FFK : Political Asset Or Liability.

By Jonathan Ishaku

It was President Ibrahim B. Babangida who once told us that Nigeria’s economy defies all logics. I can also add that Nigeria’s politics defies all logic. Granted, politics isn’t exactly the play field of saints and known also as a profession without qualification but at least in other climes a certain minimum is required.

Americans require a modicum of honesty and fidelity in their politics.

In 1987 the brilliant political career and the well-received presidential bid of Democratic Senator Gary Hart came to an abrupt end when it transpired that he had spent a weekend on a yacht named “Monkey Business” in March with two young women, none of whom was his wife. Infidelity also earned President Bill Clinton an impeachment and brought down uncountable politicians through the years. Why are Americans so fussy about marital infidelity? Many are influenced by President Harry Truman’s reasoning when he said: “You know, if a man will lie to his wife, he will lie to me.”

That has been interpreted to mean that if a politician can cheat on his wife he would cheat on his nation with alacrity.

You cannot apply this in Nigeria unless you want to drive ALL the politicians away. Understandably ours is still largely a polygamous society and therefore marital fidelity is less nuanced.

I’m not holding this up to FFK, a confirmed serial polygamist whose conquests, by self-confession, included a beauty queen from the East who was also wife to a one time Biafran War General. Recently he carried out another game of musical chairs on the home front ; he replaced the older Missus with a younger and “yellower” one. To demand marital fidelity from him is to demand honesty from him.

Okay, so most politicians are not honest but what exactly is FFK’s political selling point? Haughty, impudent, irreverent and abusive. What is a ruling party looking for in a politician with such specifications? Why would a party in power recruit attack dogs? Does the APC nurse an invidious agenda?

In 2006, in the heat of President Obasanjo’s third tenure elongation campaign, General Yakubu Gowon, who back in 1975 suffered a coup d’etat after postponing his promise to handover in 1976, came out to advise Obasanjo’s to learn from his mistake, but was instantaneously torn to smithereens by FFK, the OBJ’s attack dog!

I think I am wrong to call him an attack dog; I hear that dog’s display lifetime gratitude to their benefactors.

FFK doesn’t have this noble trait. On January 15, 1966, Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, the Western Region Deputy Premier and FFK’s father, was in custody of junior military officers awaiting certain execution as the military operations of the coup raged; the Premier, Chief Akintola had already been killed.

It was Lt Col Gowon, after he got wind of it, that dispatched soldiers under the Kabwir-born Capt. S. G. Tokkida to go and free Chief Remi Fani Kayode at Ikeja barracks. But FFK displayed his kind of gratitude to Gowon by insults that day in 2006 while defending his temporal “owner.”

Whatever job the APC have for FFK in the coming days, I caution them with the Hausa adage: Kar dara ta chi gida.