Tunde Odesola

By some indices of human assessment, such as professionalism, intellect, carriage, humility, handsomeness, etc., the erstwhile Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari (of bitter memory), Mr Femi Adesina, was not cut from the same cloth as many of his colleague editors. There was the tale of a toad-eyed, bosomy and big-mouthed female editor of a weekend newspaper, whose pair of laser-sharp designer glasses could identify a ‘dollarful’ brown envelope in pitch darkness. She’s a Jebusite. Unhatable, oga Adesina is disarmingly different, however.

Meeting Adesina is like walking into a room scented with simplicity and kindness. Who can hate a pair of white eyes nestling on a cherubic black face with a signature haircut and an innocent smile? I can’t.

I once told the story of how I met editor Adesina. I’ll tell it a second time. Twice, I met Adesina in close quarters; twice, I learnt a lesson in humility. The first time I got in the Adesina orbit was around 15 years ago. It was at the Source, Ile-Ife, where his relative was getting married. He had invited the Publisher, Conscience International Magazine, Chief Abiola Ogundokun, who extended the invitation to Osun State newspaper correspondents, on the platter of comradeship.

Adesina didn’t turn water into wine at the marriage, which was held inside the compound of SS Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Lagere, Ile-Ife, but he fed us to our throats, just like Jesus fed the 5,000 multitude. While we were still picking our teeth and sipping drinks after the meal, Oga Adesina began to pack our used plates by himself, like a male servant, but some of us protested and managed to wring some of the plates from his grip. Oga Adesina, at the time, was the editor of The Sun newspaper while we were mere correspondents.

We were three correspondents at the party: The Nation state correspondent, but now the Alagbeda of Agbeda-Ijesa in Ilesa-West Local Government Area of Osun, Oba Adesoji Adeniyi; National Life state correspondent, Omo’ba Wale Olayemi, of Otan Ayegbaju, and my little self.

A Yoruba proverb says, “If the youngster knows how to wash his hands properly, he will have the opportunity to dine with elders.” Eldership is not always an index of age. Sometimes, position or competence confers eldership. Not too long after dining with elder Adesina, I was promoted to the position of news and politics editor of Saturday PUNCH, triggering my relocation to Lagos. I was later appointed group politics editor of the three PUNCH titles. That role came with its perks. One of them was an annual invite by the U.S. Consulate in Lagos to their July 4 media seminar marking America’s Independence Day.

I was a guest at one of such events when I came across The Sun newspapers’ top dog again. This time, a former editor of The PUNCH, Mr Gbemiga Ogunleye, was also present. An extraordinary mentor and exemplar, if Oga Ogunleye lived during the time of Sango, the god of thunder, a news shrine would have been erected in his honour. He would have been worshipped to date as Ogunleye, the god of news.

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I was super excited to be at the seminar with industry giants. I looked forward to hearing divergent views from participants like Adesina, whose newspaper articles I was following, but with whom I’ve never had the opportunity to interact professionally. When Adesina finally spoke, nuggets of humility and intelligence dropped like precious stones from his lips.

The Adesina whom I knew wasn’t the same Adesina who served Buhari. I’m not talking about integrity here; his integrity remains his integrity, but I’m talking about a media guru who sits smugly and clings to the totem of Buhari while the burning train plunges downhill to doom. Adesina, in his heart of hearts, knows the disaster Buhari was, but, in order not to be seen as someone who spread the Buharian good news, which turned out as sad news, he has decided to carry the Buhari cross till he breathes his last.

In his 488-page book, “Working with Buhari: Reflections of a Special Adviser, Media and Publicity (2015 – 2023), Adesina says he left his good job at The Sun, where he earned three times more than what Buhari offered, describing his time in Buhari’s administration as national service.

While it is in Adesina’s rights to fetishise the shroud of Buhari, I feel his justification of Buhari spending undisclosed tonnes of pounds sterling on personal foreign medical trips while Nigerian hospitals were in a shambles was a slap on the face of Nigerians. It was a sin, too.

In the interview on Channels Television, Adesina said, “Buhari has always had his medicals in London, even when he was not in the office. So, it was not about the time he was president alone. He had always had it there,” adding that UK medical doctors had been managing Buhari’s health before his election in 2015 and were well acquainted with his medical history, making it unwise to change medical teams, mid-treatment.

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What the wise special adviser was saying was that Buhari, from birth, had never been sick, never been treated in a Nigerian hospital. As soon as he was born, herdsmen hoisted him on a cow, and off to London hospital they went.

Mr Special Adviser, stop feeding Ngerians with nonsense, please! It is a no-brainer that Buhari’s medical records lay in various military hospitals located in the states where he served, before his health became a national liability, after he snatched power.

Of course, you know, Mr Adesina, that Buhari had his QAmedical records in a few military hospitals where he received treatment as a middle cadre and senior officer. So, the same way he transferred his medical records abroad was the same way he should’ve transferred his medical records back to the country, upon assuming power in 2015, if his promise of change wasn’t a shortchange.

As a Christian, I expect Adesina to throw away the empty can of Buhari’s deodorant and not kick it about like a little village boy kicking a self-made ball of knotted rags. Buhari has gone to his grave with his innumerable leadership imperfections. Adesina should let him rest in peace, and not in pieces.

Nothing defines Buhari’s self-centredness and megalomania than his exposure by Aisha, his wife, and daughter, Zarah, in September 2017. Both mother and daughter intoned that Aso Rock clinic, meant to treat their breadwinner and his First Family, was shambolic, under Buhari’s very nose.

Zarah, in a series of Instagram posts, said, “More than N3bn budgeted for the State House clinic and workers there don’t have the equipment to work with? Why?” Where is the money going to? Medication only stocked once since the beginning of the year? Why? State House permanent secretary, please answer. Why isn’t there simple paracetamol, gloves, syringes… Why do patients/staff have to buy what they need in the state house clinic?”

Wait for her mother’s bomb. Aisha said, “…as you are all aware, Nigeria wasn’t stable because of my husband’s ill health. We thank God he is fully recovered now. If somebody like Mr President can spend several months outside Nigeria, then you wonder what will happen to a common man on the street?

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“(A) few weeks ago, I was sick as well; they advised me to take the first flight out to London. I refused to go. I said I must be treated in Nigeria because there is a budget for an assigned clinic to take care of us. I insisted they call Aso Clinic to find out if the X-ray machine was working; they said it was not working. They didn’t know I was the one who was supposed to be in that hospital at that very time.

“I had to go to a hospital that was established by foreigners, in and out 100 per cent. What does that mean? If something like this can happen to me, no need for me to ask the governors’ wives what is happening in their states.”

Sadly, it’s this incompetent Buhari that Adesina was defending after he had sucked the nation dry, treating himself at The London Clinic when he should have ensured the establishment of good hospitals back at home. For Buhari and the members of the ruling class, it was okay if diseases struck Nigerians dead on the streets, provided they could access adequate healthcare abroad.

Spending donkey’s years receiving treatment in a £3,500 per day elite clinic that caters for the British royal family and political leaders, exposes Buhari as a sailor without a compass. He was the soldier without a gun; an Ogun without iron; a Sango without thunder. Buhari was nothing.

But Buhari had a heart. He had a heart strong enough to push him to spend 225 days outside the country on medical trips, visiting no fewer than 40 countries since 2015. That was Adesina’s hero, whose reign amounted to zero in eight years.

I suspect that without realising it, Adesina was in a toxic relationship with Buhari, like a husband-and-wife abusive relationship, where the husband regularly beats the wife, but the wife soldiers on, wipes her face when a knock sounds at the door, smiles and opens the door, adulating her husband. Or, Adesina probably knew it but was encaged?

With his meagre earnings, where Mr Integrity got the money to fund his expensive healthcare treatment in one of the most expensive clinics in London should be a source of investigation for the EFCC, but corruption is fast killing Nigeria before Nigeria kills corruption.

I pity the Ipetumodu-born Adesina, but I don’t understand why his dove chose to fly with vultures. I put the Adesina kernel on a stone and smashed it with a stone, just to unravel why the tender earthworm crawled to the table salt. Questions popped up in my mind: Why do people smoke when they know smoking kills? Why do people traffic drugs to Saudi Arabia when they know what would happen to their necks? Why do people scream Christiano Ronaldo when they know Lionel Messi is the GOAT? Why?

Insecurity. Compensation. Disillusionment. Hypocrisy.

Email: tundeodes2003@yahoo.com

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