Tag: Femi Fani-Kayode

To get involved in any discourse with Femi Fani Kayode, the ‘most brilliant’ Nigerian polemicist, must be the equivalent of throwing oneself into a conundrum

It is curious how some scions of thoroughly illustrious Yoruba fathers easily lose it once they are close to the power loop and this is usually in spite of being very educated in their own right. Examples are too many to delay us here but writing recently on the phenomenon, Dr Jide Oluwajuyitan of The Nation attributed it to an infernal fear of having to live below the stinking opulence they were used to growing up. But should that be enough reason to lose one’s integrity and overall bearing?

To get involved in any  discourse with  Femi Fani Kayode, the ‘most brilliant’ Nigerian polemicist, must be the equivalent of throwing oneself into a conundrum of unending self promotion by a man who so loves  President  Jonathan any criticism of the number one citizen is a dagger in his throat.  Femi obviously has more than enough reasons to love a man who has the power to cause the EFCC, or any anti-graft body for that matter, to withdraw court cases, even if there are enough grounds to secure conviction. Add to this the need for the young man to be adequately compensated for dumping the APC.  It is small matter if, like he did to former President Obasanjo, he had severally thrashed the president before his Pauline conversion in an archetypical case of crass opportunism.

Let me briefly narrate a not too dissimilar story. I once wrote on these pages an article that was very critical of my aburo, Akin Osuntokun.  That was during the Obasanjo era when he, Fani-Kayode and Segun Awolowo were top men in the Villa with Fani Kayode  eagerly playing  the president’s armour bearer, throwing tantrums at whoever it was who disagreed with President Obasanjo on any issue.  Osuntokun, not exactly as acerbic, was not particularly far behind. That was what triggered my article.  Being Obasanjo’s blue-eyed boys, Akin could very easily have got me arrested and heavens would not have fallen.

But he chose differently. He telephoned me, remonstrating: Egbon, you were very unkind to me in your column today and he went on to explain why, out of sympathy to an old man, he felt constrained to always defend President Obasanjo who, in truth, was having a real bad press.  I then asked him if he knew a certain Segun Awolowo to which he said, of course, yes. I went further to ask if he had ever seen him insult anybody to which he said no, even though they were both in Obasanjo’s service.

I then reminded him that, like Segun, he too is from a lofty pedigree and should therefore be guided in whatever he does. Not once again did I see him roughly address anybody in defence of Obasanjo.  Not so a truculent Fani Kayode who forever sees himself in superlatives and as having a divine right to act with impunity. Nobody, not a Wole Soyinka or a Muhammadu Buhari, is immune to his uncultured tongue.

Now, coming to matters of the moment, if anything surprised me in his recent tirade titled: Some Hard Questions For The Buharists, it is the statement credited to Opeyemi Agbaje, an astute professional I had interacted with severally.  According to Fani-Kayode, the following are Ope’s questions: ”How come the only debates we have in Nigeria are over a “Muslim-Muslim” ticket? How come the opposition party’s instincts are always in that direction-Nuhu Ribadu/Fola Adeola? How come a discussion of a Christian-Christian presidential ticket is completely inconceivable? How come Buhari, who even in a military regime instituted a Muslim-Muslim/North-North ruling clique along with Idiagbon and eight or nine out of 11 Supreme Military Council members, is now testing the ground again with another possible Muslim-Muslim pairing? Is it that we have a shortage of capable Christians in Nigeria?”

Given Agbaje’s  assiduity,  these questions  should rather  be  directed to  a  president  for whom,  going to Jerusalem, when not kneeling before pastors, has  become an annual ritual.  The president it is, who not only frequents Jerusalem but ensures that jet-owning pastors are in tow. He, it is, who has completely politicised religion that integrity and efficiency have been pushed far into the background as determining factors for office. Opeyemi should cast his mind back to 2011 and tell Nigerians who and who were more qualified to take Nigeria out of its present morass than the duo of Nuhu Ribadu and Fola Adeola.  These are relatively young men you would never see romancing corruption or directing that corruption charges be withdrawn from courts; men who will never protect corrupt ministers or aides. It is essentially to mask these foibles, these predilections in some quarters, that religion has been deliberately imported, as a façade, into our politics.

As to why not a Christian -Christian ticket, the APC as a thinking party, must reasonably walk away from the religious booby traps the president and his minders, especially the CAN leadership, have woven into our politics. A ticket of same religion has since been rendered completely unreasonable for any party that wants to win election. Nor could it be a Muslim/Muslim ticket for the same reasons and the eagerness of the Metuh’s of this world to dub the APC a Moslem party. APC is considering a Moslem Presidential candidate because equity demands that it should be the turn of the mostly Muslim North to have its turn at the presidency, come 2015, or for how long can we keep a part of the country away from power in a democracy?

Fani Kayode also quoted the views of one Oladeji in support of his quaint views but to treat those views with more than a benign neglect is to waste precious time on nothing.  Described by Fani Kayode as a seasoned and experienced journalist on the stable of Mr Nda Isaiah’s Leadership newspaper, it should not be difficult to see where Oladeji is coming from and what motivations drive him.

Fani Kayode’s uneasiness is, however, much simpler, as he personally elected to put himself in a bind by promising what he could not deliver.  His defecting to the APC, in the first place, is allegedly, the result of a promise he gave to a well-heeled northerner to influence the emergence of a Christian northerner as APC’s presidential candidate. He bolted the minute he saw the futility of that self-inflicted assignment. We should therefore expect more of his diatribes against APC leaders as we inch towards the elections. Only that this time around, he demonstrated a level of illogicality so unbecoming of one so seemingly brilliant.

Among other things, he had written:

“… in the APC-controlled Lagos State today 80 per cent of State House of Assembly members are Muslims, 80 per cent of Local Government Area Chairmen are Muslims, 80 per cent of National Assembly members are Muslims and 80 per cent of Commissioners and key government functionaries are Muslims.  It is also a fact that every single state that is under the control of the APC in the south west today is governed by a Muslim whilst 90 per cent of APC governors throughout the Federation are Muslims’. Then he concludes jubilantly: ‘That is the APC for you. With them you will never see what you will get until it is too late.”

Now if this young man were in full control of himself, shouldn’t he have remembered that this had been the position long before the merger of the parties and the founding of APC?  This inexplainable gaffe should be enough to tell Nigerians how desperation has driven Fani-Kayode to his misadventures.

Having also failed miserably to add any value to Senator Omisore’s quest for the governorship seat in Osun State, in respect of which he must have characteristically promised much to his new friends, and given his gift of the garb, I will advise this young man to try his schemes towards emerging a top member of the Jonathan  campaign; that is, if his  loquaciousness would not turn awry for both party and candidate.