By Dr Mohammed Bin Haruna
Action Congress’ Spokesman, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has shown to be a publicist with great appetite to destroy towering reputation built over the years. After picking erroneously on President Goodluck Jonathan, attacking in the most baseless and unsubstantiated fashion, his personality and policies, he has shifted abruptly. Now is the turn of another great Nigerian, Dr. Doyin Okupe who was recently appointed by President Jonathan to direct his public affairs and engage the likes of Alhaji Lai Mohammed delighted in feeding the unsuspecting members of the public with half-truths and downright falsehood about Jonathan’s Administration.
In fact, at the wake of Dr Okupe’s assumption of duty as Presidential spokesperson on Public Affairs, the media became awash with vitriolic attacks on his person, character and status. The media reports are products of press statements syndicated by Alhaji Mohammed, the ACN National Publicity Secretary. His grouse is that Dr Okupe should not have been appointed by the President as his public affairs advisor.
Regrettably, Mohammed has earnestly sustained apparent campaign of calumny culminating in his clarion call that Dr Okupe be sacked by the President and be replaced, Perhaps by him?
The nucleus of his campaign is woven around his claim that Okupe is under investigation by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over contracts awarded by Benue and Imo State Governments in 2004 and 2006 to a company he chaired. His submission is that someone who has a fraud-related case to answer with the EFCC is not a proper and fit person to be the President’s public affairs advisor.
Understandably, Alhaji Lai Mohammed’s sustained campaign against Okupe is curious in many respects. It is more so incontrovertibly stuffed with intrinsic hypocrisy. I will provide well-based images to substantiate these observations.
First, it is startling that the ACN and its spokesman, Lai Mohammed could show great uneasiness and nervousness over the appointment of Okupe as the President’s spokesman on Public Affairs. The explanation to this is instantly recognizable. The opposition party is highly troubled that a Daniel has come to judgment; that an Okupe who has the proficiency, propensity, dexterousness and bluntness to cut their wide-ranging craving for vitriolic attacks on the Federal Government and spread of unsubstantiated information has come to engage, contain and cut them to size by exposing their malfeasance. Otherwise, when has it become the responsibility of an opposition party to assess appointments made by the ruling party, in so doing, recommending those to be sacked or retained by the President? Besides, why has the opposition party’s search light encircled around Dr Okupe who has great pedigree on presidential image making and capacity to match and overwhelm anti-Jonathan propagandist elements?
It is even more curious to observe the refusal of Alhaji Lai Mohammed to accepting the position of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission that Dr. Okupe has no pending case with the anti-corruption body. Apparently peeved by the statement credited to the EFCC spokesperson, Mr. Wilson Uwajaren on the matter, Mohammed had warned EFCC not to falsify and obliterate records in order to give Okupe a clean bill of health. Three key observations are germane here.
One, the position of EFCC renders Lai Mohammed’s outbursts against Okupe baseless, null and void. Two, it is instructive of the extent to which the ACN spokesperson can embark on a smear campaign on an amorphous basis and on the altar of deceit and disinformation. Three, in spite of the position of EFCC, Mohammed’s determination to continue to pursue the orchestrated project to lower Okupe’s estimation in the eyes of Nigerians who adore him, smacks of desperation to distract him from concentrating and consolidating on his onerous national assignment.
In fact far more disturbing is the stunning level of hypocrisy in Lai Mohammed’s approach. The ACN Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji is currently standing trial of a 20-count charge of fraud before a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos. He was being accused of stealing over N7 billion belonging to Lagos State House of Assembly. PDP South West Zonal Publicity Secretary, Kayode Babade in a statement raised a pervasive concern more succinctly: “in spite of being tried by a competent court for fraud, Mr Adeyemi Ikuforiji is still presiding over the affairs of the House and the hypocrites in ACN have not deemed it necessary to ask him to resign or step aside until the criminal trial is dispensed of”.
Babade is right. It offends the sensibilities of right thinking Nigerians that Lai Mohammed would close his eyes and mouth to the log in the eyes of the Speaker of Lagos State House of Assembly who is a leader in his own party while battling a leader in another party over an issue EFCC has declared non-existent. This attitude being exhibited by the ACN spokesperson has largely defied a popular and timeless maxim that “one who lives in a glass house should not throw stones.”
Time has come when Nigerians should no longer be taken for a ride by politicians who hide under the cloak of hypocrisy to goad them wrongly. It is imperative for Nigerians to condemn and reject this level of political hypocrisy because of its propensity to hamstring democratic sustainability.