In response to the vitriole directed at Femi Fani-Kayode over his remarks about the waywardness of the Igbo women he had sex with, a pan-Yoruba socio-political and self-determination group, the Oodua Solidarity Forum (OSF), has emerged to urge those attacking the former Minister of Aviation to stop.
The group was reacting to the attacks by Igbo elements following the articles Fani-Kayode wrote in defence of the Lagos State Government and the Yoruba race. OSF described the attacks as a ploy by the Igbo to drag the nation into another meaningless war. It wondered why the Igbo were berating the former minister over an issue that did not concern them.
In a statement by its National Coordinator, Mr Julius Olajide, OSF said it would no longer tolerate further attacks on Fani-Kayode and any other Yoruba man or woman.
It urged Igbo leaders to call their people to order before they incur the anger of their accommodating hosts.
Fani-Kayode, in response to former Abia State Governor Orji Uzor Kalu’s diatribe that Lagos is a “no man’s land”, wrote a series of articles: The bitter truth about the Igbo.
It was in defence of the Yoruba race and a counter-claim to Kalu’s assertion that 55 per cent of the revenue generated in Lagos State belonged to the Igbo.
OSF expressed sadness that despite the former minister’s explanation that his intentions were not to ridicule or malign the Igbo, the attacks had continued with some Igbo groups threatening Fani-Kayode’s wife and children.
The group said while many may view the attacks as being focussed on the former minister, discerning people have noted that the attacks were targeted at the Yoruba race.
The statement said: “It is funny how these people, who have found it a game to attack Fani-Kayode, remained silent when an Igbo man, former Abia State Governor Orji Kalu described Lagos as ‘no man’s land’ and that 55 per cent of the state’s resources belongs to the Igbo.”
It said the former minister did not only make the comments as his personal opinion as a Nigerian but also as someone who decided to rise in defence of “his fatherland, which is being disparaged by an Igbo man”.
The OSF noted that although Yoruba accounts for ownership of between 20 to 30 per cent of buildings and businesses in Abuja, it has never lost sight of the fact that the place is not only the federal capital but also the land of the Gwari.
The group described the statement credited to the Ohaneze in the Daily Sun of August 6 as an insult and an affront on the Yoruba.
It added that the Igbo umbrella group, in the statement, claimed they constitute 46 per cent of the state’s population with a veiled threat to destroy it, if they don’t have their way.
