Afolabi Gambari
Events sometimes break in Nigeria these days at lightning speed, and while effort is being devoted to grabbing and dissecting one event, another event breaks soon after. Some events even go completely unnoticed or are simply ignored. Who wants to be swamped, anyway?
However, some of the events attract chroniclers so much that they can hardly go unrecorded, no matter how others see them as “things that would soon pass away”. With all sense of modesty, I consider myself in the rank of the chroniclers; hence, I have carefully selected the following events as worthy of being relayed.
Here I go:
Asked in a television interview when the Lagos international airport refurbishment (or rebuilding, as he swiftly corrected the interviewer) would be completed, Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Olorogun Festus Keyamo, SAN, said summarily: “22 months.” Reminded quickly that the first term of the Tinubu administration would have ended by then, he also said: “Yes, during our second term.” The SAN sounded cock-sure that this administration’s tenure would end in May 2031, signifying that aside from being law-savvy, he is also adept as a seer. Incredible!
It would have been easily thought that with his natural simple-mindedness, former president Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (also affectionately called GEJ by his admirers) has seen through his fellow countrymen and women and should by now be more circumspect as to who he listens to. But it appears that, despite how narrowly he escaped being worsted but has since luckily had his honour intact, he is returning to his simple-mindedness yet again and reportedly listening to some people who are urging him on to “go and complete” his “second term” in office. How could he not know that those urging him are experts at pushing their captive to the very edge of the precipice, there to abandon the captive to his fate?
“It can’t happen here” is the reaction of some people to the possibility of Jonathan being goaded to contest in the 2027 presidential election under the banner of the PDP. Really? So, what can’t happen here? Or isn’t it here that one man (General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida) very needlessly and unpatriotically annulled the result of a free, fair and credible presidential election, and the same man is today still regarded as “statesman”, “nation builder”, “patriot”, “unifier”, etc? If this can happen here, what else can’t (and mustn’t) happen?
Immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, is nothing these days if not a troubled man, even though he has tried his utmost not to appear so in public or would not even admit it. Whatever troubles him is anyone’s guess, however.
Well, many would easily recall how El-Rufai stuck out his neck campaigning for the incumbent President Bola Tinubu in 2023, vehemently insisting that only Tinubu had the solution to the myriad of problems bedevilling Nigeria. He had also reportedly abandoned his academic pursuit abroad to campaign for Tinubu and was largely applauded for his immense role. Like any other political “helper”, he expected reward for his efforts in whatever manner. But not only did he not get the reward, but he also endured being blacked out of relevance in Tinubu’s administration. Needless to say, he became restless. Recently, he launched a demarketing campaign for Tinubu, telling the whole world that the latter is pure poison. He has merely sought to overreach, if not overrate, himself, though he would not readily admit to being outsmarted on the political chessboard. Rather, he has opted for the Desperate Avenue, seeking reckoning from a largely impressionable and captive crowd in sheer delusion.
In recent times, it’s been a deluge in the news space with regard to what those in government regard as “huge success” being recorded by the Tinubu administration against insurgents and bandits in the north-east and elsewhere. Headlines as “Troops attack…”, “Troops bombard…”, “Troops level…”, “Troops neutralise…”, “Troops advance…” became the fad as bemused Nigerians wondered if all these can substitute wiping of the non-state actors that have for close to 15 years made life a hell for innocent Nigerians for whom the insurgents and bandits would remain ghosts until they are captured and served as a deterrent to others that would wish to revel in criminality for sustenance.
A widely publicised release by presidential spokesperson, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, concealed more than it revealed. Here is how: the Director General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Mr. Salihu Dembos, who was reported to have been removed by the Presidency after the expiration of his three-year tenure that began in August 2022 and was duly replaced by Mr. Rotimi Pedro who has since resumed office, was suddenly “directed” by the same Presidency to return to his office. It was clearly a power play at its height. Despite being an appointee of the Muhammadu Buhari administration, Onanuga stated in the release that Dembos was appointed the NTA DG “in October 2023”. Meaning: he was appointed by the Bola Tinubu administration – ostensibly to narrate that Dembos was returned to office because his tenure had one more year to elapse. For sure, Pedro is the loser in the power play. But no bigger loser than Onanuga deliberately misled the public on the accuracy of facts, and for whom the administration’s Renewed Hope Agenda is yet to sink in, more than two years after the agenda was launched with fanfare. What a presidential spokesperson!
About this time last year, a presidential spokesperson, Ajuri Ngelale, suddenly resigned his appointment, saying a family matter needing his attention had necessitated the resignation. Ngelale’s action shocked many observers, especially as he had been seen to discharge his duties most professionally. Unlike the typical spokespersons who took insolence to and abuse of government critics as “part of the job”, Ngelale honed the skills of a teacher who understood subjects and was capable of explaining the same for his students to understand. He gave so much credibility to the image-making aspect of the Presidency.
Soon after Ngelale resigned, however, emergency columnists surfaced, rationalising the incident without realising they went overboard, and it was as though he had occupied an elective office. One particular columnist caught more than a little attention, saying: “Hiring Ajuri Ngelale, a bundle of incompetence and a man with narcissistic traits, as a spokesperson, was a self-inflicted injury and a recruitment error.” The columnist said nothing of those who committed the “error” or if they were capable of committing further errors. It’s one year after Ngelale’s exit and he has barely been heard of again. But how have Mr. President’s spokespersons fared in protecting and projecting his image?
