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| Garba Shehu, SSA to the President on Media and Publicity |
It amounts to arrant callousness to question the
genuineness of a woman's tears whose husband lies inanimately at the
hospital on the back of acute health failure.
I thought it appropriate to respond to Garba Shehu's
publication titled: 'Is This The Change We Voted For? Yes, It Is!' Garba
asked a crucial question which should have been left for the citizens
to answer, but in a desperate bid to pass his Principal off as a man of
the people, he elected to be the provider of the answer to his own
question. The question therefore is, how can we measure the objectivity
of a man who is hired to defend the President at all times? In
respect to his publication, I am responding as a Nigerian who presently
resides in Nigeria and is conversant with the terrible conditions that a
paid spokesperson tries to twist in order to win the nod of his
employer. The publication portrays Garba Shehu not just as a man who has
an estranged relationship with truth but also as one who is overly
insensitive. It is a piece of useless statistics aimed at defending the
glaring ineptitude of his Principal which has attracted untold hardship
on the Nigerian people since the advent of the APC government.
But, in fairness to Mr Garba Shehu, one needs to understand that
being a spokesman is one of the toughest jobs that people do, and
Garba's predicament in this respect did not go unnoticed. His job
requires that he speaks consistently, not in line with his personal
convictions, but as a praise-singer with the skills capable of soothing
the troubled soul of his Principal, even when his own subjective
assessment of the situation is diametric. There are no hellish
conditions on earth than one whose voice has been muffled in
exchange for a salary - like Garba's!
Even in that publication, Garba tacitly confirmed Buhari's failure when he wrote:
'It is a proud moment for many citizens that the country is being
perceived differently now that it has a different kind of
leader CREATING A POSITIVE BUSS ABROAD...'
Who ought to be pleased? Should it be Nigerians or foreigners? Whilst
I am not interested in engaging Garba Shehu in meaningless statistical
analysis, it has to be said that the impact of President Buhari cannot
be felt abroad alone, the change he promised must be evident in the
lives of the Nigerian people. This is where the real statistics of the
President's performance can be drawn, not the kind of analysis that is
cooked in Garba's kitchen and forced down the throat of Nigerians.
It is therefore an affront and outright admission of failure for
Garba Shehu to allude that President Buhari's assessment lies
exclusively in the hands of foreigners. What he forgot to tell us was
the number of votes Buhari secured abroad during the March
28 polls that ushered him to power.
But that is not all. The problems that Nigerians must contend with
during the life of this administration transcend
Garba Shehu's lies. Their ineptitude is so blindsiding that the blame
game they started soon after the inauguration has become part of the APC
government. On that, Garba Shehu has this to say:
'When they ask the question, is this the change we voted for, the
critic forgets how far we have come from the scam-tainted years of the
PDP rule.'
This is laughable! The general consensus spread across most parts of
Nigeria was that the PDP had failed, a claim that this writer endorsed,
and still does. The APC, in their desperate quest for power, promised a
change from the status quo. The oppressed people, having been raped by
the PDP since the rise of the century, naturally boarded the Change
Train that the APC paraded.
It is pellucid, therefore, that it was the failure of the
PDP to improve the living conditions of the people that caused the sun
to set on their looting and pillaging. And now that the APC has
been handed the opportunity to fix the system in line with their series
of vociferous promises, it seems inscrutable to me that they should
spend night and day lamenting over a mess they were ushered in
to mend. This cockamamie excuse has gone so stale that it now has
become intolerably offensive. At this time, Garba Shehu & Company
must now shop for another excuse to which they must hold on for the next
two years or more.
On the much-publicized 'war' against corruption, Garba Shehu has this to tell us:
'Everyone living in Nigeria knows that there is a major movement
against corruption as part of the ongoing change. This war has forced
the return to the treasury of billions of Naira and millions of Dollars
stolen by past officials.'
Perhaps the most appropriate thing to do at this juncture is to
provide Mr Garba Shehu and his Principal with a proper definition of the
term 'corruption' to enable everyone to determine where exactly the war
against corruption should begin.
In presenting the definition below, I shall place emphasis on certain words or phrases to achieve some effects.
'Corruption is most commonly defined as the misuse or the ABUSE OF
PUBLIC OFFICE for private gain (World Bank 1997, UNDP
1999). Corruption can come in various forms and a wide array of illicit
behavior, such as bribery, extortion, fraud, NEPOTISM, graft, speed
money, pilferage, theft, embezzlement, falsification of records,
kickbacks, influence peddling, and campaign contributions.'
The latter part of this definition is according to a research
work submitted to Asian-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC),entitled 'Anti-Corruption and Governance: The
Philippine Experience'.
If abuse of public office amount to corruption like we have learnt
from the above definition, then the President's nepotistic appointments
since assuming office is an irrefutable testimony that he is lacking in
probity. How then can he successfully wage a war against corruption when
he himself is heavily begrimed by the plague? But these are not the
kind of questions that Garba Shehu answers. And although
Garba boastfully tells us that the Buhari's administration has recovered
billions of Naira and millions of dollars from past corrupt
officials, his claim clearly contradicts his Principal's recent
lamentation that the country is struck with dire poverty. Quite
obviously, Nigerians are led by a government of contradictions and lies!
But more disturbing is that Garba's problem is beyond his knack
for cooking lies, his obvious sycophancy is what worries me. Hear him:
'President Buhari has himself on numerous occasions admitted that the
change mantra has brought with it pain and suffering which he likened
to the pains of labor. IT IS A PASSING PHASE.'
One hellacious task for this administration is
the noticeable difficulty in admitting the sky-high incompetence
that is associated with President Buhari and members of
his cabinet. So, rather than admitting that the government is without a
clue to respond to the economic quagmire rocking the nation, Garba
elects to tell us that the prevalent suffering across the country
is A PASSING PHASE in this government, and he says this
without a practical roadmap on how they intend ending the
ongoing scourge in the country. His attempt to inflict such a monumental
insult on our collective intelligence is permanently unforgivable.
Garba Shehu needs to be told in blunt terms that Nigerians are sick
of the Buhari's Administration. And Garba, who seems to live in the
sky, needs only a single vox populi from the streets, markets, bus
stops, etc to confirm the bogusness of his publication.
Residing far away in the sky, Garba needs to be reminded that a bag
of rice in Nigeria is presently above N25,000, far more than the
N18,000 minimum wage yet to be paid by many states. Our dear spokesman,
away from his handsomely paid job, needs to taste this
minimum wage for four years or more before he can competently answer the
question he raised in his risible publication.
The people are presently battling to survive the outrageous prices of
petrol, diesel, kerosene, foodstuffs, all of which skyrocketed in the
morning of Buhari's government. Since Nigerians have remained malleable,
we are at the mercy of the daily disasters of Buhari's government. And
whilst we are enmeshed in the pool of these disasters, one can only hope
that God intervenes, even in the face of a paid writer!
Elias Ozikpu is a social commentator, polemicist, playwright, and novelist.
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PLEASE BE POLITE