“He is alive and well. President Buhari
is not magical. He cannot be holidaying in the UK and be in Germany,
dead or alive at the same time.
“He is unlike a past president, who was
at Ota with Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and attending the Trump inauguration
in DC, being in two places at the same time.”
The statement above, as reported by punchng.com was credited to the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to President Buhari, Mr. Shehu Garba. He posted the the alleged statement on his twitter handle, while trying to debunk online news report that made rounds Saturday, claiming that President Buhari had passed on.
When I read that statement, I laughed and grieved at the same time. I laughed at how unserious, unprofessional and unintelligent some people, who occupy high places can be and I grieved because such people actually occupy high places in my country and make decisions that affect millions of people. How much more idiotic and mundane can a presidential statement be.
If that was a try at sarcasm, someone should advise the presidential adviser to go back to school.
For the unaware, Mr. Shehu was trying to be smart in relation to online news reports purporting that former President Jonathan was invited to Donald Trump's inauguration. On the day of the inauguration, Jonathan was in Ogun state visiting former President Obasanjo and I guess Mr. Shehu was trying to lets us know that the 'invitation' news was all hogwash, else jonathan wouldn't be in Ogun state.
Beyond the fact that former President Jonathan's media aide refuted the 'invitation' news what irks me here is finding the relationship between the health of Mr. President and President Jonathan's visit to Obasanjo or his attendance/otherwise of Trump's inauguration.
If Mr. Shehu is a careful person, he would have known that the news of the invite had been debunked and as such, no need to refer to it. If professionalism is his garb, he should know that as a media adviser, a presidential one at that, you do not gossip or make cheap talks on the social media. If he is logical in thought, he should know that in debunking a false social media report, you do not cite another unconfirmed socail media report.
Since inception, we have been grapling with understanding what the
vision of this administration is, if any. From May 2015 till now, it has
been like a desktop screen full of sticker notes of 'I think I should
do this' list. No dashboard of plans on the direction the country should be
going, known to all stakeholders.
Instead of making cheap talks with tax payers money, Mr. Shehu should advise more on ways this administration can communicate for development. For free, I will tell him what this means.
It means advising this administration to come out with a communication on where we are, where we need to be, how we are going to get there and droping the timeline markers visible enough for people to realy know that we are in forward motion and not static or retrogressing into recession (no pun intended).
It involves INFORMING us of what needs to be done, INSTRUCTING us on how it can be done, INSPIRING us start doing, INSISTING that we start doing and finally making us INVOLVED in doing.
The above are what he should be advising on. He is an adviser, not a spokesperson. But if he thinks he needs to speak for his principal, the he should speak to these:
- The fact that the President had to go on holiday just days after our airforce mistakenly bombed internally displaced citizens, a national tregedy.
- Why Southern Kaduna killings was left to linger but we quickly mobilised our soldiers for big brother action in Gambia with the tax money payed by those slain in Southern Kaduna.
- The fact that arrest of journalists/bloggers and storming of media houses by agents of the state is on the increase.
These are just a few of the myriad of things he needs to speak to, if he must speak.
Mr. Shehu has made many blunders on social media and it looks as if there will be no end to it. This is another sad story about those who lead us. They do not seem incapable of learning from their or other people's mistakes.
But, I have a word of advice, as stated by Alvin Tofller: “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot
read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment
PLEASE BE POLITE