Anyone who thought Femi Fani-Kayode’s controversial return to the All Progressives Congress (APC) party last week was out of character certainly did not understand the man. The man is known to be unpredictable, inconsistent and, above all, abusive. To understand the man, you need to understand the roles he played at various times in history. To understand those roles, you also need to revisit his time as special assistant to the President with responsibility for public affairs.
It is indeed a statement of his fickle character that Fani-Kayode could see nothing wrong in his meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari, a man he ridiculed in a Channels television programme Politics Today. Shortly, I will reproduce some of the words he used against Buhari during that interview.
It is quite astonishing that, after years of throwing mud at the APC, Fani-Kayode could turn around to announce his return to the same party, the party he left angrily years ago. By meeting with Buhari, and by returning to the APC, Fani-Kayode picked up repulsively and swallowed instantly the mucus he spat out some years ago. How disgusting. How shameful. What a low life.
Fani-Kayode could be described appropriately as an all-weather man, that is, a man who sees his behaviour as appropriate to every occasion. To put it in a typical Nigerian phrase, he knows which side of his bread has been laced with butter.
Here is an example of Fani-Kayode’s capricious nature. When he appeared before the Senate Committee screening ministerial nominees following his nomination as a minister, Fani-Kayode, the tough-talking assistant who was desperate to become a minister, showed a different character. He looked more subdued. He pleaded for forgiveness in the following words: “I want to use this opportunity to apologise to all those I may have offended in the course of doing my job. The regret that I have during the job is hurting some people…I was the President’s armour bearer and I had to take the bullets and I was certainly not brought up hurting people.”
Before that ministerial screening, Fani-Kayode had taken delight in abusing just about anybody who disagreed with him or President Olusegun Obasanjo. His attack dog style of debating issues earned him the sobriquet, the “Presidential Rottweiler,” and that tag stuck on him like glue ever since. There are many instances in which Fani-Kayode used abusive language to diminish people who criticised the government he served. Space limitations will not permit me to reproduce those instances. But they are documented anyway.
An entire nation is now polarized over the dramatic decision by Fani-Kayode to return to his former political party. By his latest move to the APC, Fani-Kayode has behaved true to form. With him, there is nothing uncharacteristic with a politician contradicting their previously declared position. But that argument would fit only men and women who lack character, class and personal identity. These are men and women who do not know where to stand, or the political party to which they should belong.
It is not so much the decision to jump from one political party to another that has sullied Fani-Kayode’s image and attracted to him extraordinary national outrage. What many people find ghastly, stinking, disgusting, improper, unacceptable and disagreeable about him is what he says every time he abandons his party to join another. Other offensive aspects of his behaviour are his constant references to God, his frequent use of swear words and his arrogant references to his family background and wealth.
No one cares, really, whether Fani-Kayode was rich or poor, whether he hailed from an upper or lower class, and whether he was educated at an elite or ordinary university in the UK or in Nigeria. He can join any political party of his choice or create one, if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) approves. But he must not use his privileged position to abuse people, particularly journalists who ask fair questions about his public conduct and his decision to swing back to the APC.
What Fani-Kayode forgot in his ongoing dances with wolves is that we live in an electronic age in which public statements made by politicians and ordinary people are recorded and preserved for future reference.
Here are exact words used by Fani-Kayode in previous and recent interviews to assert his muddled decision never to return to the APC.
Reminded by a television interviewer that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was in crisis and asked whether he would still stick with the party, Fani-Kayode replied with a note of finality: “Of course, the PDP is my party. I will never leave the party.”
Asked whether he would ever consider going back to the APC, Fani-Kayode said repeatedly in that same television programme: “I would never, ever…The APC? Absolutely out of the question. Until kingdom comes, you know, until Jesus returns, I would never…”
These are strong words, you would say, but they were abandoned last week.
British playwright William Shakespeare was right. There is truly no way to detect the mind’s construction through the appearance on the human face.
In his short speech last week in which he justified his decision, Fani-Kayode said somewhat sheepishly: “The point is that I felt this is the appropriate time to do the right thing, to put Nigeria first, and to appreciate the efforts that have been made, particularly in the last couple of years, in terms of security, in fighting insurgency, fighting terrorism. Most importantly is appreciation of the fact that we must remain one as a nation, build bridges, work together to move the country forward…When the time is right, we change direction to join forces and join hands to move the country forward. Doing this doesn’t mean we are enemies to anybody…”
In an earlier Channels television programme Politics Today, in which he harshly criticised Buhari. Fani-Kayode said: “I don’t believe that Nigerian people would ever vote for a man that believes that we should drag this country back, a man with a pitiful and disgraceful record. When he was in power, he locked people up…turned Nigeria into a pariah nation…a man that sent so many people to jail for hundreds of years without due process, without credible evidence…this man destroyed the lives of so many people…”
Following his decision to return to the APC, Fani-Kayode was asked, in another edition of Politics Today programme on Channels television, whether his return to the APC could be seen as finance-related. That question stung him like a bluebottle. His face quickly turned red and he became angry, tempestuous, and grumpy. He abused, threatened and intimidated the interviewer.
In response to the question, Fani-Kayode said: “Seun, I don’t expect that kind of ridiculous and absurd question from you, okay. I have never ever lacked in finances. I have no inducements. Politicians don’t move because of finances. If I wanted finances, I would have moved a lot sooner than today. I have struggled and I have fought over the last six years more than any of the little monkeys had said what you just said to me now. And I stand proud and I stand tall. The kind of family I come from, the kind of background I have, finance is never an issue…”
You be the judge. A man who can engage in drivel and throw tantrums so easily with no convincing argument should never be taken seriously. That man lacks class, moral values, integrity and any sense of ethical principles.