Fani-Kayode ‘Heaven didn’t fall when Jonathan was insulted,’ Ex-minister tells Buhari

Former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode has criticized President Muhammadu Buhari over the arrest of Joachim Chinakwe who named his dog after the president.

Former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode has criticized President Muhammadu Buhari over the arrest of Joachim Chinakwe who named his dog after the president.

Fani-Kayode said further that former president, Goodluck Jonathan was also insulted but he kept his cool.

The former minister made his comments via an article titled “Mr. Chinakwe's dog, the sons of Lucifer and the seed of Al Shaitan”.

The article reads in part:

When the likes of Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, the former Minister of Education and a hitherto great supporter and friend of the Buhari administration can publicly proclaim that “President Buhari does not deserve to be President”, then you know that this government has indeed gone beyond the pale, that the meltdown has started and that the corpses are beginning to smell.

Yet nothing is more indicative of the Federal Government’s misplaced priorities and more reflective of their total and complete moral degeneration and psychotic paranoia than their behavior towards the owner of a dog that was named Buhari. Consider the following.

One year and two months ago when President Goodluck Jonathan was still in power, a man named his goat “Goodluck Jonathan”. After doing so he took a picture of himself with the goat and proceeded to splash it all over Facebook and Twitter. As insulting and provocative as this was, no-one in government raised an eyebrow and neither did President Jonathan take it in bad faith.

Again one year and two months ago whilst he was still in power President Goodluck Jonathan was maligned, misrepresented and labeled as being “clueless”, “weak” and “incompetent” by many.

We took advantage of his meekness, decency, sense of restraint and humility and we took the basic freedoms that he gave us for granted. It didn’t stop there.

On several occasions during the course of the 2015 presidential election campaign he was stoned in parts of the core north by violent groups of hungry-looking and thuggish almajiris whilst the First Lady, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, was unfairly and cruelly portrayed as an illiterate, a drama queen, a clown and something akin to a female court jester.

She was even referred to as a “hippopotamus” by no less a person than our Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka whilst Jonathan himself was described as “a pig” by Mr. Japhet Omojuwa, a young and dynamic blogger and political commentator.

Yet despite all these unwarranted, crude and provocative insults the President did not lose his cool, the heavens did not fall and his government did not query, warn, threaten or arrest anyone.

One year and two months later things appear to be very different. Permit me to explain. A few days ago a man who named his dog “Buhari” was promptly arrested by the police and remanded in custody. His name is Joachim Chinakwe and he lives in Ogun state.

The police told members of an incredulous public that they took and kept Mr. Chinakwe in custody “for his own safety” and that they intended to arraign him in a court of law in a matter of days for having the effrontery to name his dog “Buhari”.

According to them, giving his dog that name was a provocative act that could have led to an ethnic and religious conflict because Mr. Chinakwe’s neighbours were Hausa-Fulani. Apparently those neighbors were not too happy with the name that he had given to the dog, in view of the fact that our President shares the same name, and therefore they threatened to kill him for it.

As far as I am aware this is the first time in the history of our country that anyone has been arrested simply because his dog shares the same name as our President. It is also the first time that the victim of a serious crime and an individual whose life was threatened ended up being thrown behind bars whilst those that threatened to take that life ended up being the complainants in the case.

And all this because of a poor dog named Buhari which, we are told, had to be quietly put down and sent to the great beyond by its owner so that it couldn’t be used as evidence against him in court! The whole episode sounds like a second rate Hollywood script but sadly it really happened. I guess that is “Mai Chanji” for you.

The latest development is that eight Christian polytechnic students were burnt alive in Zamfara state for allegedly making “blasphemous comments” against Prophet Mohammed. Clearly the madness is spreading. I hate to say “I told you so” but I guess that we all have to live with the consequences of the choices that we make. That is “mai chanji”

Those amongst us that are still “too scared to speak out” and that live in a state of perpetual bondage and fear have much to learn from the words of Alexander the Great, one of the greatest kings and warriors that ever lived. He said “conquer your fears and you will live forever!”