Last week Thursday the former controversial Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK) officially defected from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). For quite sometime now he had been hobnobbing with APC chieftains and bigwigs across the federation apparently bidding his time and perfecting his strategies toward the announced PDP exit. We knew all along as rumours went viral online of his romance with the APC elements. So the defection came without any thunder!
Not that there is any serious difference ideologically between the APC and the PDP but Femi decided to move to the side that could provide him something tangible to live on. Defection (a Nigerian perennial political malady) never started with Fani-Kayode and it would never end with his celebrated movement to the other side where the ‘grass’ is greener and graft tolerated and accommodated. Since indiscipline and impunity reign supreme in the APC FFK is highly welcome!
Arrogant and magniloquent, a serial betrayal and liar Fani-Kayode was a pathetic figure to behold seeing him pose for a photograph with President Muhammadu Buhari inside the Aso Rock Villa in Abuja. While some critics could describe the FFK desperate move as the height of infamy we were not shocked or surprised by his defection given his antecedents. He was formerly with the APC but decamped to the PDP and now he has gone back to the APC. Perhaps tomorrow or after 2023 he would come back again to the PDP!
FFK had since justified his decision to join the APC by saying that he wanted to join forces with the Buhari regime for social cohesion and national unity. And because he had suddenly discovered the ‘romantic’ side of the ruling party which is no longer an evil congregation of thieves. Besides, he postulated that the President to whom he was presented in Aso Rock soon after the spectacular dumping of the PDP and whom he had virulently excoriated ceaselessly in the past was no longer the same Buhari having known him now better ‘inside’. And finally that the APC had changed for good!
The same and only APC he had called names, the same President he had called unprintable names, now he is wining and dinning with them! The truth of the matter is that Femi was looking for ‘something’ with a cocked intellectual gun and now having released all the ‘bullets’ hitting targets and missing some he had gotten it at long last.
As a political freeloader Fani-Kayode has always been animated by ‘stomach infrastructure’ politics (apology to Ayo Fayose). He knows the game and plays it very well. Perhaps afraid of going to prison yet again following the impending EFCC resumed trial for fraud and corruption FFK smartly decided to join the ‘winning’ ruling party to avoid any further embarrassment.
If the likes of ex-Governors Rotimi Amaechi, Timipre Sylva and Godswill Akpabio could be shielded from prosecution (given their exposed corrupt stewardships in Port Harcourt, Yenagoa and Uyo respectively) then why not the former Minister? Those who have skeletons in their cupboards are the ‘untouchables’ once you declare your allegiance to the ruling party or Buharism.
Before making his defection official and public Fani-Kayode’s real intentions were shrouded in mystery as he spoke from both sides of his mouth. He had denied every accusation of treachery pontificating on his ‘principles’ and moral force. Now we know better. Dealing with a political animal like FFK often hard on drugs requires a great dose of fortitude and surprises. If one does not hear about him pummelling his wife or concubine then he must be assaulting a journalist who dared ask him vexatious questions.
By claiming that he had facilitated the cross-carpetting of a couple of hitherto PDP Governors to the APC (though one of the concerned Governors, Dave Umahi of Ebonyi state, had countered Femi by labelling him a liar) Fani-Kayode exposed how criminally he had worked from inside against the interest of the PDP as a mole. All along Femi may have been recruited by the APC apparatchiks to depopulate gubernatorially the PDP camp!
A serial decamper, a political prostitute of the worst kind Fani-Kayode is not only unprincipled but a glorified disciple of the late Lamidi Adedibu, the demon of Molete’s ‘amala’ politics. He glorifies perfidy and hubris.
It is generally said that FFK was broke lately. And as a drug addict, philanderer and political whore he needed money desperately to maintain an executive wayward lifestyle. Politicians in Nigeria are nothing to write home about in terms of character and service delivery but in Femi we have since discovered the worst specie — corrupt, amoral, unpatriotic, hypocritical and shameless.
In the end the Buhari administration may reward him for the ‘services’ he rendered while still in the opposition. They may throw a job to him from where he could loot back the filthy lucre he had squandered while jobless. Rehabilitation will surely come his way sooner or later. But after Buharism, come 2023, Fani-Kayode must not regale us with tales of how the devil bewitched him or how the Kogi Governor, Yahaya Bello, hypnotized him leading to his decision to quit the PDP.
Femi Fani-Kayode is a lost case, a case of political insanity! He is psychologically unstable and maritally confused. Whatever force, spiritual or physical, propelling him to become a laughing stock must be blamed for the political acrobatics he is engaged in lately. May God deliver him from the demons within.
We wish him hard luck in his latest political adventure or misadventure. In the end when the ‘vultures’ and ‘hyenas’ in the APC have had enough of his flesh and blood for breakfast and dinner he may be worst for it by the time he decamps yet again.
Is FFK the ‘Judas of Oduduwa’ (as Sheikh Ahmad Gumi recently described him aptly)? Well, Gumi was very charitable in his critical submission. We hold that Fani-Kayode is worse than Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus the Christ selling him for some 30 Shekels to his eternal damnation. The Jewish Judas instantly realised his folly, regretting his deed and committing suicide as penance. Our own Femi the ‘Judas’ is beyond contrition and redemption.
Yet it goes without saying that what he has just done may well be his political suicide. Only time shall tell. His comeuppance could come at the fullest of time.
SOC Okenwa
