Still on FFK Derangement Syndrome, by Abel Ada-Musa
What amazes me about David Oluwafemi Adewunmi Abdulateef Fani-Kayode is not his recent decampment to All Progressives Congress (APC) from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), but the shameless ease with which he crossed what looked like a forbidden line. At least we know Nigeria is not a truly democratic country, in view of the gale of meaningless migrations from one party to the other. Nigeria is not a place where politics is driven by ideology or conscience. FFK as he is popularly known is somebody whose conscience has been seared. He does not bate an eyelid before he abandons his friends and associates. To the extent he has gone with such recurent attitude, it cannot be considered normal anymore.
I firmly believe that what FFK is showing in his national political life, is also rooted in his family life. He has been married four times. Presently, he has no wife; only girlfriends, who are old enough to be his children. His first marriage was to Saratu “Baby” Atta in 1987. They were divorced in 1990. They have one daughter whose name is Oluwafolake. The second marriage was to Yemisi Olasunbo Adeniji in 1991. The marriage ended in 1995. They have three daughters whose names are Oluwatemitope, Oluwatobiloba and Oluwatuminu.
The third marriage was to Regina-Hanson Amonoo. They were married in 1997 and have one daughter, whose name is Oluwaremilekun. In 2014, Femi Fani-Kayode and Precious Chikwendu, a beauty queen and the winner of the Miss United Nations (world) beauty pageant 2014, got married. This was his fourth marriage. Barely two years after, – 1 February 2016 Fani-Kayode and his wife, delivered a baby-boy, their first son. He was christened Joshua Oluwafemi Emmanuel Lotanna Aragorn Fani-Kayode. He is Fani-Kayode’s first son. On 25 May 2018 Precious Chikwendu Fani-Kayode gave birth to three boys.
Femi Fani Kayode’s family is not known for substance abuse neither is there any trace of madness in the family blood. I am particularly worried about what is happening in his life, which I think has no correlation with his ancestry. I am aware he descended from a blue-blooded genealogy of academic giants. His family is well-respected in Nigeria. Ordinarily, Fani Kayode is not a hungry person, based on his lineage.
His great grandparents were heavy weights in modern civilization and education. He lived a luxurious life as a child. He was brought up under a very strict culture of Christian religion, discipline and excellence. To put it mildly, he was born with golden spoon in his mouth.
His father, Chief Victor Babaremilekun Adetotuboh Fani-Kayode hailed from a prominent and well educated Yoruba family of Ife in south-west Nigeria. His great grandfather, Rev. Emmanuel Adedapo Kayode, was an Anglican priest who had got his Master of Arts degree in 1885, from Fourah Bay College, which at that time was part of Durham University. His grandfather, Victor Adedapo Kayode, studied law and graduated from Selwyn College, Cambridge in 1921. He was called to the Middle Temple in 1922, and went on to become a prominent lawyer and then judge in Nigeria. His grandmother was Mrs. Aurora Kayode, née Fanimokun, who was the daughter of the respected Rev. Joseph Fanimokun, also an Anglican priest.
His father, Chief Victor Babaremilekun Adetokunboh Fani-Kayode, (1921–1995) was born on 22 December 1921, in Chelsea, England. He was a leading Nigerian politician, aristocrat, nationalist, statesman and lawyer, until his death in Brighton, England in October 1995. He was elected deputy premier of the Western Region of Nigeria in 1963 and he played a major role in Nigeria’s legal history and politics from late 1940s until 1995.
FFK used to speak glowingly, with an ambience of arrogance and pride, about his ancestry. That is why we wonder how he got his repulsive character. Femi Fani Kayode has never positively portrayed the image of his family. We did not hear that his father married another woman, in addition to FFK’s mother. None of his people exhibited character failure.
His character does not suggest a child brought up in the revered Remilekun Kayode family, who was a political role model. His father’s political image loomed large. The former aviation minister is everything that his late father was not.
In July 1958, FFK’s successfully moved the motion for Nigeria’s independence on the floor of the Federal House of Assembly in Lagos. He argued that independence should take place on 2 April 1960.
With his blue-blooded pedigree, one wonders how FFK got his habitual political somersaults. At age 61, he is still acting like a spoilt child.
FFK was born on 16 October 1960. Since he left office as Minister of aviation, 29 May 2007, he has oscillated between the two major parties in Nigeria – APC and PDP. After his tenure in Obasanjo’s administration, he crossed over to found the political coalition named APC. About the time when preparations were made for the presidential primary election of the party, he crossed back to the PDP, citing religion marginalization as excuse. He said he could not stand a Muslim-Muslim ticket being proposed by the party, for the presidential election. He alleged that his faith, Christianity, was not well-represented in the party.
In June 2014, he returned to the ruling People’s Democratic Party. In what look like the greatest volte-face in Nigerian political history, Femi again returned to the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) on the 16th of September 2021. He cited change in the leadership style of the ruling party to be one of the major reasons he went back. This followed months of flying a kite and speculations in the top hierarchy of the party.
Until now, FFk has been the tormentor-in-Chief of President Muhammadu Buhari and APC. But in February 2021, he started fraternizing with the Governor of Kogi State, whom he has recently been calling “my brother and my friend” – whatever that means!
FFk’s ignoble return to APC has received more knocks than accolades, even within the ruling party. In APC, the majority of party members don’t know whether to rejoice or to cry. In fact, 90 percent of the key members of APC are not favourably disposed to the return of FFK.
I don’t know the mind of President Muhammadu Buhari, when he agreed to receive his former “enemy”, back into the party, in the State House. FFK is used to being received in State House. In 2014 when he left APC, he was received in Aso Rock, by the then president, Goodluck Jonathan.
FFK is not a particularly serious politician. In Osun where he claims as his home, he cannot influence 10 persons to vote for his party. He is a Twitter or social media politician. There is nobody in the history of this country that has insulted a sitting president like FFK had done to Buhari.
What was Buhari thinking when, he admitted FFK back to the APC? Was he thinking that FFK had repented of his insults? What thought streamed down Buhari’s mind? Buhari is not known to forgive and forget. He is a vengeful person. Could it be that Buhari has forgiven FFK, in spite of the avalanche of insults heaped on him, his tribe and religion over the years?
FFK’s continual migration from one party to the other suggests that he needs help, in the area of mental health. Is FFk really normal? Could such an outlandish, shameless and reckless display character failure be normal? At this stage, is it wrong to query the state of his mental health?
Suddenly FFK stopped criticizing Buhari, Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen and APC. Suddenly, he started receiving politicians in his home, in addition to show-casing his son, Aragorn. In February this year, Governor Yahaya Bello announced the decamping of Kayode, to APC, which he mildly denied. Since then, his “friends and brothers” have been those in the APC.
The recent sign that he had actually moved on from PDP was when he attended the wedding of Yusuf, Buhari’s son, in Kano. He reacted to those criticizing him, saying that they were “foaming in the mouth.”
In 2014, when he joined APC, he called President Goodluck Jonathan “a President without balls,” and, “the gutless eunuch.”
In 2015, after he decamped to PDP, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode was appointed the Director of Media and Publicity of Jonathan/Sambo Presidential Campaign Organisation, a position that enabled him to praise President Jonathan. He stated that he “renounced those views about President Jonathan long ago.”
In the run up to the presidential campaign that year, he started calling APC a party with “Janjaweed ideology” adding that the APC was a party of Boko Haram and Muslim extremists. Janjaweed ideology is a terrorist ideology!
He had proved to be Buhari’s greatest critic or enemy since he joined PDP, to the extent of launching “Buhari is dead” campaign, in 2018, when the president was sick, and took refuge in a London hospital.
“Buhari is dead and he never came back from London. Only his body did. They invoked the spirit of Jubril and placed it in Buhari’s body, adding that “It is a common ritual among Satanists,” he said. He was a strong believer of Buhari being “Jibril”. FFK has always described President Buhari as weak, incompetent, sectional, bloodthirsty, genocidal and wicked.
At a time, FFK established relationship with the supreme leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu. When Kanu was incarcerated in 2017, FFK was one of the main people that visited him in prison and even called him his “brother and friend.” But, FFK has a long history of bigotry against people from the eastern part of the country.
In 2013, FFK published an article entitled: “The bitter truth about the Igbo.” He justified the pogrom against Igbo in 1966, by blaming the Igbos for a number of crises.
He wrote: “It is that same attitude of we own everything”, ”we must have everything” and ”we must control everything” that the Igbo settlers manifested in the northern region in the late 50’s and early and mid-60’s that got them into so much trouble up there with the Hausa-Fulani and that eventually led to the terrible pogroms where almost one hundred thousand of them were killed in just a few days.”
Igbo indigenes of note had expressed disgust that FFK had no regard for the memory of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the leader of Biafra Republic, when he claimed that he “had a long-standing and intimate relationship with Miss Bianca Onoh,” Ojukwu’s wife.
FFK had once raged, in a fit of self-adulation that, “I would rather die than join APC or bow to Buhari.” Now, he has true-to-type returned to his vomit. As proud as he seems to be, he has no shame when he goes back to his vomit.
His new friend is the governor of Kogi State, Alhaji Yahaya Bello. How they came together cannot be explained, but this is somebody he had despised and taken down verbally on several occasions. “When I wrote that this boy was a useful idiot and an accursed slave, some said I was being harsh. The truth is that he is worse than that. His mental faculties are non-functional,” he wrote on Twitter. Now, between the two of them, only God knows whose “mental faculties are non-functional”!
The fact remains that this man is suffering from a peculiars sickness – ‘FFk Derangement Syndrome.’ It is delusional, erratic, consolatory and irrational. It is a condition peculiar to him. It has nothing to do with his family bloodline.
His former boss, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo knows him more than anybody. He once said that FFK’s stomach is his god! “Femi Fani Kayode is my boy. Provide him food, he will eat and then sing for you. He’s a smart boy” – General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd)
He moves from state to state, visiting governors, without a definitive mission. Many people have called him a beggar. The fact is that, he is not suffering from any lack. His problem is himself.
We don’t know how Buhari and APC want to use FFK in the next dispensation. It could be a strategy to make him quiet for rest of Buhari’s tumultuous administration. FFK is not an asset to any political party.
He could even be a jinx.