The Trials of Presidential Spokesmen, By Leon Usigbe
POLITICS DIGEST – Lauretta Onochie is not new to stirring up controversy as long as the issues concern President Muhammadu Buhari’s perceived opponents. She was, therefore, thought to be in her element when she leveraged on her position as a personal assistant on social media to the president to tweet recently that the court invasion by operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS) in an attempt to re-arrest Sahara Reporters’ publisher, Omoyele Sowore, was stage managed by his supporters to give the service a bad name.
Onochie is facing a defamation lawsuit worth billions of Naira slammed against her for an alleged infraction committed in her effort at defending her principal. Even though the alleged court invasion was captured in a viral video that has been seen around the world, she wrote, citing an eyewitness account to buttress her assertion: “Who Drama help? Every lie will expire, court room drama explained. So it was a stage managed drama in the court yesterday; Sowore pinned down by his supporters in a courtroom in order to give DSS a bad name.” However, the supposed eyewitness cited denied ever giving such information.
Her tweet was followed by an official statement from the DSS whose spokesman, Peter Afunanya, corroborated her claim. While denying that the DSS invaded the Federal High Court, Abuja, where Sowore, who was the presidential candidate of African Action Congress (AAC) in the last general election, was standing trial on charges the security outfit brought against him, Afunaya said: “In actual fact, it was his people who seized him.”
Femi Adesina, the special adviser to the president on media and publicity, echoed the DSS’ viewpoint as he believed that it gave a balance to the story of the court invasion, a story he also maintained, was concocted.
Yet, another presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, followed up, reminding the world that Sowore’s re-arrest should not be surprising because he is a person of interest to the DSS having been accused of calling for a revolution to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nigeria. Calling the publisher-turned-politician an “agitator,” Shehu rationalised his re-arrest thus: “He founded an organisation, Revolution Now, to launch, in their own words, ‘Days of Rage,’with the publicised purpose of fomenting mass civil unrest and the elected administration’s overthrow. No government will allow anybody to openly call for destabilization in the country and do nothing. Mr. Sowore is no ordinary citizen expressing his views freely on social media and the internet.”
DSS’ apology
Amid the presidency’s arguments, it was revealed that despite the initial denial, the DSS’ personnel actually attempted to re-arrest Sowore inside the court and the leader of the team had indeed apologised to the presiding judge, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu, for the incident.
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Some observers have questioned, not only the re-arrest of Sowore, but also the manner the DSS sought to carry it out, which has been viewed in certain quarters as a desecration of the court. Among these is the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC), Professor Itse Sagay, who thought that even though the DSS had the right to make arrest without first telling the president if they think the arrest isnecessary, what they did inside the court with Sowore did not look good. He said in his reaction to the incident: “I agree that the DSS have their job. They don’t need the approval of the presidency to do their job. So, no one should blame the presidency for anything the DSS does. However, the re-arrest of Sowore looks bad on the surface in the sense that the man was released a day earlier, and he was in court the next day to answer the charges and he is arrested. I feel that Nigerians are entitled to an explanation. It’s not something you can do and keep quiet. It’s not alright. There is something wrong in that. They could have a good reason, but they should tell us what that reason is.”
The ruling All Progressives Congress-led Senate was also dismayed by the occurrence and has consequently mandated its committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal matters to investigate the invasion following a point of order moved by the chairman of the committee, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, who had noted Nigerians’ concern on the issue, while also stressing that the leadership and members of the judiciary were particularly disturbed by the development.
AGF’s take over
Even though the Buhari administration has been perceived in the past as showing scant regard for the rule of law before now given the number of court orders it has allegedly flouted, perhaps, the court invasion is the single most embarrassing incident yet in its four and a half years old life. This is ostensibly why the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, AbubakarMalami (SAN), has ordered the DSS, to hands-off the prosecution of Sowore and forward to his office the case file in respect of the charge pending against the detained pro-democracy activist and convener of RevolutionNow protestbefore the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Overdrive
The presidency watchers believe that the foregoing hardly did justice to the public perception of its spokes people in the positions they assumed that seemed to justify the invasion. They are thought to be even more imperiled now by the ‘profound’ editorial published by the Punch newspaper announcing its decision to prefix, henceforth, the name of President Buhari with his military title, Major General, and as well refer to his administration as a “regime” as a way of pressing home the medium’s disgust over his government’s perceived increasing despotic tendencies.
It was a move that sent the presidency’s media managers on overdrive. While Adesina initially asserted the Punch’s right to address the president as a Major General as a measure of the free speech enjoyed in the country and the fact that the rank did not come cheap, Shehu on his part, in a manner that suggested that Adesina did not defend the president well enough, sent out a lengthy epistle questioning the “sinister motive” of the respected newspaper. Shehu argued that the medium assumed the position because Buhari was not its favorite to become president in the 2019 presidential election. In contrast to Adesina’s position, he maintained: “It is not within the power or rights of a newspaper to unilaterally and whimsically change the formal official title or the designation of the country’s President as it pleases.” Some have feared that Shehu’s reaction may be a precursor to a more significant government action on the Punch. This remains to be seen.
The First Lady’s wrench
Already laden by the Sowore controversy, the First Lady, Mrs. Aisha Buhari, threw an unwelcome wrench into the works of the presidency’s media office by accusing Shehu of disloyalty to the president and effectively pressuring him to resign as a spokesman for her husband. By its standard, an office that is used to dealing with all sorts of controversies, would have found the last few days a trying time as it struggled to make sense out of this bolt from the blues. A number of observers say more tasking times lie ahead unless there is a major shift in the government’s approach to the practice of the rule of law, as well as in the temperament of the security agencies to prevent further acts that may infringe on human rights of Nigerians.
