A diagnosis of the diagnosed Femi Fani -Kayode

A DIAGNOSIS OF THE ALREADY DIAGNOSED!

THE LATEST RANTINGS BY FEMI FANI KAYODE BORDERS AROUND "ABERRATION"









FANI-KAYODE’S CRY FOR MATERNAL HELP

By: Law Mefor

Femi Fani-Kayode, one time federal minister of Aviation, the same one who once described President Olusegun Obasanjo as “clean as a whistle” when he was his chief laundryman, has caught a new fancy: the preeminence of the Igbos in Nigeria is now giving him nightmares and he is not taking it well. Such irrational fear and the way he is going about it border on xenophobia, narcissism and egolalia, among other disorders.

Xenophobia is a very dangerous thing. It is a new form of irrational fear and false perception of another as foreign or strange such as against members of Igbo race by Fani-Kayode . Xenophobia usually manifests itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an in-group towards an out-group, including the fear of losing identify, suspicion of its activities, aggression and desire to eliminate their presence to secure a presumed purity. Fani-Kayode’s perception of the Igbos and his infantile outrage that Lagos is being swamped by the Igbos and the need to stop them, fit this description like glove.

Xenophobia can also be exhibited in the form of uncritical exhilaration of another race in which a culture is ascribed an unreal, stereotyped and exotic quality. Fani-Kayode ascribing some larger-than-life quality to the Igbo race fit this also. It first became prominent in South Africa and since then has been spreading. It has reached Nigeria no doubt, for there are no other ways to explain why a man high up there as Femi Fani-Kayode would feel so upset with a race of about 40 million people who are doing pretty well in Nigeria and all over the globe.

Worse still, in a remarkable feat of delusion Femi Fani-Kayode believes he can bring the Igbos down all by himself or set Nigeria on the road to Kigali, with Yorubas and Igbos as Hutus and Tutsis.

When the futility of this foolhardiness became palpable, when people from a all parts of Nigeria, including his kinsmen took him to the cleaners, the man beat a retreat. But once again, he was headed in the wrong direction; his recant cut deeper for saying in a press statement that he never meant sexual escapades, when he mentioned his liaison with Her Excellency, Chief Mrs. Bianca Ojukwu and two other senior Igbo babes.

To his warped mind, he merely wanted to prove that if he has so many Igbos as friends he couldn’t possibly be against the Igbo people. Yet curiously, he mentioned not a single Igbo male friend or Igbo business partner, but could easily string up 3 erstwhile Igbo dames as evidence of his charity and niceness to the Igbo race, which he is desperately denigrating.

From psychological point of view, Femi Fani-Kayode’s sexual indiscretion or claim of it, no matter however veiled, points to something that runs quite deep; it suggests that what he is going through is not ordinary, and likely a manifestation of conduct/personality disorder. This antisocial condition has long been interrogated by Psychiatrists and Clinical Psychologists and most of them arrived at a description that it is a “Cry for Maternal Help”.

To the ilk, sex is a symbolic manifestation of conquest and as such form part of the consistent pattern of their irrational but injurious attempts at getting back at authority and avenging a hurt childhood. For this reason too, they have gained a wild reputation for pervasive sexual dysfunctions, sexual deviations and sexual variations, an example of which is Macho-Sadism.(Some of them need to be flogged like hell before they can gain the requisite mood ).

Barely 50 and in third marriage and still counting, there is little doubt that Femi Fani-Kayode is clinically unstable. Another source of worry is that from his well-known struggles with drugs, Femi Fani-Kayode may well be on a rebound and only presenting a relapse in this unpalatable, absurd manner of trying to drag everybody that matters down with him.

Some closer inspection of his childhood also reveals a number of disturbing experiences that can precipitate the disorders suspected here. For example, his history has it that he (Femi Fani-Kayode) may have watched his father’s near-death experience in the 1966 coup in Nigeria, in which the man (Chief Remi Fani-Kayode, Deputy Premier, Western Region – as he then was) was believed to have called out his Principal, Chief S. L. Akintola (Premier, Western Region – as he then was also) to his death. He holds the Igbos responsible.

Such traumatic experience is one certain way of acquiring Xenophobia. Through Classical Conditioning form of learning, one can be conditioned to having fears or repulse from aliens generally, or, from specific group. Ways to instill it would be dehumanization mostly by propagandas. For example, video connoting group members shown distorted, erroneous and in proportional phases of horror, he is painting of the Igbos.

From the analysis of xenophobia acquisition process, one can see that Femi Fani-Kayode may not have gotten over his personal experience of the 1966 coup which he has erroneously interpreted as ‘Igbo coup’ aimed to enthrone Igbo hegemony . The greater presentation of his crisis is that he is painting a gory picture of his perceived Igbo misdeeds in Nigeria to carry members of his ethnic group and other Nigerians along in his grand vendetta agenda against the Igbos.

It is also a well-known fact to mental health professionals that people like this, rather than seek psychiatric or psychological help, prefer to wallow in self-pity and self-decapitation, as they reel themselves against authority or forces they cannot even scratch as in Femi Fani-Kayode versus Igbos.

Psychologists see it as “a Cry for Maternal Help” because it has its roots in childhood, where the individual may have suffered some remarkable deprivation or trauma with resultant poor coping strategies. Chief Femi Fani-Kayode’s defense mechanisms are truly weak as narcissistic lifestyle and egolalia are his only ways of coping.

This angle needed to be brought to the fore as treating it/him and the/his condition as though it is normal may prove a fatal conceptual mistake; for indeed if Femi Fani-Kayode needs help, it will inhuman on our part not to encourage him to submit himself for a clinical examination and if confirmed, submit to clinical intervention. Suppose that is the only way he can regain perspective? Shouldn't we be our brother’s keeper, as noble African culture teaches? 

· Law Mefor, a Forensic Psychologist, is National Coordinator, Transform Nigeria Movement (TNM) Abuja; email:lawmefor@gmail.com;+234-803-787-2893