Special
Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina has
stated that he's been receiving curses after a false report of him being
against the #EndSARS protests went viral on social media.
In a lenghty article titled ‘An Enemy of the People’ which he shared
on Thursday October 15, Femi Adesina insisted that he has never advised
the President to ignore the #EndSARS protests rocking the nation.
The presidential spokesperson further stated that he was never given a chance to respond to the claim.
For well over one week, the polity has been suffused with what
President Muhammadu Buhari describes as “genuine concerns and agitations
by Nigerians about the excessive use of force and in some cases
extra-judicial killings and wrongful conduct by men of the Nigeria
Police Force.”
And in that period of time too, I have had strident efforts being
made to position me as an enemy of the people. Very serious efforts by
mean people, who are simply out to generate hatred and animus against
other people, for no other reason than Luciferous and pernicious feeling
of smug satisfaction.
As a year two undergraduate at the then University of Ife in 1982,
one of the texts recommended for us in English Literature class was
Enemy of the Public by the Norwegian writer, Henrik Ibsen. I remember
traveling from Ile-Ife then to the popular Odusote Bookstores in Ibadan
to procure the book, along with some other recommended texts.
The term Enemy of the People originated in Roman times as hostis
publicus, which if translated directly means, ‘public enemy,’ someone
acting against the larger group, indeed, against society.
Get appointed to serve in an elevated public position in Nigeria, and
you automatically face some odium, nay opprobrium. He has joined those
who have come to steal our money. He has come to earn fat salary. He is
going to be taken care of from the public treasury, while we have to
slave and toil before we earn a living. He will be talking to us from a
high horse, haughty and huffing, while we look like grasshoppers before
him.
They never care what you were, and where you were coming from.
Whether you came down several notches in your income in order to serve
your country does not matter to them. Did you lobby for the job or not,
it does not matter. The moment you get appointed into government
position, you are poised to become an enemy of the people.
The first salvo came on Sunday from a suicide fake journalist who
plies his trade with an online rag called Peoples Gazette. He published
that President Muhammadu Buhari was to have approved the dissolution of
the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) the previous Friday, but had been
prevailed upon not to do so by his spokesman, Femi Adesina. That happens
to be me, and the information was coming to me as a piece of virulent,
hateful news.
Again, the hatchet job masquerading as a news item , added that I
convinced the President not to ever surrender the sovereignty of
government to ‘Twitter warriors,’ whatever that means.
Further, it said because of my anti-people convictions, I had issued a
statement against the EndSARS protesters, which had received wide
condemnation from the general public.
Several falsities stood out from the supposed news story. One, what
the reporter claimed never happened. That I prevailed on President
Buhari not to scrap SARS must have existed only in his fecund but
diseased imagination. What truth did that information rest on? None. Was
I or anybody else spoken with to authenticate the supposed information?
Not at all. It clearly failed the test of objectivity, which every good
news story must pass.
Then, the report said I had issued a statement against EndSARS
protests, which had received wide condemnation. Where, when, how? By
that date, I had not said a word, either privately or publicly against
the public marches. Any decent journalist would have checked, and quoted
the date and content of such statement, if it ever existed.
But the journalist from hell simply published lies against me, not
obeying dictates of the noble profession. And because we are in the age
of the digital media, characterized by riot and recklessness, people
began to share the evil, fake story. The plot to turn me into an enemy
of the people was in full motion.
I issued a rejoinder to the fake story by an equally fake reporter,
rebutting all his claims. A number of people believed me. But an equally
large number of people refused to believe, and continued to share and
purvey the evil report. Why not? Some people revel in merely believing
the worst about other people, and no superior argument would ever
convince them. Of course, Barrabas the murderer was preferred against
Jesus in Bible days.
Let me tell you about my minimal contact with this non-credible,
notorious purveyor of fake reports, who now publishes the online Peoples
Gazette. He used to work for Premium Times, which is one of the more
professional online newspapers we have. Over the past five years since I
came to serve in government, he had called me up a number of times in
the attempt to balance stories. I would give him the side of government,
particularly the Presidency. But whenever the stories came out, he
would have twisted them to serve his whims and other pre-determined
ends. What would be published would in no way look like what I had told
him, yet he would credit such to me.
He did it once, I thought it was happenstance. He did it the second
time, I thought it was coincidence. When he did it the third time, I
then knew it was deliberate enemy action.
I called up his editor, Musikiliu Mojeed, and pleaded that whenever
his medium had anything to confirm or crosscheck with me, he should
please send a saner and more professional journalist.
It’s that same raggedy reporter that has now become the Publisher of
Peoples Gazette. A veritable danger to today and tomorrow, now a
Publisher. Shame! Online journalism takes all sorts-the thief, the liar,
the pimp, the pen assassin, and all sorts of villains. At the touch of a
button, they just attempt to set on fire. They set out to incinerate
names, reputations, society, the country, and if possible, humanity
itself. Thy glory oh journalism is slain upon the high places. How are
the mighty fallen!
There was yet another attempt to position me as an enemy of the
public on Wednesday, this week. On August 6, this year, I had appeared
on Sunrise Daily, the early morning program of Channels Television.
Topic of discussion was a rally the previous day, organized by the
Revolution Now group. That rally, meant to torpedo the normal order of
society, attracted just a handful of people, who showed clean pair of
heels the moment security agents approached.
I was asked how the Presidency felt about the rally. I said it was a
non-event, mere irritation caused by a handful of lily-liveried people
who vanished as soon as they saw the police.
But on Wednesday, a hidden hostile hand, son of perdition, took a
video of the interview, edited it, and made it seem as if I was reacting
to the extant EndSARS protests. All hell broke loose online, with
people mouthing maledictions and curses against me. Well such things
have ways of returning to the sender, so it didn’t bother me. A curse
shall not alight without a cause, says that Book of Books.
I am happy that Channels Television was professional enough to issue a
prompt clarification. It published that what was being made to look
like a fresh interview had been done well over two months earlier.
Thanks.
Those who wanted to, believed the television station. A large number
chose not to, and bombarded my phone lines with curses, expletives, and
messages from the pit of hell. Well, if anybody chooses to belong to
that nether region, it’s a matter of choice.
Talking of bombardment of my phone lines, it had begun on Sunday. A
hateful mind had published my two numbers on Twitter, urging people to
troll me. They called till the phone batteries went dead. Mum was the
word from me. “He was reviled, but responded not,” that is what the Good
Book said of my master, the one I try to pattern my life after. So, I
said not a word to any of the callers.
The flurry of hateful calls was petering out on Wednesday when the
doctored video was launched. All hell broke loose again. My two lines
began to ring simultaneously, all bearing hateful messages, laced with
threats. Still, mum was the word from me. No reviling for reviling, just
as my Master would have done. We try to walk in His steps, despite our
occasional failings, as mere mortals.
Now, why do I think people try to demonize those in government, and
bring them down? Many reasons. Evil hearts. The heart of man is evil,
and desperately wicked. If you are in any form of elevated position,
they would love to see you fall. Man is in a fallen state, and the more
they see you bite the dust, the happier they are.
As spokesman to the President, they have told themselves you were
lying before you opened your mouth to talk. Ask them to mention one lie
told to them in five years, and they then begin to look like fools,
people with addled minds.
Again, envy consumes them. Why should he be presidential spokesman,
and I can’t be? Does he have two heads? Why should he be earning that
fat pay (lol, very fat, indeed, as fat as Super Dee of Africa) and I am
not the one earning it? Why should he live in government quarters, ride
official cars fueled and serviced by government (how I wish it happens),
and generally be impervious to the hardship in town? Envy turns to
malice, and they get consumed by ill will.
Again, in my own case, they say, why is he so loyal to his boss? Why
is he not joining us to malign and hate him? Yes, I love President
Buhari, and I’ve done so since 1984 when he became military head of
state. And till China joins to Africa, I will love him. “The strongest
man in the world is he who stands most alone,” Ibsen wrote in Enemy of
the People. Yes, millions of people love President Buhari passionately,
but in the unlikely event that the number will dwindle to ten or less,
count me in the number of those that remain. Whether I serve in
government or not, Buhari is my man. That is why I wear my best trousers
to serve him, though Ibsen wrote that “you should never wear your best
trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.” I’m wearing
mine.
Some people want me to join them to hate the President. It would
never happen. Not in this world, or the next. I have picked my own hero,
let them pick theirs. So, they try to bring me down, but the more they
try, the higher they see me on the mountain top.
In my first month as Special Adviser to the President, Sultan
Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar of Sokoto had come to the Presidential Villa. I
had known him long before then, and he calls me Kulikulii, which is my
email address, which I’d chosen for some comic relief.
The Sultan said on that day: “Kulikulii, you have come to do a most
difficult job, a thankless job. See what happened to those before you.
That is the way people will want you to end. But if the work was
thankless for others, for you, it won’t be so.”
The Sultan was prophesying, and I said a resounding amen, thanked
him, and left. I’ve not forgotten that encounter, and sure won’t.
So, for all those trying to bring me down, to make me an enemy of the
people, are you not striving in vain? For who Jah bless, no man curse,
sang Bob Marley. The food seller can only eye a toad hopping by, the
toad can never end in her soup pot.
For the fake journalist, and all those who shared his evil report,
that person who doctored the Channels TV interview to generate hate, and
all those who besieged me with virulent phone calls and text messages, I
can only say: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
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