FANI-KAYODE, BOLA IGE AND THE PITFALLS OF ETHNIC IRREDENTISM

It is a “dangerous thing” to be a writer. What you have written today and the opinion you canvasses may come to haunt you tomorrow. If you want to make Reuben Abati, the Special Adviser, Media and Publicity to President Goodluck Jonathan uncomfortable when he embarks on his spirited defence of the actions of the president and the first lady, Dame Patience Jonathan, draw his attention to his published articles on the duo as a columnist with The Guardian before his appointment by Jonathan. But this is not about Abati who is today going back on his own vomit, when he was still on the people’s side. This is about the former minister of aviation, Mr Femi Fani-Kayode who has written a lot of unprintable things against the Igbo of Southeast Nigeria, since the saga over the deportation of people of Igbo extraction from Lagos by the Lagos State government began and the late Chief Bola Ige, who established a reputation as Hausa-Fulani hater and it cost him the presidency. Fani-Kayode who should have been more measured in his intervention even if he supported the action of the Lagos State government failed to do so. Juxtapose Fani-Kayode’s response to the issue with that of legal luminary Femi Falana, SAN, who in his well reasoned treatise “ The Lagos Deportation And The Law” did not only declare the action of Lagos State government and other states that have carried out deportations illegal and unconstitutional, but took his readers on history excursion on similar deportations in the past. Fani-Kayode, if I am not wrong looks like a man who would want to hold higher responsibilities at the federal level in future and his demonization of tribes other than his own may become his greatest undoing. Recently his twitter account has been buzzing with many hailing him for “giving it to the Igbos”.  But the political price for his writings is entirely his. This takes me to Uncle Bola Ige, Nigeria’s late Attorney General and Minister of Justice. Uncle Bola Ige, as he was fondly called maintained a must read column in the Tribune Newspapers owned by late Premier of Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. While the column was used by Uncle Bola to challenge poor and bad governance in the country, he also used it to demonise the Hausa-Fulani, blaming them for most of Nigeria’s woes. At the height of the Rwanda Genocide against the Tutsis by the Hutus,  he  called the Hausa-Fulani, the Tutsis of Nigeria and warned that if they are not careful, what the Hutus did to the Tutsis in Rwanda could be a child’s play in Nigeria. He thought he was promoting the Yoruba cause by such hate writings. He was wrong. When in 1999 Nigerian elites decided that the democratic president of the country must be a Yoruba, Bola Ige thought he was the anointed one. He had been a state governor which he won on the platform of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) founded by Awolowo. He is indisputably a disciple of Awolowo that is much revered in the old Western Region and beyond. He had written in defence of the Yoruba race and was a well known confidant of the late Yoruba leader. Challenging him for the Alliance for Democracy (AD) presidential ticket was Chief Olu Falae, a man whose only credential in political leadership was his appointment as the minister of finance by General Ibrahim Babangida’s administration. To Bola Ige’s shock and dismay, Olu Falae was endorsed by Afenifere, the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation to be the presidential candidate of AD to challenge Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, another Yoruba who was the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Why did Afenifere overlook Ige and choose Falae? The Afenifere rightly reasoned that with Bola Ige’s universally known hatred of the Hausa-Fulani, he cannot be able to muster any support from the north to counter the PDP. The Yoruba elites were aware that no Yoruba can be president with Yoruba vote alone and if they are to put their preferred son in Aso Rock, they are not going to present a Hausa-Fulani hater. To say that Ige was furious is an understatement. He did not only dump Afenifere, he went against the wishes of the organisation to join the Obasanjo administration. Once he got into government he joined forces with Obasanjo to destroy Afenifere with the formation of Yoruba Elders Forum. Afenifere is yet to fully recover from the damage inflicted on it by the very upset Ige. Afenifere was not the reason he was looked over by his people. It was his hate writings in his Tribune Column. Even when he was nominated as Attorney General and Minister of Justice some concerned Nigerians in the National Assembly wanted to stop his confirmation because of his hate writings. I hope this will serve as a lesson to hate mongers out there, especially those who write regularly.