Femi Fani-Kayode Satanic Verses – Bayo Oluwasanmi

Just when you think Femi Fani-Kayode can’t possibly be more delusional he spews out another well concocted nauseating superstition. FFK’s foot-in-mouth disease is on display again in his recent pathetic fallacy titled “Lord Lugard’s Magic and Flora Shaw’s Spell” widely published under the headline “Nigeria is built on satanic foundation.”

FFK’s Satanic Verses read like an oversize evangelical claptrap with stubborn myths meant for the uninformed and the gullible. He blames Lord Frederick Lugard the first Governor-General of Nigeria and his wife Flora Lugard as the architects of every evil that torments Nigeria. He says the Lugards who gave Nigeria its name were Luciferians and worshipers of Satan who practiced black arts and satanic rituals. He says Lugard was a High Priest of the Freemasons’ and he and his wife were devout followers of Aleister Crowley the leading satanist of his day and self-styled world’s most wicked man.

Adding another splash of gasoline, he says Nigeria has refused to develop because it was built on a satanic foundation. He claims that the name Nigeria in Latin means “area of darkness” and was the cause of all our problems. FFK complains only Sudan and Nigeria among other African countries colonized by Britain, refused to change their names and that was why the two countries are in a mess. With Jonathan out of power, FFK the erstwhile Jonathan campaign propagandist has been consigned into remote dustbin of irrelevancy. No doubt, he’s suffering from a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, idleness, and more importantly loneliness. To be sure, he must fill his boring time with something and his best option is to resort to scapegoating.

How could Lugards have laid the satanic foundation of Nigeria when Ogboni Fraternity, the Society of Odd Fellows, the Ayelalas, the Babalawos, the Alafas, the witches and witchcrafts, and numerous Nigerian “principalities, powers, world rulers of darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places” have ruled Nigeria forever before the Lugards ever set foot in Nigeria?

To fully understand where FFK is coming from and where he’s going, we need to understand the political purpose of scapegoating. Scapegoating involves more than blaming innocent people or group for other people’s problems. Why has FFK contrive the lie on blaming the Lugards for our problems even when his arguments make no sense? The answer is: scapegoating serves to distract Nigerians from the real causes of their problems. Using Lugard and his wife as a universal scapegoat is very clever political strategy on the part of FFK. It plays directly into the hands of Nigerian Zombies and Bozos the traditional followers of FFK. The biggest problem with FFK scapegoating the Lugards is that it makes it much harder to solve our pressing socioeconomic and political problems.

Whipping up feelings of anger and resentment against the Lugards and by extension the Brits, only encourages irrational thinking and distracts us from understanding the real causes of our problems. It pushes out reason and common sense. That’s so important for people like FFK. That’s the reason FFK must engage in the scapegoating of the Lugards no matter how implausible his arguments. For FFK to acknowledge the real causes of our problems would simply be too threatening and frightening to his ideology and interests.

There is no denying that the Lugards as emissaries of the colonial master – Britain – were responsible for the way Nigeria was fused together as dangerous political co-joint Siamese triplets. That’s the extent we can blame them for our troubles. FFK would not admit that 54 years of misrule especially 16 years of PDP notably the Jonathan regime is responsible for our problems. The main problem with FFK’s blame-the-Lugards tactics with all attempts at scapegoating is that it is based on a distorted vision of reality. The reality of the Nigerian situation is exactly the opposite of what FFK contends. It does not require academic dissection that Nigerian government is run by Nigerians, hence they’re the cause of the serious socioeconomic and political problems we face.

In his mad rush to blame the Lugards for everything that is wrong with Nigeria, FFK has thrown reason and common sense out of the window. Witness, for example, FFK’s confident pronouncement that “… Shaw (Lugard’s wife) gave us the name Nigeria … and there is a deep spiritual and mystical reason why she gave us that name. It comes with a lot of baggage because not much good can come out of an area of darkness.” No one can make sense out of this contention.

Is FFK saying the Lugards were responsible for corruption, unemployment, poverty, infrastructure, Boko Haram, armed robbery, kidnapping, and all other ancient evils that plague Nigeria? For FFK to blame the Lugards for the anemic economic growth, a triple dip recession, a disturbingly high unemployment, and untamed corruption – legacy of the PDP led Jonathan administration of which FFK is an active participant, is an example of bizarre reasoning typical of hypocrites like FFK.

Poverty has been a remarkably persistent problem in Nigeria. Why won’t this problem go away despite our oil wealth and other resources? Greed and corruption. Evidence abound that we deliberately and professionally grow poverty.

The statistics on the extent of corruption and the amount of money involved are well known. This is the cornerstone and the foundation of a satanic nation. The real Satanists of Nigeria are the looters and leeches ruling the country and they are the most wicked people in the world. As aviation and tourism minister respectively, what was FFK’s contribution in terms of innovation, progress, development and service delivery in the aviation and tourism sectors of our economy? Zero! So, the juju or voodoo by the Lugards was responsible for FFK’s failure as a minister.

If you can’t get a job, your chances of being poor are quite high. And there is persistent unemployment and underemployment in our economy. Were the Lugards responsible for our persistent unemployment and underemployment? For corrupt judges who make a mockery of our criminal justice system? Should we blame them for the ragtag, obsolete Nigeria Police Force? Did they elect the fools and the thieves at the National Assembly who are in direct opposition to the interests of Nigerian people? Were the Lugards responsible for stagnated wages, non-payment of salaries and pension, rising cost of living, the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor?

Should we chastise the Lugards for our moral decadence and dearth of leaders? FFK’s scapegoating of the Lugards is malicious, misleading, and destructive. It is a tactic that relies on the encouragement and exploitation of dangerous emotions.

Blaming the Lugards also makes it much more difficult to develop effective approach to lowering our poverty rate, death rate, and to improve the lives of our people if people like FFK persist in the delusion that the Lugards are the reason why Nigerians are poor, jobless, homeless, sick, and insecure. Scapegoating also works to delegitimize the only institutions that are large enough and powerful enough to successfully take on many of these socioeconomic and political problems.

FFK’s article is a foolish distraction. Blindly accepting his scapegoating of the Lugards as Lucifers behind all our problems only undermines and weakens the very democratic political institutions that we must rely on to actually develop and implement the solutions we need. The Lugards are not to blame. Blame the FFKs of the world.

It is on record that FFK has never been an impressive moral personality of sterling performance. He’s known for his cantankerous marginal ability. Though we’re proud of FFK for one thing: he never missed any opportunity to show case the plague-spots in his character. His personal and public life reveals much.
FFK has just shot himself in the foot – again!

byolu@aol.com.

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