Last week, Femi Fani-Kayode, the former minister of aviation, gave an explosive 40-minute interview to the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation about the ongoing hostility in Gaza. The interview was reportedly watched by millions around the world on television and other platforms.
Below is a brief excerpt from the interview, as transcribed by our reporter, Emmanuel Agbo. You can watch the full recording of the conversation HERE.
“If the people of my country, Nigeria, had been subjected to the barbarity that Gaza has been subjected to by any foreign power and occupation force, we would have waged an endless war and fought them to the sea because it is human nature to do so. You say that Hamas is evil and terrorist, but would you not have joined Hamas if you had been subjected to what the people of Gaza have been subjected to? Netanyahu and Israel are knocking on the door of World War III!” – FFK.
The situation in Gaza is very tragic. It is a situation that the whole world is watching with great concern and deep anger. It is not just about Gaza, but about all of Palestine. All of Palestine. What is happening there and what the people of that region and the Palestinian people in general have been subjected to is totally and completely unacceptable. It is not just about 11 months of genocide, but about more than 75 years of genocide, plunder, occupation, terror and evil inflicted on them by the Zionist state of Israel.
But what has happened in the last 11 months is that this has become clear to the entire world. People have finally seen what the Zionist state stands for and what it is capable of doing.
While thousands, thousands of Palestinian children are being killed, women are being slaughtered, and men are being killed with all kinds of cutting-edge weapons, they are being slaughtered without any response, any vigorous response from the so-called civilized world. This is barbarism of the highest order. It is evil. It is wickedness. I am glad about one thing, and it is this: the world has finally woken up to the callousness and bestiality of this wicked Zionist state that claims to be a nation of Jews but is in fact a nation of looters, pillagers, pedophiles and vicious megalomaniacs led by a man I consider absolutely evil, Bibi Netanyahu, who has no intention, I assure you, of stopping the carnage and the genocide. Rather, he wants to perpetuate it. He wants to continue the occupation. He wants to continue killing people. He wants to have a bigger Israel.
He and his national security minister, his finance minister, all of them, we know them. Everybody knows these names, notorious names, which I will now compare to men like Adolf Hitler in the past. That is what has happened. But the good news is that because of the resilience of the Palestinian people, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, resilient and strong, they stood proud against this tyranny for 75 years and over 11 months of barbarism. Because of that resilience and strength, because they have honor and dignity, they refuse to bow down. And they have said, no, no way. We will defend the Palestinian people and we will not be suppressed. We will not be wiped off the face of the earth. And I am very proud of that. That is how I feel about it. And I speak for millions, not just in Nigeria, but all over Africa.
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There are two ways to look at this. I can assure you, and I can tell you right now, that if, for example, my people in Nigeria were subjected to the kind of occupation, tyranny and barbarism that Israel is subjecting the Palestinians to today, we would have had an endless war. We would have fought them to the sea and to the bitter end. Very few people would have talked about international resolutions because it is human nature to do so. And that is one way to solve this problem: through armed conflict. And you say, well, the other side has all the weapons and all the means. Yes, but God is still alive. God still exists. I am a Christian and I know that God exists. And there are many Muslims who know that God exists. So they may have all the weapons in the world, but it is only a matter of time. It is only a matter of time.
So there is that aspect of it. People say, oh, you talk about armed struggle. It is only one option, when all other options fail. I believe in a peaceful resolution of the crisis, for example. I think there should be a two-state solution. As a lawyer, that is a civilized and correct way to proceed. Let the Palestinian people have their own country, a sovereign state, and Israel have its own. But the government of Israel, the people of Israel – 80% of them – have rejected that. So what is left? The only thing left, in my view, is to have a situation where the country is united, both Palestine and Israel, as one nation, and it is a free country where the Palestinians have equal rights, and where Israel is now set aside and the Jews are a minority within that country. And to get that, you have to fight for it.
Now, I'm not advocating armed struggle. I'm just saying that it's an option. And when people say, oh, but Hamas is such an evil organization. Fine, if that's your opinion. But listen, if your people were being subjected to what the Palestinians are being subjected to, would you be a member of Hamas or not? Would you be a member of Hamas? That's a question that needs to be asked of most of our Western brothers. Wouldn't you have been a member of the African National Congress during the apartheid struggle in South Africa? Wasn't the African National Congress considered a terrorist organization at that time? Wasn't Nat Turner, the great slave who fought against slavery in the 18th century in America, considered a terrorist, and he stood up and started killing white people because he said that black people had a right to exist as human beings? He fought against tyranny and he paid the price for it, but he raised the issue and he started the struggle.
During the time of slavery in America, during the time of John Brown, a great white warrior stood up and said, “I will fight slavery.” He took his sons and his men and went to free the black slaves. They fought against tyranny. In the end, they won. My point is this: it doesn't matter.