This week’s public presentation of a book entitled, ‘According to the President: Lessons From Presidential Spokesman’s Experience’, written by the former Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari, Mallam Garba Shehu recalled some of reminiscences that transpired under the retired Katsina’s general who was expected to deliver on the dividends of democracy, but left the country worse than he met it. As a prefatory remark, I have not read the book, but I have followed some of the snippets contained in the memoir.
Before he was appointed presidential spokesman, Shehu was the Head of Atiku’s Media office. He was not only generous in providing background information to enable reporters and editors to understand certain dialectics that were often marshalled out in the dark recesses of political manipulation.
Changing Narrative
When he was appointed as one of the presidential spokesmen, he never lost touch with his constituency and did his job to the best of his ability. My closeness to him got a little bit fractured when he joined Pastor Femi Adesina to unleash a barrage of criticism against Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah anytime the Catholic Bishop expressed an opinion they considered not palatable.
Between Adesina and Shehu, it was clear who was responsible for doing what. It is to the credit of both men that the whispering rumour of a sour relationship between them only resided in the realm of rumour. Throughout the first term of the Buhari administration, I was always a recipient of Shehu’s Sallah and Christmas greetings.
When I had to request his intervention for my international passport renewal by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) to enable me to attend a conference in Austria in 2018, he gladly and promptly assisted me.
Like I said earlier, I am yet to read Shehu’s book, but some of the snippets I have read so far have revealed that the former presidential spokesman’s recollections were fact-based and can’t be repudiated.
I am aware that a certain construction giant in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was always engaged in building retirement homes and offering other peripheral benefits to top officials in government in exchange for highly inflated contracts. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo once called off the bluff of the giant company when he excoriated the construction firm for submitting outrageous estimates for the completion of the National Christian Centre, then known as the Christian Ecumenical Centre.
Mustapha’s Fairytale
The event provided a platform for estranged politicians who are now sorely divided over the re-election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The presence of core Buharists in the person of Kaduna State’s former governor, Mallam Nasir Ahmed el-Rufai, among others, and the presence of presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga exposed the personalities of guests who attended the occasion.
Turning the event into a platform for repudiating the indispensable role of Tinubu in realising the Buhari presidency in 2015, the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, said it is a fallacy to insist that Tinubu made the Buhari presidency.
Following the tremendous reactions on several online and social media platforms, Buhari’s chief social media defender, Mrs. Lauretta Onochie, declared support for Mustapha’s position which described as an appropriate declaration that has put a lie to an assertion that upheld the saying that Tinubu was the major determinant of Buhari’s ascendancy to the nation’s highest political office.
For the former SGF who was brought in to replace David Babachir Lawal, who was booted out of office over an alleged contract scam for the cutting of grass, there was no way for him to correctly ascertain how Buhari’s presidency was deliberately orchestrated for political victory. The fact remains unassailable that Tinubu played an indispensable role in the making of the Buhari presidency.
It was clear that Buhari profusely wept in 2011 when he lost to President Jonathan. It took the capacity of various politicians who buried their animosities and deployed their sagacity to plot the fall of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had sworn to rule Nigeria for 60 years. Leading that charge for the emergence of Buhari, who had been forcefully convinced to return to political contest, was Tinubu, who was the rallying point and inspiration for the APC victory.
Lest We Forget
Sadly, some top officials known as Buhari’s boys are back in the trenches. Though the former president has declared that he is still loyal to the Tinubu government and the APC, the actions of his henchmen are contrary to what Buhari would want us to believe. The immediate past governor of Kaduna State, who threw everything into the fire to realise Tinubu’s victory and the Muslim-Muslim ticket, is now totally devoted to ensuring the defeat of the president’s comeback bid in 2027.
When the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, declared that Buhari is not materialistic, he re-echoed the public perception of the essential military leader who was toppled in a bloodless coup in 1985. While many still think Buhari is less concerned with things of the world, many are asking why some of his aides became stupendously wealthy within the short eight years of his presidency. The singular lesson Nigerians have learned from the Buhari presidency is that the presence of a much-admired incorruptible leader in power does not necessarily translate into defeating the monster of corruption that has become the big elephant in the room.
