By KEMI KASUMU
In a long piece he published on his personal website, posted on his Facebook page and published by The DEFENDER on Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity for eight years, Mr. Femi Adesina, shared an interesting encouragement from Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar to him in the past.
Known for his sense of humour, the 20th Sultan makes jokes which, to his close allies and aides, many times serve as a teaching-learning class for people with intellectual property to decipher between intended words on marble and those said just to be gone with the winds.
Reminiscent of an encounter with him in his first week in office as Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, therefore, Mr. Adesina recalled how the Sultan told him what the new office he had come to occupy is by nature and why he needed not to worry.
In the piece titled, “THE FINAL GALLOP HOME”, with his photo with President Buhari as an illustration, Adesina said the Sultan of Sokoto had told him that the job of Media Adviser does not attract appreciation from Nigerians, citing previous occupants of the position.
According to him, His Eminence assured Adesina that his tenure would be different from that of his predecessors.
According to Adesina, while some Nigerians are currently unhappy about his preparation to quit the office on May 29, wailers are set to see him leave.
In Adesina’s words, “In my very first week as Media Adviser, the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, had visited the Villa, and met me along the walkway to the President’s office.
“We had been acquainted for many years before then and he usually called me by my email. And he said: ‘Kulikulii, you have come to do a very thankless job. That’s the way it has been for your predecessors, but with you, it won’t be so.’
“And I’ve not stopped saying amen to that prayer for 8 years, and no low person will stop me from that amen chorus”.
Truly so, we have gathered, Femi Adesina has been receiving “thank you” in appreciation of his job as media and publicity Adviser to the President, not only from the Presidency, where the principal – upon his return from medical holiday abroad – thanked him for holding fast against mischief makers but also from across regions and among younger generations of professionals.
The prediction of the Sultan could have naturally been coming to fruition when, even without seeing the content of the Adesina’s latest article, a media and publicity consultant and one of younger generation of Nigerian journalists looking up to Adesina’s exceptional journalism mentorship, Prince Bashir Adefaka, posted an insistent appreciation about President Buhari and Adesina on his Facebook page same day.
In the post titled, “ONLY BY BEING FOR NOBODY BUT FOR EVERYBODY TRUE SOCIAL SECURITY IS ASSURED: BUHARI AND ADESINA’S EXAMPLE”, Adefaka wrote:
“It is not easy to go by without you having a crowd of enemies BUT, in all honesty, these two personalities will return home from government happy and into the warm arms of their people:
“1. President Muhammadu Buhari will be loved by his Katsina State people and they will protect him to their last blood.
“2. His SA Media and Publicity Mr. Femi Adesina will return to his Ipetumodu, Osun State country home and his state people, despite being under opposition party, will warmly receive him and will protect him with the last drop of their blood. Recall that Osun has the fairest of political footballism at the moment with Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s Governor Ademola Adeleke coming good with these personalities as his best friends.
“Do you know why? Reason of integrity-based participation in governance. Oga Femi Adesina would also say to, particularly, me, I don’t know of what he said to you, that he is a not a politician. But he is truly not a politician.
“Only by developing capacity to stand for “nobody but for everybody” such social security can be possible in the life of man,” Prince Bashir Adefaka, CEO/Editor-in-chief of Defender Media Limited, said.
