The dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of psychopaths and child abductors, taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign on internet, finally met its match in Nigeria to inaugurate the week of September 11 – most appropriately. Shekau’s danse macabre was surpassed by the unfurling of a political campaign banner that defiled an entry point into Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. That banner read: BRING BACK JONATHAN 2015.

Before the Ebola crisis, I never heard of Dr Ameyo Adadevoh (The Consultant Physician and Endocrinologist at First Consultant Hospital). However with her tragic death at the hands of Ebola, I have heard and read more about her. From close family friends who had the opportunity and privilege of knowing her, she was a good person and very committed to her duty and country. Given the way she stopped Patrick Sawyer from leaving the hospital upon discovery that he had Ebola, her good-heartedness, patriotism and desire to protect humanity are unquestionable. Most unfortunately and sad, she died from her genuine efforts to protect us Nigerians.  

Nigeria is NOT and was never designed to be a hybrid state where we were meant to forgo our primary identity, forsake the vision of our forefathers and forget our fundamental differences with other nationalities.

The story has been told often enough and is now old: A response from Chief Orji Kalu to the recent forced removal of some Nigerians from one part of their country to another vexed and caused Chief Fani Kayode to write a series of essays, one of which he termed, ‘The Bitter Truth about the Igbos’.

IN his article: “The bitter truth about the Igbo”, Femi Fani-Kayode spectacularly exhibited his ignorance, narrow-mindedness, xenophobia and a penchant for lying.

As the cliché goes, all this would have been laughable if it is not so tragic. In the heat of the subsisting venom and vitriol, it seems nobody now cares that the first set of “deportees” from Lagos were no other than Yoruba indigenes of Oyo and Osun states. I say this because this knowledge is not reflected in the way and manner protagonists have been conducting the debate on the so-called “deportation” of Igbo from Lagos.

A GREEK proverb warns: “don’t hear one and judge two”. This sensible aphorism would appear to have been ignored by Mr. Femi Aribisala in his article of August 21, 2013, in which he bitterly assailed the contribution, character and person of the late Chief R.A. Fani-Kayode in the following terms : “….Like father, like son: That was 48 years ago.

As the cliché goes, all this would have been laughable if it is not so tragic. In the heat of the subsisting venom and vitriol, it seems nobody now cares that the first set of “deportees” from Lagos were no other than Yoruba indigenes of Oyo and Osun states.

They called him names, pronounced him mental, some even threatened his family members. His crime was that he spoke, not only did he speak, he spoke the truth. This is a very grievous crime to the Igbo. They have their own ideology of what the truth ought to be and all creature must propagate Igbo’s version of ‘the truth’ even if it contradicts the facts on ground. It is a mission that must be accomplished.

The striking resemblance between Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, former Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo and former Minister of Aviation and his late father is enough to convince anyone of his biological paternity. However, when the Yoruba hail a person as a ‘husband’s child’ it is not necessarily, nor limited to, a confirmation of DNA.

I HAD intended not to dignify Femi Fani Kayode with any response since he decided to dance naked in the market place. Somebody ought to have reminded him that those who live in glass houses don’t throw stones. He has only himself to blame about his unpalatable past which has been on display all over Facebook in the last few days.

THE year was 1965. I was an innocent starry-eyed 13 year-old and Nigeria was in turmoil. It was the era of the “wetie,” when the houses of politicians and key public-figures were burnt down in the brouhaha that was then Western Nigeria.

I had the ugly experience of reading the infantile postulations of a former minister of aviation, Mr. Femi Fani –Kayode, headlined, ‘The bitter truth about the Igbo’. I wept for Nigeria as I remembered that such a character was once a member of the Federal Executive Council under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s presidency.

One lesson I learnt over the years is to ignore rabble rousers no matter the degree of their provocation. The recurrent decimal that defines political failures is their unalloyed penchant at deploying religion and ethnicity in craving for a seat on the political gravy train. The irony is the success rate of this tactics notwithstanding the damage it does to the polity and national cohesion. Are politicians really ready to learn or is the number the most important factor no matter the character of coalescing individuals?

THOSE that call me a tribalist and an Igbo-hater are simply misguided and ignorant. Perhaps they do not know the meaning of those words or the true import of their meaning.