By Kemi Kasumu, General Editor
When it was said that aides of this President work like their boss, who talks less but act more and that when he will talk, no matter how brief, he speaks volumes, little did many realise what it meant. It meant that there was no benefit in talking much without substance in it, which has not been found in the administrative characteristics of the current government, unlike the other before it when people talked first before they thought.
Call them hoarders of information or blockers of ministers from seeing their boss, the truth remains that in the 18 years experience of the ongoing Fourth Republic, no Media Office of any President of Nigeria has been so choosy and perfectly professional in handling and managing information and using words linguistically, in a vocalised corruption society as demonstrated by allegedly corrupt former public officers of immediate past regime, like the Media Office of President Muhammadu Buhari has done.
Recall in this country, people who ran to court to punish Buhari and his government for daring to allege them of corruption, ran back to confess and in most cases begged to settle on plea bargain ground. They confessed to stealing in provocative manner in the range of N100 million, N400 million, in billions of Naira, Dollars and Pound Sterling.
Recall also a PDP presidential campaign organisation media director, who claimed to have left APC because, according to him, it was Islamic party later confessed to EFCC that as a director and member of PDP he actually took from Sabo Dasuki, N850 million out of money meant to save the lives of millions of Nigerians from Boko Haram insurgency. He however “justified” himself to have taken the huge sum saying it was by virtue of his position as director of media of that presidential campaign organisation.
What that particular claimant did not tell Nigerians was why a separate N850 million had to be pulled out of a national security fund voted to secure Nigerian territory and its people after another PDP chieftain had, as he also confessed, taken some N2.6 billion for what he too called media and publicity. That chieftain is owner of popular television and radio stations in Nigeria. That is not to mention another media organisation owner who took N856 million or thereabout, also for media and publicity. What a proliferation of simple purpose. There was also another one who took a huge sum of N700 million just to organisation an anti-Boko Haram rally in Lagos. He also confessed to have delivered the $35 million sent through his bank account to a PDP governorship candidate to buy his way into the Government House in a South West state of Nigeria. Today he is the most vocal governor of the PDP of Yoruba extractions whose continued existence in office could only be credited to the President Muhammadu Buhari’s gesture, whose stopped the effort of APC to use all legitimate means to remove him from office. But with what did he pay Buhari back? Insults, death wishes, hate speeches, misappropriation of immunity in power.
More disheartening, others call it disgusting, is that, that particular chap who took N850 million for the same purpose his party’s chieftain had taken N2.6 billion for had been up and down very vocal and allowed luxury of space in particular print media abusing President Muhammadu Buhari; he had been rumoured to be behind the death wishes of President Buhari while in London because he stated it clearly in his published speeches and articles that “…if the President has not died”, and in another place he said he was David and that Buhari would die because he used EFCC to persecute him adding that, six senators who did same to him had died.
Despite the huge weight of provocations generated by those vituperation of his alone, Media Office of this Presidency never bothered to honour him with a reply. Even when John Kerry, former American Secretary of State visited the troubled North with a view to preferring solution to the Boko Haram insurgency and he met with Sultan, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III; this particular unjustifiable taker of N850 million Nigerian security money wage religious sentiment, insulting President Buhari and the never been insulted Sultan. This Presidency didn’t reply his treasonable utterances; though he is a lawyer.
No Nigerian should forget in a hurry that the current IDPs challenges in the country was strictly a creation of the devilish act of wicked looting of that security funds minimum of which was $2.1 billion diverted to the pockets of PDP leaders and officers. But these are the same people who speak and cry louder over “how IDPs are being served and lacking adequate care”. IDPs should be adequately catered for but these looters should have saved Nigerians the stress of finding out what did they do to help IDPs before voted out of power? They had allegations of using military helicopters to supply food to Boko Haram, exposition for which Adamawa Governor Murtala Nyako was removed from office and levelled charges of corruption, instead of telling Nigerians whether or not Nyako was telling lies.
The media had been their best tools in pushing back against the Buhari anti-corruption war and the judiciary apparently was not left out as these alleged corrupt people carried their impunity to courtyard and, in the end, adjournments over and again since 2015, hardly has any trial of them properly commenced. The judiciary was like that until President Buhari raised alarm that judiciary were the major headache of his effort save Nigeria from the grip of corrupt people, whose corrupt deals have created unprecedented poverty in the land.
Per adventure it was the realisation of this combined tool of media and judiciary that Diezani Allison-Madueke has ceaselessly sought for her trials to be transferred from London to Nigeria. Recall also how the supposedly honourable House of Representatives of Nigeria ordered arrest of EFCC’s boss, Ibrahim Magu, simply on the petition of Nigeria’s richest First Lady so far, Patience Jonathan, who has incessantly made a crocodile cry about supposed persecution of her by EFCC. The House of Reps should have kept its honour by staying clear of any such stain. But the bubble has already burst because, former United States of American Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. John Campell, has blown it to the world how the Nigerian House of Representatives (by interpretation) has connived with the PDP to frustrate the Bubari’s anti-corruption war.
Recall Campbell wondered that Patience Jonathan, a known civil servant, amassed $35 million in a poor society like Nigeria and that uptill now, over two years after, she has not been convicted except that lawmakers in the country placated her further with warrant of arrest against the boss of the anti-corruption agency prosecuting her.
Perhaps it was the feeling that the shame being caused the country daily by these people was getting the cup full that a voice sounded from the Nigeria’s Presidency of integrity to say, enough is enough. And that came from no less than President Buhari’s Special Assistant on Digital and Social Media, Mrs Lauretta Onochie. President, as stated earlier don’t talk any house, but when they choose to, it is hugely.
Lauretta Onochie, the Special Assistant on Digital and Social Media to President, on Sunday, fired shots at former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan and ex-Petroleum Affairs Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke for what she called their weird demands.
According to her, Mrs Jonathan needed to be honest to Nigerians and come clean regarding her wealth allegedly acquired through corruption.
On Diezani, Onochie said the ex-Minister had concluded plans to run off to a Caribbean Island to live off the blood money she allegedly stole before her scheme was scuttled.
Onochie said on he Facebook page: “It’s the season of weird demands. Recently, Nigerians were assaulted by the demand by the wife of the former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience Jonathan, asking President Muhammadu Buhari to tell EFCC to leave her alone.”
“Fat chance! EFCC is an institution, not an adulterous man running after someone else’s wife. So, woman to woman, I asked her to look inwards. Patience should wear the sort of aura that dispels, rather than attracts law enforcement agencies.
“She can start by being honest and coming clean, regarding everything – cash, properties, etc., that were ill-acquired. Then hand them back to the rightful owners. Yes, back to Nigerians via the EFCC.
“You see, EFCC, ICPC, DSS, CCT, all follow the smell of crimes. If she does not have suspicions of criminal activities oozing and buzzing from and around her, there’s no way she’ll be dragging President Buhari to commit impunity by ordering EFCC to leave you alone.
“But there again, she’s been busy swatting the bees, she had no time to see that her husband’s reign of impunity, ended many moons ago.
“But that’s not the end of the story. And then, there’s Diezani Alison- Madueke.
“She too, wants something. She wants to return home. Remember she’s in the UK for medical purposes. Remember the photoshopped images her image launderer plastered all over the tabloid and the Social Media?
“Diezani is over 18 years old. That makes her an adult. She dusted her passport and flew out of this country, Nigeria.
“She had concluded plans to run off to a Caribbean Island to live off the blood money she stole, not hauled from the poorest and the most vulnerable citizens of this nation.
“She had no idea that she had become attractive to the British authorities, and had been in their view since 2013.
”You see, these women, who own choice properties and obese bank accounts they do not need, across the world including Nigeria, had the best of opportunities to improve the lives of Nigerians, especially those who suffer health hazards from environmental degradation in the bowels of the Niger Delta where these two come from.
“If they cared not about their immediate environment, why would they bat an eyelid that environmental issues in the Lake Chad Basin were fuelling Boko Haram.
“The adage that what a man can do a woman can do better, has never been proven more by anyone than Diezani Madueke.
“The forfeitures the Nigerian people have been awarded against Diezani, the pending and on-going corruption investigations and cases, are a testimony that this woman, who was elevated to the status of a goddess by ex-President Jonathan, has cases to answer, from UK to USA, Italy to the Caribbean.
“Why Mrs Madueke suddenly developed an urge to return home, is not clear. But many Nigerians think it’s not unconnected to the perceived cash and carry criminal justice system in Nigeria.
“But she’s probably not aware that the Chief Justice of the Federation, Justice Onnoghen, has vowed to clean up the judiciary.
“But there might be those judges who would be tempted by the mouth watering inducement that flows from the bottomless pit of Diezani Madueke’s haulage.
“May I remind Mrs. Madueke that a certain (Rtd) Admiral Alison-Madueke, warned President Muhammadu Buhari to leave his wife alone. May I also remind Diezani that Nigerians assume that she is that wife that the retired naval officer warned the President about.
“Now that she has been left alone, if she needs to return to Nigeria, she will also need her husband to threaten President Buhari to come after her, Hahahahaha…
“Dear Sis, in the meantime, you should make yourself comfortable in the UK. Attend to your criminal trials going on there. When found guilty, happily serve your jail term because it’s just the beginning.
“Then when you are done, repeat the same process in America and then in Italy. If you are still alive by then, you should then be retired to Nigeria, to begin the same process that will ultimately lead you to your retirement home. You have a choice between Kirikiri and Kuje, among other prisons. Till then, it’s Goodbye Diezani. You aren’t coming home soon!”
