What Lai Mohammed should have told his grandson – TheNigerialawyer

Abimbola Adelakun

Years ago, I read about a man who worked as a night soil man.
When he found that his son was ashamed of his lowly occupation, he
had to explain to the kid that there was dignity in labour.
Besides, someone has to clean up after the city and its occupants.
The fact that he did not fit into the idea of what society
considers noble and sexy jobs did not mean he was undeserving of
the dignity of personhood. I recalled that story while watching the
immediate past Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, during his
ministerial screening. Mohammed was supposed to justify his record
of public service before the Senate, but he pivoted to the campaign
that has soiled his name. According to Mohammed, he used to ignore
the mischievous contortion of his name from “Lai” to “liar” until
his seven-year-old grandson asked him about it.

What he said he told his grandson struck me as quite
interesting.

First, I cannot resist noting that there is no contemporary
politician more jinxed than Mohammed when it comes to names and the
malice they incur on the bearer. Unfortunately, Mohammed built his
career on propaganda such that when his traducers came for him,
they found his name an easy weapon to use against him. Now, he goes
around the world with the scarlet letter of “liar.” He cannot shake
it off neither can he live it down.

Mohammed (and through his proxies) has protested this hilarious
twist of his name a few times in the past. In February 2017, while
visiting the Abuja office of Daar Communications Plc, he referred
to the “lie” moniker appended to his name. Mohammed claimed that
being labelled a liar is a price he had to pay for his service to
the nation. The fact that he brought it up -again- before a Senate
session that was going to tell him to “bow and go” shows that the
issue haunts him. They did not ask him about it, but there he was,
confessing like a witch in a deliverance service. It must be
painful for him that he has to lug around that label throughout his
life along with his other pains. Admittedly, his self-exoneration
before the Senate was light-hearted, but as the Yoruba proverb
says, it is in the act of jest that the truth is revealed. My hunch
is that Mohammed – who has not been as vocal as the times when he
was on a page of every newspaper – is embarrassed by his career as
the All Progressives Congress propagandist because his scions have
now grown up and begun to ask questions.

I am reminded of a similar story by the Special Assistant to the
President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, who claimed his
daughter “almost wept” when she read the comments vilifying him on
the social media. These snapshots into the private lives of these
media men tell us that behind the façade of invincibility of power
are vulnerable human beings who are hurt by their job. No, this is
not to rake up pity for them. They knew what the job entailed when
they signed up to wipe the behind of fellow politicians. These
government mouthpieces did not seem prepared to give an account of
themselves before the intimate crowd of their children and
grandchildren. Their families are not people they can shut down
with spurious shouts of “collective children of anger,” “wailing
wailers,” “Descendants of Shimei,” “keyboard warriors” and other
shaming labels they use during online “njakiri”, as the Igbo would
call it. They have to justify themselves differently. Gone were the
days when children were insulated from the fallout of parents’
jobs. These days, information is so democratised that parents in
political offices will have to explain to their children why they
are a spittoon for Internet folk. Adesina says he told his daughter
that the Adesina she sees crucified online is the one online
warriors created for themselves, not the real him. Mohammed says he
told his grandson not to mind his critics because they are the “bad
guys.”

While I understand such answers to their children are necessary
to deflect the embarrassment of online insults, I think they should
have been more honest with their children. Saying your critics are
the bad guys is setting them up poorly for the world in which you
have sown so much toxicity. Life is more complicated, and Mohammed
especially needs not underestimate the perspicacity of a
seven-year-old to apprehend issues. They could, for instance, tell
them that like the job of a night soil man, somebody has got to do
it. Somebody has got to clean up after a government that messes on
itself with a childish abandon. The lot fell on them because they
were at a certain place at the time when those services were
needed. Just a week ago, about 13 Shi’ites, a policeman, and a
“youth corper”-journalist were killed in gruesome circumstances
that should not have escalated into violence if Nigeria valued
life. Since that happened, the President’s media men have been all
over the social media wiping the blood.

Presidential aide, Garba Shehu, had the effrontery to tell us
the Shi’ites killed the policeman, DCP Umar Usman, and the
journalist, Precious Owolabi, during their protests. There has been
no official report of an autopsy, but Shehu has already decided the
case. Meanwhile, the police are the ones who carry weapons and the
Shi’ites have regularly been victims of their brutality. Shehu even
claimed that the decimation of the Shi’ites in Kaduna was because
the government proscribed them. He must have edited his memory to
exclude the part where soldiers brutally massacred those Shi’ites
in that same Kaduna. This is no hearsay, the murder and mass burial
of 347 victims were publicly admitted at the sitting of the
Judicial Commission of Inquiry set up by the Kaduna State
Government. For Nigeria to admit that many, you can multiply the
figure by at least three. Shehu even added that their recent ban on
the Shi’ites’ Islamic Movement of Nigeria now means any action
taken to repress them is justifiable. That is what the government
that employed both Adesina and Mohammed to clean up its soiled
clothes does.

How they can construe anybody but themselves as the bad guys
beats me.

I think they owe it to everyone to tell their children the hard
truth. They should tell them they do what they do so they
(themselves and their children) can lead a life of comfort and
privilege. They should tell their children that Nigeria is a
hellhole. It is a place where people can be killed on the streets
because they protest; a place where the education system has
collapsed such that even the President and Vice President who
stopped the allocation of forex for other people’s children foreign
education send their own abroad and dazzle us with graduation
pictures on social media; a place where the healthcare system has
depreciated to the point that none of our leaders can entrust their
health to the system, and will rather fly abroad; a country whose
future has been cannibalised and where the destiny of the
inhabitants of this geographical expression called Nigeria is no
one’s immediate priority. They should show their children the
reality of living and existing in Nigeria outside of the spaces of
power. Then tell them that if they do not want to fall from glory,
they should stop checking the Internet for what people think of
their fathers. They should just shut up and accept all the goodies
that Daddy brings home with gratitude, even when its wrapper drips
with the sweat and blood of other Nigerians.

Culled from Punch

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