Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK), brilliant lawyer and more, on Thursday, August 20, 2020 failed to answer a simple question. His response, the manner of the response and his choice of words, have spawned a worsening impression of the oft-rated suave FFK.
His response was graceless. It was loaded with enough munitions that when they exploded, they did not spare FFK’s bunker.
What could be so annoying about the question, “Who is bankrolling your trip?” Daily Trust reporter, Eyo Charles who threw the poser at an FFK press briefing to round off his tour of Cross River State, got a mouthful from FFK. He still did not get an answer.
Unless we are to take the abuses that FFK poured on him and journalists in general as answers, FFK failed to answer a simple question. Did he not know the answer?
Was FFK above being questioned? Should the public not know what their former Minister of Aviation was up to, most recently? What type of questions was he expecting when he invited the media? What was the purpose of the media engagement if he could not be asked questions?
FFK left no one in doubt that he was mad with the reporter. His arrogance was at a new high. What caused his anger? Did he think of the consequences of his anger in relation to his mission?
Well, he gave hints about how the reporter annoyed him. He fancied that he was Olusegun Obasanjo, the former President under whom he served as Minister or Donald Trump, President of the United States of America. He said the reporter could not have asked any of them the question which he said was from his political enemies.
Either Obasanjo or Trump was his role models or he saw himself as them. He expected that he could not be asked some questions because of his background which he kept emphasising in the video. What was his challenge in answering a simple question? He ended the briefing with the question unanswered.
If a lawyer, politician, media influencer, set out on a national tour – Zamfara, Anambra, Cross River, still counting – was the public not entitled to know his purpose? Was there a better way of interrogating the purpose without asking who was picking the bills?
Why would FFK have time to insult the reporter without time to answer a question that was of public interest? His answer too was of interest to the public.
FFK’s conduct supported lack of accountability and transparency in the affairs of leaders. He has many followers who would have expected a better handling of the situation.
The Nigeria Union of Journalists has condemned the verbal assault on Eyo.
Daily Trust has taken up the matter, with a full-page publication asking the police to hold Fani-Kayode responsible if anything happened to the reporter. The publication accused FFK of posting a version of the event that excluded the insults, and threats to Eyo. The newspaper called his conduct a threat to democracy and the media’s roles in it.
Fani-Kayode has vowed never to apologise to the reporter. He maintained that Eyo was sponsored to insult him but got more than he expected.
Two examples of two politicians FFK knows would illustrate how to handle irritating questions. The situation could also be milked to one’s advantage.
Jesse Jackson, civil rights activist, and a Baptist minister was promoted for most of the 1980s as the most likely first African American to be President of the United States of America. He had good runs in the 1984 and 1988 nomination races of the Democrats
His better effort was in 1988 when he finished third in the nomination. At a 1988 press conference in Columbus, Ohio, a reporter pulled out a copy of a newspaper with the bold, front page headline, ‘Clouds over Jackson’s Campaign’. He sought Jackson’s comments on the publication. Jackson’s campaign was really in trouble then for insensitive comments he had made about Jews. His half brother was also serving a prison term.
What did Jackson do? Getting up from his seat, according to USA Today, Jackson pulled a window blind of the meeting room and looking into the Ohio sun, retorted, “I see only sunshine”. He did not call the reporter names. He had no interests in his sponsors. He did not threaten the reporter with calls to his employers to end his career.
It was not different back home. A journalist in a team interviewing former Senate President, the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo asserted that Okadigbo liked women. Okadigbo roared in laughter and asked the reporter whether he should have liked men instead. The real position he said, was that he liked women and women liked him too.
FFK has the garb and grasp to have answered the question in ways that would have won him applauses. He chose differently. He sounded as if the reporter was a great inconvenience to him.
The response was replete with insults that were for all journalists, not for the reporter alone. When FFK runs out of temper, he will still have to answer that simple question. In addition, people are now wondering what he found so upsetting and objectionable to the question, “Who is bankrolling your trip?”
FFK also needs to offer apologies for a behaviour that should be beneath him. The reporter tested the threshold of FFK’s tolerance of public scrutiny. We now know how FFK accounts to the public.
In using his pedigree to obfuscate civility in the public space, FFK failed the leadership test woefully. His pedigree was meant to have been used more respectfully for himself, his forebears, and the public.
He still has a chance to pick up the smithereens of his shattered image from that media imbroglio in Calabar. The choice remains his.
Isiguzo, a major commentator on national minor issues, writes from Abuja
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