On The “Triumphant” Entry of FFK Into Aso Rock!! By Olowoseunrere Abiodun

On The “Triumphant” Entry of FFK Into Aso Rock!! By Olowoseunrere Abiodun.

Chief Femi Fani-Kayode(FFK) will do a better job than Alhaji Olayiwola Muhammed(Lai), no doubt. Though he has no real electoral value, but he brings with him a huge nuisance value, the very type a regime that is sinking daily badly needs.

He is a gutter-fighter, a Cambridge-educated street-fighter; who insults his opponents with Queen’s English; and makes pretence to being urbane and sophisticated while doing so.

While leaving APC in 2014, he said one of the reasons for dumping the then opposition party was his inability to tolerate APC National Leader’s mouth odour. Not done, he threw caution to the winds by saying Lai used to wear diapers, a reference probably to his opponent’s medical condition. Using halitosis and incontinence to shame your co-travellers with whom you just parted ways shows how low the short-fused man could go.

But why will any party want to have such a man in its fold? Why will a whole president leave the numerous urgent matters of the state to receive such a character into his party? Why did PDP do everything humanly possible to dissuade him from leaving? The answer lies in strategy. The far-sighted wing of the ruling class in the two dominant parties understand perfectly the nature of the period we are entering.

The period we are entering is a period of intense intra-class squabbles; of very dirty fights among the parasitic ruling class. It is not a period for reformist statemen and intellectuals in the mould of Zik, Awo and Balewa, not even those of pretend-statemen like Obasanjo and Olu Falae (of 1998/1999). It is not a period of debates or arguments over how Nigeria should be structured (federal vs. confederal), never mind the deafening noise of that overused word, restructuring, so misused that it has lost any tangible meaning. It is not a period of debate over what percentage should be allocated to education and health, and other social services. The two parties have exhausted their lifelines; their respective abilities to lie to the electorates on the aforementioned programs and policies have been greatly impaired, going by their records in the last 22 years (of their respective reigns).

So, if it is not a period of debate or any pretence to intellectual discourse around programs, what period is it?

A period of mudslinging, of what Fela called “rofo-rofo”, of total disregard for sophistication, finese or civility. It is a period where the likes of FFK and Okupe (who once described himself as an attack lion) are more valued than the ones who reel out statistics and draw graphs or pie-charts. A period where MC Oluomo and Auxiliary hold sway in party circles than Turenci-speaking politicians.

It is a period of decline. Nigeria is fast declining. None of the factions of the ruling class has a solution to stop this accelerated descent. Neither PDP nor APC. Neither Atiku nor Jonathan. Neither Tinubu nor Osibajo.

We have the benefit of history to draw parallels. From Ancient Rome to Ancient Greece, from Old Benin to Old Oyo, the pattern is the same. When an empire or society is in decline, the affairs of the state fall more into the hands of the worst set of elements. The finese of Azikwe, who reigned in a period of relative social progress, contrasts very sharply with the crudity of Wike and Orji Kalu. Similar parallels can be drawn between Awo and today’s southwest leaders; as welll as Aminu Kano and northern leaders of today.

Two options stare us in the face in today’s Nigeria: either Revolution, by this we mean the forcible mass entry of the poor and oppressed into the arena of politics, led by their most advanced section which the working class represents, with a view to wresting power from this hopeless ruling class and begin the process of redirecting the politics, economy and society along socialist lines ; OR, a further decline into BARBARISM. There is no third option.