Opinion
By Steve Osuji
EVERY child loves cartoons. If you have a child who exhibits an intentional allergy to that rich, compelling childhood menu, then you must quickly consider psychiatric help for him.
Even adults enjoy that canned world of raucousness and make-believe. We get engrossed in it occasionally to while away the time or escape the unsavoury realities of adult life.
Today, I sincerely thanks our colleagues of the pen army, Dele Alake and Bola Onanugu for graciously bringing us public affairs in animated and digestible format. Never before has governance been presented in such pedestrian, albeit, useful nuggets for the good of all and sundry. For once in Nigeria, “government is truly for the people,” via the recently showcased one-year scorecard of current cabinet members.
If you didn’t follow this deft, media choreography on live tv, you haven’t only missed the sheer genius of strategic outputs by Dele and Bola, you really should be reined in and charged for something akin to treason, if not treason!
Trust me, this duo of my media friends have progressed from guerrilla journalism to, shall we call it guerrilla ‘governancing’! Recall that Egbon Bayo and Co took the agit-journalism script from Zik and Awo (who used it to win us independence), raised it to guerrilla journalism in fight against the military junta who occupied Nigeria until about two decades ago.
They started from M. K. O Abiola’s National Concord and on to The News and Tempo. Abiola and later Bola Tinubu were among their secret financiers. Some foreign powers also chipped in a bit of support. They and other journalists of that era (80s and 90s) were a handful to Nigeria’s spoilt generals who had become so comfortable in government house they didn’t want to return to their barracks.
Today, the tide has changed, the freedom fighters of yesterday are now the treasury managers of today.
And being adept at guerrilla tactics, they have introduced it to governance… a peculiar form of government media management. And why not!
For instance, why would you see your ministers at work if we can organise an all-accommodating talk show for all of them… 48 of them!
About 10 to 12 minutes talk to Nigerians after 12 months of strenuous work can only make life easy for all – both busy Nigerians and hard-working ministers. Especially so for I who can’t successful count even 10 of the 48 ministers.
Why should ministers waste precious man hours engaging Nigerians? Even President Bola Tinubu has shown no interest in those fancy media talks and interviews presidents waste their precious time over. He will have to finish the work on his table first and even eight years won’t be enough. So who has time for some busy-body media men! This explains the wholesale media show which some uppity journalists have already termed ‘guerrilla governancing.’
Those who caught up with nary a glimpse of the score-carding show will testify that it was top-notch. Dele and Bayo could have easily taken premium gate fee and indeed sold out. Let no one deceive you, it’s Dele & Bayo show. While Dele performed his scorecard, Bayo always sat in, sitting like a sad statue( why does he look like he’s always in terrific angst. I haven’t seen many people who are angry at the dinner table.) Onanuga just revealed to Nigerians that the Tinubu government spent one year to stop the country’s haemorrhaging. I guess it wasn’t necessary to tell us he was part of the Buhari team that gashed Nigeria mortally. He was a DG in Buhari’s era. But that’s by the way now.
Damn meticulous ministers, they regaled us of how they have taken the first year to layout plans. Most of them seem to say that even in madness, one must be methodical. A few have actually jumped out of the plan sheets on to the worksite with much bravura and alacrity.
Dele Alake himself, the Czar of Nigeria’s mining and commander in chief of the Nigerian Mining Army spoke with flourish about, about this novel achievement. Who else can set up a sub-sovereign army of his own in only a few months if not an old strategy warhorse. Though we have no figures as to how all of this rebounds on the treasury, the sound bytes and noise decibels are excellent.
Nyesom Wike was comical as he was ebullient. The one who could mock up a project for overnight, he didn’t disappoint. Those who say Tinubu has nothing to report in 12 months should check Wike’s scorecard. In fact Wike is already being dubbed the Wikipedia of projects. Well, so long as you don’t ask him the costs, it’s all okay.
Dave Umahi is another minister we at least know his name. Give it to him, he made over the 3rd Mainland Bridge his predecessors had panted over for years. He did it with streetlights and paint-over the 15 kilometre steel-and-concrete behemoth.
Having earned deserved plaudits, Mr Umahi dove, headlong, into what seems like his life’s mission – the accomplishment of a Mammy Water Highway, otherwise known as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway.
Only the one called the Wild Lion of Ebonyi could have contemplated this will’o- the-wisp project. In the first place, the project had been on the board since the time of Adam, as they say. Two, it must be the most ambitious road project in Nigeria’s chequered manhood or nationhood, if you like. A stretch of 700 kilometres, to cost a least one trillion dollars.
Only a man of acute Machiavellian bent could have gotten this project ready for kick-off in one year. But Umahi did. I wager he must be the last surviving progeny of Niccolo, that mafia philosopher. Consider that he had to handover the mammoth project to his master the president by proxy; he made sure there was no bid; nor EIA. He blurred the funding mechanism even though there’s no budget for the road ab initio, among other aberrant behaviors. He shutdown critics with gusto and accused opposition that questioned his sense priority of stoking ethnic jingoism
What a battering ram! What a tank of a chest this fellow is possessed of! Yet he’s among the class-toppers of Tinubu’s first year.
Never mind that Mr Mohammed Idris, Minister of Information and National Orientation, was a prominent fixture at the scorecard show, it was indeed a Dele & Bola production and we say, what a year it was! Kudos to guys for a great job. You made farce so beautiful! See you same time next year for another great episode…
Feedback: steve.osuji@gmail.com
A.
-May 30, 2024 @ 18:21 GMT|
Tags: Steve Osuji
