Shehu Garba heaps garbage on history

There is an interesting read featuring Hillary Clinton’s rebranding, as Hillary 2.0, by R. Emmet Tyrrell Jr. The compendium of sort, is entitled “Public Nuisances 1”. Tyrell is a long-standing journalist with honours, both causa and earned. He is also a syndicated columnist, with a long association with a long-list of media outfits, both local to his native America and foreign to the world. Except for mischief, Alhaji Garba Shehu, ex-Abubakar Atiku’s gatekeeper and now Muhammadu Buhari’s surrogate, holds his own in Nigerian journalism like Tyrell. Well, maybe he ripened too early, becoming the president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors in 1994, at just a little over 30 years and presiding over ancestors of the trade for three years. Well, since it is a turn-by-turn enterprise between North and South, the rest must kow-tow, to whatever the nominating zone, is bringing and for a Northern zone that was just incubating, at this time, Garba would just do, with his resume suddenly becoming top-heavy. Without doubt, Garba’s association with Atiku was that bend for him, when you have the spirits cracking your palm kernel and it was the vehicle, while his boss was bumping around platforms for a presidential ride, that drove him, onto Buhari’s bosom.

Like Tyrell, Garba was a syndicated columnist with way-faring mentality, touching established platforms to vent his views. But instead of listing him as Tyrell’s contemporary, the way Garba has been doing the Buhari rounds, especially since he survived Aisha’s assault last December, can only qualify him for a page in Tyrell’s updated edition of Public Nuisances.

Garba’s qualification for a generous mention in the Public Nuisances package will have little to do with the Wole Soyinka episode.

As an Atiku sidekick with plenty of cash to throw around, especially in media circle, Shehu was a heartthrob. He was dubbed the kindest of them all. Now, with Buhari, it is crystal clear, Shehu was who he was with Atiku because his boss is who he is and in Nigeria’s PR engagement, you must mirror your boss, to be seen as loyal, even when your beliefs are worlds apart. The switch to the side of blood-lickers, must colour your own lips red, to be accepted, as an, inner-inner. Does it mean that Garba would shelve sadistic approaches to public engagements, if a more-intelligent and refined boss comes along tomorrow? That would be doubtful if debatable. It seems this is the raunchy Garba coming to the fore, especially after coming into his own, following his adoption by the Villa controlling-cabal, a promotion that kept him on a job from which the one who shares the president bed, could not get him off. Well, the president is likely keeping faith with Micah 7:5, but why is he trusting friend and guide and not the one “that lieth in thy bosom.” A man rules over his household as he desires.

Human beings only get on full throttle of innateness when riding high, the confidence bicycle. I’m a fervid UFC fan. I have noticed that fighters always zoom in to kill when opponents start staggering. After dismissing Aisha by the grace of the cabal, the real Shehu is what will manifest in the midst of the fiendish fellows he has corralled himself. And day-by-day, he is looking tailor-made for his new toxic environment and assignment. You don’t act a thing like this. When an environment is enabling, you flow naturally. The gagging days of managing an Atiku who wants to remain ebullient are over. This Aso Rock takes no prisoner. Garba is their man for the job.

But it is easy for the old editor, to forget he used to assume the all-knowing posture on state matters, just a few years back as columnist for some platforms, including briefly, for the Nigerian Tribune. So, if Wole Soyinka is now a fictitious aficionado because he queried and demanded to know where Garba’s principal got his powers to shut a federating unit down, what was Mr. Shehu when he assumed the omniscient posture over Obasanjo and Jonathan’s governments, criticisng all their policies, whether science, fiction or errandism, simply because his then-principal fell out with Ebora Owu and Jonathan’s second term ambition, stood in the way of an Atiku’s presidency? Do I also suspect tribal jingoism in Garba’s DNA?

Now, that the Governors’ Forum is siding with Soyinka, Falana and Adegboruwa’s objection on whose is empowered to shut a state down, why is Garba not going after the governors. If Garba wasn’t just on insult parade, why did he not allow a knowledgeable scientist in their fold answer the professor of fiction, with scientific facts, that the world is really at war and this world war 3, is virtual, with a virus imported by the Nigerian elite, of which Soyinka and Garba are prominent members, to trouble the poor at home.

The afi fila perin warning should be commended to anyone with Garba’s kind of mental baggage. Obviously the cabal that owns Garba now, has not been able to live down the robust opposition from the South, led by Soyinka and others, which truncated the initial nationwide Ruga policy which was roundly rejected as Fulanisation of the nation. So, anything from him, must be put down with a heavy foot and a spat. But would that make his future interventions fictional?

I don’t think so. Though I’m not a Soyinka fan, due to his tendency to be deliberately blind to the evils of his political friends, but it has pleased God to make him a voice to his generation and even when he goofed, as was the case with Trump’s election, Garba and his paymasters, will still be miles away, in both domestic and international relevance.

Though well-kept away from public eyes, Garba began his today’s job, trying to undermine the one who should be his direct boss. Not a hearsay. Overtime, he was put in his place. When you see a man struggling for relevance, the mission, is always dark. Garba is a presidency giant today because perfidious hands are propelling him, high enough, to splash dysentery fecal everywhere. Yoruba will say, igba ki lo bi orere. By December 12, Insha Allah, Oga Garba will be 57 years. Is it not about time to start running servile errands like a true-born.

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