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| Fani-Kayode |
By: Emeka Kanu-Nwapa, Olusegun Adedeji and Istifanus Danladi
Reading Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode’s misleading article titled: “A
People in Denial” which appeared in THISDAY on Wednesday, April 24, where he
laboured to denigrate President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan over the Boko Haram
insurgency and Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda for expressing optimism on the
amnesty option for the sect, also compels amnesty for the writer.
More disheartening is that the article reduced the respect
and admiration, which he once had as a promising patriot, nationalist and
statesman. Ordinarily, his article would have been allowed to pass without
comment, but for the sake of innocent readers who may easily fall prey to
wicked sophistry. It becomes necessary therefore to show how his arguments are
nothing but hollow antics.
He started in the first six paragraphs of his article by
celebrating the descent of Armageddon in the country and then descended on the
President in these words: “President Goodluck Jonathan has handed our country
over to a bunch of butchers who have no value for human life. Under his watch,
our people continue to die and die whilst he sits in the Presidential Villa and
drinks champagne”.
We will neither hold brief for the President and his image
handlers nor are we in defence of criminals who kill people at will. Suffice it
to observe and it stands to reason that crime and criminality is everywhere in
this country. We have had instances where militias killed people, abducted
people in the south - though they claimed that they were fighting to end the
environmental pollution and degradation of the Niger Delta region.
At the same time, we had the Oodua Peoples Congress in the
South-West, which imposed fear and terror in the region prompting the
international community to declare them as a terrorist organisation. So where
was Femi Fani-Kayode’s pen at that time? Did his pen run out of ink because the
OPC are of his ethnic extraction? It is easy to see here how he is playing up
ethnicity at the expense of national unity.
This is a tragedy and a betrayal of President Olusegun
Obasanjo who brought him to work for national integration. What has become of
the son of Fani Power, the foremost
leader in his time? OPC, MEND or Boko Haram, the point remains that any person
not authorised to possess firearm is a criminal because the Nigerian law is
very clear on this. Possession of illegal weapon is tantamount to daring the
Nigerian state because the government is the institution that has the sole
authority to handle firearm as an instrument of coercion.
President Goodluck Jonathan has made entreaties to every
criminal group and not only Boko Haram to lay down their arms and come to the
negotiating table for amnesty as was done to the Niger Delta militants. If
amnesty stopped such past criminalities, why not the Boko Haram? After all, it
does not mean that after amnesty appropriate measures will not be taken to
restore law and order.
To all intents and purposes, Mr. President is doing the
needful based on the oath of office he took to protect and enforce as
exemplified in his decision to grant amnesty and declare a state of emergency.
As a lawyer and man of God, Fani-Kayode may appreciate that Mr. President has
been accountable to the constitution and God. He is President today courtesy of
God’s will. His office deserves our respect.
With the amnesty offer, the President is waiting for those
willing to surrender to presidential de-briefing to restore their sanity.
Indoctrinated persons can also be de-briefed. It means such people including
those discharged from psychiatric hospital can be granted amnesty, de-briefed
and integrated back into the society. Who says they can’t be VIPs tomorrow,
even as presidential advisers or ministers tomorrow?
Fani-Kayode’s rabid article did not stop at plotting to
denigrate Mr. President. Baying for more blood, he went after harmless Bauchi
State Governor, Malam Isa Yuguda whom he introduced, ab initio as his “old
friend”. Why Isa Yuguda, you may ask? ‘The governor’s profile as a consummate statesman
has continued to rise due to his principled and open stand on truth, justice
and equity recently declared in an interview with journalists that the Federal
Government should go ahead with the amnesty option notwithstanding opposition
by a splinter faction of the Boko Haram.
He expressed optimism and conviction that the amnesty will
be accepted by the real and original members who started in 2009 with demands
for a society founded on justice and equity. According to him, Boko Haram has
been hijacked and is now a franchise and license in the hands of politicians,
criminal gangs, robbers and merchants to kill, maim and murder innocent persons
for selfish goals.
Femi-Kayode raised three questions for the governor who, for
crying out loud, merely bared his mind on a crucial subject that impinges on
his constitutional and moral duty as chief security officer of a state that has
also had more than its fair share of Boko Haram’s stranglehold. One, when did
Yuguda become the official spokesman for Boko Haram (for expressing optimism
that the real sect members will accept amnesty)? Two, why should he absolve the
real sect members of the evil acts? Third, since when has any faction of the
Boko Haram not been criminal and political?
For the avoidance of doubt,
Yuguda has never either by acts of omission or commission, spoken,
behaved or pretended to be the official spokesman for Boko Haram. It is absurd,
preposterous and uncharitable for anyone to tar him with such wicked brush for
merely expressing his optimism and conviction that some of the sect’s members
will accept amnesty.
If the truth must be told, no true leader of the North with
as much integrity, credibility, intelligence, sagacity, popularity, wide
connections and fear of God is eager to see an immediate end to the smouldering
insurgency in the North than Yuguda, particularly in the northeast flank. Yuguda is daily pained by the unsavoury
effects of wanton violence and instability in that part of the country.
Available records abound of his overt and covert efforts at
collaborating with other people of goodwill to free the northern region from
the orgy of violence, especially the heavy toll recorded recently at the far
northeast fishing village of Baga in Borno State to, which President
Jonathan, with declaration of state of emergency in Borno, Yobe and
Adamawa states.
Therefore, if by expressing his opinion and optimism for a
quick and decisive end to the insurgency amounts to speaking for the sect, it
is indeed unfortunate. After all, like the Fani-Kayodes of this world, the
governor is also entitled to his personal views and opinions. It is his
fundamental right.
Rather than commend him for the information, Fani-kayode
resorted to name calling and casting aspersions. One would have thought that as
“an old friend” and Yuguda’s successor as Aviation Minister, he would have made
efforts to reach out to the governor for clarification. He did not do so and
chose the ignoble and dishonourable option of demonisation and character
assassination in the public domain. This is outrageous to say the least.
The governor did not say he knows the Boko Haram members. He
did not say he has met them. The classifications he made were based on everyday
study of the mode of operation of the sect. His analysis is therefore based on
his perception. Anyway, is it a fallacy that armed robbers are robbing banks in
the country? Are there no politically-motivated assassinations and killings
under the guise of Boko Haram? So why suggest that Yuguda is Boko Haram’s
spokesman when his contribution was only meant to add to what many already know
about the sect?
Does expressing a view on the way forward means absolving a
faction of the sect? The answer is definitely no. The governor is not the only
prominent northern leader who has advocated for amnesty for Boko Haram members.
He has also reasoned that while amnesty comes to the table, the moral question
over victims of the bombings and their plight must also be addressed in the
interest of true justice. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to
have been done.
It has therefore become necessary to address these issues
which Fani-Kayode raised in his article in which he sought to tar Gov. Isa
Yuguda in the same brush as those he described as “leaders always ready,
willing and able to rationalise, defend and forgive the actions of beasts” in the
article. The Bauchi State governor does not belong here. On the contrary, he
has remained a foremost defender of the rights and freedoms of his people; he
has always provided adequate security to the people of his state, indigenes and
non-indigenes alike. With an ‘old friend’ like Femi Fani-Kayode, Gov. Isa
Yuguda does not indeed need an enemy.
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