IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, SHAKA MOMODU IS THE ONE-EYED KING

RIGHT OF REPLY

*A rejoinder to his back page article, Nigeria No be Lagos

By Angela Rusida

There are cogent reasons to review Shaka Momodu’s three- part tirade of hate and spite against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. (Tinubu’s Mission Impossible, March, 5, 2018; Lagos Must Be Free, October 12, 2018 and Nigeria No be Lagos). As Editor of THISDAY, his opinion indexes his editorial judgment and exposes the contradictions and confusion of his psyche. Understanding that psyche is therefore critical to any serious evaluation of his malady. Since not all patients understand the medical implications of the symptoms they manifest and research has shown that mentally deranged persons are the least to admit the precariousness of their situation, this writer will be doing Mr. Momodu a world of good by offering to dissect his problem pro bono. This also serves a societal purpose of restraining him from continuing to inflict his toxic imagination on unsuspecting healthy and clear-headed citizens.

When Edo State University certified him a graduate of Political Science, it must have been assured that he had gained, at Bachelor’s level, reasonable mastery of the concepts of the discipline such as democracy, republicanism and constitutionalism in theory and practice. Momodu has either forgotten these concepts or seeks to abbreviate them to conform with his warped thinking. For instance, freedom of expression is a core concept of democracy. This includes the right of an individual to express himself and the duty to respect the right of others to hold and express theirs.

However, in Momodu’s Country of the Blind, he, the one-eyed king has the reservoir of the right to expression as others who seek to avail themselves of this right are “unscrupulous, useful idiots” who “spew utter hogwash”. The academics are “educated people, professors, reasoning like zombies” and he would not give the citizenry the right to reason because he could not take it for granted that they have learnt any lessons from their travails.

Who did this to Shaka? Between 2003 and 2007, Shaka Momodu was an indigent , humble correspondent of THISDAY newspapers at the Governor’s Office in Alausa, Ikeja. He covered Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as the Lagos State Governor serving his second term and witnessed the radical politics and governance of the maverick politician, financial strategist and astute logistician as he tried to redress the injustice suffered by Lagos State by creating 37 additional local governments. He was on the front row as Lagos State reformed the revenue collection system, setting up the Lagos Internal Revenue Service and computerizing the tax stations to provide real time feedback to the central office. He witnessed legal struggles that won for Lagos State the control of the production of number plate and all lands under the bridges built by the Federal Government. He reported for THISDAY newspapers the decision of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu administration to pay the fees for the final year examinations of all students in public secondary schools and the evolution of the tutor-generals/permanent secretaries to improve the administration of education.

Momodu was among the correspondents who reported the numerous awards won by the Tinubu administration at the internationally acclaimed city awards and penned articles that fairly reported the exceptional achievements of the administration. Just cutting his teeth in the journalism profession then, there was no hint of a misguided crusader in the young man who was excited by the advertising placements passed through him to several newspapers by the Zenon oil marketing company to supplement his salary by taking commissions. This transactional relationship with news sources, though corrupt by journalism standards, had become the famous tactic of all public relations gurus to encourage the newshounds to look the other way.

Without decorating many of the press releases penned by the office of the Press Secretary with his byline, it is not likely that Momodu would have gained the attention of his employers who propped him up and pushed him higher to take more responsibilities. It is evident that Momodu gradually became giddy and lost his humility and reasoning as he climbed up the stairs at THISDAY. He left the newspaper’s motto, Truth and Reason, on the ground floor.

Journalism is such a vast landscape of many messages, each requiring different skills and temperament. A news report often requires the craft of a sub-editor to achieve lucidity and brevity. A feature, longer and more exploratory, allows the writer more room to show his style. But editorial or column writing is a task for serious minded seekers of truth and employers of reason. It is expected to be well-researched, full of facts and figures and brilliantly written to celebrate the writer’s capacity for literary entertainment. By the way he labours to fill the page, it is clear that Momodu is out of his ken. None of his opinions can be recommended as a model for students learning how to write good essays. They are so morally depraved, disrespectful, abusive and insulting to the readers that they are hardly read for informed commentary.

In Momodu’s Country of the Blind, the journalistic ethos – facts are sacred, opinions are free – is never observed. For example, concluding that there is nothing to commend about the Lagos State Development Plan produced by the Tinubu administration, Momodu arrogantly goofs: “ It is to his eternal shame that there is no pipe-borne water anywhere in Tinubu’s Lagos. What is this nonsense talk about the Tinubu model?
Such a goof makes one wonder what Momodu picked up as a former Alausa correspondent between 2003 and 2007. How could he forget so soon that Lagos State has three major waterworks and 48 mini-waterworks that collectively generate 210 million gallons of water daily through 180 -kilometre transmission mains and 2.215 kilometres of distribution mains. If he had a modicum of responsibility to inform his readers accurately, couldn’t he google Lagos water corporation to learn what he did not know or remember what he forgot? He would have discovered that Apapa, which hosts THISDAY, is one of the three locations with high water supply. Others are Ikoyi and Ikeja.

Momodu, the one-eyed king also goofs on investment in Lagos in his bid to run down the city in which he has taken refuge from his backwater village and that also transformed him from a rookie beat pounding journalist to editor, by expressing his wish for investment to decline as fact. This reckless misinformation is at total variance from the information issued by the Nigeria Investment Promotion Council which declared that in the third quarter of 2021, Lagos State received 81 percent of total investment inflow into Nigeria valued at $7.29 billion.

Momodu’s aggression is the result of his frustration caused by the way his weak, facile and mechanistic analytical paradigm has failed to correctly predict the electoral process in Nigeria. Despite swearing God Forbid against the second term of President Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian people used their votes to demonstrate the futility of his arrogant ignorance, ego massage and a predilection to think he has any influence on public opinion. This ego massage can be seen in the first paragraph of his last article where he turns himself into a clown jesting that he had warned an accomplished elderly Nigerian not to run as if he ever had any capacity to stop him or anybody.

The frustration-aggression theory is well known as a conflict paradigm in social science. Deployed to dissect the psyche of our current patient, the one-eyed king, it illustrates why he will continue to suffer such delirious escape into delusion unless he quickly adjusts to the reality of the Asiwaju Tinubu presidency and joins other progressives to move the nation forward.

Editor’s Note:
This rejoinder was sent in by Tunde Rahman, Head of Tinubu’s Media Office.