Tobias Sylvester
A former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has justified his actions after calling a journalist, Eyo Charles, “stupid” during a press conference in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
KanyiDaily had shared a video showing the moment Fani-Kayode was raining insults at Eyo Charles, a journalist with Daily Trust newspaper, for asking him a “stupid question.”
Charles had asked Fani-Kayode who bankrolled his recent tour of some southern states. But the former minister, who was infuriated by the question, said the journalist was stupid.
The development triggered outrageous responses among many Nigerians, with many faulting the former minister’s action.
But reacting via a statement, Fani-Kayode said he had no apology to offer, insisting that he was insulted by the journalist whom he attacked at the press conference.
“During my tour of the South and after a long and successful press conference in Calabar, Cross Rivers state, a journalist put up his hand for the last question and said: Well we do not know who is bankrolling you,” he said.
“Below is my response and I have no apology to offer for it… This is not a question but an assertion and an insult. And if this insulting assertion were made before (Donald) Trump or OBJ (Olusegun Obasanjo), I know how they would have reacted.
“The young man apologised to me during the press conference and sent his apologies to me after the conference. I have accepted his apologies in good faith and moved on.
“I have always had respect for journalists and I always will. Those of them that know me or have worked with or for me over the last 30 years can attest to that.”
Fani-Kayode added that there is a difference between asking a question and “offering a gratuitous insult.”
“This is all the more so when it is clear that the assertion was sponsored and engineered by my political enemies who wanted to use the young man to insult and embarrass me and question my integrity. Well they got more than they bargained for,” he said.
“I repeat this was not a question but an assertion and an insult and I will not accept that from any man born of woman. Thank you.”
This is coming barely 24 hours after Fani-Kayode attacked President Buhari’s government over the killing of IPOB members by security operatives in Enugu.
