Femi Fani Kayode’s recent article “PDP’S Great Betrayal And The Choice Before The APC” is a classic example of ‘hate speech.’ In the above-named article, he literally called for an ethnic and religious pogrom! I’ve read the article an umpteenth time.
In his ill-advised publication, Fani Kayode described politics as “difficult game filled with intrigue, betrayal and treachery. It is murky, it is foggy, it is dark, it is treacherous, it is full of intrigue and mystery and nothing is as it seems or appears.” True as this may look, considering the peculiar politics of Nigeria, Fani Kayode was actually describing himself!
FFK is betrayal personified. And many who were gullible enough to trust him or accord him the benefit of the doubt, have been left decimated in his treacherous trail. He is a man with the unenviable penchant to bite the hands that feed him. Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and Dr Goodluck Jonathan are living victims of his résumé of treachery!
It is on record that the PDP as a party has hitherto favoured the supposed “South” of the country in the choice of its presidential flagbearer. This is an incontrovertible fact. In the 16 years of the PDP in power at the federal level, two zones from the South held sway for thirteen years and three months. This was via Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (eight years) and Dr Goodluck Jonathan (five years and three months). Under the PDP, the North held presidential power for less than two years and nine month (via the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua).
Since the 2003 presidential elections, Femi Fani Kayode’s newfound paymasters have not only fielded Northern candidates, but they have persistently fielded one single candidate, Muhammadu Buhari. They did so in five consecutive elections – 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019.
Thus, Mr Fani Kayode should have directed his vituperations to his newfound paymasters in the APC. Instead, he vilifies the PDP, a party that has thus far fielded candidates from the South four times in the six rounds of presidential elections since 1999.
2023 will be the seventh round of presidential elections. By next year, therefore, PDP would have fielded southern candidates on four occasions, as against three times for north. If this does not reflect equity, fairness, and fair-play, I wonder what does!
Fani Kayode mentioned Ohanaeze Ndigbo in his debasing diatribe. It was uplifting to read a rejoinder to refute a similar write-up contained in another rogue publication. In its repudiation, the revered umbrella body of Ndigbo worldwide described them as “mischief-makers, impostors, charlatans and unscrupulous social climbers who have shamelessly leeched on the invaluable footprints of Ohanaeze Ndigbo to issue press releases for narrow, perverse and illicit pecuniary interests. It is the unwholesome activities of such maladjusted, impish scaremongers that have been the bane of Igbo cohesion.”
It is hoped that Mr Fani Kayode takes heed of this principled pronouncement.
In his myopic assessment of the PDP presidential primaries (an event monitored by both local and foreign media, and beamed via livetelecast to a global audience), he failed to mention the underhand, last-minute extension of the deadline of the presidential primaries! A development that was obviously designed to favour the ruling APC who still appear rudderless and clueless as to how to simply “organize” a credible convention.
As noted by ace-writer, scholar and journalist, Dr Reuben Abati, “The extension was announced on the eve of the PDP Presidential Convention after the party was no longer in a position to shift its own programme.”
Dr Abati continued thus: “This was at a point when the main opposition party could no longer benefit from the extension, and its rival, theruling APC would have the opportunity of spying on the outcome of the neighbour’s primary. To the extent that INEC is expected to be completely neutral and independent, its decision to shift the goal-post in the middle of the game was ill-advised.”
Fani Kayode described his own people of the South West as “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. He accused the PDP of giving its ticket to “a man who is the best of friends with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, the defender-in-chief of the terrorists of the north-west”. I began to wonder if he was referring to President Buhari.
Ahmad Gumi is an avowed loyalist of Mr. President. In the same article, and in what I believe was an unintended intellectual somersault, Fani Kayode revealed the dictatorial undersides of Buhari and the APC! He insists that in choosing its presidential candidate, Buhari holds the “Yam and the Knife” that he could do that with “Just one phone call”.
In his exact words, Fani Kayode tells us to “make no mistake about it, this decision is Buhari’s and his alone. He alone will most likely determine who APC will field and where that person comes from. If he chooses to stop any presidential aspirant from emerging even at this late stage he can do so, no matter how popular, rich and powerful that aspirant may be.”
In his final submission, Fani Kayode prescribed where Nigeria’s political parties should pick their presidential candidates from. In his words: “I am on record as saying that the three zones that ought to be considered for the nomination before others are the South-East, North-Central and North-East and I stand by that.” Well, Atiku Is North-East!
In spewing his characteristic tirades which he always laces with his customary sophistry, Mr Fani Kayode abandons facts. He’d rather nestle his false arguments in his pseudo-reality: his own version of home-grown prose.
It is interesting to read Fani-Kayode’s repeated resort to quoting the Bible and turning the same on its head. But as Shakespeare points out in “The Merchant of Venice” one can see through Fani Kayode’s mischievous duplicity for even “The Devil can cite the Scripture for his purpose.”
In conclusion, I will beseech those those whose attention and funding he seeks to attract with his serial descent to black propaganda to be wary. Those betrayed by Mr Femi Fani-Kayode litter our political space like speckled dots on a leopard’s back!
–Balogun, a public affairs analyst writes from Ibadan
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