhem peace-building.  Osun Governor, Rauf Aregbesola, he dismissed as a “coward”; Kano’s former Governor, Rabiu Kwankwanso, invited to soothe the ruffled nerves of his hurting people, he dismissed as some illicit viceroy, of some phantom imperialists in Fani-Kayode’s hateful mind.

    And the security agencies, who must work at justice for everybody.  He claimed, without any hard evidence, that they were skewed partisans in the matter!

    In his bid to court chaos, Fani-Kayode may well be beyond redemption.  The state should therefore do something before he turns this space into another Rwanda or Somalia.

    As for news media lending their space to Fani-Kayode’s strange fulminations, well, Rwanda is yet another golden example.  If he ever gets his comeuppance, they would — and justly too — partake of that bitter but due pill.

    If you doubt, ask the managers of, and presenters on, the hate-blaring  Kigali Radio, now in the International Criminal Court (ICC) slammer.

  • Fani talks the talk

    The Tinubu-Odigie-Oyegun tiff, in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has landed a most surprising sympathiser-in-chief, Olufemi Olu-Kayode (formerly Femi Fani-Kayode).

    Perhaps in no time, his namesake and tag-team partner in peculiar public commentary, Femi Aribisala, would be swooning and talking-in-tongue, in explosive anger, purportedly in Tinubu’s corner — and you could guess: political end-time is here.

    With such friends, Hardball can clearly declare, you need no more enemies.

    But back to Fani.  With an introductory apologia, he dived into the fray, splashing a happy water of confusion to announce his triumphant entry.

    Then having quite a swell time, half-sympathy, half-gloating but over all mischievous, he rushed, posthaste, to partition the dramatis personae into saints and sinners.

    In Fani’s mischievous realm of logical emotions (no contradictions here, Hardball assures you!), there is no grey.  Just black or white — and those two extremes are made even starker than they really are by Fani’s explosive hyperboles!

    For the excitable and unperceptive, Fani has firmly billeted himself in Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s camp, against his mortal intra-APC enemies.  But hey, by his explosive power of emotive logic, only perhaps a Fani can muster; he even appeared to be making eminent sense.

    But don’t be deceived: Fani is in nobody’s camp, except his own. So, don’t you be starry-eyed about anything he says. In fairness though, there was some child-like innocence at the end of that intervention — that wish that his comatose Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) were strong enough to take advantage; and romp back to power in 2019!

    For PDP, everything starts and ends with power, doesn’t it?

    So, Fani’s motive is crystal clear: as much as he ripples with rage, he is no mother hen protecting a chick in danger; but an over-excited vulture swooping down at the sight — in any case, the prospect — of carrion!

    The APC feuding partisans must therefore know: a fight-to-the-finish would benefit no one but the same reactionary forces, which Fani-Kayode unfazedly represents, that have rendered Nigeria prostrate for too long.

    Which is why APC chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun’s measured response to the Tinubu allegations is reassuring. Tempers may be high now; with the feuding camps threatening to go for the kill. But it is always good to keep a measure of calm — such calm that retains justified anger, without vaulting it into madness!

    Nevertheless, Chief Odigie-Oyegun’s measured response cannot be enough, though it has helped by not further stoking the fire. The allegations against him are weighty; and if true, concern basic fairness and justice. That should not be tolerated, if APC were to escape the PDP nemesis, of brazen intra-party injustice.

    Still, whatever the problems, APC should be mature enough to handle it: right wrongs and ensure justice and fairness.

    It should never be the likes of Fani’s call, playing sympathisers-in-chief.

    That would be unfortunate, indeed, an epochal tragedy for a nation, if allowed to happen.

    Nothing but mischief can come out of Fani’s house of politics.

  • Fani power takes the cake

    This is the Femi Fani-Kayode season. Things are going his way. When former President Olusegun Obasanjo thought the men handling publicity for him were too decent, he sent for Fani Power to take charge and take things along a different course. Where the matronly Mrs. Remi Oyo would simply set records straight, Fani is gifted with expletives. Anyone who as much as criticized his principal would earn himself abuses and curses. No one was spared. To Femi Fani-Kayode, President Olusegun Obasanjo was a god and whoever offended the Number One Citizen deserved to be verbally assaulted. He performed the task so well that he earned promotion from a lowly presidential media aide to a minister.

    He performed so well too that President Goodluck Jonathan, at the time in Bayelsa state, took note of the change. As President, he must have noticed that Dr. Reuben Abati is too tame and decent in his releases and thus felt the need to engage Femi’s services. And, I believe that he is not disappointed. Since the Ile-Ife-born politician took charge of campaign propaganda, the fountain of expletives has displayed its beauty. Where there was no issue, he ingeniously came up with one. He found nothing wrong with aligning with Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose in suggesting that general Buhari would not last the distance. He invented a secret pact allegedly signed by Professor Yemi Osinbajo vacate office for Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

    I got to know Femi when he came as a guest to a Vanguard Forum in Abuja before the 2007 general elections. He was then nursing the ambition of contesting the Osun State governorship primary in the Peoples Democratic Party. We exchanged contacts, but did not take it further. As a rule I am not attracted to people I consider loud. Not long after that chance meeting, Fani Power chose Professor Wole Soyinka as target of his verbal ballistic missiles. I felt so strongly about it that it formed the thrust of my column in Vanguard then. I replied that he ought to have recognized the Professor as a literary icon, academic giant and nationaly hero who had been conscience of a sick country since Femi was a toddler giggling as he played with toys in Ibadan. Femi could not bear it. As soon as he read it in the morning, he put a call through and lamented that I betrayed a non-existent friendship. And, before I could reply him, he had dropped. He followed up by complaining to mu colleague and friend, Mr. Kunle Oyatomi who was then editor of Sunday Vanguard.

    A few years later, by which time I was already at The Nation as Group Political Editor, Femi found a way of getting in touch with an article he wanted published. I obliged him. But, in introducing the piece, he was given the universal title MR. He complained that he ought to have been appropriately titled. While apologizing, I pointed out that many illustrious Nigerians, including Mr. Akintola Williams and Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola have taken no titles, traditional or even academic. The man would refer to me as “aburo” without bothering to know my age. It was enough that I work with a newspaper and must therefore be younger. He was quick to jump to the same conclusion in relating with my friend and brother, seun Ogunseitan who is four years older.

    In recent times, Fani Power’s drum has been very loud. He would defend anything Jonathan and attack anyone who as much as suggests that the President has fallen short of the expectation of rational Nigerians. The spokesman for the President Jonathan campaign Organisation is in his elements when he has to swim in polluted and troubled waters. At such times, he seeks others he could drag in with him, especially if the person has his aso ala (white dress) on. And, when such a person expresses discomfiture at the fate that has befallen him, Femi would have his hearty laugh. The Late Chief Bola Ige said of the late Chief Akintola in one of his books that the man could weave something around any political opponent knowing such a story was merely a figment of his imagination. Similarly, Femi’s imagination is very fertile.

    There are two reasons for this piece. One, those who occupy public offices should be taught to employ decorum. Even a Fami fani-Kayode could be prevailed upon to apply decency in his communication. Two, those who are easily drawn to engaging the deacon in verbal brawl should realize that he is a master of such combats. They should know that, like the proverbial man dressed in white apparel; they should maintain a good distance from the man bearing a full load of palm oil.

    It is our collective duty to redirect the campaign to focus on issues. Characteristically,, since Femi was brought in, the focus has been diverted to personalities and inanities. Nigeria deserves a better campaign in the 21st century.

  • Fani-Kayode’s incredible illogic

    Fani-Kayode’s incredible illogic

    Yesterday, nearly all newspapers gave generous treatment to Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s snide remarks on President Goodluck Jonathan’s dismissal of the Odi invasion. The president had during his recent media chat made wry comments on former president Olusegun Obasanjo’s methods of fighting terrorism. Obasanjo, who pictures himself a strong leader, had in Warri on the occasion of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor’s 40th anniversary of pastoral work sanctimoniously declared that Jonathan was ineffective in fighting Boko Haram. The former president pointedly gloated over the orders he gave in 1999 for the invasion of Odi, Bayelsa State. Said he: “My fear is that when you have a sore and you don’t attend to it early enough, it festers and becomes very bad. Don’t leave a problem that can be bad unattended…I attended to a problem that I saw; I sent soldiers. They were killed, 19 of them (were) decapitated. If I had allowed that to continue, I would not have the authority to send security anywhere again. I attended to it. If you say you do not want a strong leader, who can have all the characteristics of a leader, including the fear of God, then, you have a weak leader and the rest of the problem is yours.”

    Apparently incensed, but doing his best to hide it, Jonathan had retorted during the said media chat: “After that invasion, myself (as deputy governor) and the governor entered Odi…and saw some dead people. Most of the people that died in Odi were mostly old men, women and children; none of the militants was killed. If bombarding Odi was to solve the problem, then it was never solved. If the attack on Odi had solved the problem of militancy in the Niger Delta, then the Yar’ Adua government would not have come up with the amnesty programme. So, that should tell you that the attack on Odi never solved the militancy problem and we had more challenges after that attack on Odi.” Jonathan was referring to a recent part of our history, a part most of us were witnesses to. How could anyone fault this verifiable account?

    But Fani-Kayode is not anyone. He knows how to get water from a rock; and in spite of his well- known irreverence and what his detractors describe as his facile tendency to apostasy, he knows how to procure the miracle of turning the bitter waters of Marah to sweet, and effecting changes in colours without being a chemist. Responding to Jonathan’s rebuttal of Obasanjo’s unkind characterisation of the president, he had tendentiously declared: “After the Federal Government’s strong military response in Zaki Biam, the killing of security personnel with impunity stopped. The objectives of the military operations in both Odi and Zaki Biam were to stop such killings, to eliminate and deal a fatal blow to those that perpetuated them and to discourage those that may seek to carry out such barbarous butchery and mindless violence in the future…By doing what he did at Odi and Zaki Biam President Obasanjo saved the lives of many and put a stop to the killings and terrorism that had taken root in the Niger Delta area previous to that time…He brought justice to the perpetrators quickly and promptly and he did whatever he had to do to protect the lives and property of the Nigerian people.”

    Did Fani-Kayode respond to Jonathan’s observation that no militant was killed in 1999 at Odi, and that the old general’s sense of decisiveness and justice were grossly perverted? No. He simply sidetracked it by waffling about security goals achievable through indiscriminate, state-sponsored killings. Both Obasanjo and Fani-Kayode in fact gave the impression that collateral damage in security operations was acceptable. Worse, they even suggest that scorched-earth approach is an effective deterrent to criminality. Fani-Kayode talks of barbarism in his rejoinder without really knowing what it means or who to apply it to: is it to those who ambushed opposing soldiers and policemen and murdered them; or to a government that destroys two communities of women and children and the innocent in order to punish fleeing militants? One, it seems, should be tried in a local court; and the second doubtless should be tried for crimes against humanity.