Between Garba Shehu And Southern Governors (1)

 By Dan Amor

There are rumblings or discontents in Nigeria following an exchange of diatribes between Malam Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity, and Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum and Governor of Ondo State, His Excellency Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN. Ever since the 17 Southern Governors met in Asaba, Delta State on Tuesday May 11, 2021, and took a collective position on the state of the nation, presidential aides, especially Garba Shehu and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, have been fuming and hurling mud at Southern Governors with reckless abandon. 

*Gov Akeredolu of Ondo State 

First, Southern Governors stand for the unity of Nigeria. To reinforce that unity, they agreed that the country should be restructured. The governors also wanted Nigerians to come together to talk about their country and its future. They wanted President Buhari to drop his overwhelming nepotism and respect or address the overall essence of the Federal Character Commission in appointments into federal institutions including the national security architecture.

Above all, they wanted a stop to open grazing by cattle which armed herdsmen have been capitalizing on to kidnap, kill and rape people with impunity. Eight Northern Governors have so far openly declared support for the ban on open grazing by their Southern colleagues. Northern Governors have been meeting since after the Civil War in 1970 to deliberate on issues concerning the common interest of the North. Where then have Southern Governors gone wrong? If really they can’t halt the incessant abduction, rape and killing of their subjects, why were they elected into office in the first place? What is the first responsibility of government? 

Since this government came to power in May 2015, Nigerians have been dying like ants and the Federal Government has been turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the cries of the people. The president himself told the world in 2018 that the killers came from Libya, people trained by the late Col. Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi, who found their way into Nigeria through our widely opened borders. But the Buhari government now wanted the natives to allow their killer “brothers” to settle with them with their cattle. At a point, Presidential aides told these natives to surrender their land to the herdsmen if they (the natives) needed to live. While the armed herdsmen are killing innocent Nigerians, bandits have come from nowhere to join them. Without official declaration of war, Nigeria is already in a state of war. 

There is no day that passes without at least 200 people being killed by these Fulani militias across the country since Buhari became president. This is apart from the cascading Boko Haram insurgency in the North East which has been festering since 2009. In Southern Kaduna and the Middle Belt (North Central), whenever the Fulani sack an entire village, they take over their homes and the Federal Government does nothing. The government would lie to the world that the clashes are between cattle rearers and sedentary farmers. So many Nigerians have been killed and so many kidnapped and raped by these people. Today, PMB would send a release attacking those who support the ban on open grazing, and tomorrow, when the heat is so much on him from angry Nigerians, he would release another one that he is against open grazing. 

What a presidential rigmarole or breakdancing! 

It is outrageous, to say the least, that Nigerians are confronted with a Presidency that lies on oath to the people and lies intermittently to the world at large. What is even more benumbing is the mendacious propaganda by presidential aides who lack the courage to resign their appointments for gross inefficiency and wayward hypocrisy. The magnitude of sophistry and intellectual dishonesty being displayed by these otherwise brilliant presidential aides shows that the President might obviously be reading speeches not vetted. This is absolutely ridiculous. It is part of the obscenities and subterfuges that Nigerians are made to contend with since 2015. A committee set up by the APC on Restructuring and headed by Gov. Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has agreed that the country is overdue for restructuring. In fact, Restructuring was originally part of the APC agenda during the 2015 Presidential campaign. But it was dumped as soon as PMB came to power. 

Gov. El-Rufai even said last week that there should be devolution of powers from the centrifugal to the centripetal forces for Nigeria to move forward. But the government at the Centre would just not budge. Also, last week, Alhaji Mohammed Sa’ad Abubakar 111, the Sultan of Sokoto said that strategies to halt insecurity in the country are deliberately being delayed by the presidency. Yet, if a southerner says so, Garba Shehu would descend on him. Buhari’s handlers and the man himself mistake presidentialism for absolutism. They see the presidency as a monarchy and the president as a monarch who, like Caesar’s wife, cannot be faulted or challenged. But these aides who insult Nigerians for airing their views over their dismal performance must note that Nigerians are intelligent and discerning people who cannot swallow hook, line and sinker the jejunity and indecorum at play at the nation’s highest ruling office. 

In fact, the most insulting and painful is the way and manner in which they talk down on elected state chief executive officers as though these governors are errand boys to the presidency. 

Most of the unprintable words oozing out of their mouths or pens are taken for what the President has said even when he does not see or go through them. Why are presidential aides using the most acidic language to deprecate state governors? They must be educated enough to know that Presidential speeches the world over are exercises in critical thinking and persuasion. There is nothing wrong with wanting to win the conviction of the governed in a given society without wanting to study theories of rhetorics, communication, argumentation and decision making. But the evolution of the study of speech communication has infused the forensics arena with fresh, new ideas with the apparent interest of world leaders in decent instruction in speaking and professional speech education. Consequently, the Presidency needs a speech making or speech writing mechanism. 

*Amor, a journalist and  public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja