ENGLAND CONFIDENTIAL


Diran OdeyemiSaturday, August 23, 2003
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London, UK

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FANI-KAYODE'S ENTERPRENEUSHIP:
LIKE FATHER LIKE SON


n Nigeria's political history, the name Fani-Kayode rings more than just a bell. You may wish to recollect that the late Chief Remi Fani-Kayode was the Deputy Premier of the Western Region who dropped off the progressive plane of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo to join the conservatives train in the sixties.

Fani-Kayode's prayers to God in his lifetime were answered; he was lucky not to have been killed before he eventually died. Some of his allies were not that fortunate, they died a violent dead.

In a way, Chief Fani-Kayode left a legacy that runs in the blood of his son Femi Fani-Kayode who is a replica of Fani-Power in appearance, character and mind-set. Femi has since continued from where his father left, playing a personal beneficiary game of survival. Like father like son! He is not only in government now; he is very much in power too and would not mind inheriting his father's appellation but with a slight modification; 'Femo-Power'.

All I can wish him is 'softly softly' as he joins the league of Aso Rock boys whose duty is to attack whoever meddles in the president's 'private' or public affairs

Femi who is the brand new Adviser to President Obasanjo on Public Matters (or is it Affairs?) is doing his job just fine. As a piper, he is playing the tune signalled to him by his pay master but I will still caution "gently gently" because, no condition is permanent and whatever we do or say today will go into record as history.

In his reaction to the statement credited to Muyiwa, son of Chief Bola Ige, the slain Attorney-General of the Federation, Femi Fani-Kayode was so upset by Muyiwa's attempt to express reservations about the Obasanjo government's scandalous handling of his father's murder case. Muyiwa Ige had at the 11th National Convention of the Egbe Omo Yoruba, North America, in Oakland, California, United States, praised Justice Moshood Abass for withdrawing from the trial of the suspects.

Ige's family knew what they were doing when they announced to the whole world that they would not fight for justice if their demand for such would lead to more death in their clan. What else could be a wise decision than these? They saw what others did not see and knew what others did not know and in their wisdom withdrew from the case. They lost hope of getting justice and did not have confidence in human judge but instead relied in God as the supreme adjudicator that will not adjourn punishment for killers of their father. This to me was a wise decision.

Femo-Power in defence of his boss over alleged complexity in the killing of Chief Bola Ige "challenged" Muyiwa, apparently his childhood friend, to tell the world if he knows those that killed his father or else he should stop crying as he Femi, the son of Fani-power, is also one of Ige's children! This in summary is my interpretation of the story line as relayed in "Champion Newspaper".

Quoting him verbatim this is what he said. "Muyiwa is not the only son that Chief Bola Ige had, we were all sons of Chief Bola Ige".

We know better now. Let us thank Femi for the privileged information. We can see how many sons Ige had just like the former AD governors claimed to be the surviving sons of late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. With sons like Femi Fani-Kayode, Ige could not have been a happy father!

I consider it blasphemous on Ige's name for the likes of Femi, the son of Fani-Kayode to lay claim to being Ige's son. Late Chief Ige was not known to have produced a son like Femi and this is the truth. I share the same local government with late Ige and was close to the family, I am sure of my claim.

Let us try an hypothesis here, given the chance to exchange fathers, I am not too sure Muyiwa Ige will be happy to substitute his father's name for that of late Chief Fani-Kayode for obvious reasons which I might need to highlight in the future.

As a matter of fact, Ige's family knows who is not one of them; Femi is a parasite in love with good family name whereas, there is no semblance in the son of a cow and that of a goat. The difference is clear, one is big and the other is small.

By the way, I am at a loss as to why Champion - on whose website I read the story - described Fani-Kayode's reaction as "Federal Government's Challenge". Is this not another evidence of press sensationalism of a serious matter of public concern over which some souls have passed-on and many others are languishing in Agodi prison?

When has it become a tradition that somebody just appointed to fill in a gap and made to answer "Adviser" should be taken seriously as speaking for the Federal Government or the country?

Wait a minute; perhaps, I got the whole thing wrong. Champion may be right after all. Why can't Femi speak for and on behalf of the man he is advising or the country that failed to cry foul over his "jeun-jeun" post? Bizarre as this appears, it is only in a government like this; where the father's name rather than merit is the sole prerequisite for political appointments can the likes of Femi represent what the government stands for.

Femi's recent posture and utterances is yet another example of the kind of disaster that can be created when semi-employed young men are unleashed in the corridors of power on the basis that their father's names ring a bell in the political arena.

As a matter of fact I had laughed my head off when I read that President Obasanjo appointed Femi as Special Adviser on Public Matters. The question that came to my mind was, what is there in the public that our president does not know that he would need a man whose public rating is zero as his Special Adviser?

I was convinced that President Obasanjo has been dealing with the public ever before Femi was born. During these periods, Obasanjo knows what public needs are and he is acquainted with matters that concern them on the basis of which he was voted as president. I doubt if he needs any adviser to know that the public needs are security, good roads, functional education, efficient health care system, gainful employment and other infrastructures that makes life worth living.

In logic, Femi's appointment like many other "extra luggage" in Aso Rock represents a distribution of fork and knife to the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful for them to cut from the national cake.

Now that Femi has been rehabilitated, (Please note my use of word) he has been granting press interviews, shooting his mouth into controversial matters so as to be seen as a better replica of Uche Chukumerije of the Abacha era. On one occasion, before Femi's appointment, a friend who watched a late-night NTA interview session that featured Femi Fani-Kayode related to me the shameful episode of how he transgressed all known rules of intellectual discourse in defending the glaring incompetence that has ruled Nigeria for more than four years now. The verdict my friend passed was: The young man just wants to be settled! True to my friend's observation, Femi was fixed few weeks thereafter. His likes are needed for the hatchet man's job to praise sing governmental inefficiencies.

What for God's sake is the totality of Femi that he will now be regarded as talking sense. Here is a young man who is a master in double talk. Depending on what he wants, he is ready to sing any tune and abuse his elders provided such hypocrisy and eye-service would put him in position of authority. This exactly is the picture of a man our president has chosen as his adviser on, of all things, 'public matters'.

One would have thought since he was "settled" alongside his "comrade" in the business of sophisticated sycophancy, Deacon (as he once claimed) Fani-Power junior would enjoy his much-sought after re-absorption into the corridors of power and keep his peace.

I remember at an earlier period when Femi desperately wanted to become Osun State Deputy Governor on the basis that it was zoned to Ile-Ife (not on the basis that he was competent) he boasted over Iyiola Omisore that he could pay back the latter's investments in the Alliance for Democracy! There was no bad name in Yoruba dictionary that Femi Fani-Kayode did not call Omisore. It is the same Omisore he abused few months ago when he wanted position from AD that he is now praising when he got appointment from PDP. What a way of life, like father like son.

Why I am so peeved at Femi's defence of Omisore is because of his antecedents that are full of inconsistencies and duplicity. If he is thrown out of PDP government today, he may come up with another theory that he went into government as a spy as if indeed he is not born to be double-faced.

Let me quote Femi: "If Muyiwa Ige knows something that the rest of us do not know, let him come back to Nigeria and come (sic) and tell us rather than sitting (sic) in America and passing (sic) judgement over our judiciary, our government and our President."

I want to tell Deacon Femi that there is hardly anything that Muyiwa knows that the rest of the world does not know about the killing of Chief Ige. The hand is that of Esau while the voice is Jacob's as mere suspects are being made to suffer the fate of culprits. It is the likes of Femi Fani-Kayode that could not see beyond their nose any longer. At least, not now that they form part of the president's entourage inside and outside Nigeria.

Femi's grief over Ige's murder (his father's, as he wants us to believe) is a grief of identification; he can only pretend to be crying more than Muyiwa, the bereaved. In reality, Muyiwa's grief is the real sorrow; sorrow about losing your famous and accomplished father to assassins' bullets inside the recesses of his own home, under the reign of a President that he had risked his entire reputation to stabilise.

"�If Muyiwa Ige has any evidence to substantiate his claim, let him come back to Nigeria and present the evidence." Femi declared. He has invited Muyiwa to come home (Nigeria) and point to the killers of his father and in his conclusion said, "It is incumbent upon him (Muyiwa Ige) to give us his reasons".

Well, I am obviously not speaking for Muyiwa but could give some reasons in response to the progressive Iscariot's invitation and conclusion. Muyiwa Ige's father was killed. He didn't just die in his sleep. Twenty months after, the killers are yet to be found. In the heat of all the funny trials, his mother died. It is logical to conclude that those who killed their friend (his father) will not hesitate to kill a foe (himself) for having the audacity to request that justice be allowed to take its course.

My guess is that Muyiwa fled abroad to cool down. Nigeria is his home, he will return one day. Self-imposed exile is like running away so as to be able to fight another day; dead men do not fight a cause only the living does. This same Femi Fani-Kayode was once in self-imposed-exile in Ghana and all his addictions are no secret. Let us hope that I will not have cause to say it all in the near future.

Fela have sung: "people start to talk o, government start to shake o. This government e bad o."

While we are at that, may I ask what is it in the system that makes promising young men majority of who were (or are) members of the much-publicised Progressive Action Movement (PAM) to become such pathetic jobbers and pitiable entrepreneurial sellers of conscience?

We need to ask ourselves and reassess our impression of these traders and dealers and possibly do something about our findings, before these 'intellectuals' kill off our hope of returning to a better Nigeria.

I pause for now.