Fani-Kayode’s short fuse, Trump’s small hand and the Nigerian Metaphor

In the year 2000, after the world miraculously survived the notorious ‘millennium bug,’ a virus in the guise of a song was unleashed on unsuspecting people. It was titled ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ by a Bahamian band, The Baha Men.

For obvious reasons, seeing the rabid ferocity with which former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode disgorged the bile in him on the person of Daily Trust reporter Eyo Charles brought back memories of this song. And the more I watched his tirade, the more the song played in my head.

It is a stunning attack on a journalist and perhaps ranks next to clips of Argentine football great, Diego Maradona, shooting at journalists outside his Buenos Aires home with a compressed air rifle in 1994. Both incidents are disturbing. This one more so because of its wider implications.

It would be justified to focus solely on the FaniKayode video and to disrobe his dreadful antics, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter that much to the former minister. His threshold for shame or decorum is incredibly low. This conclusion is of course based on his record of brazenness—the public manner in which he presented his alleged affair with Bianca Ojukwu, branded Igbo women as prostitutes, and his recent volte-face to accept a chieftaincy title from the same ‘power-hungry, bloodthirsty Fulanis’ (his words, not mine) he had expended so much energy to castigate. Not to mention the manner in which he slinked back to be an attack dog in President Goodluck Jonathan’s failed 2015 campaigns after he had been very critical of the same Jonathan. His former boss, President Olusegun Obasanjo had reportedly said of him, “Femi is my boy. If you give him food, he would sing and dance for you.”

So perhaps it is prudent to have a very low expectation of such a character.

But what does this attack really mean, not only for the individuals involved but the wider socio-political sphere of this country?

Mr Kayode’s attitude, dangerously unrefined as it is, and not at all in keeping with his privileged background and education, is sadly perfectly in keeping with the attitude of a good number of politicians to the people they aspire to lead. The hubris that makes him think that he, as a public figure, is beyond reproach, and beyond asking to account for the funding of his trip, which is a legitimate question any journalist should ask, is not uncommon. So are the disdain and contempt in which he holds this journalist and others, something that is furthered in his none-apology, in which he regretted causing his journalist friends the trouble of having to tell him that he slammed his face into his own vomit and should tender an apology. In all of that apology, he ‘withdrew the word stupid,’ apologized to his journalist friends, but at no time did he apologise to the journalist he offended. That watery statement was not issued because he feels any kind of remorse, it is one designed for damage control occasioned by the public ire that followed his attack on Mr Charles.

The irony here is that Fani-Kayode caused this wahala for himself. If the team of sponsored, pseudojournalists he was travelling with, in the guise of some obscure ‘One Voice Africa TV,’ had not been imprudent enough to share the clip, taking the time to edit out the question Mr Charles had asked, and foolishly captioned the video “FaniKayode blows hot and blasts rude journalist,” all of this storm would not have kicked off in the first place. And the incident would have been conferred to the waste bin of memory. Perhaps the idea of posting the clip was to portray Fani-Kayode as a nononsense disciplinarian, to intimidate journalists when engaging with him. However, it only showed him up as a person dangerously unfit for public office.

The fact that in his tirade or an explainer for it had said men like Trump or Obasanjo would not tolerate such a question is also telling. If Fani-Kayode is modelling himself after Trump, with his customary disdain for any person who is a journalist, not white, not a man, and not of the required level of stupidity, it is a dangerous path to follow. But then again there might be a lot more in common between the two men than we realise. FaniKayode has a short fuse. Trump has small hands. These are inadequacies small minds (‘very small minds’) advertise in themselves.

What is also bothersome is the reprehensible manner in which the other journalists there stood by and watched their colleague being humiliated. The scene reminded me of the oftrepeated one in wildlife documentaries where a lone lion jumps into the midst of a herd of antelopes, seizes and feasts on one of them while the rest of the herd resume grazing at a safe distance, with no thought of banding together to help the victim. If you like, replace the image of the lion with a wild dog here, and add the soundtrack of ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ and it would fit just fine. Some of these journalists, one particular person, scolded Mr Charles for daring to ask the question. “See your life,” he sneered.

The fact that most of them held their breaths, hoping Fani-Kayode’s short fuse doesn’t explode and burn up the little brown envelopes they were hoping for at the end of the briefing is an indictment on journalism practice in this country. For this, journalists and owners of media organisations have to take responsibility. If underpaid reporters have to pander to the likes of Fani-Kayode to augment their income through brown envelopes, and on account of this dare not ask tough questions and happily throw their colleague under the bus for doing so, then it is a serious indictment on the players in the mediascape. Watching those journalists trading, by their silence and inaction, all the power they had as journalists in favour of brown envelopes, while politicians who go on unsanctioned, meaningless state tours trade their dignity, or what is left of it, for Ghanamust-go is deeply disturbing and typifies exactly what is wrong with this country.

One must not mistake this as a problem of journalism alone because that would imply that one is missing the big picture.

This is a Nigerian problem. This is how most Nigerians would stand by and watch their leaders chew up the next person as long as they would further their interest, be it a brown envelope, a small handout or ‘stomach infrastructure’.

Fani-Kayode needs to sit down in a corner of his room and think of his dreadful behaviour, as do journalists and owners of media organisations who must learn not to send out journalists to scrounge for brown envelopes from politicians desperately scrounging for Ghana-mustgo. As should Nigerians who should know that they have the right to ask questions of politicians who want to govern them and to receive answers and be accorded the respect they deserve as occupiers of the Office of Citizens of the Federal Republic.