In the last five weeks or so, former presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu, appears to have done more publicity in defence of former President Muhammadu Buhari than he did for him when he served as presidential media aide. He has remained very active on the social media, especially on X, where he has not relented in his onerous duty of speaking for and explaining the actions and inactions of his former principal.
Recently, Shehu took a former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke, to the cleaners. Adoke had irked Shehu and many other citizens of the Buhari clan when he threw a simple but profound dart at them, and it did hit them hard. Many people just read the headlines Buhari made in his response to Adoke but not many knew where the rope came from.
What Adoke told Adesuwa Giwa-Osagie in a convivial interview session ahead of his 60th birthday touched a raw nerve in the Buhari team’s central nervous system. He spoke with some observable tinge of irritation for the Buhari administration when the matter got to the charges of corruption brought against some Nigerians by the immediate past Federal Government led by Buhari.
Adoke said: “I’ve been a victim of corruption allegations by the immediate past government — the most incompetent government we’ve ever seen in this country — ran by the most incompetent president that this country has ever had, and we will never have again; and ran by a set of political morons.”
It was that easy for him to say, but it was also easy for Shehu to fish in troubled waters made available by Adoke. Shehu simply took advantage of the perennial corruption issues in which they had roped Adoke and others who had been on the table before the advent of Buhari. However, it kind of serves Adoke right because he too was coming from the mud of corruption allegations that had splashed us in the face.
Shehu has also had something to say to and about “the social media” where he believes that some (real or imagined) people have been trying to cook something sinister to feed unsuspecting Nigerians and the sundry public. He believes that social media is the most conducive place where they are incubating a lie by trying to give life to baseless rumours. The rumour, Shehu said is this: “Former President Buhari is requesting his successor, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, not to investigate former officials of his government.” This, he thinks, came from nowhere. The rumour has no legs to stand on — kòl’ese n’ lè — and therefore, it is a meaningless concoction. “It is fake, let us not discuss it or give it energy or air of publicity. This is fake news, and nothing more,” Shehu assured.
Then the creative Shehu, more recently, also had something about the 100 days of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by not saying it. Rather, he said so many things about 100 days after Buhari in something he entitled: “100 Days after Buhari.” In the short treatise, he reeled out the many achievements of former President Muhammadu Buhari. Some top things on the list released by the effusive Shehu include monumental achievements like “tackling corruption”; “the institution of Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPIS) to cover all MDAs in spite of great opposition from the armed forces and the universities”; the administration “achieved self-sufficiency in rice…” He also said, “Two million poor and vulnerable families received N10,000 bimonthly stipend per month; 10 million schoolchildren received a meal a day which has boosted school enrollment.” Those are among the achievements listed by Shehu in his “One hundred days after Buhari.”
These contentions by Shehu have sprinkled some flavouring to the whole confusion that is the Tinubu’s government so far. It is a unique way of pointing out the way to a confused child on a vast farm. Shehu by his posturing has also appeared more like saying ‘I dare you to probe Buhari’. Or, how is it that putting contentions like this in the public when the new administration is still struggling in its own whirlpool is not drawing attention to the monumental ills of the vilified predecessor?
To most people who are discerning enough, telling us things like that is inadvertently or intently a ploy to draw attention to those things Buhari would not want us to go back to. It is more like, as we say in my beloved Ikwuano, nté n la-agbasúonweyaafo — the cricket which fatally injures itself by rupturing its own abdomen. It accidentally does that in a bid to dish out its trademark chirp. My grandparents gave us the nté allegory when we did things we felt were good but which usually turned out to be our own undoing and got us into trouble.
Many Nigerians among whom are millions of All Progressives Congress (APC) members and sympathisers, harbour the same feeling: That Buhari was a colossal failure as president and commander-in-chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. They can see that Nigeria nourished Buhari but Buhari malnourished Nigeria. That contention is daily being underscored by the perpetual explaining with little or no substantial evidence by Shehu. Nigerians are now in the space of ‘you go explain, explain tire, no evidence’. The evidence Nigerians want should not be in the notebooks and files of Shehu and other Buharists alone. It should have been noticeable in how we lived under him; it should have been palpable and tangible as we move around the country.
If, like Shehu contended in June this year, that it remains the wish of Buhari that “he be allowed to have his needed rest, and for the Tinubu administration to have the right atmosphere to work on the realisation of the promises they made”, who is now the nté that has been rupturing the peace of our soporific ex-president? Who is the man setting all the agenda and reminding beleaguered Nigerians of the horrors of the immediate past eight years? If, at this time, Buhari is receiving a lot of flak from Nigerians because of his misadventure as our president, is it not because Shehu brought home ant-infested firewood?
Do you think Buhari deserves peace? Do you believe that he does not deserve to be disturbed by the wailing of the hungry majority? You do not want Nigerians and all dragging his name through the mud? You do not want him disturbed so that he can have his deserved rest after serving us or otherwise for eight years? Then he should stay off our face! Take him off our faces, dear GarbaShehu. Nigerians too deserve a break from the type of past Buhari exemplifies. He should leave us to our woes rather than his sustained assault on our harassed and wounded sensibilities. Buhari’s constant dance in the market will make him a cynosure.
If Shehu is always in the public domain talking about everything that Buhari did or did not do as president, then he deserves no rest because Buhari will always be called to account for his deeds. That is the nté theory — the cricket should let us have our peace and he will enjoy the assurance that he will not rupture his abdomen.
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