In his publixation titled 'Is This The Change We Voted For? Yes It Is!' Garba Shehu asked a crucial question which should have been left for the citizens to answer, but in a desperate bid to pass his Principal off as a man of the people, he elected to be the provider of the answer to his own question.
It amounts to arrant callousness to question the genuineness of a woman's tears whose husband lies inanimately at the hospital on the back of acute health failure.
I thought it appropriate to respond to Garba Shehu's publication titled: 'Is This The Change We Voted For? Yes, It Is!' Garba asked a crucial question which should have been left for the citizens to answer, but in a desperate bid to pass his Principal off as a man of the people, he elected to be the provider of the answer to his own question. The question therefore is, how can we measure the objectivity of a man who is hired to defend the President at all times? In respect to his publication, I am responding as a Nigerian who presently resides in Nigeria and is conversant with the terrible conditions that a paid spokesperson tries to twist in order to win the nod of his employer. The publication portrays Garba Shehu not just as a man who has an estranged relationship with truth but also as one who is overly insensitive. It is a piece of useless statistics aimed at defending the glaring ineptitude of his Principal which has attracted untold hardship on the Nigerian people since the advent of the APC government.
But, in fairness to Mr Garba Shehu, one needs to understand that being a spokesman is one of the toughest jobs that people do, and Garba's predicament in this respect did not go unnoticed. His job requires that he speaks consistently, not in line with his personal convictions, but as a praise-singer with the skills capable of soothing the troubled soul of his Principal, even when his own subjective assessment of the situation is diametric. There are no hellish conditions on earth than one whose voice has been muffled in exchange for a salary - like Garba's!
Even in that publication, Garba tacitly confirmed Buhari's failure when he wrote:
'It is a proud moment for many citizens that the country is being perceived differently now that it has a different kind of leader CREATING A POSITIVE BUSS ABROAD...'
Who ought to be pleased? Should it be Nigerians or foreigners? Whilst I am not interested in engaging Garba Shehu in meaningless statistical analysis, it has to be said that the impact of President Buhari cannot be felt abroad alone, the change he promised must be evident in the lives of the Nigerian people. This is where the real statistics of the President's performance can be drawn, not the kind of analysis that is cooked in Garba's kitchen and forced down the throat of Nigerians.
It is therefore an affront and outright admission of failure for Garba Shehu to allude that President Buhari's assessment lies exclusively in the hands of foreigners. What he forgot to tell us was the number of votes Buhari secured abroad during the March 28 polls that ushered him to power.
But that is not all. The problems that Nigerians must contend with during the life of this administration transcend Garba Shehu's lies. Their ineptitude is so blindsiding that the blame game they started soon after the inauguration has become part of the APC government. On that, Garba Shehu has this to say:
'When they ask the question, is this the change we voted for, the critic forgets how far we have come from the scam-tainted years of the PDP rule.'
This is laughable! The general consensus spread across most parts of Nigeria was that the PDP had failed, a claim that this writer endorsed, and still does. The APC, in their desperate quest for power, promised a change from the status quo. The oppressed people, having been raped by the PDP since the rise of the century, naturally boarded the Change Train that the APC paraded.
It is pellucid, therefore, that it was the failure of the PDP to improve the living conditions of the people that caused the sun to set on their looting and pillaging. And now that the APC has been handed the opportunity to fix the system in line with their series of vociferous promises, it seems inscrutable to me that they should spend night and day lamenting over a mess they were ushered in to mend. This cockamamie excuse has gone so stale that it now has become intolerably offensive. At this time, Garba Shehu & Company must now shop for another excuse to which they must hold on for the next two years or more.
On the much-publicized 'war' against corruption, Garba Shehu has this to tell us:
'Everyone living in Nigeria knows that there is a major movement against corruption as part of the ongoing change. This war has forced the return to the treasury of billions of Naira and millions of Dollars stolen by past officials.'
Perhaps the most appropriate thing to do at this juncture is to provide Mr Garba Shehu and his Principal with a proper definition of the term 'corruption' to enable everyone to determine where exactly the war against corruption should begin.
In presenting the definition below, I shall place emphasis on certain words or phrases to achieve some effects.
'Corruption is most commonly defined as the misuse or the ABUSE OF PUBLIC OFFICE for private gain (World Bank 1997, UNDP 1999). Corruption can come in various forms and a wide array of illicit behavior, such as bribery, extortion, fraud, NEPOTISM, graft, speed money, pilferage, theft, embezzlement, falsification of records, kickbacks, influence peddling, and campaign contributions.'
The latter part of this definition is according to a research work submitted to Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC),entitled 'Anti-Corruption and Governance: The Philippine Experience'.
If abuse of public office amount to corruption like we have learnt from the above definition, then the President's nepotistic appointments since assuming office is an irrefutable testimony that he is lacking in probity. How then can he successfully wage a war against corruption when he himself is heavily begrimed by the plague? But these are not the kind of questions that Garba Shehu answers. And although Garba boastfully tells us that the Buhari's administration has recovered billions of Naira and millions of dollars from past corrupt officials, his claim clearly contradicts his Principal's recent lamentation that the country is struck with dire poverty. Quite obviously, Nigerians are led by a government of contradictions and lies!
But more disturbing is that Garba's problem is beyond his knack for cooking lies, his obvious sycophancy is what worries me. Hear him:
'President Buhari has himself on numerous occasions admitted that the change mantra has brought with it pain and suffering which he likened to the pains of labor. IT IS A PASSING PHASE.'
One hellacious task for this administration is the noticeable difficulty in admitting the sky-high incompetence that is associated with President Buhari and members of his cabinet. So, rather than admitting that the government is without a clue to respond to the economic quagmire rocking the nation, Garba elects to tell us that the prevalent suffering across the country is A PASSING PHASE in this government, and he says this without a practical roadmap on how they intend ending the ongoing scourge in the country. His attempt to inflict such a monumental insult on our collective intelligence is permanently unforgivable.
Garba Shehu needs to be told in blunt terms that Nigerians are sick of the Buhari's Administration. And Garba, who seems to live in the sky, needs only a single vox populi from the streets, markets, bus stops, etc to confirm the bogusness of his publication.
Residing far away in the sky, Garba needs to be reminded that a bag of rice in Nigeria is presently above N25,000, far more than the N18,000 minimum wage yet to be paid by many states. Our dear spokesman, away from his handsomely paid job, needs to taste this minimum wage for four years or more before he can competently answer the question he raised in his risible publication.
The people are presently battling to survive the outrageous prices of petrol, diesel, kerosene, foodstuffs, all of which skyrocketed in the morning of Buhari's government. Since Nigerians have remained malleable, we are at the mercy of the daily disasters of Buhari's government. And whilst we are enmeshed in the pool of these disasters, one can only hope that God intervenes, even in the face of a paid writer!
Elias Ozikpu is a social commentator, polemicist, playwright, and novelist.
