Opinion: Femi Fani-Kayode: The Epitome Of Nigerian Politics

By Ugoji Egbujo

A child in an adult body. Nigerian politics is a rotten salad. And it’s awful because many of our politicians are rancid condiments, players with shallow consciences in crucial roles.

The central issue is the absence of accountability. Evil actions and vile words can be thrown. The politician is free to push the country to ruin. No criminal sanctions. No social sanctions. Gifted with such impunity, the politician sees the public as a toy—Lego pieces.

And politics is reduced to an exercise in reckless self-indulgence, an enterprise governed by shallowness and opportunism. With that state of affairs, the average politician regresses in thought and becomes a babbling child in an adult body. When the child steps out in the adult body, navel-gazing becomes his preoccupation and vainglory an ideal.

For six years, Fani Kayode struggled to shred the country. Everywhere he thought inflammable, he lit and threw a match. The child’s party lost in 2015, so he began stomping around. He swore the APC was an Islamic party, the vehicle for an imminent Fulani enslavement and subsequent Islamisation of the Christian south and middle belt. He punctuated his fables with bible verses, and many believed him.

Today, beloved Fani Kayode, oracle of the living God, dreams of backsliding into the bosom of the   Almajiri People’s Congress. He has flirted with the “Islamists” to the extent that Gov Yahaya Bello announced his full Islamization.

I like Fani Kayode. He is a shining example of a Nigerian politician. Received good education in England but lacking in basic civility. Gifted with a smart tongue but deficit in sobriety. Loud and emotional, he knows where the fault lines are. He is the sort of fellow you will want in your camp when everything has come down to gutter sniping. He has an infinite capacity to brainwash the gullible but has little interest in articulating developmental ideas. Perfect.

Politicians love  agberos. Because they believe people have to be bullied. Sophisticated  agberos  may not have the capacity for physical violence but they can do incitement, generate alternative reality. Nuisance value is value. Nuisance is particularly of great importance in Nigerian politics, where politicians lack self-belief and live make-believe. Fani Kayode is a consummate rabble-rouser. The country is filled with the excitable rabble. So do not be surprised that Femi Fani Kayode, despite his glaring and crippling moral handicaps, switches parties at will and marches straight to the pulpits.

When Fani Kayode abandoned his gospel of imminent  Foolanization  and submitted his head to a Zamfara Emir to be turbaned, I knew new mischief was afoot. The new Sadauki of Shinkafi has not disappointed. He has left millions of primed secession-seeking Igbo youths and eloped to that camp of the jihadists in the zoo in the interest of national unity. After setting fires on all the structures that hold the country together, the Sadauki is now masquerading a bridge-builder.

Femi Fani Kayode is one of the folks who think the public is perpetually asleep, perpetually under the spell of their smart tongues, or totally amnesic. Fani Kayode is a 60-year-old child who spends a sizable portion of his time fantasizing about his late father’s greatness. If Femi Fani Kayode has indeed come to any repentance, he must come before the public with remorse. He must recount his sins and forsake them. He must admit his trespasses, diabolically defamatory commentaries and demonic speeches. He must confess his bigotry and denounce it. He must disown megalomania.

In 2017, President Buhari took ill and flew to London. Men of goodwill wished him a speedy recovery. Evil men wished him death. Weeks later, depraved people said he had died in London. After the president returned to office, Femi Fani Kayode took to his megaphone to announce that a corpse was ruling over Nigeria. And he labeled the system of government in Nigeria as a “Corpocracy.”

Fani Kayode exhausted himself poisoning the minds of the people against the president and his party. Today Fani Kayode, apparently driven by 2023 calculations, has abandoned the young minds he poisoned with  corpsocratic sermons and revelations. He seeks to immerse himself in the  corpsocratic  communion in the interest of national unity.

Fani Kayode’s tweets in the last five years are mostly unprintable. I will reproduce one of them in the interest of political accountability. On the 19th of September 2019, at 5.51 am, Fani Kayode, perhaps after his morning devotion, dug deep into the gutter and tweeted an obscenity.

“If the short man doesn’t resign within 6 months, they will soon be sending him to wash toilets. U came in on the same ticket, U sold your soul, U betrayed ur people, ur tribe, ur region, and ur faith and you sucked ur boss’ rectum for four yrs! Look at what you got in return. Shame on you!”

That was the 60-year-old Cambridge lawyer, child of the living God blessing the vice president. The owner of the rectum referred to in the tweet is President Buhari.

Many say every reprobate can switch parties because no one can stop anybody from joining any party. Yes, I agree. They also say that politicians say many ugly things, which if held against them, there would be no politics. I agree too.

But if we allow politicians to get comfortable inciting division and violence when throwing tantrums, angling for chunks or crumbs, we will ruin the country.  If we encourage politicians to forgo moderation in speech and action by rewarding political arsonists with recognition and prominence, we will destroy society.

Take Governor Wike, for instance. I like him too. A bold and courageous man, isn’t he? One of the strongest opposition politicians today. Brash, crude, and vocal too. But he has been restrained in publicly describing the ruling party as a Fulani party or a vehicle for Islamisation. He has thrown innuendos, but he hasn’t encouraged secession. Wike isn’t the best model. But even that comparison throws bold relief on Femi Fani Kayode’s degeneration. Now compare Fani Kayode against Okowa. Let’s not go there.

It is true defections have become routine in Nigerian politics. Good and bad products have defected for genuine and comical reasons. Only two years ago, Fani Kayode thought defectors were prostitutes, cowards, and traitors. Six months ago, Dogara defected to the APC. Femi Fani Kayode went loose on him.

“I am convinced that the former Speaker has been put under a Luciferian spell and is the victim of some form of a demonic ritual, voodoo, and witchcraft. I expect nothing less from the APC because that is their stock in trade. They are a party whose leaders are well versed in the black arts, the occult, and sorcery.”

Six months later, Fani Kayode wants to become a member of the political wing of Boko haram in the interest of national unity. He wants to taste the rectum of Buhari. He wants to help Osinbajo wash toilets in Aso Villa.

Some say the shameless live better lives. They have no scruples. In that sense,  Fani Kayode is living the life. Igbos say if you want to eat a toad, then eat the juicy ones. Fani Kayode is smart. He is swallowing giant toads. Well done, my brother in Christ. You are the best player.   Have fun.

My hope is, the public sees and learns.

Egbujo, PhD, is a commentator on current and national issues, and writes for Vanguard Newspaper