WAKE UP: When Femi Adesina told a Nigerian the truth he needed to know

By Bashir Adefaka

Tuesday May 5, 2020 was like every other day except that it came in a season when Coronavirus lockdown still had not let off its toll on the lives of people. Then came a response by Special Adviser to Nigeria’s President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, to caller on a phone-in radio programme who wanted him to ensure President Muhammadu Buhari, his principal, holds media chat with men of the Nigerian press and he was told that President Buhari cannot be ordered around for the fact that he was elected.

The caller, simply identified as Mr. Ibikunle, might only be echoing the much grumble of those who probably had taken part in the effort to ruin the life of the President wishing him death and taking all steps possible in achieving that singular aim, during the time activities of mischief makers rented the air of the Africa’s most populous nation.

That was a period in Nigeria’s recent history, when a former minister of the country in the person of Femi Fani-Kayode, sitting governor of Ekiti State at that time, Ayodele Fayose, and many others joined forces with an Olusegun Obasanjo-led coalition of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Theophilus Danjuma-led “Retired Christian Generals”, Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and other opposition groups in connivance with some South Eastern flocks represented by Nnamdi Kanu-led now declared terrorist organization, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to bring down the Federal Government of the Fulani man.  And they did that most of the time through generation and spread of Fake News, dangerous rumours and twisted/slanted information which saw herdsmenism, Islamisation and Northernisation agenda claims by those conspiracies drifting the once United people of Nigeria towards conflicts,  with main intent to discredit the government and his head so he did not get a second term.

Prior to that period, few months into the administration’s first term, it can still be vividly recollected that the President set out to do serious business in terms of workable and effective government-media collaboration with men and women of the Nigerian Press. This recollection is necessary before they begin work, those wanting to create impression of bad media adviser (Femi Adesina) and incompetent image and publicity handlers (Femi and Garba Shehu) around the President not doing enough to properly guide their principal and not putting information that Nigerians need to come along for them to be adequately informed of what is going on to the public.

Then there was a maiden Presidential Media Chat (PMC) coordinated (or was it anchored?) by a Channels Television Journalist. Record does not lie. There were others including a lady from one online medium like that even though her medium does not have the kind of popularity that this medium has today. But she was part of the PMC.

Alas! That lady was the very person that imported mischief into the media chat when she openly asked questions with intent to make the President deny his own religion by making a pronouncement against women or girls wearing hijab in offices and schools. But President Buhari is not as cynic as she and people she represented thought.

There were other questions asked, brilliantly, particularly with regards to the road blockage, in Zaria, Kaduna State, North West Nigeria, against the Chief of Army Staff of the Federal Republic, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai to which the President said the minds of many Nigerian voters.

Surprisingly, while the President’s triumph over the plot of media people of his own country to make him fail during the maiden Presidential Media Chat was being celebrated in the streets of Nigeria, what began to come out on the front pages of the newspapers and broadcast stations the following morning was so disheartening, appalling. This was done to a President, whose “Body Language” was still the  ruling game making everybody including the newly sacked government members, civil servants and the Nigerian Police officers and men jiltery at that time fearing that the Buhari of 2015 when democracy required him to first have evidence before arrest would be the same Buhari of 1984 when offender was only required to prove government wrong after his arrest.

Whereas democracy, now, is clearly no more or less than political ideology founded on deceit to favour its creator, America and America alone. All glory to God for making Donald Trump to expose all of this deceit unknowingly by his racist and self-centered behaviour brought into government system in a way that has now taken his country down from the status quo.

Now, since that media chat, it became obvious that the Nigeria press had been divided against itself. Where some of the men and women preferred to work with the opposition even few months after Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) came to power that 2015, there was quite a group of many other men and women of the press who chose to #StandWithThePresident.  Had it not been for that group of patriotic media practitioners, who, despite not being paid for doing it, ensured that the truths of good work of the President intended for burial must be exposed to public glare, opposition had done enough image damages to Buhari and his government that could have incited public revolt to overthrow the government. That other group of anti-government media men and women was their major tool.

For the cynics who want to twist Tuesday’s statement by Mr. Femi Adesina, without being immodest, the afforestated should be enough as background to why the Presidential Media Adviser was right and correct. “What else do you want?” He asked right. It is like for Buhari to say, “If the media in my own country is set out to twist every statement I make (because there had been more media engagements after the maiden Presidential Media Chat) and with their twists and fakeness pushing my people to killing themselves, why don’t I settle down and be contented with the little help I get from the few media organisations in the country who report me well without being influenced and foreign media who ask me questions and do not quote me out of content in their reports?”

Well, one is not sure how true this was. Towards the 2019 election it was learned that when asked in a family meeting of State House Staff with the President to give money to each media organisation and he asked what for and he was replied for them to write good things about his government, that President Buhari simply said, “If I didn’t give them money and they could write bad things about me, I don’t need to give them money to write good things about me.”. It looks like truth but to me, it was a joke but in tandem with reality on ground.

Nigeria is the only place the people are programmed to see only the bad and negative things about their Government. Even during Goodluck Jonathan era, I had made the same observation. It is a place where people would line up and even pass nights at polling boots to elect a President. After the President has emerged, they go to sleep and disconnect with the government. They don’t ask questions about activities of the government. They don’t cooperate with the government. They want the government to make laws but the laws they don’t obey. They want the government to fulfill or give them their rights but they don’t want to do their own duty to either the government or the State.  Number one duty of any citizen to his country is to wish his country and fellow citizens well but this is lacking in many Nigerian people. In the end, because of the gap they created between themselves (the masses) and the government (the State), they lack information.

Alas! therefore, by the time they are now ready to get information, Fake News, dangerous rumours and slanted news merchants have taken over the information centre stage. Those are what they consume. In Buhari’s case for instance, where Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) does most of his travels by road like many other ministers of the administration, where the agriculture impact of government has not only restored the farmers’ dignity and glory but has been our major saving grace for self subsistence in this Coronavirus lockdown period, and many good works including rail system have been done, more still need to be done, the media they are now left with or have access to tell them that nothing has been done and that is what they take to the streets and market square. In the end, they begin to shop for another President because they have allowed themselves to be misled that the one they voted based on confidence and integrity is a failure.

Who can imagine that Abacha can today be appreciated even above Obasanjo? Who saved us from monopoly of NITEL and gave us wireless phone system (operational) thereby expanding the employment space for Nigerians in the ICT sector? Abacha. Thanks to Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju, the Minister of Communications who did it and did GSM but had not launched the GSM when he was arrested having been implicated by Ishaya Bamaiyi in a conspiracy coup theory by Oladipo Diya. Today, every other officer of that Diya group has been pardoned and paid his gratuities and is receiving his monthly entitlements but Olanrewaju continues to be left in the cold. That is how Nigerians treat their good leaders.

Coming back to the basis, for anyone to think that he can order President Muhammadu Buhari around because he was elected into office, that fellow must be told right from here where he goes wrong. Mr. Femi Adesina saying things like this therefore has not misfired.

The Igbo chief, Femi Adesina, was said to have told this to a caller, when he appeared on Nigeria Info FM Tuesday May 5, 2020. The caller, Mr Ibikunle, had asked him to ensure President Buhari holds a media chat with men of the Nigerian press and Adesina said:

“I just want to encourage Mr Ibikunle not to continue to sound like a broken record. When the COVID thing started, everyone was like the President should talk to us. He has had three National broadcast within a month. What else do they want? What else do they want? Some people think because you elected a President or you did not elect you, you must lead your President by the nose.

“It doesn’t happen. The fact that you have elected a man does not mean then you begin to order him around. The President will do what is good for the country at any given time,” he said.

Yes, I agree.

*WAKE UP is opinion article column of Prince Bashir Adefaka, a Lagos, South West Nigeria based media practitioner. Reach him via omope72@gmail.com and 08163323906.