From human historical past, the king’s palace or presidential palace in every single place within the world, has all the time been a prestigious place, unceasingly flowing with milk and honey, and, in fact, luxuries of all types. However not missing its facet of hazard, whether or not one’s job is assessed amongst that of boy-boy or big-man, working at presidential abode is expertise value savouring.
Nigeria’s Aso Rock can’t be an exception. If there could possibly be something completely different, it might more than likely be heightening of lavishness.
At a time all points of life in Nigeria is present process excruciation for survival, these in Aso Rock, in addition to different associated quarters in Nigeria, are immune from the hardship ravaging lives of hundreds of thousands of properties within the nation. It is just the resonating sound of moaning and murmurings in every single place within the nation that these in Aso Rock have been listening to.
That’s the reason quitting such job isn’t with out surprises, particularly in Nigeria, the place resigning from mouth-watering public workplace work, is extraordinarily uncommon. In some kind of suddenness and surprises, it’s amidst public outcry in opposition to deteriorating financial insurance policies of the Bola Tinubu administration, which the current woes within the nation are traced to, that Ajuri Ngelale resigned from being the spokesman of the president. Admitting that it was “agonising determination”, Ngelale adduced that” it was taken “to frontally cope with a vexatious medical scenario” at his “nuclear household.”
As many, together with this author, have been taking Ngelale’s rationalisation with a grain of salt, newspaper report trailing it have been confirming that there have been extra to it than meet the eyes. In line with Premium Instances, “he left the place after he grew to become suspicious that he could possibly be humiliated out of workplace.” The Cable corroborated existence of “medical concern in his household” however added that that was not “the first motive for his determination” to stop. Counting on “insiders” account, Premium Instances disclosed that “the presidency has been purchasing for an skilled and competent media skilled to switch Mr. Ngelale” on the idea that “the journalist has to date didn’t show enough capability to successfully ship on the job.”
It’s not onerous to see that supremacy struggle has been raging coldly however lethal among the many president’s appointees and members of his speedy household. It’s questionable to Nigeria’s nationhood of over 100 years that because the eve of the twenty first century that the nation returned from navy to civil rule, the deciders-in-chief on the presidency, with exception of that of cosmopolitan, refined and patriotic Olusegun Obasanjo, have been cabals after cabals, made up of tribesmen of the president in energy.
It is usually obvious to hundreds of thousands of discerning eyes that the one-man riot act over-peppered with youthful exuberance, garnished with unpalatability of gangsterism and poisoned with ethnic bigotry, which sexagenarian Bayo Onanuga fraught into the polity within the construct as much as the 2023 presidential election, stays unbated even when Tinubu has since taken “his flip” as Nigeria’s President.
The multiplication of presidential spokesperson that Tinubu has continued from the place Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari stopped has given princely credence to idiomatic expression that too many cooks spoil the broth. What’s the rationale behind having multiple spokesperson for the president, whereas there are sufficient skilled data managers and speechwriters who, as civil servant, are everlasting staff on the presidency?
Nothing could possibly be extra preposterous than the pondering that Ngelale doesn’t have requisite expertise. Earlier than he was appointed senior particular adviser to President Buhari in 2019, the graduate of Political Science and Historical past from College of Kansas in the USA had labored with AIT and Channels televisions in Nigeria, the place he had been investigative reporter, information editor, producer and presenter.
With ten years and above as a journalist, if Ngelale was a lawyer and referred to as to the Nigerian bar on the similar time he began his profession in journalism with AIT in 2011, he would have been categorized into class of senior legal professionals, accompanying with the standing of being a accomplice or affiliate in any regulation agency; he may have turn into a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN); and Lawyer Common of the federation or state. He would have additionally been certified to turn into a Excessive Courtroom decide, and within the subsequent two years, he would have been eligible for a bench on the Supreme Courtroom decide.
Within the trade that Ngelale has been plying his commerce, Yakubu Mohammed, one in all Nigeria’s celebrated journalists grew to become editor of the then excessive flying Nationwide Harmony when he was less than 10 years in journalism. In actual fact, he was lower than ten years as a journalist when he co-founded trailblasing Newswatch with Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu and Dan Agbese.
Upon the heroic standing he attained, even after being assassinated in 1986, by the way, the 12 months Ngelale was born, Giwa was no more than ten years within the journalism occupation.
If anybody among the many founders of Newswatch was appointed presidential spokesperson within the mid-Nineteen Eighties would it not have been clever to explain anybody of them as inexperienced?
Might a presidential spin-doctor on this digital age have a lot issue in getting contact of related individuals? On this period, what’s required to reaching out to obligatory contacts is the scriptural admonition recorded in Matthew 7:7: “ask”, “search” and “knock” Might or not it’s that the 37- 12 months previous journalist, who isn’t digital alien, was unwilling or unable to do any of the three easy Bible-instructed actions?
However no matter superlative nomenclature the job title is embellished with these days, a spokesperson at any station of labor is just the chief reporter of the workplace of the principal occupant. Being reportorial in nature and with the convenience of presidential paraphernalia, the job of a chief reporter of a president might not be as tedious and tasking as that of a newspaper editor.
The work reduce out for a spokesperson neither requires acerbity and logical subjectivity of an advocate-columnist nor the sophistry of a propagandist and persuasive energy of a salesman which were made to turn into conference by authorities data supervisor in Nigeria at this time.
Along with possessing qualities of reporter, what a chief reporter of public workplace holder wants is mixture of honesty and loyalty – honesty to oneself and humanity; and loyalty to the state and the chief he works underneath.
This is without doubt one of the areas the place mixed expertise of a reporter and editor have to be present in a journalist.
It’s on this rating that Oluremi Oyo, who labored underneath Obasanjo, stays distinctive and deserves to be emulated by others.
Aside from few situations during which human vulnerability to flaws might need come to the fore, Ngelale appeared inclined to be following Oyo’s instance.
The well being problem that Ngelale alluded to might not be removed from homesickness, an sickness occasioned by distancing himself from household, necessitating the longingness with emotional misery and desperation to reunite with them after not having the ability to really feel at dwelling on account of unfriendly and ill-treatment meted to him by his co-workers at office, those that take into account him a stranger. It’s scapegoatism and one other public present of the failure of the Tinubu presidency. Ngelale is just being made Aso Rock’s whipping boy in the intervening time.
For not permitting himself to be cowed by the present cabal at Aso Rock, Ajuri Ngelale has once more confirmed that the Ogoni blood of self-assertiveness and innate skill to name whoever’s bluff stay undiluted in him. Moderately, the fertilization from the blood of a German-American girl and a Nigerian man of Ogoni origin, which gave rise to his delivery have consolidated his character of boldness.
Ekanem despatched this piece from Lagos via [email protected]
