After Receiving ‘Presidential Amnesty’, Fani-Kayode Must Purge Himself of His Past-Ajulo

Popular Abuja lawyer, Dr. Kayode Ajulo, has weighed in on the defection by controversial politician, Femi Fani-Kayode, from the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC, describing his admission into the APC by President Muhammadu Buhari as a ‘symbolic presidential amnesty’.

In a press statement he issued in Abuja on Thursday, Ajulo said he made that submission based on Fani-Kayode’s virulent attacks on President Buhari, until recently.

Ajulo declared that the APC was actually magnanimous to have received the loquacious former Minister of Aviation notwithstanding the  fact that many Nigerians, even people within the party, were obviously  not be happy with the development.

”FFK’s past attacks on President Buhari, and the APC, had unwittingly influenced passions in some quarters, for armed and unarmed agitations against the President and the Nigerian State,” Ajulo stated in the release.

Ajulo recalled that Femi Fani-Kayode had suggested, in his tweets, on different occasions that the APC government was filled with terrorists. At some other times, the Ile-Ife, Osun State-born politician said, among other things, that he could only join the APC over his dead body,

While commending  “magnanimity” that President Buhari extended to Fani-Kayode, he (the President) should be extend the same to the various agitators of several ethnic nationalities across the country “as a basis for amnesty”.

He, however, expatiated that “amnesty in this context should not be viewed from the strict standpoint of legal knowledge” but that the ordinary meaning would suffice.

“For our immediate purpose, therefore,” Ajulo continued, “amnesty means forgiveness, cessation of remembrance of wrong, leniency and mercy.”

The respected legal practitioner however stated that “it might not be wrong to state that the symbolic ‘amnesty’ granted to FFK by the President and the APC almost came on a platter of gold,” adding:

“The symbolism by the President signposts the fact that the vilest of ‘sinners’ in his lucid moment of thorough reflections,  can be granted safe passage toward the “mercy seat.”

Admitting that Fani-Kayode was a thoroughly misunderstood man and obviously a controversial personality, he declared, however, that “having  been given the benefit of ‘eating his cake and having it, the same level of understanding, leniency and mercy should be extended to his allies.”

This, he insisted, had become necessary especially because some of the agitations by secession campaigners had been openly endorsed and supported by the controversial politician.

And now having been shown mercy, Ajulo counseled Fani-Kayode to turn a new leaf, and “totally divest himself of his divisive and un-nationalistic past.