Sunday, 14 July 2013

How Responsible a Father Is Femi Fani-Kayode?

Written by Dr Yemisi Aderogba

Contemporary Nigeria is a very interesting place where almost anything absurd and destructive finds patronage among a large population of its leaders. Not long ago, the world woke-up to the news of a suicide-bomb attempt by one of the sons of a privileged Nigerian onboard an American airline flying to the United States from Europe. The aircraft was loaded with innocent travellers and the suspected attempt of the bomber was to explode the aircraft and its content to pieces, tens of thousands of feet above the ground!    The suspected bomber’s name is Farouk Abdul-Muttallab, son of a strikingly wealthy and very influential Nigerian, Alhaji Abdul-Muttallab. Sequel to the internationally publicized arrest of his son, Alhaji Abdul-Muttallab caused right-thinking members of the international community to wonder wide and deep about his headship of his family based on his rather curious revelation that he had previously reported his son to the US embassy in Nigeria when he began to suspect that Farouk may have been receiving extremist Islamic lessons from strange quarters. Alhaji Abdul-Muttallab’s seemingly bold action received a barrage of questions and criticisms from different circles across Nigeria and across the world beyond the country’s shores.



Like Alhaji Abdul-Muttallab, Mr Femi Fani-Kayode is a privileged Nigerian which many Nigerians look-up to. Also like Alhaji Muttallab, Mr Fani-Kayode, a former Nigeria Minister of Aviation, is a father. But unlike Alhaji Abdul-Muttallab, Mr Femi Fani-Kayode is a prominent Nigerian who apparently finds personal relish in practicing a life-style that most people of privilege and honour avoid and condemn!

Anyone who is very conversant with one of the most popular new media of this era known as Facebook would have noticed Femi Fani-Kayode’s loquacious and jejune political discussions on the medium which tend to reflect how poorly groomed he is. Femi is the son of the late Deputy Premier of the old Western region of Nigeria, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode. He attended some of the most prestigious schools in the world such as Cambridge University but has the whitish tissues of his commonsense soiled with the stinking mud of immorality!

Very recently, I was going to get my usual news update on Facebook when I stumbled on a thread with a collection of pictures that had Femi Fani-Kayode’s stamped on them. Picture updating is an interesting part of the Facebook experience. One is, on a daily basis, treated to thousands of pictures ranging from important images of human development to those of the follies of some wannabes. On this day, my curiosity hurriedly led me to view what images Femi had on the pack for “friends” on Facebook.
I initially wondered how a former Minister and a governorship candidate in Nigeria was able to find time to upload a long ‘reel’ of images ranging  from pictures of his great-grand mother to those of his many relatives on the highly engaging and time-consuming Facebook platform. Soon after some clicks and scrolls, I met a shocker on reaching the part where his ‘innocent’ daughters were loaded. Their careless and irrational father personally uploaded explicit images of their bodies! Such irresponsibility from a Nigerian Minister! I paused at a point for a few seconds to imagine what could possibly have been going through Femi’s mind as he uploaded the near-lurid images of his children; young girls at that, for the whole world to see!

Femi Fani-Kayode may have felt proud of exhibiting his daughters as beauty icons on Facebook, indirectly revealing what he spent a significant chunk of his loot on, cash stolen during his reign in former President Obasanjo’s kleptomaniac administration. Sadly, vindictive and crooked Obasanjo in his insensitive prevalence as Nigeria’s Number One Citizen thought it wise to foist a former drug-addict on more than 120 million Nigerians and the outcome of that crazy decision is the personal exhibition of his daughters’ Unclothedness on Facebook! Well, Femi is one privileged Nigerian who is seldom off the fetid grounds of disrepute. As an attack-dog of the Obasanjo administration which he initially served as spokesperson, he was known to have rained torrents of insults on many respectable Nigerians, a list which includes world-renowned Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka. Not even elder statesman, Pa Peter Enahoro, was spared by flippant Femi! Mr Fani-Kayode routinely poured bile on the achievements of these noblemen in consonance with the brief of his dirty job as given by wayward Obasanjo.

Many Nigerians were taken aback by looseness of his tongue and were encouraged to conclude Femi was just being himself, him being a poorly raised child that is completely bereft of decency. To those Nigerians who considered Femi in contrary light, his latest rubbish should be enough to make them review their position on his kind of person. Femi has simply proven once again that he has no sense of decency. It is such a shame that, perhaps, only in Nigeria you will see a man that cannot run a family effectively being offered a position in the Federal Executive Council; it is no surprise that characters like Femi still abound in the affairs of our nation.

Dr Yemisi Aderogba, Conventry, UK

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