Bayo Onanuga, a veteran journalist and human rights activist, burst into national consciousness during the ill-fated regime of General Sani Abacha. He and six other colleagues, including Dapo Olorunyomi, now the Publisher of Premium Times, Senator Babafemi Ojudu, former Senator and ex Political Adviser to former President Muhammadu Buhari, Seye Kehinde, Publisher of City People, etc., co-founded The News Magazine. The magazine, which was involved in guerrilla journalism, greatly battled the Abacha regime, which led to the incarceration and exile of some of its co-founders and journalists.
When democracy came in 1999, The News was still vibrant in its investigative journalism as it broke the story of the certificate scandal involving the ex-Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, in the infamous Toronto gate. They also broke the alleged certificate scandal involving the then-Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the Chicago gate.
When the then-President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Onanuga as the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), I predicted that he would succumb to the lure of government largesse and be insensitive to the plight of the hapless masses that he had spent a chunk of his life fighting for.
While at NAN, he was quoted in a Facebook post when he said: “I was in Bauchi and Jos at the weekend, I also found that food was cheap everywhere,” he wrote. “In our hotel, we paid about N700 for a plate of semovita, or eba with a choice of catfish or chicken. On the roadside, I found to my surprise that with just N1,000, I bought over 50 oranges, two giant watermelons, and 10 pieces of sweet potato. I had experienced a similar thing in the market at Abuja, where I found that with N1,400, I could make a big vegetable soup, with tomato, pepper, and roasted Titus fish.”
And the sucker punch: “Are the media and bloggers really painting a correct image of our country? It’s time for the media to objectively conduct a reality check about our reports, whether we are not over-sensationalising so-called hardship that we talked about.”
He didn’t stop there. “My daughter was on the Virgin Atlantic flight that took off from Lagos to London today. I asked her to find out whether the plane was filled up or going to London near empty, judging by the noisy campaign from a section of the country about the ‘hardship’ in our country. My daughter sent back this one-line text, after boarding: “Daddy, the flight was filled up. This makes me wonder whether all the seeming orchestrated campaign in the media was not mere propaganda to make the Buhari regime look really bad,” he wrote mockingly.
In a recent Arise Interview on Tuesday, June 23rd, with Charles Aniagolu, he said that Nigerians were not hungry despite the ravaging hunger and poverty in the land.
He said, “We have been pigeon-holed into certain assumptions. It is like in the early days of this government, the president went to Lagos, I think he was coming from Central Mosque, and somebody did a voice-over – ebi ń pa wá o – which means “we are hungry.” And since then, people have been saying, we are hungry,” he said in a very matter-of-fact way with a straight face. But he was lying.
The presidential spokesperson says that it was a hoax because his personal staff says otherwise. “I am a Nigerian, and I have people working for me privately. I don’t see the level of hunger you people are talking about.”
Wondering what those who are complaining of hardship are talking about, Onanuga said: “People are praising this president. It is the opposition that is maligning him.”
He didn’t care that about 139 million Nigerians live in multidimensional poverty compared to about 87 million when Tinubu first assumed office in 2023.
Aniagolu reminded him that while the government admonishes long-suffering citizens to tighten their belts, government officials are loosening theirs.
Onanuga’s response was as asinine as it was harebrained: “That is not totally true. Let me just tell you a story. Today, after a meeting, I spoke with the Minister of Finance. It will shock people that some ministers, some of them spoke during the last budget exercise, didn’t receive capital money… some of them, because they came into office to serve, are using their personal funds to run. Some of them are not collecting government money.”
Incredible! Nigerians are, indeed, shocked that ministers are using their personal resources to run the business of the Nigerian state, and it beggars belief that the presidential spokesperson sees that as a credit to the government, assuming it is true.
An obviously flustered Aniagolu asked what he meant by ministers “using their personal funds to run,” to which Onanuga responded, “I mean to run their official work.”
I don’t entirely blame Onanuga. I blame the system that always throws up journalists as spokesmen. A well-trained PR practitioner is better suited as a spokesperson and won’t have made that faux pas.
Onanuga is fast sliding into infamy, and what will be his legacy as he won’t be in office forever? It is so tragic that he who started so well will end up like the Biblical King Solomon.
