What Does It Take To Speak for President Tinubu?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Ordinarily, the innocuous question – who speaks for President Bola Tinubu – should be a non-issue because it ought to be a given. But these are no ordinary times. In Tinubu’s bumbling emi l’okan dynasty, where the end justifies every means and jejune politics trumps governance, absurdity is the norm.

*Onanuga and Tinubu

Such intrigues, in the warped estimation of his rabid supporters, elevate him to the pantheon of political gods, making him the Jagaban of Nigerian politics. But Nigeria is worse for it.

On July 31, 2023, Tinubu appointed Ajuri Ngelale, who served as Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to President Muhammadu Buhari, as his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity. The 38-year-old man wasn’t unknown. A broadcast journalist before his appointment, he also served as co-spokesperson of the Tinubu-Shettima Presidential Campaign Organisation.

But he was an outlier in the Tinubu political family where the likes of Dele Alake, erstwhile Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, held sway. His appointment was said to have been facilitated by a faction of the Aso Rock cabal led by Tinubu’s son, Seyi.

Ngelale was having a ball until the President appointed Bayo Onanuga as Special Adviser on Information and Strategy on October 13, 2023. Thereafter, the supremacy battle, which blew open on May 28, 2024, ensued. Preparatory to the first year anniversary of the Tinubu administration on May 29, 2024, Onanuga said the President will not make any broadcast.

“Instead the President will address a joint session of the National Assembly, which has lined up a programme to commemorate 25 years of the nation’s democratic journey at both the executive and legislative levels,” and thereafter “commission the National Assembly Library and Resource Center, now to be known as the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Building,” he disclosed.

Hours later, Ngelale countered him, telling Nigerians to disregard the statement. “In view of the public commentary concerning the President delivering a speech before a joint sitting of the National Assembly tomorrow, May 29, 2024, it is important to state that this information is false and unauthorised as the Office of the President was not involved in the planning of the event,” Ngalale said. That was an unprecedented move that drew a line in the sand. It was, therefore, not surprising when a fight to finish ensued. Onanuga triumphed and three months after, Ngelale resigned.

The former presidential spokesman, who disclosed that he had submitted a memo to the Chief of Staff to the President on Friday, September 6, predicated his action on some undisclosed “medical matters”.

“While I fully appreciate that the ship of state waits for no man, this agonising decision — entailing a pause of my functions as the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity and official spokesperson of the President, Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action and Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen — was taken after significant consultations with my family over the past several days as a vexatious medical situation has worsened at home.”

Nobody was taken in by such apparent spurious reason. It was obvious that he had been given a very hard push and Onanuga was over the moon. He couldn’t have been happier seeing the back of the upstart who publicly called him a liar and even without being officially re-designated, he moved into Ngelale’s former office at the presidential villa and appropriated the presidential spokesman title.

To be sure, Onanuga has always been a close ally of Tinubu right from his active journalism days, especially when he was the boss at the Independent Communications Network Limited, ICNL, publishers of TheNews magazine. Nigerians thought that with the exit of Ngelale, the game of musical chairs in the communications team had effectively come to an end. But they didn’t reckon with the president’s seeming abhorrence for decency and orderliness.

So, like Ngelale, Onanuga was enjoying his day in the sun when Tinubu, on October 23, appointed Sunday Dare, his former staff at TheNews magazine as Special Adviser on Public Communication and Orientation. But that was not much of a problem because Dare, former Minister of Youth and Sports, was to work from the Ministry of Information and National Orientation.

But when he appointed Daniel Bwala as Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications (State House), on Thursday, November 14, it was obvious, as Ndigbo would say, that the handshake had gone beyond the elbow. Bwala’s appointment was an invitation, once again, for Onanuga to wrestle.

It took less than a week before the battle started. Last Monday, Bwala announced himself as the official replacement for Ngelale. “Today, I resumed officially as the Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications/Spokesperson (State House),” he tweeted after briefing State House correspondents earlier.

While insisting that the three Special Advisers were all servants of Tinubu, he reiterated that: “I only came to introduce myself to you and the role that was given to me by Mr. President, and I told you that role was once occupied by Ajuri Ngelale.” 

Distinguishing his portfolio from others, Bwala emphasized: “When Ajuri was there, the nomenclature was Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, and now that role is called Special Adviser on Media and Public Communications (State House). Sunday Dare works from the office of the Minister of Information.”

But Onanuga would have none of that. Not again after surviving the Ngelale scare. A few hours later, he countered Bwala, insisting that Tinubu has no single spokesperson. Not only that, he announced that changes had been made in the designations of members of the presidential communications team.

“President Bola Tinubu has re-designated the positions of two recently appointed officials in the State House media and communications team to enhance efficiency within the government’s communication machinery.

“The restructuring is as follows: Mr. Sunday Dare – hitherto Special Adviser on Public Communication and National Orientation is now Special Adviser, Media and Public Communications. Mr. Daniel Bwala – announced last week as Special Adviser, Media and Public Communication, is now Special Adviser Policy Communication.

“These appointments, along with the existing role of Special Adviser, Information and Strategy, underscore that there is no single individual spokesperson for the Presidency. Instead, all the three Special Advisers will collectively serve as spokespersons for the government. This approach aims to ensure effective and consistent communication of government policies, decisions, and engagements.”

Was the re-designation authorised by Tinubu? Nobody other than Onanuga can tell. As at the time he released the statement, Tinubu was in faraway Brazil. But this is only the beginning of the big fight ahead.

Of course, Onunaga knows that having three Special Advisers serve collectively as spokespersons for the government cannot ensure effectiveness and consistency. It is a recipe for confusion, a classic case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. In any case, the Special Advisers do not speak for the government as he claimed. That is the remit of the Minister of Information. They speak for the President.

Three spokespersons for one president is not only redundant and inefficient, it also raises the question of whether the communication challenges of Tinubu’s government are so overwhelming that it requires multiple voices to manage. Or is this just an attempt to amplify propaganda and gaslight Nigerians through multiple channels in a devious bid to overwhelm citizen?

Yet, as if having three Special Advisers is not bad enough, the communications teams has Senior Special Assistant on National Values and Social Justice, Fela Durotoye; Senior Special Assistant on Public Engagement, Linda Nwabuwa Akhigbe; Senior Special Assistant on Strategic Communications, Fredrick Nwabufo; Special Assistant on Public Affairs, Aliyu Audu; Senior Special Assistant (Media), Tunde Rahman; Senior Special Assistant (Print Media), Abdulaziz Abdulaziz, among others, thus making it the biggest and most unwieldy presidential media team in the country’s history.

Unsurprisingly, rather than succinctly communicating the vision and governance philosophy of the President to Nigerians, the Special Advisers have redefined their role to mean who will spew the vilest vitriol against real and perceived opponents of their principal.

*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche