I was really excited
on Saturday when I received news of the eventual visit of President Muhammadu
Buhari’s media team to him in London. I had always felt that the exclusion of
the media team from the London medical vacation and the various visits
practically undermined the Presidential media office, and created the space for
the mismanagement of the communication process around and about the President’s
illness.
I could never have imagined my own boss in our time,
travelling without me or shutting me out of any important event. He took my
team everywhere. Every President has what is called a Main Body. This comprises
his first line of assistants, namely his Chief Security Officer, Aide-de-Camp,
Chief Detail, Chief Physician, State Chief of Protocol, Personal Assistant
(Luggage), Personal Assistant (Private matters), and of course, the Special
Adviser (Media and Publicity)/Official Spokesperson.
Whereas other parts of this body face their own challenges,
the major problem that the President’s media team often faces is that everyone
in the Presidency, and even persons from outside, particularly the
na-my-brother-dey-there crowd tend to assume that they know a lot about the
media. They probably have an uncle who once worked as a journalist or newspaper
vendor, or they happen to know one or two editors or correspondents, who are
perpetually telling them how the media team is not doing what it is supposed to
do.
While other parts of the President’s Main Body are usually
civil servants, the Chief Physician and the Special Adviser (Media) are traditionally
political appointees, and they are easily the targets of so many people who
want their positions. My then colleague, the Chief Physician used to
complain bitterly about how on many occasions he had to warn self-appointed
physicians who used to recommend vitamins and other drugs for the President
behind his back. In the corridors of power, the jostling for power, territory,
and space could be psychologically crippling and emotionally corrosive.
I recall in particular, how in those days, (indeed, yesterday
is beginning to sound like those days!), some persons used to draw attention to
how the media is managed in the US White House. After a while, I started asking
them: “have you ever worked in this White House, that you talk so eloquently
about?” Now, we have seen a different White House under President Donald Trump,
and hence, when I call up “the White House experts”, their only response these
days is that “it is not easy.” Of course, no part of Presidential work is easy.
There is also no standard formula for serving a President.
No two presidencies are alike in any way. The nature and character of an
executive Presidency is determined by the style/temperament/competence/choices
of the individual President and the circumstances of his tenure, and it is
these same factors that account for the differences between great, mediocre and
bad Presidents. To each category, history is the eventual judge.
Nonetheless, I thought it was wrong to have kept President
Buhari’s team out of the London trips. The core team should have been there all
the time to take photographs, issue statements, if needed, organize
video recordings, liaise with local journalists, and manage “inconvenient”
journalism and public.
I imagined that some characters would have filled the gap
left by the absence of the media team, and would have been busy
taking pictures with a miserable gadget, not knowing
that photos are meant to tell stories and that they are taken with the
brain. Whoever was behind that newspaper vendor style of journalism did the
President a disservice and was responsible for most of the damage that was
done. The real damage was that Nigerians did not believe the official
narrative, they concluded that the pictureswere photo-shopped or that they
were old pictures and that there was an attempt to hoodwink the
public. It didn’t help that whoever took those early pictures focused
on the President’s weak points: his fingers and arms in a poor pose, for
example.
But the game changed the day Bayo Omoboriowo
accompanied seven governors to London to see the President. With
five pictures, the President’s official photographer showed him in better
light. The photographs presented him as a living being. Every
Presidential assistant is as important as the amount of access and empowerment
that he/she enjoys. Many Presidents undermine their media team, as US President
Trump has done. I consider the visit to London by President Buhari’s media
team, a form of rehabilitation, for the team and for the office. The meaning of
that visit was not lost on the team either.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on his arrival at the Abuja House,
looked like he had been grinning about 100 metres away before he met the
President. When the President extended his hands for a handshake,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed did a Nigerian version of the Cameroonian Bidoung
challenge. He bowed close to 90 degrees. Even when the President took another
person’s hand, Lai Mohammed was still busy bowing. When the President praised
him, he grinned so much, I thought he was going to prostrate! My brothers, Femi
Adesina and Garba Shehu didn’t bow, they stayed professional, but I have never
seen both former Presidents of the Nigerian Guild of Editors grin so
enthusiastically!
Lauretta Onochie was probably the biggest beneficiary
of the visit. Considered by opposition activists a footnote in the
Presidency pretending to be a valuable attack dog, her inclusion in that
trip has elevated her relevance. She still has a lot to learn on the job
though, especially from the masters of the attack dog game
in Nigerian politics: the inimitable and talented Femi Fani-Kayode, the
grandmaster of this chivalric Order, Doyin Okupe, the senior warden of
rebuttals, Lai Mohammed, Ayodele Fayose, Reno Omokri, Lere Olayinka, Deji
Adeyanju, and Jude Ndukwe.
Given the nature of Nigerian politics, future
Nigerian presidents will certainly need the services of these dogged political
fighters to complement the officialdom of Presidential spokesmanship.
Lauretta Onochie has a lot to learn from them, albeit she is
doing much better than the pathetic play-safe crowd in the Buhari team but the
London recognition should further empower her. Abike Dabiri-Erewa was also in
London, curtseying with both legs and hands; she was described in the reports
as Senior Special Assistant on Diaspora Matters, but I guess she was included
in the team in her professional right as a seasonedbroadcast journalist. Bayo Omoboriowo,
the official photographer, was also in attendance and when it was his turn to
have a Presidential handshake, he grinned and shook so much he almost staged an
Olamide-inspired Wo-challenge. I hope he remembered to inform the President
that his wife had just been delivered of twins and that being a father of twins
has serious implications in Yorubaland!
Together, the team delivered a professional reportage.
Brilliant. Different. Good moment for the Presidency’s Media Department.
Whereas previous coverage before the Governors’ visit showed the President in
an unconvincing manner, his media team has managed to show him in a
three-dimensional frame. We saw him sitting, standing, and walking. He shook
hands. He talked. His wardrobe was different. He appeared animated and alive.
With that visit, many doubts have been laid to rest through the power of media.
We now know that Buhari can talk. Dirty-minded persons may even stretch the
matter and imagine that our President has been engaging in “the other room”
skelewu in London. The media team has also managed to establish that medication
or not, Buhari remains in charge. He is still President and he is not
incapacitated.
In the kind of system that we run, there cannot be two
Presidents at a time. When you have a living and breathing President, be he in
Iceland or Antarctica, for whatever reason, he remains the President. This,
thus, creates a special problem for Acting President Yemi Osinbajo. The
combined interpretation of the to-ing and froing to London to visit President
Buhari is the impression that whereas Acting President Osinbajo has an office,
transmitted to him constitutionally in the light of Section 145 of the 1999
Constitution, he has neither the power nor the authority of that office, or he
is not being allowed to enjoy the full benefits of his legal status. This puts
Nigeria in a lurch, technically and pragmatically and let no one make any bones
about that.
What is worse is the declaration by the media team that the
President’s return now lies in the hands of his doctors and he is resolved to
obey their orders. It is tragic that Nigeria’s sovereignty, which resides in
part in the office of the President, has been ceded to UK doctors. They alone
can determine when Nigeria can have its President back in the homeland.
Saddening as that situation is, not even the Queen of England or the British
Prime Minister has deemed it necessary to visit President Buhari or seek
audience with him.
This egregious insult is well-deserved by Nigeria and other
African countries whose leaders embark on medical tourism to Europe, Asia and
North America. The intelligence agencies in these countries have all the
strategic information on our leaders and country, but we are happy to play
third fiddle in global politics. In 2050, Nigeria’s population is likely to be
over 300 million, with some of the youngest people in the world being
Nigerians. If by 2050, we do not have enough good hospitals and medical
facilities to take care of our people, we would be a doomed nation.
This is not a task for Buhari’s media team. But just as they
tried to put out a fire in London, another had already started at home. By the
way, a Presidential media department is a Fire Service office and an ambulance
operation. There is always another fire next time and victims in need of
desperate rescue. In the present instance, a group called “Our-mumu-don-do”
group, led by Charly Boy, the self-acclaimed Area Fada of Frustrated Nigerians
had begun a protest in Abuja asking President Buhari to resume office or
resign.
They were echoing the protests of those who have argued that
the Nigerian electorate voted for a President not an absentee one, that they
voted in the expectation that their President would stay in office and serve
them, and did not expect that the President would become an apparition or a
London-based tourist and museum attraction. Charly Boy, 66, went out with his
pro-democracy troops, but they were tear-gassed and harassed by the police.
They were accused of engaging in unlawful pro-corruption and irresponsible
activity that was hijacked by hoodlums. That of course is stupid talk.
At issue was the right of every Nigerian to protest without
being molested, and the right to free speech. When free speech is denied, hate
speech is encouraged. It is ironic that the same government that is so
concerned about hate speech is the same one promoting it.
Meanwhile, sycophantic speech is encouraged. To counter the
Charly Boy group, someone organized a pro-Buhari group, which has been busy
dancing around Abuja proclaiming that Buhari will win the 2019 election,
denouncing those who want him to resign. I have taken a look at this group and
they look like a bunch of hoodlums, every one of them, but they have so far
enjoyed police protection and the government is very happy with them. When
government gains one thing with one hand, some other characters remove it with
another hand. This is the sign of the times.
But there are unresolved questions that will not go away
just like that. For how long will the President remain on medical vacation in
London, even when the Constitution, the country’s basic law, is silent and
ambiguous on this score? What is the actual cost of the President’s absence in
a context that disallows the transfer of power and authority in the presence of
an apparently living and said-to-be-capable President who is otherwise
indisposed?
I’ll not ask that the visits to London be stopped, in case
that is part of the doctors’ therapy, but it is ridiculous and insensitive that
government officials are now visiting the President in medical exile, with some
of them posing for photo-ops with their children. Our President should not be
turned into a tourist attraction and the Abuja House in London should not
become a museum.
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