You are guilty of hate crime, law professor tells Fani-Kayode

A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode said he owed nobody an apology for describing Fulani herdsmen as tsetse flies and murderers.

He was responding to tweets by Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, who accused the ex-minister of hate crime, promising to lodge a complaint to the Nigerian Police Force.

Odinkalu, who disclosed his intention on Twitter on Wednesday, lashed at Fani-Koyode. He said it was not proper for Nigerians to be asked to quite a particular section of the country. He said Fani-Kayode should not have resorted to calling an entire race names for an offence committed by a few people.  

“Chief Falae’s abduction is a crime, but to make that basis of a campaign against a race as Femi Fani-Kayode did is hate speech. It is hate speech to leave individual responsibility and describe a race as tsetse fly, locust and leeches,” Odinkalu tweeted

He added that it was “unlawful to advocate for mass removal of Nigerians from parts of their own country.” This, he said, should not have come from a former minister and lawyer.

But Fani-Kayode, who recently changed his name on social media to Olufemi Olu-Kayode, responded to NHRC chairman. He tweeted, “It is those gutless cowards that seek to play down the murder of others that are guilty of hate crimes and not those that call a spade a spade.”

He added, “No regrets for describing murderous Fulani herdsmen as tsetse flies. Actually, they are worse. Like Satan, they come to kill, steal and destroy.

“Those that say that we must remain silent when aliens invade our land, rape our women and kill our people shall fail. We will resist evil. I support the call by the Afenifere that all Fulani herdsmen should be banned from the South-West. We do not want these killers in our midst.”

In the widely-circulated article, the ex-minister justified the call on by a section of the South-West that the cattle rearers should leave the region.

The call followed an allegation that the herdsmen were responsible for the recent kidnap of a chieftain of the Afenifere, Chief Olu Falae.      

“These herdsmen have become the pests of our nation. They are like the East African tsetse fly: wherever they go they suck blood out of their hosts and, like the locust, they destroy everything in their path. They are like leeches: they indulge in a parasitic mode of nutrition and they suck the blood of the carcass until their victim is left for dead.

“Like the Arab Janjaweed, they are only known for the most hideous of things. This includes terror, intimidation, theft, murder, rape, abduction, mutilation, violation of the rights of others, destruction of the land and crops of farmers and destruction of property.

“Anyone that doubts this should ask the people of the north central zone what they have been suffering in the hands of these vagabonds and vagrants for the last 50 years. This is especially so in Plateau, Benue, Niger, Kwara, Nassarawa, Taraba and Adamawa states.

“Yet, up until 20 years ago this was essentially a northern problem and it did not affect the south. Sadly that has changed. It has now become a national plague that knows no boundaries and whose poison threatens to consume us all.

“In the last few years, the herdsmen have attacked, ravaged and pillaged many rural communities south of the River Niger and they have slaughtered and raped thousands of innocent people in the South-South, the South-East and the South-Western zones of our country,” Fani-Kayode wrote.