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TINUBU: A déjà vu of 2015

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All critical minders of Nigeria’s preparation for the upcoming general elections will see in the ruling All Progressives Congress’ (APC’s) quest to retain power in 2023, a retrogressive match to 2015. A harrowing eight-year déjà vu.

The reason many Nigerians acceded to Maazi Nnamdi Kanu’s sponsored rumour that President Muhammad died in London in 2017, buried in Saudi Arabia and a certain Jubril from Sudan surgically plastered to take on Buhari’s role in Aso Rock was because of the yawning communication gap between Buhari and Nigerians. Mr. Buhari presided over a presidency that was so distanced from his own people.

Under Presidents Obasanjo and Jonathan, there was a regular “Presidential Media Chat” — an interactive phone-in program aired live by NTA and Radio Nigeria, in which the president interfaced with ordinary Nigerians on topical issues of nation building. There was no single space for any debilitating rumour of “ruling in absentia” to thrive under their regimes. But Buhari arrived with an incognito brand of leadership, that made it easy for every smoke of hearsay to transmogrify into reality.

And so, it was so easy for Nnamdi Kanu’s death theory on the president to gain acceptance among a vast majority of those outside the vicinity of Aso Villa.

As a refresher, let’s recall with quintessential columnist — Festus Adedayo that: on November 10, 2018, Kanu made what he called a broadcast from Israel, his then latest fugitive refuge. Therein, he had stoked several insinuations. According to him, Buhari collapsed on Tuesday January 17, 2017 and was immediately rushed to London via Casablanca “where his presidential jet made a stopover.” In his words, Buhari stopped breathing and the plane had to make an emergency landing in Casablanca to pick up a life support machine and then flown to London. “In the hospital in the UK,” said Kanu, “the President was declared brain dead on the 20th of January, 2017.” But the life support machine was switched off on January 27, 2017 and Buhari pronounced dead.

Pursuing this further, Kanu said Buhari’s corpse was then flown to Saudi Arabia on January 28, 2017 for internment. The procurement for a replacement for Buhari then began, and Mr. Jubrin — a Sudanese impostor, made to undergo plastic surgery in London, to become Buhari’s look-alike, was brought into the Villa. Confirming his thesis, Kanu claimed that the Jubrin has a different earlobe from the original Buhari and that the Jubril has a full set of hair unlike the bald Buhari, among other alleged inconsistent bio-physical characteristics.

Many believed such esoteric rumour because President Buhari totally demarcated himself (and his office) from those who elected him. In that instance, any rumour about his health would fly unhindered.

His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s candidature for the presidency of Nigeria, under APC has cut in every inch the image of 2015 Muhammad Buhari. Both were apparently frail in health. Both were “mediaphobic” and are distanced from everyday Nigerians. The little difference is that Buhari began his solitary life after taking office. In Tinubu’s case, he has already started media apathy prior to election.

In the month of September, Tinubu left Nigeria to an unknown destination, spending well over three weeks in an unnamed foreign land. This aroused curiosity among many, and in a strange response, on September 30th, a member of APC’s presidential campaign council, Mr. Ayo Oyalowo on Arise TV shocked Nigerians when he said that “Tinubu was in London resting.”

This unsettling response might have been what made Asiwaju’s spin doctors to release a video of the disputed octogenarian on a gym cycler, animating on it to show his fitness. It was an elaborate indication that if elected, Tinubu will turn Nigerians into hypothetic guess experts on the whereabouts of their president (dead or alive) as Buhari did in 2017—2018.

Another worrisome aspect of his presidential aspiration is his media shyness and aversion to interrogations by local press. This is another inherited disorder of Buhari’s regime.

Recall that Buhari was never given to talking to newsmen, but when he does, it was to foreign journalists.

Tinubu has started on the same pedastal. All presidential candidates (including Waziri Adamawa — His Excellency, Atiku Abubakar) have taken their turns to visit local TV and Radio stations across the country, fielding answers to the myriads of questions Nigerians pose to them. But Tinubu had sworn to anger never to honour such invitation.

Few days ago, he would go to CHATHAM House in faraway UK, to make mockery of our local media Organizations that invited him to Town Hall Meetings, ridiculously claiming that he is superior to their programs.

Well, Nigerians are taking note of all these, and February 25, next year will prove him right or wrong.

Tinubu has also proved that his presidency will gag the media, same way Buhari’s regime was accused of gagging some organizations like AIT (which he even banned from covering his inauguration ceremony in 2015).

After his CHATHAM House show of shame, he (through his surrogates) launched a cold war against Prince Chief Nduka Obaigbena (CON) and his Arise TV/This Day Newspaper outlets. On December 13, Mr. Bayo Onanuga authored a vitriolic article titled: “Nduka Obaigbena and his ThisDay/Arise News hypocritical grandstanding on public morality” against the man who just received national honours award two months ago, for his distinguished roles in uplifting our people and uniting the nation through the genuine media practice.

The article revealed a sponsored salvo from Tinubu’s camp, trying hard to suppress the didactic advisory of Arise to make himself available for public scrutiny. The attack on the organization was most unfortunate, and reveals how reprehensible a Tinubu presidency will be.

Not even President Buhari (Tinubu’s role model) could be this lethal to Arise, despite its objective criticism of his regime. In fact, Buhari himself, against all perceived odds, choose Arise to interview him on June 10 last year. It was arguably the first comprehensive interview he granted any Nigeria’s homegrown news outlet. But here we have a Tinubu — a mere candidate, albeit in a party which popularity is in a maddening decline, bullying the press.

To be fair, Arise News has been the best thing that happened to Nigeria politics in the current dispensation. They’ve revolutionalized journalism in the country, especially with their magazine talkshows — The morning Show, and The Primetime interview. Prince Obaigbena (a boardroom guru and media magnate) is the only one with Midas’ torch, who could pull together the kind of highbrow experts in journalism to work under one roof as he did in This Day Newspaper/Arise TV.

Fighting them as Tinubu’s henchmen are doing will be a fight in futility, as Nigerians will resist it to the letter.

He ostensibly wants to cow Nigeria’s domestic press into self-censorship, before he could present himself for interview. This was Buhari’s techniques too. And everyone knows that whenever an interviewer red-pencils himself, the expectations and relevance of the interview will become attenuated.

Tinubu’s ‘mediaphobia’ is a pointer to his lack of tact and situational awareness needed for the office of the President, and that was why he wants to bowdlerize anyone inviting him to reel time interrogations on screen.

He and his praise-singers may throw Aso Rock into another chasm of incommunicado presidency.

Tinubu also doesn’t read the signs of the time. He doesn’t see that for the first time Nigerians have agreed to exorcise the ghost of ethnicism, religious bigotry, and selfishness, which was why they want to hear directly from their prospective leaders.

May daylight spare us!

✍️ Jude Eze.

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