By Tony Eluemunor
There is something new in the air; a miffing, terribly irksome nobody-deserves-respect-attacks that have been visited on those who have dared to criticize President Bola Ahmed Tinubu or support another person to become President in 2027. Any who has not joined his hallelujah chorus has been tarred and dirtied.
Many, obviously baffled by this vengeance, have expressed surprise that otherwise experienced journalists and public spokespersons who keep the public space clean for Mr. President, have been outrageously aggressive and indecorous … if not insulting. Yes, the people who try to correct them by pointing out to them the more respectable and temperate ways to do Public Relation works on their boss’s behalf are right on one point: that Tinubu’s handlers spare no one and spray at one and all the galling yapping and yammering output of their caustic tongues.
Yet, Tinubu’s handlers are no journalistic nonentities. So, if they spew caustic soda mixed with acid, then it must have been a matter of choice. Just last week someone complained and I quote: “Those tasked with managing the image of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appear to be doing the opposite. Instead of winning hearts, they are creating more enemies. A recent example is that of the Presidential Spokesperson,
Bayo Onanuga, a respected journalist, publisher, and former Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). In a lengthy press statement, he traded the discipline of public relations for Bolekaja (street-brawling) rhetoric.
Rather than addressing issues involving a former President and a former minister with decorum, Onanuga resorted to abrasive language. In nearly a thousand words, he harshly condemned former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, describing it as one of “dismal records” of economic mismanagement and corruption. He went further to warn Jonathan against aligning with PDP figures such as former Information Minister, Professor Jerry Gana, dismissing them as selfish opportunists.
This was not public relations; it was black propaganda. And it was unbecoming of a man of Onanuga’s pedigree. More troubling is his careless reference to Sambo Dasuki, the former National Security Adviser, whose detention for over four years under the Buhari administration has already become a matter of judicial controversy. By invoking Dasuki in a political attack, it serves his interests. Does a President admired for political dexterity truly need aides issuing press statements that inflame rather than reconcile?
If a novice, fresh from university, made such blunders—issuing a release that creates adversaries rather than allies—one might excuse it as inexperience. But from a seasoned journalist of Onanuga’s stature, it is both shocking and disappointing. It is a monumental surprise that the writer did not get the message right from the start. Bayo Onanuga and other members of President Tinubu’s army of media aides are well-experienced. They know exactly what they are doing. They are veterans of Nigeria’s media battles even against audacious military jackboots during Nigeria’s nastiest military regime. Many of them courted doubt and darkness, faced attacks against their persons and professions in those days of military despotism. They practiced guerilla journalism when journalism was pure war. Then, they were at the receiving end. Now they are at the giving end. The story has changed but the tactics may still remain the same for them; it is still a battle and only the strong and the well-motivated can survive.
That same last week, Mr. Emma Niboro had cause to complain about Bayo Onanuga’s style. Even he also missed the point…which is that Bayo Onanuga (and every single person in Tinubu’s office) sees Tinubu as lord and master who is beyond reproach. Anyone outside his camp is an enemy to be crushed. They see themselves as being right and any who doesn’t applaud them is wrong. Tinubu has never apologized for anything….or has he?
Really, this narrative that they are right because they say so and others are wrong because they also say so, didn’t start today. It just happens that Nigerians never learn the right lessons when someone else is at the receiving end of untold atrocities. The others who should be otherwise well-informed because of the civic sensibilities the schools they attended must have imbued them with, also betray their education and fellowship with the barbarians and idiots that appear to lead public discourse in Nigeria. They simply flow with the tide, totally refusing to swim against the current. Thus, it is most likely that Mr. Niboro would never have espied anything wrong with Mr. Onanuga’s narrative, no matter how caustic, if Onanuga’s fiery and feisty chronicle didn’t scorch former President Goodluck Jonathan – his former boss. So, too, the first person I quoted; he felt drawn in simply because a man he felt beholden to, Col. Sambo Dasuki, was charred. Who speaks when he is not directly affected? Who stands on guard duty for the truth, the decent and Nigeria? Who watches the public space simply because it is wholesome to ensure that the gutter contents do not seep onto the well-plied public road?
That brings us back to the charge, from the first commentator I quoted; that Mr. Onanuga displayed Bolekaja journalism. If that was a put down, please note that it is off the mark by a country mile. President Tinubu’s media handlers ably led by Bayo Onanuga are toughened riders in the storm who have taken the Nigerian political space by … storm. To them, only the strong need dare chance upon it.
They have elected to make politics a scary turf and they have served notice a million times that they play only by their own rules – roughen any who dares to challenge their own version of the truth.
Now, there is a respectable story behind the Bolekaja “come down let’s fight” quip. Chinweizu, Onwuchekwe Jemie and Ihechukwu Madubuike (all PhD holders who also taught at universities) popularized it in the 1970s/80s when they called themselves “Bolekaja critics” in their book “Towards the Decolonization of African Literature”. They showed no respect to any one – including Prof Wole Soyinka – who challenged them. Their preface was a battle cry: “We are three Nigerian writers and critics who are intensely concerned for the health of African culture…. We hope that the position we have taken will provoke efforts, whether out of agreement or flat disagreement … Let controversy rage; may it stimulate creative discussion.”
And when an authority in African literature such as Wole Soyinka attacked their first essays published in some journals, tagging them “pretenders” to the “crown of Pontifex Maximus of African Poetics”, they laughed the Professor to scorn. They derided his rebuke as though it was a joke; “a designation predictably borrowed from an alien Greco-Roman experience by a Euro-centric African mind, we would like to make it quite clear that if anything, we are bolekaja critics. Soyinka’s attack gave them a chance to further flatten Soyinka. And Team Tinubu has mastered this method!
Media practitioners waiting for the Tinubu’s army to lower their decibel or mitigate their tones are wasting time. If the warnings against Lagos state residents, during the last general elections, to vote in a certain way or they would be visited with certain unpleasantries, did not rouse indignation in certain Nigerians, what else would? And there is a strategy to it all. Though no one appointed any one an Iyaloja of Nigeria to superintend over markets in Nigeria, someone arrived in Benin City to inaugurate the head of Market women there. The well-respected Oba of Benin informed those involved that such a position entails the performing of certain traditional rites.
Commentators have embraced that. Sorry for Nigeria; the obvious question remains unasked: who empowered anyone to become the Iyaloja of Nigeria?
Even the narrative in certain quarters concerning the sacrifices of the members of National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) never ever mention Chief Raph Obioha, Lloyd Ukwu (who drove the USA NADECO wing), late Ambassador Raph Uwechwe, Bobo Nwosisi (who died during the struggle), Peter Obada or John Oyegun. Even surprising is the fact that the NADECO story, according to some people, have been told without mentioning the very person who registered NADECO, opened its bank account and ran its secretariat. Only in Nigeria could that have happened. That person? Oh, Prof Sylvester Monye (MFR), who was Special Adviser, Performance, in Jonathan’s administration. One day, the REAL NADECO story will be told.
Any Nigerian would have seen what some people did in Lagos, and changed the narrative there…that Ndigbo have no business participating in Lagos politics and showing they were/are ready to kill those who dare challenged them. They are still busy wiping off certain names in the geography of Lagos State by renaming streets and roads such as Ozumba Mbadiwe Road. And just while renaming the National Theater, President Tinubu rightly called for national unification efforts. This is important because without it Nigeria will never develop because all the components parts will be pulling in different directions and internal squabbles will wipe out the roadmap to progress.
A big battle is ahead. It will be something Nigeria hasn’t witnessed before. Some people attacked Jonathan before …without cause, lied against him and turned his records upside down. And they won. So, to them, it is a winsome strategy… so, why change it? Remember that they even took to the streets against Jonathan…great Nigerians from top politicians to leading Pastors. And before I am misunderstood, I hereby declare that I do not blame Profs, Pastors and the politicians who took to the streets against President Jonathan. They were within their rights. And if they now refuse to take to the streets against Tinubu, they are also within their rights. You don’t protest against someone you love. Only those who feel that the present administration has failed should say so, and if they are waiting for any particular Professor or a particular Pastor to speak up for the sufferers in the land, then their expectations are totally out of this world.
By the way, the Pro-Tinubu journalists did not manufacture this scorched-earth policy of journalism. Chief James Onanefe Ibori suffered it; every allegation was piled upon him. Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha was so ill-treated and lied against such that he was pushed into an early grave. Journalists savaged him, wrongly accusing him of returning from Britain to Nigeria dressed as a woman …though they know that was a lie. Story has it that his impeachment and removal from office was induced as the Bayelsa legislators were shepherded to Lagos.
Tinubu’s media handlers did not invent this sort of journalism; they have learnt very well, though. That is obvious. The lesson there for Nigeria is that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
Source: independentng
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