Former Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to former President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu, has admitted that the widely reported story about rats invading the Presidential Villa in 2017 was a fabrication intended to divert public attention from Buhari’s ill-health at the time.
In his recently unveiled book, ‘According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience’, which was launched on Tuesday in Abuja, Shehu revealed that the story was a deliberate “spin” to shift focus away from the mounting speculation about the president’s medical condition and ability to govern.
The incident followed Buhari’s return to Nigeria on August 19, 2017, after nearly three months of medical treatment in the United Kingdom.
At the time, the Presidency had announced that Buhari would be working from home rather than his office at the State House, a move that further stirred public doubt.
The situation was already tense, as Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), had claimed that Buhari had died and was replaced by a clone named Jibrin of Sudan.
In Chapter 10 of the book, titled ‘Rats, Spin and All That#, Shehu recounted the events that led to the creation of the story.
“So in the few hours of the president’s return, I picked up a conversation in the office of the CoS, where the chief, a few principal officers and the permanent secretary sat over lunch, a damage to a cable was noticed and it needed fixing,” he wrote.
“Someone speculated that rats may have caused that damage, given that the office was unused for a long time.
“When the surge in calls for explanation of why the president would be working from home, if truly he had recovered his health and fit for the office came, I said to the reporters that the office, which had been in disuse, needed renovation because rats may have eaten and damaged some cables.”
According to Shehu, the story quickly went viral, even making it into the BBC World News bulletin’s top five stories. He said the media frenzy intensified with journalists, including BBC Hausa Service, pressing for more details about the invasive rodents.
“To get them (journalists) off my back, I referred them to the strange rats that invaded the country in the 1980s during the rice armada that came here aboard ships bringing the commodity from Southeast Asia,” he wrote.
“As was known of them, in their destructiveness, those rats ate just anything anyone could imagine. Many critics disagreed with me, saying that we were covering up the president’s ill health. Some people had a good laugh over the narrative, and an insignificant few believed me.”
Shehu also recalled being questioned about the narrative by then Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
“At a later meeting, the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo asked me why I had toed that line of story,” he wrote.
“I said to them that the choice I made was deliberate: I wanted the discussion to shift, to move to any other issue besides the president’s health and his ability to continue in office as the leader of the country. In my view, that spin succeeded. Both of them disagreed, saying that this was well off the mark.”
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