By Steve Osuji
ALAKE’S LACKEYS ON RAMPAGE: One of the popular maxims you pick up from journalism school is that truth offends the most. It’s particularly so with wanton government officials. They are perpetually at loggerheads with truth that they loose sight of governance issues.
Such was the plight of this column last week (8) when we interrogated the current presidency that had quickly shrunken and become puny. Of course the subject of the piece, Mr Dele Alake, President Bola Tinubu’s man Friday, obviously took umbrage. In a moment of unenlightenment, he unleashed his lackeys who responded with about half a dozen write-ups, mainly attacks on my person and a verbose defence of their boss. They accused me of being poor, mendicant and ungrateful. Thank goodness they didn’t say I was mendacious. But let it be known that I don’t envy their stupendous wealth without a legitimate source. Besides, poverty is a thing of the mind and using my definition, I think I am among the most blessed persons I know.
Speaking about ungratefulness, I never saw my appointment as a member of the editorial board of The Nation newspaper (obviously owned by the incumbent President Tinubu never admitted) as a favour. After practising at the highest levels in The Guardian, African Guardian, Thisday and New Age (as foundling editor) as well as managing a state governor’s media for four years, joining an editorial board couldn’t be a favour by any means. I was the one doing The Nation a favour with my wealth of experience and enormous value I imbued the newspaper.
I spent nine years and I never got the car I was promised at inception. Over this nine years, I flogged my personal car to scrap working for the Nation. Yet I am supposed to be grateful. I never mentioned this in public. This and numerous other unspeakable discriminatory practices going on in that stable I endured yet here I am being denigrated in public for holding an opinion.
But the rather mediocre attacks on my person by hooded hack writers is emblematic of the lack of enlightenment in today’s presidency we broached last week. A presidency cannot operate on Alake’s 2G broadband against a possible 4 or 5G. The result would be inertia and flip-flops as we have seen in the last 8 weeks.
It also amounts to a most unpresidential response when you try to hack down a critic. Though the incumbent may be perching on the seat (fidihe), he remains the president of Nigeria by law today. We have right and duty to show interest about the running of our country. Today, Nigeria is the only country we have; we all have equal stakes and we have a responsibility to ensure it is well run by our leaders, especially at the pinnacle if power.
If the gail of attacks was to circumscribe my right to free speech and commentary, it won’t work. Over the past 35 years, one had interrogated the leadership of Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, Abdulsalam Abubakar, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari and now Bola Tinubu. No presidential aide called me names till now. My last word to Dele Alake is that if he can’t stand criticism, he has no business in our Aso Rock. If you don’t like the smoke, you leave the kitchen!
MORE CRUDITY AS POLICE ABDUCT A JOURNALIST ON THE STREET: When we speak of moments of unenlightenment, there were so many this past week. If you expected the Tinubu presidency to usher in some fresh breath and new light on the polity, that hope fades fast now. What we see creeping in is much vendetta, witch-hunt and official brigandage from every quarter.
Last Friday, a popular radio presenter and commentator, Chinonso Uba, better known as Nonso Nkwa was abducted on the street of Owerri, capital of Imo State by hooded men after his morning radio show. For many tense hours, no one could tell his whereabouts.
His family, friends and co-workers feared the worst. There was silent agitation, a latent upheaval brewed in the city as Imo people were sure state government would be complicit in any harm to Nonso Nkwa. It took enormous media pressure to extract a release from the State Police Command. Nonso was picked by Force CID and flown to Abuja, the official statement read. It took about 24 hours for the Imo State government to announce that Nonso was picked up for “criminal libel”, allegedly against the state governor, Hope Uzodinma.
A video was subsequently released showing Nonso saying Governor Uzodinma collaborates with militant kingpin, Asari Dokubo to infest Imo with vicious unknown gunmen.
Assuming without conceding there was such an allegedly libellous video, would that warrant such level of crudity and impunity by the police.
When the new IGP Kayode Egbetokun was appointed recently, we had expected a new dawn at NPF. Now a police under the watch of supposedly scholarly IGP would don hoods and scruffy jeans like bandits and abduct a citizen, a critic of government on the street, not for armed robbery or terrorism, but for alleged criminal libel. What a shame, what a let-down.
How much did the Imo state governor pay to suborn the office of the IGP and cause him to commit gross illegality of abducting a citizen in the manner Nonso was abducted last Friday and has been kept incommunicado since – his lawyers, his wife, children and family were not contacted as to his whereabouts.
Finally on this, how come Asari Dokubo, the die-hard militant who has challenged Nigeria’s sovereignty and ridiculed the military and police; who boasts that he can’t be arrested, is still roaming free, raising more army?
MORE MOMENTS OF UNENLIGHTENMENT was the DSS almost having a shoot-out with officials of the Correctional Service over who keeps custody of a defendant, GodwinEmefiele, suspended CBN governor. This is a clear sign of insouciance among the military, security and intelligence corps. Nothing is changing for the better, rather, thing get worse.
The nonchalant state of affairs was evident in the Senate last week when the upper chamber made an open mockery of the long-suffering poor people of Nigeria. The legislature was recently placated with N79 billion bazaar upon inauguration while the people were forcibly yanked from eating the fruit of the land. The senate obviously are far removed from the reality of the Nigerian poor.
AND THE BODIES OF EVIDENCE FROM THE LEKKI TOLLGATE further tars President Tinubu. It emerged last week that over 100 bodies suspected to be victims of the October 20, 2020 mass killings at Lekki during the ENDSARS protest were found in a morgue in Lagos. However official denials continue. But the people have long made up their minds having handed President Tinubu a locus in the scheme of that dark affair. And it’s not a fine place the president is if truth must be told.
TINUBU’S MOTOR PARK DIPLOMACY IN NIGER REPUBLIC can only spell doom for Nigeria and for Tinubu’s presidency. Lack of enlightenment can be very harmful. The only time one heard or read that a group of sovereigns ganged up to attack another sovereign in a short notice was in the bible. Chronicles 18: 3 tells us how the contumacious King Ahab of Israel had casually asked the respectable King Jehoshaphat of Judah, “Will you go (to war) with me against Ramoth Gilead?
Wise Jehoshaphat seeing that Ahab surrounds himself with simpletons and fake prophets more versed in propaganda, says to Ahab, I will go with you but “Is there not a prophet of the Lord here whom we can inquire of?”
When the Niger Republic military putsch broke early last week, it turned out the perfect litmus test for Tinubu and his presidency. Being head of ECOWAS, he summoned his colleagues to Abuja to a meeting which was ok. But the outcome of the meeting and the communique therefrom will be recorded in history as the ultimate diplomatic faux pas. And we ask, is there no diplomat left in Nigeria to have guided our president?
How could President Tinubu levy a slew of sanctions and a threat to deploy military force in one week on a sovereign under the rule of a junta that has possible support of foreign powers?
For want of a better description, let’s call it “MOTOR PARK DIPLOMACY”! In Lagos motor garages, of yore motor boys would rip their shirt and invite you to a duel with the slightest provocation. General Omar Tchiani had a successful coup in Niger Republic last week and he proclaimed himself head of state. He is the sixth successful coupist in the sahel region. ECOWAS didn’t raise an army against Mali, Chad, Bukina Faso, etc so why would Niger’s be different. That’s bias. No General would accept that.
Who gives a successful coupist an ultimatum on the first contact? Where has diplomacy gone? What about the Nigerien people? It’s obvious they prefer the junta to the criminal civilian regime that was booted out. Is Nigeria in a position to execute a war? The country has been at ‘war’ with ragtag Boko Haram for about 15 years without success. Nigeria is an overflowing refugees camp. Millions of Nigerians are already in IDP camps with the one in Benue recently adjudged to be the worst human camp in the world. Nigerian youths are fleeing the country in droves, seeking any shores but Nigeria’s. Nigeria is in her worst socio-economic state since the civil war of the 60s with over 130 citizens dirt-poor. Yet our president who is on a wonky mandate is hungry for war. Does Tinubu seek war to legitimise his presidency?
Now that he has boxed himself into a diplomatic cul de sac, what will happen next when Gen. Tchiani calls President Tinubu’s bluff as has been indicated already. Well my friends, we have one week to prepare for a war… are you thinking?
Osuji, renowned Journalist, Columnist, was Special Adviser, Media, to the Rt. Hon. Emeka Ihedioha, former Governor of Imo State
