34 Facts About Femi Fani-Kayode

David Oluwafemi Adewunmi Abdulateef Fani-Kayode is a Nigerian politician, author and lawyer.

Femi Fani-Kayode was appointed the Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from 22 June to 7 November 2006, and the Minister of Aviation from 7 November 2006 to 29 May 2007.

Femi Fani-Kayode's father Victor Fani-Kayode, who was at Cambridge, was a prominent lawyer and political figure in Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s.

Femi Fani-Kayode was leader of the opposition National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons in the Western House of Assembly from 1960 to 1963; the Hon.

Femi Fani-Kayode started his education at Brighton College, Brighton in the UK, after which he went to Holmewood House School in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, South-East England.

Femi Fani-Kayode entered Harrow School in Harrow on the Hill, United Kingdom, and later went to Kelly College in Tavistock, UK, where he completed the rest of his public school education.

In 1980, Femi Fani-Kayode went to the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies where he graduated with an LL.

In 1993, under the tutelage of Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams of Ghana, Femi Fani-Kayode became a Pentecostal Christian.

Femi Fani-Kayode decided to go back to school to study theology at the Christian Action Faith Bible Seminary in Accra, Ghana, gaining a diploma in theology in 1995.

Femi Fani-Kayode was a member of the Nigerian National Congress in 1989.

Femi Fani-Kayode was elected the national youth leader of NNC that same year.

Sani Abacha's military junta, Femi Fani-Kayode left Nigeria and joined the National Democratic Coalition abroad where, together with the likes of the Oxford University-trained lawyer Chief Tunde Edu and others, he played a very active role in the pro-democracy campaign against the military regime of Abacha.

Femi Fani-Kayode came back to Nigeria in 2001 and met President Olusegun Obasanjo.

At the beginning of 2003, Femi Fani-Kayode was appointed by the President as a member of his presidential campaign team for the 2003 presidential election.

Since the end of the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo's administration on 29 May 2007, Femi Fani-Kayode has gone back to the private sector and to his legal practice.

The Senate Committee on Aviation in early 2008, initially recommended that Femi Fani-Kayode be banned from holding public office for five years but later withdrew it.

In November 2010, Femi Fani-Kayode said that Yar'Adua's sought to jail and destroy his predecessor in office and the man that single-handedly brought him to power, President Olusegun Obasanjo, as well as his loyalists, including El-Rufai, Ribadu, and Femi Fani-Kayode himself.

Femi Fani-Kayode alleged that Baba Gana Kingibe, the Secretary to the Federal Government during the Yar'Adua administration, was the principal enforcer of that plan and that Yar'Adua administration officials James Ibori, Tanimu Yakubu, Abba Ruma and Michael Aondoakaa were involved.

Femi Fani-Kayode was arrested in December 2008 by the EFCC and charged with 47 counts of money laundering.

Femi Fani-Kayode stated that he was innocent and that the monies were funds received from his own private businesses and legitimate sources and had nothing to do with government funds.

Femi Fani-Kayode said that the investigations of the Yar'Adua government and the EFCC were politically motivated, and he was being persecuted in the same way as other colleagues from the Obasanjo government, such as Nasir El-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu, for their ties to President Obasanjo.

Femi Fani-Kayode was discharged and acquitted on 1 July 2015, by a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos on the two-count charge of money laundering preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

Femi Fani-Kayode had fought the case since 1 July 2008 and he was finally cleared of all the remaining charges that had not been dismissed earlier on 1 July 2015.

Furthermore, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has faced criminal prosecution and criminal charges and trials back to back in 4 major cases and appeals by the EFCC which jointly lasted over the last 18 years.

Femi Fani-Kayode won every single one of them and the last one was on 4th February 2025.

In November 2009, before Yar'Adua fell ill, Femi Fani-Kayode wrote a poem titled "I Stand and I Fight".

Femi Fani-Kayode argued that this was being done by the authorities even where it was clear that the president was already "half dead".

Femi Fani-Kayode defined his concept of corpsology as "the rulership of the living by the dead" and the thrust and intent of his satire was to clearly convey the message that the attempt to introduce this hitherto unknown system of government into Nigeria by Yar'Adua, his wife and his cabinet was unacceptable and should not be allowed to stand.

On 7 August 2010 Femi Fani-Kayode wrote another article titled "Charles Taylor: A Man Betrayed" in which he described the events and circumstances leading up to the extradition of the infamous former President of Liberia Charles Taylor from Nigeria, where he had been given refuge and asylum after a bitter war and crisis in his nation Liberia.

Femi Fani-Kayode explained how Taylor ended up being handed back to Liberia and how he was then sent to the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Femi Fani-Kayode accused both America and Liberia of reneging on their word and on an earlier agreement on the Taylor issue and he alleged that they "betrayed the confidence" that the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States Heads of Government, Nigeria and President Obasanjo had placed in them.

Femi Fani-Kayode alleged that they had committed these crimes during the illegal invasion of Iraq and the bombing of Baghdad in which he claimed that "hundreds of thousands of defenceless and innocent Iraqi women and children" were killed.

Femi Fani-Kayode was involved in a debate about the mysterious circumstances under which Nigeria's first Prime Minister, Sir Tafawa Balewa, lost his life.

Femi Fani-Kayode was christened Joshua Oluwafemi Emmanuel Lotanna Aragorn Fani-Kayode.