By Prince Babajide Babalola
I would like to respond to the recent inaccurate and irresponsible article, filled with disgust and mental deficiency, published on saharareporters, nigeriavillagesquare and other online magazines by one Pius Adesanmi with the title ‘‘Getting Their Beering Wrong’’. I am particularly disturbed that Saharareporters and others, will post such an article devoid of intellectual objectivity nor intellectual analysis, I doubt
if the editor of Saharareporters had the patience to read the whole long piece of “copy and paste” ‘opinion’ before posting it on the webpage for the sane minded readers.
If Adesanmi was fair to himself and his father’s name he should have exercised restraints over issues like this which purely lack substance, facts and accuracy. A Yoruba adage says ‘‘omoosanlounkopoun-polobaiya re nile’’ (It is only a prodigal son that brings dishonour& shame to his mother), this proverb can best describe who Pius Adesanmi is. I am sure if he had asked his counsel he could have been better informed about the damage he is doing to himself and career. Although I truly agree with him that he has right not to believe Nigerian officials or politicians, his fundamental rights also allow him to believe wikileaks or anything else, or to possibly embrace all the uncensored cable appreciating them more than his Holy Bible or Quran. However it would be wrong for him in his infertile and vicious mind to take on Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, MallamNasir el-Rufai and others, over some classified information that were released by wikileaks some of which are completely incorrect and fallacious.
Every right thinking individuals knew the damage this cable has done to all career diplomats (serving or retired) in the global community and some observers have even concluded that revolutions and reforms are in danger of being lost as the cables spread to intelligence contractors and governments before the public. For a hallucinating Adesanmi who is ostensibly uniformed about the realities attached to this cable, he should be guided that the United States, a country where he purportedly lives, denied ever cooperating with the anti-secrecy group, and blasted Wikileaks for threatening national security and the safety of confidential informants. Wikileaks equally blamed Britain’s ‘‘The Guardian newspaper’’ for the breach. They also emphasized that bulk of the information released are from their confidential informants at their various embassies and that all the information and conversation can’t just be true, affirming that there must be some sort of distortion of facts and in some instances such conversation never took place coupled with the fact that some of the materials provided are not even verifiable. One wonders why Adesanmi has decided to seek pleasure in making this scandalous and derogatory opinion about these distinguished and well accomplished Nigerians including Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, el-RufaiNasir, OkonjoIweala and even President Goodluck Jonathan among others.
I have pleasure in tutoring MrAdesanmi like a primary school pupil, by informing him that in the internet community there is what we call ‘’hacking’’ which can inadvertently hit anyone on their social network or email accounts especially when the firewall on their computer systems are not strong enough to combat intruding virus, which was what Chief Femi Fani-Kayode experienced some months ago when his facebook account was compromised by some hackers who literarily hacked into his facebook page causing him inconceivable and regrettable damage in the public. This callous propagandist has also lied and misinformed the public by saying Chief Fani-Kayode posted suggestive pictures of his biologically children on his facebook photo gallery, this is also incorrect because there was no time such pictures were posted on his facebook photo gallery. You can check out the links below they would surely dissolve your sense of ignorance and indecent journalism, moreso this information can also make the public to be well informed about the facts of the matter erroneously raised by this confused and demented columnist. http://saharareporters.com/article/re-how-responsible-father-mr-femi-fani-kayode?page=2 http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/09/femi-fani-kayode-the-rage-and-the-wikileaks-fever/ http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201102082524470 .
However, it should be on record that Chief Femi Fani-Kayode meritoriously served under the administration Chief OlusegunObasanjo as Special Adviser on Public Affairs, Minister of Culture and Tourism and later in the Aviation ministry. On the merit of this available fact, all right thinking person would surely expect him to stand in defence of his principal in those days and I don’t think he has done anything wrong in that regard. Therefore Adesanmi should not engage himself on any blue murder excursion, it is needless and I would advise him to utilise his writing skills on something reasonable that can add value to his professional career not by brandishing himself as a jester at the public gallery. A responsible journalist is expected to focus more on investigative work and backing it with irrefutable evidences. Meanwhile I have not seen anywhere in the world when writing rejoinders in the press has become crime, particularly when accurate facts are put in the right perspective to guide the public accordingly, so he should tell us how and where Fani-Kayode has wronged him.
Furthermore, Pius will do Nigerians (including me) great service by exposing the antics of corrupt and inconsistent Nigerian politicians who speak from both sides of their mouth, but for him to have chosen Chief Femi Fani-Kayode in such order he has gone for a wrong ‘bull’. I believe it would be fair enough if Nigerians can only commend and appreciate Chief Femi Fani-Kayode for his quick intervention in solving many delicate issues particularly when the nation was faced with incessant air crashes which bedevilledthe aviation sector between 2005 and 2006. In fairness to President OlusegunObasanjo he made a good choice in his minor cabinet reshuffle back then, when he redeployed FaniKayode from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the Ministry of Aviation. The redeployment took place in November 2006. Before the redeployment, the country had experienced no less than five plane crashes in Nigeria with the attendant loss of approximately 400 lives within a period of one year. This was not only unprecedented in peace time but was also a national tragedy and disgrace and was widely acknowledged as being so.
The plane crashes were, in no particular order, the Bellview crash, the Sosoliso crash, the military plane crash (in which some of our brightest and most distinguished generals were killed), the ADC crash and the crash of a small plane that took place in Kaduna . As if to add a rather sinister twist to the whole saga, virtually all these crashes took place on a weekend. This was a perplexing coincidence and was indeed by a curious and cruel twist of fate. It was clear and obvious to the discerning and spiritually sensitive that the demons of hell had been invoked and loosed into the Nigerian airspace in that one year. FaniKayode took on these dark forces and their agents and restored discipline, accountability, sensitivity, responsibility and a full compliance and ‘no-nonsense’ approach to safety and security issues within the sector.
For him, the protection of the lives and welfare of the Nigerian flying public was more important than anything else. To him it was his duty to protect these lives for the seven (7) months that he was at the Aviation Ministry. We thank God that in that primary assignment, by God’s grace, he was successful and the cycle of plane crashes stopped throughout the period that he was Minister of Aviation. Still the hatchet men wont stop their propaganda and media onslaught by way of misinforming the public about the aviation intervention fund and the roles played by the EFCC and judiciary among others things. The fact is that Fani-Kayode never stole any money and the fine gentle has clean bill of records contrary to the lies that have been served to the public by the inefficient and incompetent Farida Waziri and his boy Femi Babafemi. Here is also a rejoinder which put things in their correct proper perspective http://www.pointblanknews.com/Articles/artopn2799.html.
I believe Mr Pius Adesanmi is a core Yoruba man, and for that I expect him to openly apologize to those he had sensationally disparaged simply because he feels he has good command of English or he could abuse or play with semantics. He should learn to be decorous with his choice of words while writing his opinions, nothing can be more retrogressive and disdainful than this and unfortunately for him this is not excellent journalism. He has not only done great harm to himself but to his entire generation by fielding falsehoods to the unsuspecting members of the public who are only nosing for news. He should know that he is not the only one who knows how to handle the pen in a manner capable of undermining the ethics of his profession. I will leave Pius to his conscience, but it is pertinent to emphasise on some specific lapses that are evident in his biased opinion. The potential consequences of being wrong in an article are far more extensive because of the impact upon the public discourse when it comes to deciding how issues are judged. Here, facts are used to persuade but what if those facts are wrong?
The rule always has been that an editor publicly admits the error and prints (or broadcasts) the correction to it. Regrettably, that will not be the case here. Sure, letters may be written to the editor that may be printed long after the urgent momentum to reconcile the error has lapsed. Also, editors will leave it to essentially uninformed readers to decide on their own that is more credible. And, for those leveraging the PR efforts to sway public opinion and buzz for their politically and selfishly motivated efforts that will do nothing whatsoever to rectify falsehoods, they will be happy to know that editors will not bother to admit their errors or correct them in a prominent manner. This is not good journalism. And, it misleads deeply. Readers beware and thank you for dispelling this costly hoax and rumour.