Yes, the headline is correct. Femi Fani-Kayode, the chief campaigner for Kogi Governor Yahaya Bello as Nigeria’s president in 2023, used the scathing words ‘an idiot and accursed slave” for Bello.
Bello had said in an interview that if President Buhari asked him to jump into fire, he will not hesitate to do so.
FFK literally annihilated him in his response on 5 April, 2018, repeating an earlier tweet on 23 March, 2018.
He tweeted: “When I wrote that this boy was a useful idiot and an accursed slave some said I was being harsh.
“Truth is that he is worse than that. His mental faculties are non-functional”.
Three years after, Fani-Kayode, in one of his many contradictions as a human being, has become Yahaya Bello’s biggest fan, though they are not in the same party.
But on 10 February, 2018, he also said this about his new friend:
“Gov.Yahaya Bello of Kogi state is looking for trouble and courting disaster.His gratuitous insult on hardworking and tithe-paying Christians has not gone unnoticed.If he does not sheath his sword we will unleash a verbal blitzkrieg on his ugly head from which he may never recover.”
With killings of Kogi people by Fulani herdsmen and Bello appearing indifferent, Fani-Kayode threw another bomb at him. This was on 19 March 2018.
He wrote: “Does Gov. Yahaya Bello still consider this matter to be a “family affair?” Does he accept the fact that his policy of capitulation to the Fulani is a costly venture? How many more have to be butchered in Kogi before he calls on them to desist and to stop killing his people?”.
But all those scathing comments on Governor Bello have now been thrown into the verbal trash can of Feni-Kayode.
It was possible that Bello won Fani-Kayode over by visiting him in Abuja and he also paying him a visit first in Abuja, then later in Lokoja.
In February, it was Bello that told Nigerians that FFK was on his way to the All Progressives Congress, by dumping the PDP.
Well, it appeared Bello jumped the gun, by revealing the defection plan, as Fani-Kayode denied he was making the move.
The two politicians have become good friends, nevertheless, such that FFK has now become the campaigner for Bello as president of Nigeria.
His latest verbal shot was this tweet on 11 April, as Bello transformed from being an idiot and accursed slave to a “decisive leader and bridge builder”.
“The idea that Gov. Yahaya Bello should not run for the Presidency & that the NC (North Central) zone, which has never produced a democratically-elected President, ought to settle for another position is absurd”, FFK said in a tweet on Friday.
“Nigeria needs strong & decisive leadership, a generational change & a bridge-builder”, he added.