After eight years of an unproductive and chaotic leadership, President Muhammadu Buhari will be handing over the mantle of leadership to the newly elected President, Muhammadu Buhari, on 29th May 2023, leaving behind deep sighs of relief. Even the most fervent supporters of the outgoing president would be happy to see him pack and return to Daura or Niger. In his babariga pockets, he rode into the presidency in 2015 with many tokens of goodwill, but his presidency has been characterized by sadism and indolence. His sociopathic nature will not allow him to care much about letting down those who once took him seriously.
At the core of the Buhari regime were his media aides. They were his enablers who buffered him from reasonable public opinion and obfuscated serious issues, enabling his apathetic stance while his tenure rode roughshod over the nation. Although they had a large reach, they failed to advance an original thought or devise any meaningful public engagement strategy. They were so vociferous that they amplified Buhari’s failures loudly, and their inability to summon a higher moral resolve compounded the wreckage and carnage left behind as the regime rolled on.
While it is fair to say that the media aides to non-performing politicians like Buhari have an unenviable responsibility, their wit became addled over the years of managing Buhari’s crisis-prone government. Responding to the public can be challenging, and they found themselves working in a permanent crisis zone, putting out either a series of small fires or a conflagration (or both at the same time). Continuously working in a self-defence mode could do things to one’s cerebral capacities, and this explains the frequent misspeaks and missteps that typified these aides’ jobs since 2015.
Managing a truant boss like Buhari was an exhausting experience for these aides. They spent the eight years inventing stories, deflecting questions bordering on accountability to the public, punching down at political opponents and their supporters, pandering to their current paymasters while putting up a grand show for prospective ones, and generally maintaining a facade of government functionality. Sadly, many of those activities are ultimately useless because neither the approach nor the substance of their communication advanced the course of democracy (or even our national values).
The conception of their professional responsibility is locked into a debilitating cycle such that they can hardly imagine public interaction without antagonism, slap downs, and punch downs. They cannot function without antagonizing Nigerians, and their public relations managers too cannot act outside that frame. Once behind the high walls of Aso Rock, they can no longer afford to see humans whose survival is threatened by the cluelessness of their employers and who have every reason—and right—to make demands on the government. All they see are pesky irritants who will not let them eat in peace. Their response is duplicity, deceit, and the shallow-mindedness that suffuses every part of their communication.
On Monday, the outgoing media aides of the Buhari presidency will leave their respective offices, save for those lucky to be reabsorbed by the incoming administration. Nigerians will not miss them. Buhari’s reign has seen the failure of leadership and the trampling of democracy. It is hoped that the new administration will usher in a new era of effective governance that would prioritize the well-being and security of Nigerians over personal aggrandizement and political longevity.
