One more adviser for Buhari

I ask for forgiveness if the proposal I am about to make will increase the cost of running government in these lean times. It is not my intention to intensify the financial tension of the moment. But it has become absolutely necessary in view of noticeable gaps in the line-up to give President Buhari one more adviser to take care of all other matters that are floating outside definite administrative portfolios.

We can call the fellow to be hired, Senior Special Adviser Plenipotentiary (SSAP). His job shall defy descriptions. If for instance, the President in response to a probing question from a reporter talked about bombing some protesters to submission in a democracy that is 17 years old, the fellow would call a press conference immediately to say the President did not hear the reporter correctly and had only reacted based on what he thought the reporter said.

Actually, the pressure up there in the Aso Rock Villa could create a hallucinogenic field and make the occupants to hear and see things differently from us. And so, the exact job of the new adviser is to put all statements that flow from the presidency in proper perspective, so that what is said and what is heard is the same and one. If this had been perfected before now, the confusion arising from the wrong communication on President Buhari’s state of health could have been avoided.

It seems, Mr. Femi Adesina, the President’s Special Adviser on media, does not understand the difference between when a man is ill and when a man is hale and hearty, however, with a little ear infection that could affect his hearing. He lumped both and for a while, the listening public could not tell which applied in the President’s inability to visit Lagos and Rivers State on different dates for official functions.

Adesina heightened the confusion when he said neither illness nor ear infection was responsible and made it look as if it was a crime for a 73-year old man to fall ill or have some hearing problems.

In 24 hours, Adesina issued two statements presenting opposite positions on the state of health of Mr. President. The one on Saturday, June 4 proclaimed the President as “hale and hearty.” The following day, Adesina, a long standing newspaper columnist wrote another statement proclaiming a 10-day holiday for President Buhari and that the President would use part of the short vacation to “see an E.N.T (Ear, Nose and Throat) specialist for a persistent ear infection.”

Are you hearing what I am hearing? The President’s hearing problem that had been persistently denied by Adesina suddenly became “a persistent ear infection.” It is to avoid this kind of persistent contradiction in the Presidency that I am proposing an addition of a SSAP to the Buhari’s work force. In this embarrassing double speak by Adesina for instance, the SSAP, I am cock sure, would have managed to speak straight and make the message uniform.

Something like: ‘President Buhari is on vacation for 10 days in UK.’ End of story. Every worker world over uses his/her holiday to attend to personal matters, which may include medicals.

The message was muddled up and I do not know what Adesina would want Nigerians to believe? Let me recap: is the President on a 10-day holiday or on a 10-day sick leave? I am sorry if I am pushing too hard here. Nigerians must know how much of Buhari’s annual vacation is outstanding.

He had had five days before, from February 5 to 10, which was also spent in UK. If five is added to 10, it comes to 15 days and if the President is statutorily entitled to 30 days in a year, let it be known to all and sundry that President Buhari must have exhausted his annual vacation by 50 per cent at end of the current 10 days. With this, we now know how many more days to grant him the next time Mr. Adesina comes with a vacation theory or something close to that.

There was another piece of communication from the Buhari household that was also poorly handled. One minister called Dr. Chris Ngige woke up one morning to tell a dream he had in the night. In the dream, Federal Government got so buoyant under President Buhari that it bought over every business in Nigeria including banks. The banks, which didn’t know about this dream and the change in their ownership structure began to work at cross purposes with government and Ngige, the dreamer, was forced to step in quickly.

He said, except with the express permission of the Labour Minister, (himself) any bank which reduced its work force to remain afloat in the current turbulent economic waters would have its licence suspended by the CBN, which had been duly informed through its Governor, Godwin Emefiele, to do so without fear or favour.

It could very well pass for the Anti-Bank Retrenchment Decree No. 1 of 2016 and since its promulgation by Dr. Ngige on June 3, all the media platforms (social and conventional) have remained active saying the same thing: that Ngige or even President Buhari for that matter, has no right under the 1999 Constitution as amended and all extant laws in Nigeria, to stop a solely private company without government equity holding from taking administrative decisions for its own survival. So far and good, no solid communication has come from the Buhari’s household to either suspend the decree or even amend it into a doable act.

Everybody, from masters to messengers, has remained numb as if all is well with the promulgation of a decree in a democracy where a bicameral legislature is in place. Yet, the matter is not altogether, impossible to handle. To douse the resultant heat, the SSAP would have been able to say ‘the matter of the take-over of banks by the Federal Government was actually discussed at the Federal Executive Council meeting on a Wednesday but Ngige who had previously complained of an ear infection might have mixed-up the final decision reached that day, which was that the Federal Government would partner banks and seek ways and means to save jobs in that sector in spite of TSA.’ End of story!

Sincerely, I would want the hiring of the SSA plenipotentiary to be treated with dispatch because things are rapidly getting out of hand. Talks on how to repeal the Ngige’s decree were still ongoing when yet another council member called Babatunde Raji Fashola characteristically came with a piece of sophistry to complicate matters for the Presidency in the absence of Buhari, who is on a 10-day vacation in UK. Fashola explained mid last week why tariff hike by electricity distribution companies (DISCOS) is inevitable in the current circumstances and in the same breath defended, like a Senior Advocate that he is, the inability of the DISCOS to deliver electricity in homes and business premises.

The man said there is zero public electricity because 80 per cent of the power-generating plants in Nigeria are thermal and fired by gas, which comes solely from the Niger Delta where some people called Niger Delta Avengers have stopped gas from getting to these power stations. What kind of talk is that? Was he expecting Nigerians to applaud him for asking for higher tariffs for the supply of perpetual darkness?

Fashola did not announce suspension of estimated bills and higher tariffs until the release of gas by the Avengers but found it almost expedient to explain government constraints in the provision of electricity and then ask us to show understanding in the face of the sustained onslaught on pipeline facilities by the Avengers. Nothing can be more unfair.

Instead of these arrogant postulations by Fashola, the SSAP would have said, ‘pending when gas would be freed by the Avengers to fire power stations to ensure public electricity, the Federal Government has decided to suspend import tariffs on generators, rechargeable lamps and to also extend generous credit through the Bank of Industry to candle manufacturers.’ End of story.