By Ojonugwa Felix Ugboja
Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode (FFK) has stated that former governor of Anambara state and Nigeria’s current minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige is a devilish dwarf for saying that Igbos should not complain about marginalisation because they didn’t vote for President Buhari.
FFK made this statement via his twitter handle on Friday, as a reaction to Chris Ngige’s exclusive interview with ThisDay about Igbos and Buhari’s presidency.
“The devilish dwarf and little pygmy that said Igbos should not complain about marginalisation because they didn’t vote for Buhari is a village idiot, a compound fool and an unrepentant slave. He has sold his soul to the devil and he is eating crumbs from his masters table.” he tweeted.
The minister, Chris Ngige, while speaking with THISDAY said all his efforts to persuade the Igbo to wisely invest in Buhari’s presidential bid in 2015 failed because of lack of co-operation by many South-east leaders, who threw their weigh behind former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Ngige’s statement, reinforces the President’s statement at the onset of his administration that more focus would be on geopolitical zones that supported him than those that did not.
“This is not a question I should answer because I’m a politician. But before these things happened, before the government of Jonathan failed, I went to all the Igbo fora to tell them that the Jonathan government will fall.
“I went to our Eze Ndi-Igbo in Enugu twice. They could not even reply to a letter written by Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, seeking for a meeting with them,” Ngige stated, while responding to a question on how he feels about the marginalisation of the South-east zone by the Buhari administration.
The minister, who accused some Igbo leaders of playing a cat-and-mouse game with Buhari during the electioneering period, said he went to Lagos and convened an Igbo stakeholders forum in William Nwodo’s house in Ikoyi, Lagos in 2014, where he analysed the voting pattern in Nigeria and told them that even if they did not want to support Buhari, they should give him 25 per cent of their votes.
The minister added: “They refused to listen to me, and to make matter worse, there was no voting in most of the areas in the South-east; they just allocated 5 per cent to APC.
“It was that bad, it is too late to cry when the head is off. Politics is business in a way, you invest in business and you reap profit.
“Yes, that is what it is. But all I want to tell you is that we played bad politics; we made a bad investment because they invested in the Jonathan presidency. They invested in Jonathan more than the South-south, where he hails from.
“I am not saying that is enough to marginalise them or not allow them come in but we are there. I will continue to speak for them and when there is anything to be distributed, we will make sure that the South-east gets its own portion. But they will not get excess portion.”
Drawing an analogy from a wise, successful farmer, Ngige, a former governor of Anambra State, said: “Even in a family where the head of the family goes to the farm to harvest his yams those who accompany the farmer to the farm get more share.
“When they bring back the yams some of them will be damaged, and the pieces are put out in one section. Then the whole yams are put into the barn and some will be sent to the market for sale. And some will be sent to the family centrally for distribution among the family units.
“Those ones that are in pieces, the extras, will be shared among those that went to the farm.
“We did not benefit from the extras with people who went to the farm. We didn’t go to the farm in the south-east.”
He noted, however that leaders in the zone are reassessing their political strategy so that in 2019, the zone does not repeat the same mistake.
The minister, as at the time of filling this story is yet to make any reply to FFK’s scathing remarks about him.
