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By Etim Etim

What started as an innocuous invitation to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu to appear at a Town Hall organized by Arise News and answer questions with other presidential candidates in November has degenerated into a series of insulting and denigrating statements issued by Tinubu’s campaign team against Nduka Obaigbena, Publisher of Thisday newspaper and Chairman of Arise News and Reuben Abati, one of the TV’s anchors.

Although hot exchanges among Nigerian journalists are not unprecedented (I can quickly recall the bitter quarrels between Andy Akporugo of Daily Times and Dele Giwa of Sunday Concord in the early 1980s), no presidential campaign team has ever declared such a virulent press war against a major news organization.

Clearly, Alake and Onanuga want to embarrass, intimidate, harass and cow the Thisday group and therefore send strong signals to other independent media organizations to stay away from Tinubu.

In other words, they don’t want any other journalist to go near Tinubu, ask him questions or probe into his shady background, thereby inadvertently elevating him to the level of a warlord.

Even before Onanuga and Alake descended on the Thisday group, I have long noticed that many newspapers have stopped accepting articles critical of the APC candidate for publication. It is a sad moment for the press!

Tinubu’s team has explained that the man is following his campaign schedule and will not attend an event organized by Arise News, which they also accuse of being biased against the APC candidate.

In response, Obaigbena has challenged Tinubu to walk into any TV network of his choice, including TVC which Tinubu owns, and give a one-on-one interview that lasts for just eight minutes.

Instead of taking up this challenge, the Tinubu team has resorted to issuing damaging allegations against the chairman of Arise News and the journalists that work in his media group, a tactic meant to distract attention from Tinubu’s apparent inability to face media scrutiny.

It is notable that the other two main candidates, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubarkar, with their respective running mates, have been attending many media events, including the ones organized by Arise News and taking questions.

Nigerians are aware that Tinubu is suffering from some form of debilitating ailment that impairs his ability to be coherent and articulate in making an extemporaneous speech. His embarrassing performance at Chatham House in London the other day has diminished him greatly and removed whatever doubts some people might have had about his health condition.

In the months before he travelled to London, it was already obvious that something was wrong with him. His numerous gaffes, unsteady gait, incoherent frame of thoughts and drawls in his speeches are all telltale signs of underlying impairments. Last month, I wrote an article entitled, ‘’Tinubu’s baffling gaffes’’ in which I noted that the blunders in his speeches were getting so many that his aides were no longer keeping up with trying to explain them.

In recent weeks, his frailties have become so obvious that human scaffold have to be quickly assembled around him on the podium as he stumbles on his speeches. We can all see what’s been happening.

The reason many people are horrified at the unfolding Tinubu drama is the fear that history might be repeating itself so soon. In 2007, an apparently unhealthy candidate was elected and sworn into office as president. He died three years after, throwing the country into an unexpected Constitutional crisis.

I recall that President Yara’Adua’s aides and family had designed every manner of schemes before and after his election to hide his illness from the public. The Vice President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, was kept in the dark while the family and the cabal were busy helping themselves to public funds. The paralysis that gripped the nation between November 2009 when Yara’Adua flew out to Saudi Arabia to see his doctors and May 5 2010 when he died was one of the most troubling moments in our country.

In 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari was hospitalized in London for seven months, only two years after he took office, and since then, he’s been in and out of hospital regularly for regular follow ups. We were never, and have never till now, been told what ailed Buhari.

It is to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s credit that he kept the country together during Buhar’s hospitalization, and did not invoke Section 144 of the Constitution to get the incapacitated President removed from office. Yet, Buhari did not even present any visible symptoms of poor health during the 2014 campaigns.

There is no denying the fact that Buhari’s low energy level at work in the last seven years is due to his lingering health issues and old age. This is why another hide-and-seek drama involving another sickly presidential candidate is so worrisome. Can’t Nigerians ever learn from history and overgrow certain things?

The media has a Constitutional duty to ask questions, analyze issues, probe into the records and backgrounds of candidates and scrutinize them, so that the voters can adequately assess their suitability for the office. One-on-one interviews and town hall meetings allow the public the opportunity to assess the candidates’ mental alertness, level of preparedness, physical stamina and thought process.

In any case, Presidents routinely have to make extemporaneous and off-the-cuff remarks at various functions, meetings and press conferences at domestic and international forums.

By running away from live TV interviews and town halls, Tinubu denied Nigerians opportunity to assess him thoroughly. It is so unbelievable that we are dealing with this type of problem in the 21st Century.

We deserve a President who can stand at the White House Rose Garden with the man in Oval Office and address global issues confidently. I think we have come of age! We don’t want a leader who would scamper away if the international press at the UN approaches him. Nigeria deserves a President who would be comfortable before the cameras, anywhere in the world.

My sense is that Tinubu is being shielded from media scrutiny, not just because of his health issues, but also because there are many areas of his life which he is not comfortable to talk about. For instance, when he was governor, he had told us that his family was too poor to send him to a secondary school. But in a BBC interview he gave after the Chatham House episode, Tinubu was asked about the source of his stupendous wealth. He told the reporter that his wealth is largely investments in property he inherited from his family. What? The same family that couldn’t afford to send him to school?

There are also questions about Tinubu’s forfeiture of $466,000 in 1993 to the US authorities due to his association with drugs dealers.

Instead of hiding him from the cameras, I suggest that Tinubu’s team should prep him up and get him ready to face the cameras. Nigerians, ever so forgiving, may be willing to forgive and give him a second chance. We shall, however, never be deceived by the tactics of pummeling the press for doing their jobs.

Finally, I remember that after the sad death of President Yara’Adua 12 years ago, his predecessor, President Obasanjo claimed that he did not know that Yara’Adua had a terminal illness. Many Nigerians doubted him. They claimed that Obasanjo had deliberately sought out the ailing man to assume the topmost job so that his early exit would pave the way for another Southerner.

Now, what does President Buhari know about Tinubu’s health status?