The God of Obasanjo and Fani-Kayode Versus God of Nigeria

Just like many Nigerian citizens who have a strong inclination towards socio-political and topical issues concerning our country, I regularly scan the electronic pages of the periodicals that abound in Cyberspace for doses of Global events, intellectual stimulation, articles, news about events in Nigeria and Africa when I abruptly veered across a brilliant and stylistic masterpiece titled “Fani-Kayode: Ministerial Rascality taken too far!” authored by Farooq A Kperogi. I was held thrall by the sheer display of literary artistry by this maestro writer. Farooq A Kperogi deployed the usage of his prodigious oratory to robustly describe the Dishonorable Minister of Culture and Tourism of Nigeria called “Femi Fani-Kayode”. In the most compendious and readable manner, Farooq Kperogi demonstrated the consumate skills of a journalist, scholar and clearheaded commentator. My concord with his observation, description, commentary and averment about Femi Fani-Kayode is in totality. However, in this article, I shall attempt to add my voice to his patriotic vociferation and make my own dialectic analysis on Femi Fani-Kayode, President Obasanjo and the God both of them claim to serve.

First of all, intellectual integrity demands that I pay deserving tribute to the handsome man called “Femi Fani-Kayode” for his well-heeled academic heritage and erudition. His commanding power of English language is simply scintillating and coruscating. Sometimes, the way he talks makes me jealous. His brilliant and scholarly stint at Cambridge University eloquently demonstrates his cerebral finery. His sophistication in blandishment which makes Information dissemination a viable vocation for him testifies to his profoundness and savvy of communication. He is specially endowed with prodigious gift of oratorical garb which allows him to talk with remarkable glibness laced with furtive eloquence in seductiveness. These are the qualities he possesses in overflow of abundance while casting his stealthy spell on the unsuspecting victims – like he did to the bunch of Nigerian elders who converge in the house called “Senate” during his screening as a Minister.

Lest I forget, Femi Fani-Kayode is also a physically powerful man. No, not because he is a Minister in Nigerian Government and security aides around him; Femi Fani-Kayode is a Professional boxer who has never lost a fight in his boxing career. So, when my brother, Farooq Kperogi, reiterated that Femi Fani-Kayode “led a rebellion of some ministers to kick Vice President Atiku Abubakar out of the last Federal Executive Council meeting”, I boisterously giggled. Thank God that Vice President Atiku Abubakar respected himself by leaving the FEC meeting honorably. Otherwise, Femi Fani-Kayode would have beaten him to pulp for his corrupt practices before handling him to Ribabu like he has done to his many opponents who only recovered at the various ICUs of different Hospitals.

On a more serious note, aside the aforementioned threshold of his ebullience, Femi Fani-Kayode is an embodiment of everything despicable in a man. The avalanche of notoriety which his name has garnered in the eyelid of our participatory politics is weighty and mighty. His gusto to showcase imperviousness to shame and discretion has no example. His excessive impertinence to decorum and civility is simply inconceivable. Just like his late father, who was certified in villainy, abrasiveness, vacuity and peccadillo, Femi Fani-Kayode has also, in Farooq Kperogi’s elegant words, elevated vulgarity, coarseness, and infantilism to an art. But in slight contrast, the opprobrious and contumelious trademarks of his father have been reinforced by the greater muscularity in his beloved son – Femi. In other words, just as Yorubas succinctly put it: “Omo tekun be bi, ekun ni o joo” – Tiger’s progeny must bear the semblance of a Tiger. Hence, Femi Fani-Kayode is an eloquent exemplar of what Yorubas refer to as “Omo iran kiran” – an offspring of perverted lineage.

The bout of repulsion that grips my spirit whenever l read and hear his impudent contumely in defense of President Obasanjo is indescribable. These feelings come from Fani-Kayode’s audacious and ribald subculture. He depicts the image of a scumbag who places expediency above principle that defies social and moral tenets. Just before his wanton elevation to oversee the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, he, not once or twice, venomously beleaguered many notable Nigerians because of disagreeing with the blind policies of the President. Professor Wole Soyinka, General Yakubu Gowon, Audu Ogbeh, Professor Achebe, United States government, et al, have not been spared in this inane battery by Femi Fani-Kayode. In a civilized clime, such a churlish orchid would have forfeited his appointment but, alas, the reverse is always the case in Federal republic of Nigeria. After dragging Nigerians with nobility of spirit in the mud of vilification and invective for decrying the incompetence, decadence and crudity that have enveloped our Nation, President Olusegun Obasanjo surprisingly and rewardingly accorded Femi Fani-Kayode with the ascendancy and priesthood of overseeing the sanctum sanctorum of Ministry of Culture and Tourism. As defined, aberration is a State or condition markedly different from the norm. The decision of our President to make Femi Fani-Kayode the Minister of Culture and Tourism defies the definition of aberration. The question that pervades my mind is this: “Did President Obasanjo forget his decency and gumption in prison cell in which he was plucked?”

For instance, after his release from the prison at the behest of progressive Nigerians who worked tirelessly for his release, Obasanjo was a broken man, both mentally and materially. Shortly after his rehabilitation, PDP as a political Party was formed. Obasanjo contributed nothing whatsoever in the formation of PDP but became an absentee landlord who reaped where he didn’t sow. In order to wield autocratic ascendancy and dominance, he drove out the founding fathers of the Party. President Obasanjo single-handedly destroyed PDP by appointing his unethical cronies with all sorts of criminal records. Today, the criminal godfather of Anambra State, Chris Uba, a man who can hardly read and write his name is a member of PDP Board of Trustees. When Dr Alex Ekwueme was the Chairman of PDP Board of Trustees, all other members of the board were men and women who distinguished themselves in their respective fields of endeavor. Today, Chief Anineh, a dismissed Assistant Police Commissioner is the Chairman Board of Trustees and he has imported all sorts of jiggery-pokery and duplicity into the Party. As if this crassitude was not galling enough, another wretched twirp known as Iyiola Omisore, who blatantly assaulted the then Minister of Justice in Obasanjo’s Government, Chief Bola Ige, at a public function was not only admitted into PDP, but elevated to the hallowed chamber of the highest legislative body in the Country called “Senate” as the Chairman of one of House Committees. This ignoble chutzpah compelled a sound and undefiled mind like Professor Wole Soyinka to objurgate the vacuity of the President and his cursed political party, PDP, of dancing on Ige’s grave. Like we were all aware at that time, this precipitated in a celebrated verbal exchange between Professor Wole Soyinka and the President. But lo and behold, Femi Fani-Kayode’s fatigued existence is disconnected from world of commonsense and reason; he descended into his usual abyss of ballistic bunkum and boorishness by calling Professor Wole Soyinka unprintable names and denigrating epithets. Femi Fani-Kayode, a born-again Christian, together with one New York-based rookie lawyer called “Paul Adujie”, criticized Professor Wole Soyinka of irresponsibility for raising his Voice against the Obasanjo. Most recently, he went to the extent of vowing not to respond to Soyinka again because the old man does not believe in God like him!

!! Even though some impeccable sources reveal that Femi Fani-Kayode is a certificated patient of psychiatric treatment at a certain point in time, the question is: what pride and pleasure does he educe from demonstrating his lunatic proclivities to the whole world? It has never ceased to amaze or stupefy to watch with studied silence, the madness that animates and impels our brother, Femi Fani-Kayode, and its misfit as aberrations to decorum and civility.