Date Published: 12/19/09

Yar’Adua’s Health: Adeniyi courts editors

…Turns Consultant To Governors

Segun Adeniyi, Presidential Spokesman

Special Adviser on media to ailing President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Mr. Olusegun Adeniyi, has begun “seeking the understanding” of top editors to stave off what he considers negative media reports on the health of his boss.

Two weeks ago, Adeniyi met with bureau chiefs of media houses in Abuja to explain the “true” position of happenings in the fast drifting Yar’Adua administration. He followed up the meeting with another, last week, with the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and editor of Vanguard Newspapers, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye and another editor of a national daily who was his former boss in Thisday Newspaper.

Sources close to both meetings told Pointblanknews that the meetings by Adeniyi may have been spurred by complaints by members of the Yar’Adua’s kitchen cabinet on the media aide’s inability to stem the barrage of media attacks on the President. Interestingly, he insisted that his interaction with the editors be conducted “off record,” fuelling speculations that it may have been primed for “damage control.”

Adeniyi had exactly four weeks ago, in a rare media briefing, casually announced that his boss would be travelling to Saudi Arabia, and would seize the opportunity of the meeting to visit his doctors, making it appear as if the President would just dash in and out of the King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Jeddah.

Events since Yar’Adua’s admission have however suggested that Yar’Adua may have been stretchered into the hospital’s intensive care unit, barely conscious. This, Pointblanknews.com gathered, greatly embarrassed Adeniyi as it cast a huge shadow of doubt on his knowledge of the workings of an administration, whose Chief Executive, he is supposed to market.

Key government officials were said to have drawn Adeniyi’s attention to the barrage of negative stories on “Mr. President” and had reportedly charged him to do “something fast.” The chains of “interactive meetings” with key editors, Presidency sources revealed, was largely aimed at soft-soaping them into lessening attention on the President’s failing health.

However, sources close to the presidential media aide disclosed that Adeniyi has been so unsettled by the barrage of conflicting directives being hurled at him in the name of “H.E.” (His Excellency, Mr. President), and his inability to reach his boss. “With Segun (Adeniyi) unable to see or speak with his boss, he is, of course, at the mercy of the AGFs, the NSAs and the SGFs, among other key aides, who often taunt him,” another Presidency source offered.

The taunting aside, Adeniyi’s frustrations is said to be heightened by the role he played as the Tormentor-in-Chief of his boss’ predecessor in office, Olusegun Obasanjo, when he was a top columnist and editor of Thisday newspaper.

Some top editors of Thisday told Pointblanknews.com that Adeniyi, who shares Obasanjo’s first name, Olusegun, always relished strafing his namesake in his weekly columns “The Verdict According to Olusegun Adeniyi,” and bragging off about it in the days ahead of each publication.

“Adeniyi is now literally in the driver’s seat. His boss’ administration would, in the next five months, be three years old. They claimed to have a seven-point agenda. Nigerians have yet to see even half of an agendum, and even if Yar’Adua miraculously gets healed today, everybody knows that the last year of any administration is exclusively for re-election campaigns. And in their own case, I wonder what they’ll have to showcase for their years in office,” observed a former colleague of Adeniyi in Thisday.

Thisday, Adeniyi’s newspaper at the time, had observably taken a raspy stand on the Obasanjo administration, and had on more than a couple of occasions, done very grating front page editorials on the then administration. Today, observed a Lagos-based media consultant, “Thisday is literally seeking to best the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) in being the official government medium.”

“In fact, so rosy is the Yar’Adua-Thisday relationship,” continued the consultant, “that the publisher, Prince Nduka Obaigbena did not have any qualms in ‘sacrificing’ that fiery Fulani columnist Abdulrazaq Barkindo largely due to what the Thisday management considered Barkindo’s ‘Talibanist’ columns on the Yar’Adua administration,” stressing, “You know Presidency officials have consistently accused Barkindo of working for Yar’Adua’s political arch-rival General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.). Barkindo is now a deputy editor with 123Next newspapers.

Meanwhile, Yar’Adua’s absence and silence, it was gathered, may have become a blessing in disguise for Adeniyi as it has reportedly afforded him the time to concentrate on several consultancy projects for several governors, particularly those of Gombe, Kwara, Rivers, Akwa-Ibom and Bauchi states.

“Since some hawks in the Presidency have sort of benched Segun (Adeniyi), it will be unfair if he does not make the best of his position by resorting to the friends he made as editor of Thisday. At least, one thing is sure: he cannot return as editor of Thisday. So he has to seek ways of making extra money outside of the Presidency,” the source declared.