Former minister of aviation Mr Femi Fani-Kayode
has slammed the incumbent minister of aviation, Ms Stella Oduah, saying she
should conduct herself in a manner befitting her office and stop talking like a market woman.
Fani-Kayode stated this in a statement yesterday,
in a reaction to a report in which Oduah had asked him to bow his head in shame
instead of speaking out of context in an essay in which he called for her
resignation.
Describing Oduah’s tirade on him as uncalled for,
malicious and petty, Fani-Kayode said, “My advice and counsel to her is to grow
up and stop being petty. She is meant to talk like someone who befits her
office and not like a market woman. I do not like joining issues with women
publicly which is why I was very gentle with her in my essay, though I made my
point.
Fani-Kayode also asked the minister to realize
the sensitive nature of the aviation sector and effect positive change on the
sector, saying that she holds it a duty to save the country from avoidable
deaths.
He said, “But this particular woman is
endangering the lives of our people with her incompetence and insensitivity and
we cannot just keep quiet. This is a woman under whose watch almost 200 people
have been killed as aviation minister and instead of focusing on how to save
lives her obsession has become smearing and abusing Femi Fani-Kayode.”
Chiding the minister for claiming that
‘’accidents are inevitable’’ and that they were ‘’acts of God’’, Fani-Kayode
said, “This is a woman who thinks more about how her headscarf looks, her
jewellery and the jewellery of others more than she does about protecting
Nigerian air travellers. If anyone should bury her head in shame it is her and
not me. After just under 200 of our fellow citizens have been killed under her
watch instead of abusing her critics and those of us that have expressed our
concern and offered our advice, she should be seeking repentance from God and
tendering her resignation.
Fani-Kayode further advised Oduah to stop a
futile press war, saying that what should be uppermost on her mind is how to
comfort the families of those who lost their lives.
He said, “She (Oduah) should be attempting to
encourage the Nigerian people and assuage their fears rather than indulging in
petty and cheap sideshots and a futile press war. Instead of comforting the
families of those that were lost, she is opening her mouth and abusing me. What a shame. Under her tenure we have
beautiful terminals but deadly and blood-soaked skies. Our skies have become a
death trap because she really doesn’t care.”
Fani-Kayode also urged Oduah to address the
issues he raised in his essay and avoid personal insults, adding that it was
uncharitable for the aviation minister to attribute plane crashes to an act of
God.
He said: “My advice to her is to shut up, get
serious and focus on doing her job rather than attempting to smear me with her
filthy lies and malicious innuendos. I raised some serious issues in that essay
that were clearly above her education level and I avoided personal insults.
That is what civilised people do.
She should learn from that and address the issues
that were raised rather than spend her time trying to kill the messenger. When
someone says that God is the author of fatal crashes, you know that it is not
the same God that we worship as that person.
“It is the devil that causes accidents and kills
people and not God. You can say that a fatal accident is an act of God only if
the devil is your god. When I speak and write, I am under the influence of one
thing and one thing alone — the Spirit of the Living God who sees through her
and who knows her for what she is.
“She is the one that is under the influence of
one thing or the other and not me. She is the one whose hands are filled with
blood. She is the one that must bury her head in shame and no-one else. I will
pray for her because she needs it and I will pray for Nigeria
-Leadership
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