I was saddened watching Mr. Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, discuss the state of the nation on Arise Television on Tuesday. To be fair, though, he is the president’s spokesperson and his job entails defending the indefensible. But beyond that, he has the reputation of insensitivity to the plight of ordinary Nigerians whenever he finds himself on the corridors of power, an attitude he exhibited grotesquely during the interview. Nigerians may have forgotten how barely four months after he was appointed Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) by President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2016, Onanuga, a veteran journalist, went on a social media rant accusing the Nigerian media of “over-sensationalisation,” and deliberateness in discrediting the Buhari government.

Just as he did two days ago, he insisted in the September 6, 2016 Facebook post that reports in the media about hardship were “mere propaganda” orchestrated by those who lost the 2015 election. “I was in Bauchi and Jos at the weekend, I also found that food was cheap everywhere,” he wrote. “In our hotel, we paid about N700 for a plate of semovita, or eba with a choice of catfish or chicken. On the roadside, I found to my surprise that with just N1000, I bought over 50 oranges, two giant water melon and 10 pieces of sweet potato. I had experienced a similar thing in the market at Abuja, where I found that with N1,400, I could make a big vegetable soup, with tomato, pepper and roasted Titus fish.” And the sucker punch: “Are the media and bloggers really painting a correct image of our country? It’s time for the media to objectively conduct a reality check about our reports, whether we are not over sensationalising so-called hardship that we talked about.” Then, the suffering of Nigerians was “so-called,” an illusion and a figment of the people’s imagination, just as it is today.

He didn’t stop there. “My daughter was on the Virgin Atlantic flight that took off from Lagos to London today. I asked her to find out whether the plane was filled up or going to London near empty judging by the noisy campaign from a section of the country about the ‘hardship’ in our country. My daughter sent back this one-line text, after boarding: “daddy, the flight was filled up . This makes me to wonder whether all the seeming orchestrated campaign in the media was not mere propaganda to make the Buhari regime look really bad,” a dig at folks complaining about hardship. So, his answers to Charles Aniagolu’s questions on Tuesday were true to character. His Ijebu kinsmen are not complaining having tasted the goodness of Tinubu’s regime, he claims. He taunts Nigerians still complaining of hunger despite Tinubu’s unprecedented feat of turning around the country’s parlous lot in so short a time. “We have been pigeon-holed into certain assumptions. It is like in the early days of this government, the president went to Lagos, I think he was coming from Central Mosque and somebody did a voice over – ebi n pa wá o – which means “we are hungry.” And since then, people have been saying, we are hungry.”

The presidential spokesperson says that is a hoax because his personal staff say otherwise. “I am a Nigerian, I have people working for me privately. I don’t see the level of hunger you people are talking about.” Wondering what those who are complaining of hardship are talking about, Onanuga said: “People are praising this president. It is the opposition that is maligning him.” But Aniagolu, also a Nigerian, wouldn’t let him get away with such hogwash. He reminded him that while the government admonishes longsuffering citizens to tighten their belts, government officials are loosening theirs. Onanuga’s riposte was as egregious as it was harebrained: “That is not totally true. Let me just tell you a story. Today, after a meeting, I spoke with the Minister of Finance. It will shock people that some ministers, some of them spoke during the last budget exercise that they didn’t receive capital money… some of them, because they came into office to serve, are using their personal funds to run. Some of them are not collecting government money.”

Incredible! Nigerians are, indeed, shocked that ministers are using their personal resources to run the business of the Nigerian state and it beggars belief that the presidential spokesperson sees that as a credit to the government, assuming it is true. An obviously flustered Aniagolu asked what he meant by ministers “using their personal funds to run,” to which Onanuga responded, “I mean to run their official work.” It is quite revealing that the irony was lost on him that in a government that claims to be awash with money, budgets are not funded and ministers run the ministries with their personal funds. Now, I was saddened despite the fact that I didn’t expect anything different from Onanuga because if this is the quality of advice Tinubu gets from his aides – people telling him what a great leader he is, how he has made Nigeria an Eldorado – then, this country under Tinubu’s watch is done for.

The Arise TV interview is coming on the heels of Onanuga’s ad hominem attack on Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Party (NDC) in the 2027 elections following his call on Tinubu to resign on account of his incompetence and cluelessness. Citing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to step down amid public anger over a sluggish economy, a worsening cost-of-living crisis, and a failure to honour key electoral commitments as a model of political accountability, Obi called on President Tinubu to do likewise. Such a gesture, he said, would not only help in enthroning a political culture rooted in accountability and responsibility, but also “send a powerful message that public office is a sacred trust, not an entitlement, and help build a society in which future leaders understand that failure carries consequences.” He was spot on. Elsewhere, leadership is neither about office nor tenure but promise and delivery. But an irascible administration fired back, dismissing Obi’s call as “childish, hollow and an unworthy distraction.”

The presidency said the call was not only misplaced but also reflects “a selective and distorted view of Nigeria’s realities since 2023” and reminded Nigerians that the country runs a presidential system, where the president is elected to a fixed four-year term. It was an ad hominem fallacy, which, rather than addressing the substance of Obi’s submission, tried to discredit his argument by personally attacking his character, motive and background. First, it is not true that in a presidential system of government, presidents don’t reign. Chapter 8, Part 2, Section 306 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) which deals with the issue of resignations states: “… any person who is appointed, elected, or otherwise selected to any office established by this Constitution may resign from that office by writing under his hand addressed to the authority or person by whom he was appointed, elected or selected.” It went further to state that “The notice of resignation of the President and of the Vice-President shall respectively be addressed to the President of the Senate and to the President.”

In any case, while it is trite to say that resignation of presidents is always rare and dramatic, history is replete with such moments. Former U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 due to the Watergate Scandal, becoming the first and only U.S. president to do so. In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos stepped down in 1986. Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello resigned in 1992 in the middle of an impeachment trial and Alberto Fujimori of Peru, in 2000, resigned via fax from Japan after a widespread corruption scandal undermined his administration. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peru did likewise in 2018. Needless to say that this list is not exhaustive. Again, if it is puerile to call for the resignation of a president, then Tinubu is the prefect in that juvenile class. Why? Because he also told President Goodluck Jonathan to resign. Speaking at a rally in Ilorin, Kwara State, on Wednesday, November 5, 2014 in his capacity as the APC National Leader and opposition chieftain, Tinubu claimed that Jonathan’s administration lacked the wherewithal to tackle the country’s security challenges and urged him to quit office.

So, if the call was not childish then, what makes it so today? Or was Nigeria under a parliamentary system of government under Jonathan? No matter how hard Onanuga tries to obfuscate the issues, the joke is on his principal, President Bola Tinubu, and no one else. His red herring is the real definition of childishness.

The post Peter Obi and Bayo Onanuga’s red herring, by Ikechukwu Amaechi appeared first on Vanguard News.