Between Bishop Kukah and Garba Shehu

Francis Damina

In the build-up to 2015 presidential elections, my benefactor and teacher, Malam Mohammed Haruna, had introduced me to Malam Garba Shehu who was then head of His Excellency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s media crew. I immediately linked up with him at their office in Utako where we discussed issues related to the presidential campaign of the then APC flagbearer -General Muhammadu Buhari. Obvious in the conversation was Garba Shehu’s mastery and understanding of his calling as a journalist. I was also to meet him twice at the Buhari Support Organization’s Secretariat somewhere in Lobito Crescent with Malam Adamu Adamu, MM Abdallah and Hameed Ali, among many others. Now as then, one can, like the Pope, infallibly assert that Shehu knows his onions and how to fry them too. I was therefore not taken aback when he got appointed as Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Communication. Since then, knowing that a friend in government is a friend lost, my relationship with him, mostly from the sidelines, has been that of a learning disposition especially that he stands out as one of those fine intellects produced by the Northern region.

Not unaware that those who speak for politicians usually cry more than the bereaved, cum the controversies that greeted General Buhari’s ascend to Power, I didn’t wait for any seer to prophesy to me the troubles Shehu would be ensmeshed in. Since then, I have been quietly waiting to see, as a Media guru, how he will deploy his sagacity, wisdom and professionalism in dealing with the obvious issues relating to the troubles of selling the Buhari product. Unfortunately, inspite of his expertise, the last five years have epiphanized his folly as one who, in defending his principal, neither places premium on logic nor on respect and decorum as ground rules for disagreeing with others.

Out of a litany of examples, I was recently pained with the way and manner he disrespectfully engaged our revered Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed in an interview on Channels TV. It was so embarrassing that one would imagine it was interviews like this that made our very own Chinua Achebe to write “Things Fall Apart” as a mirror reflecting our fast diminishing value of respect for elders. But this is a topic for another day since my concern here is his recent vituperative response to Bishop Matthew Kukah’s testimony to the Tom Lantos Human Rights’ Commission, Washington DC, on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

Among other things, Garba Shehu in response to the revered Bishop, said: “It takes a warped frame of mind for a critic to believe ethnicity is of primary importance in public appointments.” He then described His Lordship as “so-called man of the Church.” His grouse on behalf of other image-makers of the president is that, the Bishop had testified before the Commission of how the Buhari government privileges only members of his Faith, and the terrorists, target Christian Schools which Shehu took out of context inspite of the Bishop’s very glaring assertion that more Muslims have been killed, and on education and living conditions, northern Muslims are the most hit, which shows clearly that the Bishop was merely referring to a tiny orligachy of Northern Muslim elite who have become specialists in the instrumentalization of religion and ethnicity for their survival. And this is why it can be argued that, currently in Nigeria, there are only two tribes and two religions: these northern oligarchists and the rest of us.

My argument is that, by his response, Garba Shehu has only succeeded in reinforcing the point that government has been involved in deploying different standards in dealing with its citizens depending on their religious, regional and ethnic identities. Otherwise, where was Garba Shehu when my good friend and benefactor, the straightforward and unevasive Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Gummi, was in a video clip shown telling the Fulani that non-muslim soldiers are responsible for their atrocities but that the Fulani, unfortunately, retaliate by attacking both Muslims and non-muslims altogether? Where was Garba Shehu when the Sheikh accused the military of being complicit to the insecurity in our land? Perhaps, he didn’t deserve any response from him for obvious reasons. Or, has the cleric not been calling on the president to resign for years now?

Again, the presidential aid is perhaps yet to hear about the recent pronouncement made by the Emir of Muri in Taraba State, HRH Abbas Tafida, which, according to Ibrahim Abdullahi, the National Secretary of GAFDAN, “is nothing but a call for lawlessness, extrajudicial killings and anarchy.” But there may not be a response to address him because, like the Sheikh, he is also an honourable man that expressions such as “so-called” or “warped frame of mind” cannot be used on. Imagine that pronouncement was made by the “Sarkin Katafawa”!
The greatest undoing of the Garbas is their continuous denial that our nation is currently faced with challenges some of which cannot be referenced in our history books as precedents. Unfortunately, Shehu keeps responding to Shadows rather than the substances of these submissions. For instance, he should have been seen to be dealing with specific issues in the Kukah submission to say that: one, it is not true that in cases where we have Christian minorities, Christian children in public schools have no access to the teachings of their Faith traditions.

Two, it is not true that even within the Deradicalisation and Rehabilitation programme for the so-called repentant terrorists, the teaching of Christian Religious Knowledge is not included. Or that, it is not true that the purveyors of terrorism, banditry, kidnapping and murders of our people continue to appeal to Islam as their source of inspiration. For me, the absence of Christian Religious Knowledge in the Deradicalisation and Rehabilitation programme is deliberately aimed at saying, on this matter, we can exercise some monopoly because those involved are our children. This makes me wonder why the Bishop would complain about the noninclusion of CRK knowing full well that the recipients of this knowledge do not belong to this constituency.

Also, Shehu’s references to Biblical texts in the vain attempt to show that the Bible frowns at racialism and ‘ethnocentrism’ is only a gateway to the fact that the release was merely the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob. But if Bishop Kukah deserves all these insults for saying it raw in calling attention that we are failing, hence the need for good Muslims to rise in defense of their religion that is being manipulated by both the oligarchists and the murderers, and for asking the president to be fair to all, would fatwa not have been pronounced on him if he had said half of the things the Kano-based Sheikh Abduljabbar Nasiru preached? So, it is now not what is being said but who is saying it?

By way of conclusion, it is important to encourage His Lordship never to relent in calling a spade by its name which is essentially the role of a public intellectual in post colonial societies like ours. In a series of lectures called Representations of the Intellectual (1993 Reith Lecture), Edward Said of Columbia University noted: “ an intellectual’s mission in life is to advance human freedom and knowledge.” Yes, it is the duty of the public intellectual in society, as Vaclav Havel said, to: “constantly disturb, bear witness to the misery of the World, be provocative by being independent, repel against all hidden and open pressures and manipulations, be the chief doubter of systems… and for this reason, an intellectual cannot fit into any role that might be assigned to him… and essentially does not belong to anywhere: he stands out as an irritant where ever he is.

Finally, to paraphrase Damola Awoyokun, the debate brewed by the Bishop is actually the soul of the nation struggling to free itself from grip of sinister darkness that masquerades as light of truth. It is not now when our politicians all over the country, especially with the PIB Bill cum Electoral Law controversies, think we are more stupid that he, a strong voice of civil society, should allow the inquisitive energies of his intelligence to go to sleep.

• Damina wrote from Kaduna and can be reached via:
francisdamina@gmail.com