By Lawrence Chinedu Nwobu
Many Nigerians would qualify to be rebranded a
different species of Homo sapiens totally separate from all other
human species. The evidence of these unusual phenomena is obvious in the
uncommon absurdities, the monumental injustice, the sheer wickedness,
the groundswell of hate and the self destruction with which the nation
is defined. Added to this is the total and abject failure of Nigeria in
spite of Olympian endowments in human and material resources. There is
no other nation on the face of the earth with Nigeria’s endowments that
has failed as much as Nigeria neither is there any precedent in human
history. Nigeria is thus a human and historical exception in failure.
But wait a minute; Nigeria is not inhabited by animals, Nigeria
is inhabited by human beings and led by human beings many of whom
unfortunately like the Femi Fani Kayode’s of this world might not even
be human at all or even if they are human constitute a different
species. It is such abnormal beings that have broken the world record
of making a richly endowed nation the greatest experiment in failure
ever known to man. And thus nothing works, even though we have
everything that should make it work, and thus we are only capable of
hate including self hate, which is why a councillor or local government
chairman will steal and deprive the very community he or she comes from,
the governor will steal and deprive the state he comes from, the
president will steal and deprive the nation he comes from, and thus we
engage in nothing other than self destruction as the world watches in
amazement. It is not surprising that Nigeria has produced more sadists
and more mass killers than Adolf Hitler.
Not even animals have ever been known to indulge in the level of
self destruction and perfidy associated with Nigeria. Animals do take
responsibility for their children/ siblings, they don’t kill their own
kind and they have a social structure and community that is recognisable
in the herds of a kind that often throng together. Nigeria has thus
proven to be even more debased than animals have ever been capable off
and the reason is clear; the quality of humanity of many Nigerians which
has in turn influenced their character and the way they think. There
have been suggestions in some quarters that many Nigerians are mentally
disturbed and thus lunatics, but even mad persons do have basic common
sense which is something that is totally absent in many of these
characters that have vandalised the nation.
One of such characters is Femi Fani Kayode, a relevance seeking
opportunist who is fond of jumping into every national issue and
almost always injecting tribalism into simple issues of citizenship or
social justice as his strategy of finding relevance. Being incapable of
being objective or constructive, his articles/utterances are often full
of contradictions and sometimes outright nonsense. He has nonetheless
carved a niche for himself as a disrespectful talkative loudmouth and
one of the rabidly bigoted/ignorant Nigerians who thrive in fanning the
flames of the “tribalism industry.” The recklessness and illogicality’s
he brings to bear on issues of national importance no doubt marks him
out as one of those many Nigerians who should be rebranded a
different species of humanity responsible for Nigeria’s damning
predicament. Nowhere is this more demonstrated than his take in the
constitutional issue of deportation of persons from Lagos, which he has
characteristically and laughably chosen to make a tribal issue. A man of
Fani Kayode’s education is ordinarily expected to be able to
distinguish between emotional issues and constitutional issues, he is
also expected to like a member of a jury be capable of good judgement on
the side of justice devoid of sentiments for the simple reason that as
the saying goes “injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”. But Fani
Kayode found it impossible to exercise good judgement, because he
belongs to the group who thrive in the “tribalism industry” and in the
suffering of Nigerians including his own people.
The illegality of the action of the Lagos state government in the
deportation of person should be obvious even to the layman. Nigeria has
a constitution which spells out very clearly the rights of every
Nigerian to reside wherever they chose in any part of the nation without
let or hindrance. In violation of this constitutional right Governor
Fashola started a campaign of institutional kidnapping (arresting and
holding persons against their will) and deportation of persons to
several states within Nigeria. At the last count Fashola has deported
people to several Northern states, to Oyo, Ogun states and recently to
Onitsha where at the dead of night persons some of whom were from Edo
state, Delta and Kogi states were dumped. Some of the deported persons
were reportedly lunatics who could not communicate or express themselves
and it is possible that some of them might even be from Lagos state or
elsewhere.
The pretext is that the deported persons are homeless and destitute
who were repatriated to reunite them with their family; but you don’t
hold people against their will/constitutional rights and dump them at
night along the road and claim to be reuniting them with their families.
Government exists to provide for the most downtrodden and impoverished
in society. It is the responsibility of government to invest in creating
jobs, opportunities, and to rehabilitate the downtrodden including the
disabled in their respective jurisdictions and not to deport them. In
all normal and well governed societies, government has a massive budget
of social welfare with which they provide for social housing,
unemployment allowances for those who have no jobs, disability
allowances, medical cards and other varieties of social aid.
There are thousands of technically destitute Nigerians residing in
Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and elsewhere who have been housed by
the government in council houses and who depend on their livelihood from
social welfare payments and other benefits. The government of those
countries have not deported Nigerians back to Nigeria because they are
destitute and dependent on the government to survive in line with the
logic of Lagos state government and their enablers like Fani Kayode. If
Fashola was so interested in resolving the issue of destitution he
could have shown an example by rehabilitating indigenes of his state,
but it is not on record anywhere that Fashola has provided social
housing, unemployment benefits, medical insurance and other social aid
to poor indigenes of Lagos state. It is thus evident that what Fashola
has manifested is the usual sadism and wickedness of Nigerian leaders
and their disdain for the poor and downtrodden.
In light of the tragedy of the deportations, it is shameful but not
surprising given his antecedents that Fani Kayode descended so low
as to make it a tribal issue when he said amongst others that “ the
Ibos where given back their properties when they returned to Lagos
after the Nigeria-Biafra war, and that while Ibos have been free to
invest in Lagos the East has not allowed the Yoruba’s to invest
there”. This is the extent of ignorance, bigotry and deceit Fani Kayode
brought to an issue that has to do with justice and constitutionality.
In the first place it is preposterous for Fani Kayode to reduce the
tragedy of the Biafran war to returned properties when it is obvious
that the needless lives lost is more valuable than properties, it is
also obvious that the Biafrans who were willing to fight and die in
that conflict would have preferred to have Biafra and lose the so called
properties rather than the situation in Nigeria today with all the
injustice, oppression and bigotry people like him have sowed which
is why after the millions of lives lost to keep the nation together
there are still people like him insisting that it was right to deport
Nigerians in their own country.
The injustice and genocide of Biafra is an open sore which should
continue to haunt people like Fani Kayode because his kith and kin
participated in the mass slaughter to usurp the inalienable rights of a
people to self determination (he himself has severally advocated a
sovereign national conference) recognised under international law in
the United Nations charter which could have been determined through
democratic means by holding a plebiscite or referendum. Biafra was a
legitimate, necessary, courageous, worthy and legendary act of self
defence in the face of the mass slaughter /genocide of over 50,000
innocent Eastern civilians in the North while the head of state, Yakubu
Gowon who was supposed to protect life and property under all
circumstances did nothing and even promoted the Nigerian army and police
officers who perpetrated the genocide. Nigeria remains unworkable and
mired in the same contradictions that led to the war. Incidentally, the
greatest advocates of a sovereign national conference to determine
the nation’s future are from Fani Kayode’s region and ethnic stock
which in itself is a certain vindication of the Biafran
resistance/struggle.
One wonders where Kayode finds the moral right to talk of the
Biafran war when 43 years after the conflict people like him are
supporting the deportation of Nigerians in their own supposed country?
How does he find the moral right to talk of Biafra when his father who
was the deputy premier to Ladoke Akintola was part of the group that
fought/conspired against chief Obafemi Awolowo and pioneered election
rigging in Nigeria through the massive rigging fiesta in the Western
region in 1964 that unleashed the violence (wetie) that eventually led
to the January 1966 coup and consequently the war? If not for corrupt
acts of people like Fani Kayode’s father in rigging elections and
orchestrating violence in the West, there would have been no coup and
thus no war. It is easy for hypocrites like Kayode to conveniently
bypass the facts when he talks of Biafra and the crisis that led to it
but historical facts are on record and his father played some of the
critical corrupt roles that truncated the nation’s democracy and led to
the war.
Secondly, his premise that the Yoruba have not been allowed to
invest in the East is the most laughable deceit of the century, because
there is no law that forbids the Yoruba from investing in the East.
Yoruba’s have not invested in the East because they choose not to. For
someone like myself who grew up in what was then Midwest and later
Bendel state, I don’t remember seeing any Yoruba person or Yoruba
investment in the area. Maybe Fani Kayode will also claim that the
people of the Midwest which incidentally used to be part of the Western
region also prevented them from investing there. Truth is; Yoruba’s
are generally not given to much migration and investment outside their
region within Nigeria. You are more likely to see a Yoruba person in
London than in Calabar and you are more likely to see Yoruba investments
in properties and others in London than in Benin City. Even in Abuja
which by virtue of being the federal capital attracts all Nigerians,
you are more likely to see other Nigerians owning properties and
investing than you would Yorubas, I am not aware of any law that stops
Yorubas from investing in Abuja as much as other Nigerians. This
tendency to shun investments outside the West for whatever reason is the
real reason why there isn’t much Yoruba investment in the East and
elsewhere and not the garbage peddled by the likes of Kayode. He might
himself be in a better position to tell us why his people are loath to
investing outside their region.
Another factor, Fani Kayode conveniently ignored is how the
federal government policy has affected migration and investment in
Nigeria. Nigerian migration and investment is driven mainly by federal
presence and investments in infrastructure. This is why Nigeria with a
population in excess of 150 million people only has two major cities of
note; namely Lagos and Abuja. After the war with the consolidation of
the unitary system, much development was driven only by the federal
government. Lagos being the then federal capital benefitted from a
massive investment in infrastructure and federal presence, it is
estimated that 90% of the infrastructure in Lagos state was built by the
federal government. Murtala Muhammed international airport, Tin Can
Port, Federal palace hotel, Ikoyi Hotel, 1004 towers, national
secretariat towers, national stadium, national arts theatre, Nitel
building (the tallest in Nigeria) Eko bridge, third mainland bridge,
carter bridge and all the flyovers in Lagos amongst so many other
infrastructure were built by the federal government. There is more
federal presence and more flyovers built by the federal government in
Lagos alone than the whole of the Southeast, South-south and North
Central. If as bigots like Fani Kayode deceitfully claim, Lagos was
developed by the West then we should have seen much of that development
in Ibadan which was after all the capital of the Western region.
No city in Nigeria has benefitted as much in federal investments and
presence like Lagos with the only exception being Abuja which is the
current federal capital. Without this massive federal investments Lagos
would predictably have been like so many other small desolate coastal
towns across Nigeria. This massive government presence and
infrastructure naturally pushed migration of jobseekers, private
investors and others towards Lagos, (this same phenomenon is being
presently replicated in Abuja) and naturally created the cosmopolitan
city Lagos became. Notably, at the same time that Lagos was benefitting
from massive federal investments, other parts of Nigeria particularly
the East was ignored and even marginalised. Since capital and people
mostly go where there is infrastructure and federal presence which is
evident across the world in London, Paris, Dublin, Amsterdam,
Belgium, Accra, Nairobi amongst others being the most cosmopolitan
cities in their countries the influx was routed to Lagos. Abuja,
until recently an empty forest has been transformed through massive
federal investments. It is very likely that Fani Kayode being one of
the “federal looters” with ill gotten wealth has a home or office in
Abuja because of its status as the federal capital, how would Kayode
feel if Northerners some years later start insulting residents of
Abuja and claiming the North developed Abuja?
All factors considered, Fani Kayode can thus not have expected the
Yoruba’s to invest in the East even if they wanted to when the federal
government made sure as a state policy after the civil war to lock the
East out of all federal presence and infrastructure, which happens
to be the factors that drives migration and investments. If for
example Enugu or Sapele happened to be Nigeria’s capital with all the
federal presence an infrastructure that goes with it, the same
corresponding migration and investments from all sections of Nigeria
would take place there the same way it happened in Lagos and now
happening in Abuja. The indisputable fact is that federal presence and
infrastructure is the chief driver of migration and investments in
Nigeria. For this same reason and factors, it is very rare to see non
natives settled elsewhere in the West outside Lagos, and even Yoruba’s
themselves from all the other states invest and settle more in Lagos
than elsewhere in the West. The factors that made Lagos an area of
influx and that inhibited migration and investments in other parts of
Nigeria is an issue that someone like Fani Kayode is expected to
understand.
The question of who owns Lagos should never arise except in the
heads of the ignoramus who thrive in the “tribalism industry” like
Fani Kayode, for the simple reason that Lagos like all Nigerian
cities, towns, villages and even natural resources under her soil is
owned by all Nigerians. This is after all why crude oil resources that
is obtained mainly from the Niger-Delta is allocated to all states and
local governments across Nigeria, an allocation that exclusively
sustains most of the states in Fani Kayode’s region. Kayode used to
live in Accra which happens to be the largest city in Ghana settled by
people from all parts of the country. I am not sure he ever witnessed a
situation where the Accra authorities were deporting people to other
parts of Ghana? And since he is the only one in his family who lives in
Nigeria according to his own admission, how would he feel if all his
relations abroad are deported back to Nigeria because they assessed
social welfare or any social aid from the state? Does his relations’
residing abroad have anymore entitlements and rights of residence in the
foreign countries where they reside than Nigerians in their own
country? Instead of always pandering to ignorance/bigotry and insulting
residents of Lagos as the likes of Fani Kayode and his co travellers
have become notorious for, he should be grateful to all Nigerians that
the federal government located much federal investments in his region at
the expense of other regions which created the cosmopolitan city that
Lagos is.
Corruption and tribalism are Nigeria’s two biggest industries; not
surprisingly Fani Kayode is heavily invested in both, but it is
important to remind people like him who have infamously tried to reduce a
constitutional and moral issue to a tribal issue, that Fashola has also
deported persons to Oyo and Ogun states who happen to be from the same
region. It is also possible that some of the lunatics dumped in Onitsha
who could not identify themselves are indigenes of Lagos state.
Injustice has no boundaries and Fashola’s action if unchecked means that
even Fani Kayode who is not himself from Lagos state could be deported
someday. Knowing the history of Africa with ethnically and religiously
homogenous countries like Somalia and Rwanda torn by strife and
conflicts, Fani Kayode should realise that injustice can tear apart even
members of the same immediate family. Nigeria has failed because of
the penchant to perpetrate, justify injustice and fan the flames of
tribalism. Nothing destroys a people or nation like injustice and
people like Fani Kayode should realise that injustice has no boundaries.
While he conveniently wears the tribal coat as a relevance seeking
gambit, it is not a secret that the likes of Fani Kayode loves no one
but himself, neither does he speak for the Yoruba; an urbane and
sophisticated people who must find him an embarrassment. He simply
belongs to the sadistic, unconscionable, bigoted and wicked political
class that have destroyed the nation. The fact that he is currently
facing trial for looted funds while a minister of aviation lends
credence to the fact that he is just another vulture waiting to devour
the carcass of the suffering Nigerian. While a minister of aviation he
had no achievement beyond looting the coffers and planes were crashing
from the sky like rain drops. There are suggestions that he is a
disturbed person, some suggest he is high on drugs, while all that may
be true, I believe his real problem is belonging to the different
species of Homo sapiens that have made Nigeria a laughing stock in the
world and vindicated the racists who claim the black race is inferior.
My parting advice to him is to repent, seek to retrieve his humanity,
seek treatment and learn to be on the side of justice if he hopes that
his children, siblings and future generations can have a normal nation
and society to live in where they will be free from all types of
bigotry, oppression and inhumanity.
Email: lawrencenwobu@gmail.com
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