In
multiple tweets on Tuesday, Femi Fani-Kayode said he has no apologies to offer
anyone, though he holds journalists in high esteem.
The
Lawyer, politician and former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode said he is
sticking to the verbal rebuke he gave a Daily Trust reporter in Calabar.
Tweets:
During
my tour of the South and after a long and successful press conference in
Calabar, Cross Rivers state, a journalist put up his hand for the last question
and said,
“Well
we do not know who is bankrolling you”.
This is not a
question but an assertion and an insult. And if this insulting ASSERTION were
made before Trump or OBJ I know how they would have reacted. Above (the video)
is my response & I have no apology to offer for it. The young man
apologised to me during the press conference & sent his apologies to me
after the conference.
I
have accepted his apologies & moved on. I have always had respect for
journalists & always will. Those of them that know me or worked with or for
me over the last 30 years can attest to that. However there is a distinction
between asking a question & offering an insult.
This
is all the more so when it is clear that the assertion was sponsored and
engineered by my political enemies who wanted to use the young man to insult
and embarrass me and question my integrity. Well they got more than they
bargained for.
I
repeat this was not a question but an assertion and a gratuitous insult and I
will not accept that from any man born of woman. Thank you.
Permit
me to add the following. I have taken note of the report by Daily Trust on the
incident. The content is false. I didn’t send any of my security men to
threaten their reporter. I only reprimanded him for a premeditated plan to
embarrass me & he apologised thereafter. That was all.
This
is not a battle between me and the esteemed Nigerian journalists who respect
the ethics of the noble profession.
I
have always been and will always be a friend to journalists and a champion of
freedom of speech.
What
I will not accept are brazen insults from an individual in the name of
journalism.
The
assertion or assumption that I am being bankrolled by anyone is deeply
insulting.
Finally to the NUJ I say u have got me completely wrong. It would
have been better if you had heard my own side of the story and established who
was behind this whole incident and attempt to embarrass me, who paid for it and
how much they paid before going to press.
Nevertheless
I still hold you in high esteem.
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