Onaiwu To Fani-Kayode: You Behaved Like A ‘Tout’ By Attacking Journalist

A former Director-General of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Earl Osaro Onaiwu, has lampooned former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, over his verbal attack on a reporter at a recent press conference in Calabar, Cross River State.

Charles Eyo, a reporter with Daily Trust, received numerous insults from an angry Fani-Kayode for daring to ask who sponsored his tour of projects in some PDP-controlled states in the past few weeks.

Relating his experience with the minister in an interview with Premium Times, Eyo said he had asked: “… sir, you said you have gone round six or seven states to inspect projects undertaken by those governors, and now you are here in Cross River state, rounding off your one-week visit to Governor Ayade. Who is bankrolling you?”.

Meanwhile, Fani-Kayode has continued to receive heavy criticisms after calling the journalist “stupid” in the viral social media video.

In his reaction, Onaiwu urged the former minister to redeem the “little integrity” he had left by apologising to the journalist and the media.

“It is embarrassing to say the least that a former minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria will descend into the arena of touts to attack a journalist in the performance of his constitutional guaranteed role of holding officials, in and out of government, accountable is shocking,” he said in a statement on Tuesday in Abuja.

Onaiwu, who is the publisher of the Governors Mandate Newspaper, accused Fani-Kayode of disparaging the journalism profession after benefitting from the media in his political career.

“It is still something of a wonder that the purveyor of the assault is yet to come to terms with how he has brought himself really low before the eyes of responsible members of society shows that he ought to be pitied, rather than condemned.

“At this rate, we should all pray for the former minister because an innocuous question to attract such umbrage tells of something more profound,” he said in the statement.